“Young is better than old,
Pretty is better than ugly,
Rich is better than poor,
T.V. is better than music,
Music is better than movies,
Movies are better than sports,
Anything is better than politics,
And nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”

–Stolley’s Law of Covers, created by Dick Stolley, senior editorial advisor to Time Inc., and founding editor, People. A legend of the magazine world, he made history when he secured the rights the Zapruder footage immediately following JFK’s assassination.

In a Q&A emailed to Time Inc. employees today, Stolley included an addendum to his law: “Obama has changed the “anything is better than politics” rule, but that won’t last forever.” Unfortunately 2009 offered too much proof of his rule about celebrity deaths. For more from Stolley, check out this photo gallery at Life.com where he shares some favorite photos from his years working at LIFE. –Jessica Shambora

“All content consumed will be digital…social…and interactive.”

- Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, predicting the death of print yesterday at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. After Ballmer, in a talk to 1,000 or so ad and media folks, floated this prediction about the world within 10 years, I interviewed him on stage. Stay tuned to Postcards these next few days. I’ll share some of what the always boisterous Ballmer said, about Bing and Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) and more.

Turns out, we had so much ground to cover yesterday that I didn’t get to ask him if he means, by his prediction, that magazines and newspapers won’t exist on paper in 2019. Does Ballmer really think that my company, Time Inc. (TWX), won’t be printing anything on paper a decade from now?

The man answers. Here I am, back in New York and sitting in my living room, taking in the news about Michael Jackson’s death. An email from Ballmer popped in moments ago: “I really really think print goes away.” Well, good for Microsoft, I guess. For us journalists, more pressure to adapt.

by Jessica Shambora

Raises may be up in smoke, and those perks we loved too. But talk is cheap–which may be why Time Inc. (TWX), my employer, has started doing in-house training seminars, taught by its own senior execs and veteran editors.

I’ve been trying out Time Inc. University’s “Learn from a Leader” classes. People Managing Editor Larry Hackett has led “The Cover Selection.” Vivek Shah, who used to oversee Fortune and now is the digital boss for Time Inc.’s News group, taught “How to Monetize a Website.” We’ve even got Pattie Sellers — Fortune Editor at Large as well as Postcards‘ founder and boss — doing a course on, of all things, powerful women. Go figure!

Company-sponsored classes can be an awful waste of time. But actually, I learned a lot the other day when I went to “The Anatomy  of a Digital Startup,” led by Time Inc. SVP Andy Blau. He’s the GM of advertising sales and marketing and also president of Life (but today brought news that he returning to the News Business Unit as SVP and Group General Manager).

Remember Life? After briefly reincarnating as a Sunday supplement a few years ago, the once-great magazine is back again –now in digital form as Life.com. Blau and Life managing editor Bill Shapiro partnered with Google (GOOG) to scan millions of photos dating back to the 1850s — only 3% of which ever appeared in Life magazine — and struck an ad revenue-sharing deal to pay for that work, which took more than two years. Time Inc. also partnered with Getty Images to collect photos and build the site. It launched on March 31, with 7 million photos, plus 3,000 new photos from Getty added daily.

Most people would have bet against it. But Life sprung back to life. With hardly any promotion, Life.com exceeded one million page views on each of its first two days. On the third day, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the site featured never before seen photos from the day he was slain; traffic jumped to 10 million page views, from media mentions and lots of buzz. Controversy helps: The first week of June, Life.com logged 46 million page views, thanks in part to color photos of Hitler. Unearthed photos of Marilyn Monroe also drew millions of page views.

“Now the hard work begins,” Blau sighs, explaining how the team will use search engine optimization,  partnerships and viral drivers to attract eyeballs to Life.com. One lesson they learned: Keep it simple. Life  is alive again online partly because it’s user-friendly. You can easily search for photos by topic, time period, interest or photographer. You can buy framed prints. And soon you’ll be to create personal life timelines through photos of news events and pop-culture moments–and publish books and magazines.

I’ll try those features as Life.com evolves. Next week I’m heading to “How to Land the Big Interview,” taught by Entertainment Weekly managing editor Jess Cagle. Hmm, I wonder if Jess will tell me how to get Angelina to tell her real story to Fortune.

The sun’s coming out in New York City after a week of seemingly endless rain. This was also a whirlwind week of interesting encounters.

On Tuesday, I had lunch, unexpectedly, with Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger. We were both at the New York Stock Exchange for Jeff Sonnenfeld’s Yale CEO Summit, and Iger was getting the “Legend in Leadership Award.” The Summit was off the record (as was the lunch), but I can tell you that Iger talked about the commonly held notion that the world is flattening out culturally. It’s a misconception, he contends. He noted a rise in local pride and said that Disney, in response, is turning distribution centers into creative centers and producing more local TV shows. My Fortune colleague Richard Siklos wrote about this and more in “Bob Iger Rocks Disney” earlier this year.

On Wednesday, I led a Q&A with Condoleezza Rice. This was for a small group of execs, private and pro bono. (We at Fortune can’t take money; I do these gigs occasionally for exposure and connections.) It was off-the-record, but I can tell you that Rice, now at Stanford University, is optimistic about the Middle East. She’s planning to teach in the fall. For now, she’s busy writing two books: one on foreign policy and the other about her parents. Ever a model of discipline, she gets up at 5:15 a.m. to work out — better than a 4:30 a.m., which was her wake-up time in Washington. This is her routine six days a week — after working out, she writes for three or four hours. (And yes, she’s writing the books herself.)

Yesterday, my Postcards partner Jessica Shambora and I shared and learned wisdom about careers on NBC Universal’s Mentors Walk. Check out our Thursday’s Postcard. By the way, Jess and I saw The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 last night. If you’re up for intensity, see it. Travolta is tremendous.

P.S. David Kirkpatrick, Fortune’s star tech editor and writer who’s been on book leave since last August, just swung by and gave me a big, big hug. He’s working tirelessly on The Facebook Effect, due next spring. You can follow the book’s progress and become a fan at www.facebook.com/thefacebookeffect.

by Esther Wojcicki, journalism teacher and newspaper adviser at Palo Alto High School

Reading the newspaper these days makes me sad about journalism. “The American Press on Suicide Watch” was the headline of Frank Rich’s New York Times column this past Sunday. “Legendary brands from the Los Angeles Times to the Philadelphia Inquirer are teetering,” Rich said, adding that the New York Times Co. (NYT) might shutter the Boston Globe. Maureen Dowd riffed too about “The Future of Journalism” — which was the title of last week’s Congressional hearing chaired by Senator John Kerry. Journalists, Kerry said, are “an endangered species.”

The crisis isn’t simply that consumers are no longer willing to pay real money to support real journalism. Consumers truly don’t care enough about the product. A Pew Research Center survey in March found that 42% of readers said they wouldn’t miss their city paper.  Most of these readers, as you might guess, were under 40 years old.

I care a lot because I teach journalism at Palo Alto High School, in California. I’ve been teaching high school journalism for 25 years. Starting with 19 students, I’ve built our journalism program into the largest high school journalism program in the country, with six publications, four journalism teachers, and about 400 students. In the advanced journalism class, I teach 70 juniors and seniors. I also teach freshman English.

I decided to poll my journalism students: “How do you prefer to get your news, online or in print format?”

The popular answer may surprise you. About 70% of the students said they prefer “print format” — a hard copy of the paper. They said it’s easier to read this way — especially if a story is long. Long stories online give you headaches and eyestrain, they told me.

When I asked how many get breaking news online, almost everyone raised their hands. They prefer online for breaking news and sports news as well. But they prefer the hard-copy newspaper for features, opinion pieces, and columns, as well as long news stories.

“Who prefers to read magazines online?” When I asked that question, no one raised their hand. Makes sense to me. I can’t imagine reading magazines online.

My students say that they read a greater variety of stories in print. Online they tend to seek specific stories or subscribe to RSS feeds that they know they’re interested in. This is why I urge them strongly to read the hard-copy newspaper. How can you expand your world and your knowledge base if you read only what you’re already interested in?

Yes, it’s ironic, these kids who live in the heart of Silicon Valley recognize the value of traditional print journalism. In February, I took 50 of my students to New York City to visit several publications. The New York Times was one of them. The editors there posed this question: “How many of you read the New York Times in print?” The majority of hands went up. The editors were very surprised.

As one of my students said, “Who wants to have breakfast reading your computer if you can avoid it?”

So here’s the reality: It’s not necessarily that people enjoy getting their news online. It’s just that it’s faster and more efficient — and free.

This is the rub: Readers aren’t willing to pay for news online. They expect it to be free. The standard was set back in the 90’s, and it’s now part of the culture of the Internet. Ads, they said…the ads should pay for it. So far, that strategy has had mixed results. And now we see Amazon.com (AMZN), with the Kindle, and other e-book innovators asking consumers to pay subscription fees for newspapers delivered wirelessly.

How will this story evolve? I’m not sure whether there is a solution to help pay for real journalism. I told one of my sources close to the industry about the results of my poll. “We are in a transition period,” he said. “Wait until the netbooks become ubiquitous. Then kids won’t mind taking their netbooks everywhere and accessing all their news online. It is just a matter of time.”

I wonder if it really is a matter of time. Not for me. Nothing can replace reading the New York Times on Sunday morning. I’ll pay for that pleasure, even though news about the future of journalism is bad.

Esther Wojcicki is a journalism teacher and newspaper adviser at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California. In 2002, she was named California Teacher of the Year by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.  Starting in 1984, she built one of the largest high school journalism programs in the nation — about 400 students currently. One of her students a decade ago: my Postcards colleague Jessica Shambora. And we featured two of her daughters – Susan, VP of Product Management at Google (GOOG), and Anne, co-founder of genetic analysis startup 23andMe, in “The New Valley Girls,” a feature about Silicon Valley’s rising-star women in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women issue last October. Wojcicki’s other daughter, Janet, is Professor of Pediatrics at University of California Medical Center.

“Woj,” as Wojcicki is known to her friends and students, this year was named Board Chair of Creative Commons, a group dedicated to providing free licenses and other legal tools to facilitate sharing, remixing and using of creative works of all kinds.

When I arrived at Pace University at 9:30 this morning in lower Manhattan, the line was already snaking down the side of the building. The crowd, gathered to witness the announcement of a third version of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle electronic reader, was feverishly tapping at gadgets galore and every so often stepping out of line to take camera phone shots of the assembled group. It seemed their excitement had gotten the best of them, and that even this mundane sight seemed to merit capturing for posterity.

Once inside the auditorium’s lobby, the throng of tech bloggers erupted into a frenzy. They interviewed each other on Flip video cameras and perched at bistro tables, posting the tech world’s version of a “pre-game show” to websites.  I saw delegates from blogs like TechCrunch and Engadget, which leaked early photos of the new Kindle yesterday. On the fringes, folks with name-tags that read “Amazon guest” stood taking it all. The guests I spoke to said they were from book publishers whose offerings included textbooks.

When we were finally led into the auditorium, there was a dash for the front row seats. Soft rock hits from the seventies and eighties piped into the room. Once settled in, the bloggers pulled up their Twitter accounts and began posting dispatches, announcing them aloud to one another. The camera phones were out again, capturing the empty stage and a screen with the Amazon.com logo.

Finally, just after 10:30, the Jeff Bezos show began. The Amazon CEO bid everyone good morning and then opened with his trademark phrase: “Every book, ever printed, in any language, available in less than 60 seconds.” After giving a brief history of the Kindle since its 2007 launch–still no numbers on total Kindles sold–Bezos held up the Kindle DX, which has a screen more than twice the size of the existing Kindle.  In a fireworks of flashbulbs, the bloggers typed furiously away. This is the way news is distributed in today’s world. Can the Kindle be part of this new era? We will soon find out. Click here for more on the Kindle DX. –Jessica Shambora

“One plus one equals three.” That’s what Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) chairman Charles Koppelman said last July after the company appointed Wenda Millard and Robin Marino co-CEOs.

I — and many investors — expressed skepticism. Co-CEO set-ups are so unusual that during the past decade, among Fortune 500 companies, only 15 such arrangements have existed. Koppelman literally wagered that the co-CEO set-up at his company would flourish. “I’ll bet you that in three years, you’ll say ‘Wow! What a genius move!’” he told me.

Alas, Koppelman has lost this bet. MSLO announced this morning that Millard is leaving to become president of Media Link, a consultancy that helps Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft (MSFT), AT&T (ATT), Unilever, and Home Depot (HD) figure out their media strategy.

Millard, a onetime chief sales officer at Yahoo (YHOO), says that this latest move “has nothing to do with Martha Stewart. It’s all about Media Link.” Widespread confusion about where marketers should place their media — so many choices today! — has helped Media Link chairman Michael Kassan, who is Millard’s new partner and her longtime friend, double his business these past couple of years.

“A lot of my focus will be on digital,” says Millard, 54. “The most important thing for clients is understanding ‘What does intelligent, integrated marketing look like?’” Lessons learned overseeing Martha Stewart’s multimedia platforms, she adds, will help her guide her new clients.

And what about the reports in today’s New York Post that tensions with Martha and Robin Marino, the company’s other co-CEO, drove Millard out the door? “That’s such bullshit!” she says. “I hope no one takes that seriously.” Asked whether tensions with Stewart and Marino exist at all, she didn’t deny it but said, “I would never leave because there’s tension. That’s part of business.”

Admits Koppelman: “Of course, there was tension.” Indeed, tension was inevitable given the economic meltdown, MSLO’s struggles for profitability (the company lost $15.7 million last year), high-level turnover (Susan Lyne, who was CEO until a year ago, is now running online apparel merchant Gilt Groupe) and the company’s long-suffering stock price. MSLO shares, trading at $3.37, are down more than 80% in the past two years.

Millard’s exit leaves one woman in official charge: Marino, a merchandising expert who was president of Kate Spade before joining MSLO in 2005. Though another woman gains power in today’s management shift: That would be the irrepressible Martha. Koppelman says that Stewart is taking direct responsibility for the company’s creative side. Chief creative officer Gail Towey will now report to Stewart, whose title is founder. Stewart is prohibited from serving as a corporate officer or director for five years by her 2006 SEC settlement. But no question, she’s still calling the shots.

As for that bet that Koppelman, MSLO’s chairman, made with me, he says, “You got a free dinner!” My choice on the restaurant.

I spent the last part of yesterday attending the Henry R. Luce Awards–the annual bestowal of prizes for the best work that comes out of my company, Time Inc.

I walked downstairs to the Time & Life Building’s 8th floor auditorium reluctantly, feeling that I hardly had time for two hours of hobnobbing with colleagues or celebrating an industry under fierce pressure to stay profitable.

Well, I left totally jazzed. If you don’t mind a little inside baseball for a Friday afternoon, I’d like to share with you…There were 12 awards given out, and Fortune copped three.

My colleague Peter Elkind won Best Reporting for “The Trouble with Steve Jobs.” This story is great not just because Peter broke big news on the Apple boss’s health problems. It’s also a classic profile of a complex and controversial iconic leader.

Competing against 120-plus other publications in the Time Inc. stable, Fortune won Magazine of the Year–tying  with Time. John Huey, Time Inc.’s editor in chief (who used to run Fortune) said that the committee of six judges, all renowned journalists, couldn’t decide on one winner. Nice to see the two guys who have breathed new life into Fortune and Time, Andy Serwer and Rick Stengel, get their credit.

The third award in the Fortune stash went to CNNMoney.com–Web Site of the Year. Fortune.com is part of CNNMoney.com, and we all contribute. The site beat runners-up EW.com and Time.com.

The Briton Hadden Lifetime Achievement Award–which my colleague Carol Loomis has won already–went to Ed Lewis, the founder of Essence. Accepting the award, he told the crowd–including friends Bill Cosby and former Time Warner (TWX) CEO Dick Parsons, now chairman of Citigroup (C)–that he could not believe the shift he’s seeing right now in America. “None of us ever thought in our lifetimes that we’d see an African-American President,” Lewis said. He went to Washington, D.C. for the Inauguration, he noted, “not for the parties,” but just to see Obama put his hand on the Bible.

Times are tough. But you know, progress can come when and where you least expect it.

P.S. The Luce Award for Story of the Year went to Sports Illustrated for “2 on 5,” a December 2008 chronicle of an astonishing night in 1992 for a small Alabama high school basketball team. I missed the story but plan to read it this weekend. Have a good one!

I’m an optimist. Always have been. So take with a grain of salt–or sugar, perhaps–these signs of hope across the board:

1. Maybe print isn’t dead. My new Kindle 2 makes me think that even though we may not be reading magazines and newspapers on paper a decade or two from now, long-form stories and beautiful page design can endure. (My Monday Postcard, “Amazon: Thinking beyond the Kindle,” stirred debate about whether Amazon’s (AMZN) e-reader is worth the $359 price. I say: Yes. I’m saving a lot already on newspapers and books. My cost for Book 1 of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series: $6.04.)

2. E-books could help educate the world. On Tuesday, Marie-Josee Kravis, buyout king Henry’s wife, stopped by with Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, who heads the Afghan Institute of Learning. Dr. Yacoobi has built dozens of education and health centers across Afghanistan and won this year’s Kravis Prize for non-profit leadership. As we sat in my Fortune office, I downloaded a book in less than 60 seconds (“Buy The Lords of Finance,” Kravis suggested. So I did). “That’s amazing!” said a wide-eyed Dr. Yacoobi. And we sat there contemplating how one Kindle per school might help educate poor children the world over. Once, that is, Amazon gets Kindle functioning internationally.

3. Spring is here! It’s gloomy in Manhattan today, but my Postcards colleague, Jessica Shambora, told me this morning that she saw yellow flowers sprouting in Central Park.

4. The fittest survive. Walking down Broadway to work today, I noticed the bright lights of Zara at 66th and Broadway. The hot Spain-based apparel retailer is replacing Circuit City–shuttered and bankrupt–which replaced Tower Records, another dinosaur. Retail evolution continues apace.

5. The bull is back. Who knows? But let’s enjoy the biggest four-week rise in the Dow in more than 70 years.

6. There’s life after being fired. Jim Donald, ousted early last year from his CEO perch at Starbucks (SBUX), is keeping plenty busy speaking, teaching, consulting, and more. His Guest Post, published Wednesday, has attracted more traffic than any other Guest Post we’ve run–except for Walter Stoiber’s “The Great Depression, as I remember.” My 91-year-old Uncle Walt’s inspiring piece is Postcards‘ best-read Guest Post ever.

7. Jobs are out there. Read Jessica’s “Here’s where to find a job,” posted yesterday.

8. Rock stars do good. Last night I spent a bit of time with the board of Bono’s Product RED: Bobby Shriver, former Viacom (VIAB) CEO Tom Freston, Kleiner Perkins partner Juliet Flint, RED CEO Susan Smith Ellis, and the U2 frontman himself. Can I just tell you that Bono, beyond working hard to eradicate global poverty, is a genuinely nice guy? That nice-guy professionalism helps him attract VIP supporters–Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to name two–and it also helps his rock-star longevity. Freston (who built MTV and is now working with Oprah as well as Bono) pointed out last night that the Beatles were together for less than a decade. U2 is 33 years old and as strong as ever.

9. New York baseball lives on. Tonight the Mets play their first game, against the Red Sox, at brand new Citi Field–naming rights acquired by Citigroup (C) before the big bank collapse. Tonight’s even more historic first game: the Yankees vs. the Chicago Cubs to christen the new Yankee Stadium.

10. The weekend is finally here. Enjoy the games, get rest, and recover!

We love companies that underpromise and overdeliver. Apple (AAPL) is one. Another is Amazon.com (AMZN). Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos thrives on overdelivering.

I had my own Jeff Bezos multimedia experience last night as I sat in my living room and played with my new Kindle 2 while watching Bezos on the Charlie Rose show. (Click here to see the show from late February–yes, I was playing DVR catchup.) The Amazon boss certainly doesn’t set his bars low. “Every book in every language” is his goal for the Kindle, in terms of acquiring e-content.

Bezos’ ambition got me thinking: What if he could get Kindles–or the next generation of his reading device–into the hands of the poorest of the poor? Give everyone a Kindle to learn–a la Bill Gates setting as Microsoft’s (MSFT) mission “a computer on every desk and in every home.” For now, the Kindle’s wireless connectivity works only in the U.S. But  Amazon, which already does half its business abroad, obviously has sights set on the Kindle’s global opportunity.

The Kindle already does much more than you might expect from its marketing pitch. (For instance, I can send any document from my computer to my Kindle–and click the text-to-speech function to listen to my docs if I prefer audio to reading them.) No question, the Kindle and its rivals will transform the book market. We’ll see lots of custom e-books–like Stephen King’s Ur, the novella he wrote for the Kindle 2. We’ll see a dramatic shrinkage in time to market. Want an e-book? Send us your manuscript and we’ll publish tomorrow! Bezos also talks about music embedded in e-books. Cool.

If you want a quick fix on the upheaval in publishing, check out the front page of the business section of today’s New York Times. One story: “You’ve Read the Headlines. Now, Quick, Read the Book” tells how publishers are rushing manuscripts to market, with the help of e-books. “Do-it-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick” details a new Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) web service called MagCloud that enables you–yes, you–to produce your own magazine cheap and quick. Like YouTube for wanna-be publishers.

On the same front page is a story about how Hearst may shutter the San Francisco Chronicle if it doesn’t find a buyer for the money-losing paper. Yes, it’s all about survival of the fittest. The head of Hearst Interactive Media happens to be Ken Bronfin, my college pal from 30 years ago. (We worked together on the University of Virginia’s newspaper, back when we cut and pasted copy–literally, with glue.) Ken is also the chairman of E Ink, the hot little company that provides the technology for the Kindle, the Sony (SNY) Reader, and other e-book devices. There’s lots of hope in publishing, Ken will tell you. But success hinges on adaptability.

My colleague Michael Copeland lays all this out smartly in his recent Fortune story, “The end of paper?” Also check out his exclusive on Hearst’s plans to launch a device custom-designed for newspapers and magazines this year. Read on!