Despite the recent tumult around the departure of Managing Editor Chris Mohney, and falling Web traffic, it looks like Gawker might be on the comeback trail (at least when it comes to razor sharp wit). In a recent post the site reveals The Fader as pure marketing magalog and sums up its target demographic thusly: “You probably know Cornerstone as the shadowy outfit behind The Fader, the magazine for white hipsters who wish they were black—but not black like, 50 Cent black, more like TV on the Radio black ...”

In other Gawker news, WWD recently revealed that Nick Denton’s bloggers aren’t being paid the chicken feed some might think. The publication gets NY Observer staffer Tom Socca on the record complaining openly about his salary: “The Observer salaries have never been competitive, but there haven’t been any cost-of-living adjustments. When I started here, a Gawker writer made less money than an Observer reporter. Now someone writing for Gawker is making more than senior staffers. (He emphasized that he wasn’t referring to [Choire] Sicha’s return to Gawker.)” Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Denton said of the staff shift, “We're a media organization—people move around… Gawker Media is increasingly like a mainstream media company, where writers are reassigned, or leave the company, stay in the orbit and return, later.” On a side note, the WWD article also reveals that new Observer owner Jared Kushner is planning a full redesign of the paper scheduled to debut in the spring.

In his ongoing quest for media supremacy, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has entered the battle to purchase The Tribune Company, a package that includes a newspaper chain (most notably Newsday and The L.A. Times), 23 television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Tribune is said to have a market value of about $7 billion.

Former Page Six gossip hound, and NY Press columnist Jared Paul Stern will apparently not have to face criminal charges in the case involving billionaire Ronald Burkle. On Tuesday, Associated Press quoted Stern as saying, “It is definitely a relief. But I'm still basically in the same situation vis-a-vis my life being ruined. I never really believed that I'd end up in court. It was a smear campaign. But it was a success. I got fired and vilified and all of that.”

On the heels of our recent report regarding the death of Ziff-Davis co-founder, William B. Ziff Jr., it appears the publishing empire he left behind may be ready to expire as well. The company has announced the closure of PlayStation Magazine and, as we reported last week, their 1UP.com gaming site is on the block, too. Now many industry watchers are whispering that the entire publishing house may be split up and sold into separate units.

Although the recent staff cuts (a whopping 150 positions) have momentarily tarnished Time magazine’s brand strength, this apparently hasn’t had an effect on Time Inc.’s ability to attract bidders for their other titles on the auction block. At last count, there was said to be roughly six bidders interested Time Inc.’s stable of 18 castaway titles that include TransWorld Snowboarding, Field & Stream, Parenting Group and Outdoor Life. Time Inc. head Ann Moore is said to be very particular about who gets the nod, presumably in hopes that the new owners would be able to keep the titles viable for the foreseeable future. At press time, the highest bids were reported to be in the $240 million range.

Former Walt Disney chief Michael Eisner (you know, the host of “Conversations with Michael Eisner that no one is listening to”?) can’t seem to get the hang of retirement. Following the new executive trend to rush to online video, Eisner is said to be in talks to launch his own online video channel. According to The Financial Times, online video operator Veoh is at the center of the deal (Eisner is one of the original investors in the website). It remains to be seen whether a Hollywood titan accustomed to influencing the viewing choices of millions around the globe will be content to toil away in the highly competitive arena of user generated online video content.

Other notable players fighting for a slice of the online video pie are newly launched Joost (formed by the founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom), Episodiq Studios (formed by Kyle Shannon, co-founder of Agency.com), Abbey Corps. (from Andrew Baron, the man who brought us Rocketboom, and, unfortunately, Amanda Congdon) and of course YouTube (Google’s newest chew toy). Slipping into the mayhem under the radar is the harbinger of Web 1.0 doom, Philip J. Kaplan, creator of FuckedCompany, a site that gloried in the failure of numerous Internet ventures.

Kaplan is launching a video version of his advertising network AdBrite called InVideo. The new tool will allow video creators to profit from ads placed at the beginning of their videos, with their own logos automatically placed within that video. While many cite Google’s Adsense program as a possible spoiler for the venture, the video playing field is still wide open, so Kaplan is safe from his own “dot com dead pool,” for now.