White in on TT. Our tip last week that Seven sports host Matthew White was a strong contender to replace Anna Coren as host of Today Tonight next year was spot on. That’s what Seven announced yesterday:

Matthew White is to anchor Today Tonight.

In addition to his expanding network role in public affairs, White will continue to play a key role in Seven’s coverage of major events, including the Melbourne Cup, the Australian Open Tennis Championships, the Wallabies’ test campaign and V8 Supercars.

And when will he have the day off? He may be another TV workaholic that has to learn the hard way that less is more, much like Ray Martin failed to heed that lesson when at Nine. It now is up to Nine is they give Karl Stefanovic the host’s gig at A Current Affair, or persist with Tracy Grimshaw. That would mean risking the success of Today‘s comeback against Sunrise. — Glenn Dyer

The New York Sun shuts down. Newspaper spokesman Michael Moi says Tuesday’s edition of the conservative-leaning broadsheet will be the last. Editor Seth Lipsky announced on Sept. 4 that the feisty paper had endured “substantial” losses and would fold at the end of the month without a new infusion of cash. The publication laid claim to a grand tradition when it launched in 2002 with the name of a Pulitzer Prize-winning giant that published for more than a century before disappearing in a merger in 1950. Lipsky had hoped to carve out a profitable niche among New Yorkers, providing an alternative voice in a very crowded media market. — BusinessWeek

Ad Age’s Media 100. Old-media guardians might find some solace in Ad Age’s annual list of the 100 leading media companies, which can be found on AdAge.com starting this week. Not a single company in the top 10 has budged even one spot since last year. Nineteen of today’s top 20 were last year’s top 20 too. And we thought there was a media revolution going on. But linger a little, and there’s enough to give any media seller the willies. Google, a company that wasn’t even on anyone’s radar a decade ago, has cut past former giants like a hot knife through butter to land at No. 12. Time Warner, the country’s biggest media company every year since 1995 and once more this year, is poised to cede its top spot to Comcast with the pending spinoff of Time Warner Cable. — Ad Age

Dalek more popular than Diana. A striking image of a Dalek in front of the Houses of Parliament has been voted the best British magazine front cover of all time. The “Vote Dalek!” Radio Times edition, which was published in the week of the 2005 general election, fought off competition from more than 40 other contenders spanning more than 100 years. They included the iconic photograph of Diana, Princess of Wales, which featured on the front of Vogue shortly after her death in 1997, and a picture of the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood dressed as Margaret Thatcher on the cover of Tatler. — The Telegraph

Journalism loses a crusader. Osborn Elliott, who died on Sept. 28, was one of the great figures of American journalism, a crusading campaigner for American cities, a visionary leader of the movement for voluntary service, and perhaps above all, one of those rare characters whose very presence lifted the spirits of those around him, convincing them that life could be meaningful, significant, and at the same time — and this was a key part of his appeal — terrific fun. His passing leaves his country and the world a little less bright. — Time Magazine

Self-censorship and the US election. Talk about burying a lede. Some 1,100 words into his 1,400-word piece (“‘Substantive’ Press Is Taken for a Spin”) in today’s Washington Post, uber-critic Howie Kurtz writes, “While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they’re piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship.” — Columbia Journalism Review

The Saffron anniversary. The release on 24 September 2008 of journalist U Win Tin after 19 years of captivity came on the week of the first anniversary of what has come to be known as the Saffron Revolution. A year ago, the Burmese people, supported by thousands of Buddhist monks, took to the streets to denounce the junta’s excesses. On 26 September 2007, the so-called “Saffron Revolution” came to a violent end as once again the junta conducted a ruthless campaign to still democratic voices. — IFEX

The Google News filter. Aside from a quick hit off the Drudge Report pipe, landing high in Google News is probably the coolest thing that can happen to your latest article or blog post at the newspaper. Google knows how successful their news search is, and they recently decided to divine into newspaper archive search as well as current news search. If I were running a newspaper, I think that I’d be asking myself a very important question: why does Google News work? — Eat Sleep Publish