John Koblin

Eliza Dushku is an actress best known for her recurring role on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and was repeatedly harassed by her co-star, Michael Weatherly, on the CBS series “Bull.” She believes she faced retaliation after she complained, and was written off the show. Investigators who looked into the case said Dushku’s story was emblematic of larger problems at CBS.

The story of a mysterious sports writer, her business partners, and an alleged plot to co-opt an NBA fan’s Facebook page:

“Phillips kept up her correspondence with Ben, the 19-year-old college student and creator of the NBA Memes Facebook page. She said he could make up to as much as $1,000 per post as a contributor to her new sports-comedy site. Within 15 minutes, she had another idea: ‘Here’s something I just thought of: Instead of becoming a contributor, would you like to join our team as an editor/creator for the memes section?’

“With this proposal, he could make even more money. She spelled out specifics for him: She told him that her ‘initial goal’ for the site would be 2.5 million pageviews per month, which would bring him $38,400 a year. By the fall, they’d have 7.5 million pageviews per month and he’d be making $102,000 per year. Big money for a 19-year-old college student.”

Resuscitating a battered newsweekly in 2011 is a tough bit of business. Last year, The Daily Beast and Newsweek lost a combined $30 million. Ad page numbers tell how difficult it is, too: Newsweek’s ad page performance between April to September was down 18 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau quarterly report. This is easy to dismiss (what isn’t down these days!) — but Time is up 4 percent for the year, The Economist is flat and Newsweek is competing, year-over-year, against a version of itself that had an ownership change, a lame duck editor and a very uncertain future.

Someday, when they tell the story of how digital magazines saved Conde Nast, it will begin in San Francisco’s Caffé Centro sometime in May 2009. It was there that Wired creative director Scott Dadich asked Wired editor Chris Anderson to meet him to discuss the creation of a prototype for a new digital tablet. Mr. Dadich knew the iPhone screen was far too small to re-create the magazine experience, but it got him thinking about a Minority Report-like touchscreen that could work. Mr. Dadich took out a cocktail napkin and drew an illustration of what Wired could look like on a 13-inch tablet screen.

At almost 40, Jon Meacham, with his recessive posture, his slow gait, his bone-dry jokes, may not strike you immediately as the man who can make your magazine look good.