Newsbriefs, 8/14: Mysterioso

• Penetrating the Mystery: The inimtable Moe Tkacik ended up on the phone with Eric Von Markovic, the guy-lined weirdmachine known as "Mystery" on VH1's The Pick-Up Artist. Mystery ain't much for area codes or the names of Live songs, but as far as discourse on other topics...well, it's all pretty unhinged. Mystery has attempted to clarify himself since his conversation with Moe, and, yeah...that was pretty much a mistake.
• Biblio Bombshells: Who says the world of book news isn't exciting? Today, Ron Hogan of Galleycat tees off on Oprah, and Emily Gould chops James Frey's enablers into a million little pieces.
• Unsurprising Personnel Change of the Week: Why is Tunku Varadarajan leaving the Wall Street Journal? Well, here's a clue: he penned the sentence, "Rupert Murdoch, a master practitioner of the corporate kowtow, has instructed his son James perfectly in the craft of craven submission to the communist regime in China."
• The Stories You Missed: Project Censored returns for their 31st annual accounting of the stories that were too hot for the mainstream media to report on. Not surprisingly, they generally fit three categories: "the increase of privatization," "the decrease of human rights," or all of the above.
• Screwed by Spellcheck: Poynter's Chip Scanlan gives journalist's tips on avoiding all the mistakes common spellchecker programs make. As one who's witnessed what happens when "underserved populations" gets changed to "undeserved populations" first hand--I'd give it a read.
• Now, That's Keeping on Message! Even Norman Hsu's alleged suicide note is stuffed with Clinton campaign talking points!