MONDAY'S LINKS: Scented Sticker Ads on 'USA Today' in Hotels, Minnesota Papers Spar, 'Globe' Fashion Mag

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By: E&P Staff In today's links, USA Today tries scented sticker ads for Starbucks for its Omni hotel distribution, a new study looks at the links between journalists and substance abuse, and Lincoln Weeks talks of how the Gridiron dinner once again had "the usual air of palsy-walsyness between politicians and journalists."

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-- When the closed-door showdown between Seattle's dailies begins next week, P-I owner Hearst has a legal bombshell: a sworn deposition by a former Times circulation vice president who says the paper violated the joint operating agreement with the P-I and used a "ruse" to trick its way into the morning market. (Crosscut)

-- Guests at Omni luxury hotels will find small scented stickers on the front pages of their free copies of USA Today. A blackberry aroma will suggest that the guests start the day at their hotels with a cup of Starbucks coffee ?paired with a fresh muffin.? The promotion, to be tested for at least six months, is being sponsored by Omni Hotels and Starbucks Coffee. (New York Times)

-- Tony Dokoupil: Published in the winter 2007 volume of Journalism History, "Depression, Drink and Dissipation" finds that almost half of the best people to ever push a noun against a verb in newsprint were debilitated by depression, serious anxiety, or bipolar disorder; over a third were titanic drunks, pill-poppers, or opium-addicts; nearly a third were serial philanderers, and a sizable bunch were misogynists, man-eaters, or violent bullies. (CJR Daily)

-- Lincoln Weeks: Once again there was the usual air of palsy-walsyness between politicians and journalists at the annual Gridiron Club dinner Saturday night. These anachronistic affairs are like fairy tales told at bedtime, where serious news -- the Iraq war, global warming, perjury -- is mocked and put to music as entertainment. (Washington Post)

-- Despite gloomy buyout news from the Boston Globe in recent weeks, there's still enough staffers left to launch a new monthly magazine supplement: Fashion Boston. (New York Observer)

-- Edward Wasserman: The current affair at The Los Angeles Times says something disturbing about the tremulous way in which a troubled profession is trying to reclaim a moral mandate it believes is slipping away. (Miami Herald)

-- New squabbling includes a threatened lawsuit from the publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press over Star Tribune Publisher Par Ridder's decision to hire away a senior advertising executive from the St. Paul paper. (Star Tribune of Minneapolis, Minn.)

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