Brooklyn born writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak has died. He was 83-years-old.

Sendak was the author of Bumble-Ardy, In The Night Kitchen, and, of course, Where The Wild Things Are.

We just went back and listened to Sendak's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in September of 2011. It's almost 20 minutes long, but we highly recommend you take the time to listen to it yourself. It's an example of a master interviewer letting a master story teller reveal the important life lessons of love, loss, laughter and death.

Gross speaks to Sendak by phone from his home, when he is too weak to go to a studio. She speaks to him about his life as a gay man who never raised children, the death of his partner of 50 years, and the death of recent friends, including his publisher. Facing his own mortality himself, Sendak tells Gross, through tears:

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Glass: "Ain't Too Proud to Craig!"

Earlier this week, the Voice reported about Julian Joslin's shocking discovery of a (public radio) celebrity sex tape between This American Life's Ira Glass and Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

After the jump, read Glass's response to the scandal, when our blog post continues.

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If you're as big a public radio nerd as we are, this may be the best laugh you'll have all week.

Updated: An interview with Julian Joslin, the producer and voice behind the Ira Glass Sex Tape.

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On Sunday night, various media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, McClatchy, the Guardian and the Telegraph published numerous classified files and accompanying in-depth reports about the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay. WikiLeaks, Julian Assange's pro-transparency organization, received the leaks and offered them to organizations like NPR and the Post, likely due to ongoing issues with previous publication partners like the Times and Guardian (stemming from personal dramas with Assange), who got the info regardless from "another source." But now that it's all out there, a fairly clear picture is starting to emerge, not that it wasn't known already: Guantanamo Bay is a really screwed up place. And it's still open.

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Sidney Harman, the audio equipment billionaire, philanthropist and Executive Chairman of Newsweek since purchasing the struggling weekly magazine about six months ago, died on Tuesday after a brief fight with acute myeloid leukemia, his family announced today in a brief statement. He was 92. "I was intrigued by Sidney's ideas and, like so many who encountered him, soon enough impressed at his charm and astonishing vigor," writes recently departed Newsweek veteran Jonathan Alter in remembrance. But though the body is barely cold, the media world is already buzzing with speculation about Harman's magazine, which has been called "embattled" for quite a while now and featured only six ads in its latest issue, not exactly promising news for a big-name glossy after a big-name merger with Barry Diller, Tina Brown and The Daily Beast. "The family's commitment to the magazine he loved so much is solidly continuing, in partnership with Barry Diller and IAC," Brown says in Alter's obit. But it might be more complicated than that. Details inside Press Clips, our daily media column.

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After last night's late budget compromise and extension, Planned Parenthood has been protected from any government spending cuts (so far). Yesterday, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein posted a graph from Planned Parenthood demonstrating what activities they perform (abortion is excluded from federal funding). For curiosity's sake, we thought we'd take a look at the spending chart of a program that recently had their government funding cut: NPR. Below is a comparison of Planned Parenthood's chart vs. (our best guess at) NPR's chart.

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Since becoming a pair with his company's $315 million purchase of The Huffington Post, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington have overseen the cutting of hundreds of content providers on the parent company's side, with Armstrong presiding over the laying off of over 2,000 since his tenure began. But on her side, Huffington is doing some big name hiring, and of real journalists too, probably much to the dismay of anyone rooting for the robots or Bill Keller. More on her pick-ups, plus a new music editor for our own Village Voice, and other media news inside the Press Clips daily round-up.

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Two distinctly icky stories dominate media news this Wednesday, with none bigger than the mess at National Public Radio following yesterday's release of a hidden camera video by the right-wing videographer and activist James O'Keefe. The public radio organization scrambled as a result of the (mostly feigned) outrage, turning a faux-scandal into a very real one by speeding up the resignation of outgoing fund-raising executive Ron Schiller, followed this morning by the pushing out of Chief Executive Vivian Schiller (no relation) by the board, thereby justifying the dishonest and otherwise shady actions of O'Keefe, an 'investigative journalist,' already celebrated on the right for bringing down ACORN with a similar scheme. Elsewhere, a heartbreaking New York Times article about a gang rape in a small Texas town is drawing more worthy outrage for its perceived blaming of an 11-year-old victim. More details on those stories, and two departures from The Daily, inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up.

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James O'Keefe, the same Republican operative/twerp/'investigative journalist' behind such secret stings as the undercover ACORN videos (yeah, the pimp costume guy) and the attempted tapping of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's phones went at it again today with a new video project. This time, O'Keefe got NPR executive Ron Schiller to say disparaging things about the Tea Party and Republicans by pretending to be from a group of radical Muslims with money to donate. But O'Keefe's latest stunt, in turn, got Republicans to speak badly of Muslims. Everyone wins! (Loses?) More inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up.

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Yesterday, we praised Lawrence Wright's cover story in The New Yorker, a 24,195-word mega-exposé about Hollywood writer/producer/director Paul Haggis' defection from the corrupt and crazy Church of Scientology after 35 years. Today, NPR's Fresh Air has a behind-the-scenes look at the magazine's journalistic process, including just how many fact checkers were required and how many queries the Church was given to make sure the notoriously litigious group could be reported on accurately. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post, newly in the money, is way more reader-friendly than the New York Times, over-argues one media writer. Paywall politics, the Tea Party's new magazine and more, inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up. (Tips about media goings on? Talk here.)

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