The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters examines the success of newsweekly The Week, which "earned a profit for the first time last year - $4 million - and is on track to make $6.3 million this year." Sure, that profit can be seen as modest, Peters writes, "but in an environment where in just the last six months Newsweek sold for $1 and U.S. News and World Report ceased publishing as a printed news magazine altogether, there are plenty of publishers who would happily take that $4 million."The mag's publisher also announced on Monday it …

The Hollywood Reporter's television critic Tim Goodman takes a thoughtful, detailed look at how and why U.S. cable TV coverage of any disaster is usually so terrible. For example, he notes, the current crisis in Japan "is clearly demonstrating how reporters and anchors are bungling the basics and how the producers and executives in charge of them have fallen woefully short of leadership."Goodman criticizes reporters for, among other failings, asking "simplistic and embarrassing questions." He writes, "How is it possible that on Monday evening (Tuesday in Japan), with the earthquake, tsunami and worries about radiation poisoning engulfing Japan, a CNN …

Both former talk show host Ricki Lake and current news anchor Katie Couric are considering filling the talk show void in 2012 after Oprah Winfrey goes off the air. According to Broadcasting & Cable, Twentieth, CBS and NBC have all expressed interest in distributing a show by Lake -- but they're waiting until Couric's CBS News contract is up in June before making any commitments.

Veteran teen pub Seventeen is featuring "delicious designer splurges" (as editor in chief Ann Shoket puts it in Adweek) on its fashion pages. Still, "We always want to be at reach for our readers," says Shoket, declining to say she's trying to step into the more rarefied atmosphere of competitor Teen Vogue. Lucia Moses wonders if the move could alienate some readers, though she notes that featuring $400 Coach purses and $400 Marc Jacobs shoes could help attract more advertisers.

Speaking Monday at South by Southwest, Barry Diller sounded off on various topics. The CEO of IAC -- which owns the Daily Beast -- wasn't sure if the "experiment" of the Daily Beast-Newsweek merger would work, and noted it should take six to eight months to know for sure. Diller also said The Daily was "impossible to download. To me, that's a gating issue."

New York Observer's Kat Stoeffel cites the possibility of "journalistic kleptomania" by The New York Times, detailing several instances where the paper gave cursory credit to another news organization that pioneered reporting on a story.For example, a recent expose of "the latest hot-button environmental issue -- hydraulic fracturing," finally gave nonprofit newsroom ProPublica its due for first breaking the story  -- but "20-odd paragraphs in[to the Times'] own story," which Stoeffel says is "approximately 18 deeper than the average Sunday Times reader will plunge."

Editor & Publisher takes an optimistic slant by honoring innovation and creativity, profiling "five newspapers that shine individually, and five categories in which newspapers across the country are realizing success."For example, the Appeal-Democrat, in the small town of Marysville, Calif., "catapulted itself into the future by getting in the QR code game, generating live webcasts and blogs, and turning its advertisers and ham-it-up publisher into website video stars."

Unsurprisingly, the cable news channels that focused on the quake/tsunami -- CNN and Fox News -- both experienced "massive ratings bumps," from Friday to early Saturday, according to mediabistro's TVNewser. CNN scored highest, with 2.276 million total viewers against Fox's 2.096 million.Broadcast channels were slower to get to the story, with some news team members arriving Saturday; Diane Sawyer was en route yesterday and will anchor ABC's "World News" tonight. The New York Times Media Decoder also dissected the situation of Western television networks "playing catch-up" on the story, since they "are relatively short-staffed in Asia." (P.S.: …

On the assumption that "Two and A Half Men" creators will replace their problem man with another actor -- presumably playing a new character -- Entertainment Weekly worked up a photo gallery "of "18 TV Shows That Replaced A Star." This exercise reminds us that sometimes this tactic works really well (Jimmy Smits for David Caruso in "NYPD Blue") and sometimes, especially when it's an iconic star, it bombs (Dennis Farina for Jerry Orbach in "Law & Order").Meanwhile, on the opposite assumption -- that the breach with CBS and Warner Bros. can still be repaired -- Alec Baldwin gives …

"I leave The Times feeling as reverent about it as I did when I arrived," writes Frank Rich in his farewell column, "Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist." Providing the personal back story on his Times career -- almost 14 years as drama critic, 17 years as op-ed columnist -- he begins with an anecdote about long-ago political pundit Walter Lippmann and ends with a lyric from a Sondheim song: "Stop worrying where you're going. Move on."