Leno agreed earlier this month to appear at the event, before NBC announced his return to hosting "The Tonight Show," the group said. The network's move was prompted by affiliates protesting the poor ratings of Leno's prime-time show.

The comedian will share the stage with President Obama at the correspondents' dinner at the Washington Hilton. By tradition, presidents fire jokes at the news corps, political opponents and even themselves at the event, where politicians, journalists and celebrities rub elbows.

Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge.

Executives of The New York Times Company said they wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers. But fundamental features of the plan have not yet been decided, including how much the paper will charge for online subscriptions or how many articles a reader will be allowed to see without paying.

Charles "Chas" McKeown, who will continue as publisher of E&P, hailed the sale and the speed and professionalism with which McIntosh and Nielsen completed the transaction. "Everyone knew what was at stake here," McKeown said. "Newspapers, which are transforming beyond the printed page to all forms of digital media, simply could not lose the one place where the industry could have a conversation with itself and exchange ideas and best practices for navigating the uncertain waters ahead, exemplified by our Interactive Media Conference which includes cable, TV, radio and other media."

Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc. is the publisher of several well-respected boating magazines and newspapers, including Boating World magazine; Sea Magazine, America's Western Boating Magazine; The Log Newspaper; and FishRap. The company also produces the Newport Boat Show in the spring and the Lido Yacht Expo in the fall. Both shows are held in California.

Mark Fitzgerald, a 26-year veteran, was named as E&P's new editor. He had most recently served as E&P's editor-at-large.

The newspaper will revamp to focus on politics, business and investigative reporting. The newspaper's Thursday edition announced the layoffs and said the last sports section would appear Friday. A new print edition will be launched Monday.

Among those let go was the newsroom leader, Managing Editor David Jones. The newspaper announced several management changes, though it's not clear who will oversee the newsroom operation. Christopher Dolan was appointed Wednesday as national politics editor and Brett Decker as editorial page editor.

"What we feel like we're doing is creating, in some ways, an industry first," Kutcher told Reuters. "A show that couldn't find its legs on television, we believe can find its legs on the Web."

Using his own production company, Kutcher created "The Beautiful Life" as a show that looked at the underside of the modeling industry, including its cut-throat competition.

YouTube and Kutcher are banking on the TV-level quality to attract viewers in a crowded Web landscape that has plenty of expensively made reruns, but not a lot of high-end original content.

Staff in GNM commercial departments are due to be told about the impact of the latest cost cutting on their jobs by 9 December, while changes at editorial will take longer to complete because cuts are being managed through voluntary redundancies and redeployment. GNM publishes the Guardian, the Observer and the guardian.co.uk website network, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk, and employs about 1,700 people.

GNM also revealed in the series of staff briefings today that the Guardian's Thursday Technology print section will cease publication at the end of the year.

Fortune, like many other U.S. business magazines, has struggled in the advertising downturn.

Fortune will publish two issues some months and just one issue during other months, in the new publishing schedule is part of a remodeling that is expected to result in staff cuts and a sharper focus on the long stories that have been its trademark, the Journal said.

The changes are part of another round of budget cuts at Time Inc., the nation's largest magazine publisher. Some layoffs were expected by year's end, though the executive said the number had not yet been determined. The news was reported in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

Through September, ad pages across the magazine industry have fallen 27.3 percent this year, but business magazines fared much worse. Fortune, down 34.9 percent, was among the hardest hit, while its closest competitor, Forbes, was down 30.8 percent. Fortune's paid circulation, just over 850,000 in the first half of this year, has changed little in the last decade.

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com's information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

Newsday described the move as one that would create a "pioneering Web model," combining the newspaper's newsgathering services with Cablevision's electronic distribution capabilities. About 75 percent of Long Island households are Newsday home delivery or Cablevision online customers or both, according to Newsday. Optimum Online customers total 2.5 million in the New York area, the paper said.