1. "The Star-Ledger announces large-scale buyout offer": News from Matt Seitz's old haunt, via Alan Sepinwall, who offers a brief reaction.

["The owners of The Star-Ledger announced today they will sell the newspaper if they cannot win union concessions and persuade a large number of non-union, full-time workers to take buyouts in the next two months. The owners set a deadline of Oct. 1 for getting 200 of the paper's 756 non-union full-time employees to take a buyout and for achieving the union concessions. The paper's total workforce is 1,412. The offer comes at a time when the newspaper industry is reeling from plunging advertising revenues linked to a troubled economy and the growth of online media. The news was announced to grim-faced employees by Publisher George E. Arwady at the paper's headquarters in Newark this morning. He characterized the paper as being "on life support" and urged employees to consider the offer for the good of fellow employees. "Despite the best efforts of all of us, The Star-Ledger is losing a battle to survive," Arwady said, noting the paper has suffered heavy losses the past two years. "If the Ledger is to have a future, it must make further changes in how it operates.""] Continue Reading »

1. A bit of in-House linkage. Man on Wire director James Marsh has responded to both Godfrey Cheshire's opinion piece on the film and Lauren Wissot's interview with him and Man on Wire subject Philippe Petit. His observations are taken from several e-mail conversations with Lauren and reprinted (with Mr. Marsh's permission) over two posts in both articles' comments sections. Click either link above to read the original pieces in full. Click here to read Mr. Marsh's first response, here to read his second.

["I have just discovered the blog—I think it's a very welcome oasis in the current desert and I'm glad to contribute to the discussion. However, I don't want to get into a protracted debate about Man On Wire—I think it's right to keep some separation between critics and film makers and I also think it is unseemly to whine about perceived critical slights. So, whilst I had no objections to [Godfrey] Cheshire's comments, I just wanted to correct some of the false assumptions he made about the process of making the film."] Continue Reading »

1. Two from the Times: Karen Durbin's profile of Melissa Leo (my girl!) and Dave Kehr's latest DVD column. Related: Andrew O'Hehir interviews Courtney Hunt, director of Frozen River (which stars Melissa Leo).

["Her independence has deep roots. When she was 9, she and her mother moved from the Lower East Side to Putney, Vt., and eventually to London, where, at 15, she remained on her own to study acting for two years before coming back to get her high school equivalency diploma and enroll at Purchase College. "My mom was a '70s mom," she said of her mother's willingness to let her stay in London. "She paved a road that no one had yet walked. To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth." Ms. Leo, 47, has long lived in Ulster County, near Woodstock, N.Y., with her son by the actor John Heard, and now on her own. She's a familiar presence at Woodstock's indie-oriented film festival, and is part of the loose network of artists, performing and otherwise, who have gravitated there. She explains her résumé by saying, "I do the work that's in front of me.""] Continue Reading »

1. "All the Answers": In The New Yorker, Charles Van Doren addresses the quiz show scandals.

["My first appearance on "Twenty-One" was on November 28, 1956. I must have put the whole thing out of my mind, but about a week after my conversation with Freedman I suddenly found myself in the studio, with the red light glowing above the camera, totally unaware that I was being watched by millions of people. Herb Stempel by then had been on the show for six straight weeks and had won some seventy thousand dollars. You can "quit right now," Jack Barry was saying to Stempel, in a voice practiced in arousing suspense, "and a check will be waiting for you, or you can decide to continue playing." Barry then introduced me: "He teaches music at Columbia University, and was a student at Cambridge University, in England . . . and his hobby is playing the piano in chamber-music groups.""] Continue Reading »