Hill Holiday CMO Baba Shetty will become CEO of the Newsweek Daily Beast Company in October, according to MinOnline's Bill Mickey. "In a surprising decision, he will report to editor in chief Tina Brown and the company board," writes Erik Maza in Women's Wear Daily. Shetty, who has "a background in digital media," succeeds Stephen Colvin, whose three-year stint during "a turbulent period for newsweeklies" included downward trends like circulation dips, though "ad pages are up by about 2 percent from last year," according to Maza. Colvin is departing for VC Lerer Ventures.

News from the world of men's magazines: First, the happier report comes from Conde Nast, which is relaunching M magazine Monday in a quarterly version that appears to differ markedly from its previous incarnation, killed off 20 years ago. Its target is “the affluent trailblazers who want to look under the hood,” Editorial Director Peter Kaplan tells the New York Post's Keith Kelly. “It’s not a laddie magazine or a mass magazine. Every piece combines fashion and news." On the not-so-good news front, Maxim magazine, "the lone survivor of Alpha Media’s laddie mag boom-and-bust (Stuff and Blender folded …

Cast members from “The West Wing” are back in the White House for a four-minute political ad that not only promotes the campaign of Mary McCormack’s sister for the Michigan Supreme Cout but also reminds people everywhere to fill out the nonpartisan portions of their ballots.  McCormack, according to the story in TV Series Finale, says that Dule Hill (who, like McCormack, has starred in a USA Network series) was out of town during the filming.  But there’s no mention of Dule’s on-air “West Wing” flame, Presidential daughter, and current “West Wing” star Elisabeth Moss (nor the First Lady, …

Amanda Hess in her “XX Factor” blog reports on a panel at the CatalystCon conference on human sexuality that examined one of her own niches: mainstream media’s coverage of pornography. The panel included porn industry publicists and two reporters who cover the industry itself, Sherri Shaulis of trade pub AVN and Gram Ponante from Hustler.  So how does the porn industry get mainstream media coverage.? One tip: Link anything to “50 Shades of Grey”…”no matter how tenuous a product’s connection.”  And guess what?  The industry should know its audience: "Diane Sawyer isn't going to be running a story on how …

The AMC channel could be back on Dish Network by Monday, writes Swanni.  The reasoning is that, since legal proceedings in a $2.5 breach of contract lawsuit regarding Dish’s dropping of AMC’s Voom in 2007 have been postponed until that day, “AMC Networks might agree to accept a lesser amount in damages if Dish agrees to a new deal to carry AMC the channel.”  No dish on what becomes of AMC’s sister channels, IFC and We TV, though.  

In an agency aquisition valued at more than half a billion dollars, French-based Publicis has agreed to buy Dutch-based LBI. The news comes three months after another holding company Omnicom was reported to be nearing a deal for LBI.  

NBC is working with Britain’s Zeebox, already available to BskyB viewers in the U.K., on a U.S. launch of the second-screen “augmented television” product, reports Dawn C. Chmielewski.  Zeebox is expected to debut a free iPad app in the U.S. soon, she writes. The app is said to bring together online conversations about shows being watched on TV, deliver relevant information about the episodes, and even allow viewers to buy advertised products – or products seen during the shows themselves.

Good Worldwide, known for its printed magazine, just launched Good.is, a social activation site that "actually looks more like a sparsely laid-out online magazine than a social network," writes Liz Gannes. Besides the social aspects -- members posting "stories and activities" and following each other -- Good.is "features [magazine-like] global news feed of all its members that is curated by its editorial team," according to Gannes. The company reportedy learned "what worked and what didn’t" after buying and then shuttering Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes' Jumo, "a a cause-driven social network that didn’t take off," writes Gannes.

Condé Nast mags are facing budget cuts of 5%, according to "company sources" cited by Lucia Moses. Some pubs, including Golf Digest and Teen Vogue, have already cut staff.  And in a rush to be "more fiscally responsible,” according to one source, some are going overboard, according to another: "The company is 'psychotic' about sticking to budgets," writes Moses.

With the National Enquirer squeezed by free competition on the Web like TMZ and Gawker,  its financial situation is worsening. "Just two years after emerging from bankruptcy, the publisher of the National Enquirer is being abandoned in the bond market" amid concerns that such competition "will push it back into default," writes Matt Robinson.