FIRST CUTS: Koppel and Olbermann feud; Jane Pratt returns

Joe Pompeo
·Media Reporter

Welcome to First Cuts, a daily roundup of headlines that should be on your morning media menu:

• The FCC is speeding up its review of the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger with hopes of concluding it by year's end. (WSJ)

• Will the political outlook of Fox News get in the way of former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's new gig as News Corp.'s education czar? (AdAge)

• Jane Pratt, founding editor of iconic '90s indie mag Sassy and Conde Nast's Jane, is teaming up with 14-year-old wunderkind blogger Tavi Gevinson to launch a new magazine for "wallflowerly teenage girls." (Style Rookie)

• Richard Wolffe's second Obama book hits shelves Tuesday, with one revelation already buzzing through the mediasphere: The president keeps a diary. (Playbook)

• Brian Williams wants you to record "NBC Nightly News" if you're not home to watch it live. (NYT)

• Larry King loves newspapers. Social media? Not so much. (Mediaite)

• Which MSNBC host told Mark McKinnon to "cut the bipartisan crap and just give us some red meat"? (Inside Cable News)

• Ted Koppel says opinionated cable news hosts are to "to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment"--provoking MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to strike back with a "special comment" segment on Koppel's claim tonight. (Washington Post, Twitter)

• One reporter quizzed President Obama about awarding White House spokesman Robert Gibbs a Presidential Medal of Freedom for Gibbs' dispute with Indian officials over press access. (The Page)

• The Pentagon is launching a probe into who leaked the DADT study to the Washington Post. (AP)

• Christopher Hitchens, still drinking Johnnie Walker, reflects on his life's work and coping with cancer. (Observer U.K.)

• Both Tina Brown and Sidney Harman appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday to talk about how they're going to revive the Newsweek brand through its newly struck partnership with the Daily Beast (which Kurtz now works for). (CNN)