A bag of douche. Quadrant, the magazine of rants by squares, again is back in the news, with a Melbourne Writers Festival session on Katherine Wilson’s “Sharon Gould” hoax — pretty much the only thing the magazine is known for these days. But the recent issue has a long, very long, review of Clive James’s latest collection of increasingly sententious and joyless essays. The reviewer, David Free, thinks they’re pretty good, especially his attacks on postmodernists: ” … At such sages James aims a douche of truth …” “A douche of truth”. That he is, Mr Free (if that is your real name), that he is. — Guy Rundle

Skype goes under hammer. Ebay has agree to sell Skype to a group of private investors, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, in a deal that values the internet telephony company at $2.75 billion. — Wired

I’m a politician, get me out of here! Two politicians — MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk and former Lib Dem London mayoral candidate Brian Paddick — are about to go into the jungle for I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here. — BBC News

First-hand account of life with US troops. This past July, I was embedded with American soldiers in Afghanistan for a Rolling Stone magazine article, with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. — Pulitzer Center

Cartoon leads to interrogation. Three executives on the Ugandan bi-monthly magazine The Independent were interrogated by police for four hours because they published an allegedly seditious cartoon that was critical of the president, Yoweri Museveni. — The Guardian

Time.com audience booms. Time.com’s traffic trajectory in 2009 has been headed skyward, thanks in no small part to a partnership with Digg.com. The venerable newsweekly’s web offshoot has seen its audience balloon by 41% versus last year, landing at 6.7 million unique users in July, per Nielsen Online stats. — MediaWeek

Publishers pressured to slash prices. The pressure from Google’s digital library project and Amazon’s electronic books is forcing publishers to consider drastic price cuts, the head of the world’s second largest publisher of books by sales has warned. — Financial Times

SBS’s World Cup ad coup. SBS is believed to have already attracted up to $20 million in advertising for its Football World Cup coverage next year — the biggest single injection of advertising dollars in the network’s 29-year history. — The Australian

It’s not the “man in the mirror”. A hoax video purportedly showing Michael Jackson emerging from a coroner’s van was an experiment aimed at showing how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can race across the internet, German broadcaster RTL said on Tuesday. — Sydney Morning Herald