From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

News Ltd cuts: up to 1000 gone. Rumours are swirling that News Limited CEO Kim Williams’ long-awaited restructuring plan will cut more like 1000 jobs — one-eighth of News’ total staff base — with 600 to be cleaved from the non-editorial side of the business in addition to the 400 editorial cuts reported yesterday. Crikey understands that most of those savings will be realised through arresting duplication of News Digital Media as the media giant moves to a fully integrated platform agnostic centralised operation in line with competitor Fairfax.

Power goes out for energy board members? What’s happening in Queensland energy provider circles? Seems there’s some shuffling of decks at board level …

Simon Crean for PM: the push is on. ALP leadership has re-emerged in recent days, and one Canberra watcher is adding fuel to the fire:

“Either absolute nonsense or the political tip of the century. You decide on this piece of so-called inside information. The talk of canvassing the ALP federal parliamentarians about another challenge by Rudd against Gillard is just a smokescreen for the real challenge — from none other than, wait for it, Simon Crean! Yes, the former ALP leader, a stodgy yet certifiably charisma-free product who it seems is regarded as having respect within the party for his sound political instincts and aversion to spin and grandstanding is playing the numbers endgame.”

Smaller phone books piss off regional residents. Yesterday we ran a tip about regional areas of Tasmania being stuck with a downsized phone book this year. It seems it’s not just the Apple Isle that’s had its phone books shrunk, with a Queensland reader complaining of the same issue:

“Residents of the Somerset region in Queensland also became extremely cross when they received their new phone book for 2012/13. They thought they had been sent the wrong edition because it was headlined Beaudesert District and there was no indication on the cover that numbers for any of the towns or communities in Somerset region were included. A quick search using a magnifying glass indicated that they were. The print size in this year’s publication is so tiny it makes it almost impossible to read names and numbers in the White Pages section let alone find information in the Yellow Pages section of the book. It is quite simply ‘not fit for purpose’. Let’s hope the Office of the Communications Ombudsman does its job and makes sure this disaster is not repeated in the 2013/14 edition.”

But it seems that Sensis is hearing and acknowledging the complaints, according to one sand groper:

“Somewhere in my flood of emails from a few days ago, Sensis issued its best attempt at a judicious backdown — the White Pages for the north west of WA will return to its regular, larger size this year when its delivery begins (this week I think?). They didn’t really try to dress it up — just admitted they had listened to ‘customer feedback’.”

Age and ANZ deal or just a coincidence? An interesting tip from an iPad 2 user who uses both The Age and the ANZ app:

“On Sunday I filled in an anonymous survey placed in The Age app. It asked how often I used mobile banking (occasionally) and if I’d seen ads for any of the listed Big Banks on my mobile device (nope). However, the rest of the questions were exclusively about ANZ: no other bank was mentioned from that point. I found this a little disturbing, as ANZ is the only mobile banking app I have. Is this a freaky coincidence, or the result of unauthorised snooping?”

Sun sets on Army slouch hats? From the 3AW Rumour File this morning: “Caller Setting Sun says rumour is fact that the Australian Army will stop wearing the rising sun badge on slouch hats on July 1 this year.” Surely not …?

*Do you know more? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed-anonymous form.