The cover of this week's "TV Click," The Oregonian's weekly insert on television, drew complaints from readers Sunday. Managing editor Therese Bottomly explains the situation on The Editors' Blog.

The depiction of a character in what turned out to be a Halloween costume, holding up a plastic head and spattered in fake blood, prompted objections that the image appeared "less than an inch away from the Sunday comics," and that "there is profound cultural, historical and psychological meaning to the act of beheading."

For the editors' thoughts on the matter, and for a link to the full cover in PDF format, read the original post.

Yesterday, the blog Portland Sucks posted a terse entry titled, simply, "Silence." It was accompanied only by a photo of a taped-up mouth dated "07.07.2009." Portland Sucks hosted a popular weekday podcast, and had a seemingly normal episode just the day before, with no mention of the previous show's controversy. The show ended with, "We'll be back tomorrow morning at 8am."

We received a tip Tuesday morning about host Robert Wagner's relationship with his podcaster, Small Plate Radio, which he had been a partner with until at least recently. Sources at SPR and its parent, Xhang Creative, gave us no comment on the tip, while Wagner has not returned repeated messages from OMC.

There was a controversy about the July 3 program, in which Wagner criticized The Portland Mercury's Matt Davis for a Blogtown entry titled "Rape Allegations: Another Side Effect of Big Soccer?" In his program, Wagner criticized the article on its logic, and criticized Davis on personal terms. The Mercury's Kiala Kazebee jumped into the comments to defend Matt, and dozens more comments ensued. Toward the end were these entries, posted yesterday at an unspecified time:

RobertWagner: ... F--- it, none of this is worth the effort. Kiala had a point in the first place and I was just too much a stubborn c--k head to acknowledge it until it was already too late. ...

Kiala: Deal. This never happened. NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW.

Kazebee would not address the matter with OMC, saying she's on vacation for the week.

The controversy also spilled into a thread on OMC. But the blog I'm in your water is a bit suspicious whether a "flame war, even one so intense as that, would spell the end for this show." They wonder, could it be a prank?

We'll have more when and if anyone breaks their silence.

UPDATE (7/8, 6:00pm): We're deciding to direct you to the big, bold words on the about page:

The content of this blog/website is meant strictly as parody unless otherwise noted.

That is all.

UPDATE (7/8, 7:20pm): @kiala has deleted this message from her Twitter account:

@TylerInCMYK I shut blogs down. It's what I do. #magical.

The message was dated July 7 at 8:09am.

UPDATE (7/8, 11:57pm): Robert Wagner speaks.

We lied, Press Clippings took much longer than an hour to produce. We blame our terrible, awful, slow computer.

• KMHD host Al Evans tells OMC it will be "a couple of weeks at least" before the station moves into its new studio at OPB.
• Portland Sucks calls out Matt Davis for his BlogTown post, "Rape Allegations: Another Side Effect of Big Soccer?" The Mercury's Kiala Kazebee comes to Matt's defense in the comments. Also up for Portland Sucks' wrath is KGW's Breedlove exclusive. As always, there's strong language.
• OMC reader skihoodoo sends in a photo of KGW's other Skycam in Newport at the Embarcadero resort, a followup to a story in our last Press Clippings. Skihoodoo has been doing a lot to contribute to OMC, thank you!
• A variation on an idea from @newsjunkie60 via @PortORTraffic: When an event like Wimbledon disrupts the TV schedule, why not put regular programming on a digital subchannel?
• Local blog I'm in your water offers a Portland media roundup, including former Willamette Week columnist Byron Beck calling Cort of KUFO's Cort and Fatboy "Lars Larson."
• We almost missed this: The Alliance for Community Media is holding its annual conference in Portland, discussing ways to "protect community media at the national and local levels." The event runs July 15 through 18 at the Oregon Convention Center and Doubletree Hotel.

Beyond our region:

• The climbdown is complete: Washington Post editor Katherine Weymouth has apologized over the paper's pay-for-access scandal.
• NYU's Jay Rosen notes that CNN's Reliable Sources relegated that controversy to a commentary in the final moments of the show. Howard Kurtz' status as a media critic while under the employ of two major media organizations has long been a source of its own media criticism.
• And heavy criticism doesn't always lead to apologies: Columnist Connie Schultz is more resolute than ever that her idea to ban linking and summaries of news stories is a good idea. Should Press Clippings be worried?
• If you somehow missed it over the weekend, Sarah Palin has threatened to sue bloggers and traditional media over their handling of her sudden resignation.
• Newsroom veterans may be more likely to get promotions to general manager lately.
• There's a $3 billion gap between declining TV station revenue and online ad income.
• Layoffs of copy editors mean more complaints about typos at The Washington Post.
• The Saturday Evening Post is returning to its roots, differentiating itself on the newsstand by offering more creative writing and fiction.
• The Library of Congress now offers a searchable database of news stories from 1880 to 1922.
• Web video is evolving beyond the two-minute clip.
• Instead of non-profits, The News & Observer has an idea to operate newspapers as low-profits. Insert joke here.
• Most poll respondents said they wouldn't miss their daily newspaper if it went away. I believe there was a poll to the contrary that we posted recently. Once we add tags to our old stories, that sort of thing should be easier to find.

And another big thank you to our new contributor over the weekend! Donations are all that are making this site possible. As you may have seen in our last post, we're working on ways to increase traffic so we can get some ad revenue coming in. But even then, it's unlikely to be enough to keep us afloat. The slow holiday weekend did some serious damage to our average daily visitor count. If you'd like to help us out with any amount, there's a big shiny button on the left.

This is an open thread, what's on your mind?