American Media Inc., publisher of the Star, National Enquirer, and Shape, has acquired the U.S. edition of OK magazine from U.K. publisher Northern & Shell, reports Russell Adams in The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. edition of the weekly, with a circulation of some 800,000, launched in 2005. Star and OK combined now reach 1.7 readers, behind US Weekly's 2 million and People's 3.6 million in the battle of the celebrity weeklies.

Yes, we admit that we needed to look up what community is served by the Cecil Whig (Cecil County, Md., natch). But readers of the small daily were assured in today's editorial that the Whig isn't enduring the same problems as a neighboring paper, the Wilmington News Journal, which was affected by owner Gannett's cuts announced earlier this week. Sounding the bugle in defense of local community papers, the writer notes that the Whig has been surviving crisis after crisis for 170 years (it was born to promote the Whig political party) -- including a fatal duel between the …

Comparing The New York Times' new "Sunday Review" to a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, Forbes' "Mixed Media" blogger Jeff Bercovici says the section mixes opinion with objective reporting. "Sunday Review," which replaces the old "Week in Review" section starting this weekend, will run news and opinion articles -- still clearly labeled -- side-by-side rather than on separate pages. "Sunday Review," Bercovici reports, will also feature a column by Frank Bruni, a news quiz created in partnership with the public radio show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and a rotating political comic strip.

The latest daytime talk show host aspirant is "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson, according to the Hollywood Reporter's Lacey Rose, who was told by a source that Jackson "wants to talk about things that will be hip next.... He thinks he has his finger on the pulse." Jackson, a former record label executive, is also executive producer of MTV's long-running show "Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew."

Launching today: Lucky Peach, a new quarterly food magazine overseen by chef David Chang, known for his Momofuku restaurants. Published by McSweeney's, the mag includes essays by well-known food writers/chefs like Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain, as well as a 1919 short story, "The Gourmet Club." Sounds classy, huh? We found a short review here (Sample opinion: "In a time when many magazines are scaling back, Lucky Peach feels shockingly rich in content"), but were unable to discover if there's advertising or not. Anyway, the iPad app is coming next month.

Traditional surveys on print readership will be combined with online user demographics in a new database, comScore-MRI Fusion. A joint venture of comScore and German-based GFk MRI, the service aims to "bridge... the gap between online and offline media consumption and help provide a more holistic view of how audiences are reached in a multimedia environment," according to a comScore company release.

Get ready for a record-breaking number of political ads next year, as 2012's presidential, governor and Congressional races seem to promise a 9% to 18% increase in spending over 2010, predicts Moody's Investors Service. Pure-play broadcasters are sure to benefit from this trend -- especially since the Jan. 2010 Supreme Court decision that effectively ended spending caps for political ads.

Almost a decade after Poetry magazine was gifted with a bequest in the staggering amount of $200 million, the mag and its foundation have been playing out "what sounded like a multi-act play about the consequences of winning the lottery," writes Christopher Borrelli in the Chicago Tribune. Read all about it -- including the threats from a famous novelist whose poem was rejected -- in this fascinating piece.

Just in time for the beginning of summer, check out this list of current books about media, handily summarized so you at least know what the difference is between "Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy" and "Inside Wikileaks." Ok, some of these may be too academic-like for beach reading, but consider the likes of something more lighthearted like Tina Fey's "Bossypants" (far from the typical tortured comic's memoir -- she comes across as amazingly normal, smart and articulate).

"We as an industry just need to pay attention and give consumers what they want. Then there's no room for these other guys." That quote could apply to almost any industry, really, but it's actually Time Warner Cable's CEO Glenn Britt explaining how cable can defeat the competition from Netflix and Hulu.That strategy is harder than it looks, Britt concedes in an interview in MarketWatch. "Even amid signs that cable now has the technology and the interface to provide a truly consumer-friendly video-on-demand option, cooperation with the companies that make movies and TV shows remains an elusive target," is the …