...that last line sort of creeped me out: "Mr. Stewart, you were right, we apologize—but by the way, I want to thank you, and all your writers, for watching." It creeped me out because Hannity wasn't just talking to Stewart and the "TDS" writing team, here: He was also sending a winking, smartass shout-out to everyone who tuned in tonight solely for the satisfaction of seeing him eat crow. Team Jon Stewart.

I am a member of Team Jon Stewart, and you probably are too. Jon Stewart always seems to be on "my side" in whichever cultural/intellectual/economic battle he's mocking on that night's program. That is: nobody's side. As plenty of Times Arts Section pieces have reminded us: He is the sticker-upper-for-the-little-guy, the speaker of truth to power. His sharpened blade of sarcasm cuts clean through the half-truths of politicians to reveal that the emperor has no clothes, while his under-staffed but plucky researchers reveal mainstream media for the impotent court jester it is via embarrassing video montages.

Sometimes Jon Stewart does something like take on a conservative talk-show host (or an inept financial channel personality, or a terrible debate show) and team Jon Stewart goes crazy. Boo yah: We scored a point! When Stewart showed Hannity's show to be the steaming crapfest it is, a lot of people on Team Jon Stewart jumped up and down and waved big pom poms, in blog post form. The only thing keeping everyone from high-fiving Jon Stewart harder in the blogosphere was that one hand was fully engaged in patting themselves on the back.

But then you think about Hannity's smugness: "I want to thank you, and all your writers, for watching our show." Hannity probably will get a ratings boost from all this! And you think about how Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which is a massive corporation that not only depends on and reproduces the economic inequity of American capitalism but is also directly responsible for giving Carlos Mencia his own comedy program. (CREATIVE UNDERCLASS RAGE ALERT) And since Jon Stewart probably got a ratings boost, too, Viacom will now have more money to control the world and create more shows starring Carlos Mencia.

And you begin to suspect, if you are paranoid and have a half-assed Sociology degree like me, that Jon Stewart's trick isn't actually being on "our side," but keeping up appearances. It's like the liberal What's the Matter with Kansas: After recording his show, where he earns big claps for calling bankers "assholes," he gets in his Prius and drives around the corner, where Sean Hannity is waiting—beaming and freshly scrubbed—to take him in his stretch Hummer to his mansion, where together they drink Old Fashioned's while watching an enormous bank of television screens which display live readouts of their ratings and their bank accounts, and everything is way up.

(Oh, also, Jon Stewart likes Freakonomics.)

Of course the creative underclass loves to hate on the creative overclass—embodied by Conde Nast—in public. But in private, everyone wants to get to Conde Nast. Or at least a Conde Nast expense account. Well, give up the dream, kids. The old folks got all that money already, and with 25% cuts coming down the pike, there's none left for you. Matthew Flamm says "The cuts could begin to take effect as early as mid- to late October and will continue into next year." Meaning if you haven't tasted the Conde bounty yet, you probably never will. At least not the way it should be. At least they're going out on an appropriately profligate note, sez the NYT:

For example, on Oct. 13, the men's magazine GQ will host a party in Washington to promote its list of powerful capital players, to appear in its November issue. The party is upscale: it will be held at the 701 Restaurant, known for its caviar and live piano music.

That is not the only expense involved. Several editorial employees will travel from New York for the evening. And they received an e-mail message recently reminding them to limit their expenses for the night - to $1,000 a person.

Once that would have been sad for an entirely different reason. Now it's sad like how revolutionaries probably get a tiny bit sad when they rush into a dictator's big golden palace built on the blood of the people and tear it down, because hey, even they have to admit that it was a nice palace.

Coming over the next year, it's safe to assume: Lower kill fees, no free lunches, fewer freelancers, cheaper consultants, fewer towncars for the mastheads, more ads sold below rate card, layoffs, and a drastic reduction in that good old fashioned Conde Nast luxurious wastefulness.
And they won't be hiring you. Or us.

[Except maybe at the unscathed New Yorker? No, they won't either. Pic: Getty.]

Our correspondent, who's bounced between magazines and newspapers for about five years now, is glad to have a job, obviously — and is staying anonymous in hopes of keeping it. Please don't turn the comments into a blind item guessing game.

The other night, at one of those standard-issue media cocktail parties at a bar on the Lower East Side—the type of casual post-work affair that was a dime a dozen in 2005, back when people had both work and the desire to congregate at a geographically convenient watering hole after it—I ran into Q, a former colleague of mine. We'd worked together for 18 months at the same magazine a couple of years back, after which he left to take a gig at a fashion rag and I went to work at a newspaper. I hadn't talked to him in a while, so I asked him how his job was going. "My job?" he scoffed, almost laughing at the question. "Dude, it is fucking terrible."

"Well at least you have a job!" I offered up. And one that pays pretty well. Look at the bright side!

It turns out the bright side for Q is still pretty dim. "Basically," he goes—and Q was being totally serious when he said this—"I'm 31 and at a professional dead end. And so are most people in here." We both surveyed the scene, about two dozen veteran Media Professionals posted up by the bar, with a smattering of others smoking cigarettes and chatting in enclosed circles outside. "I mean, think about it. What actual skill do I possess?" He took a gulp of beer. "I edit quips about Marc Jacobs' boyfriend for a living. 'Editing' is not really a job. Not anymore, at least. There are about a million younger, cheaper people who can do what I do, who also happen to know a thousand times more about the internet than I do. Eventually, I'll either die of boredom or get replaced. And then, what? I'll be 35. What the hell am I gonna do with the rest of my life?"

Admittedly, complaining about your well-paying job at a time when a lot of very capable people are out of work altogether won't engender any sympathy. But Q's little booze-soaked soliloquy does raise a question that seems to weigh heavily on the minds of media folk of a certain demographic these days (those over the age of, say, 27, who have already spent 5-plus years toiling in the trenches at publications that are vastly different in scope and size than when they started). Namely: Where do we go from here?

Because right now, as the Summer of 2009 gives way to fall, the answer is pretty damn unclear.

When I graduated from college several years ago, the boilerplate career arc in publishing went a little something like this: pay your dues as an editorial assistant for a couple years, biding your time until you either 1) got promoted and became an associate, or 2) jumped ship to a magazine (or newspaper, or book editing shop) where a better gig opened up. Hang in that new station for a couple years before rinsing and repeating, upwards and onwards. It was an arc that, if you played your cards right, culminated with a six-figure job you'd stick with for the rest of your professional career. (With a much higher degree of job satisfaction compared to your friends who went to law school, too.)

Of course, in the intervening years, this happened. I haven't so much as sniffed an interview for a job that would put me back on that track (does it even exist?) in over a year.

Even those who "made it" before the fall-out are bummed. A pal—a senior editor at a glossy Conde Nast fashion mag in his early 30s—summed it up like this to me over email: "Look, I have a wife. There's no way I'm gonna quit. Who in their right mind would quit right now? And hopefully, I'm not gonna be fired. But honestly, a little part of me does sort of hope that I'm next. At least that way, I'd be forced to explore other options."

His attitude makes a perverted kind of sense. "You should see this place in the mornings," he continues. "There's absolutely no energy. We're all just resigned to slogging along. At this point, I feel like every month I'm still in this job puts me a month away from being prepared to do my next one. All these young kids still wet from college complaining about the lack of media jobs—at least they're young enough to figure something else out. It's the guys like me, who've been doing this shit for a decade and don't know how to do anything else, who are fucked."

Keep in mind that this coming from a guy who gets summer Fridays and an expense account. For those unfortunate souls toiling on the internet, working (in most cases) for significantly less money and without the benefits bestowed upon hacks at brick-and-mortar joints, the disillusionment is even more palpable. "This is such a depressing grind," says one 28-year-old former magazine staffer who jumped to the web after his print publication folded. "On the web, we're operating under deadlines on a daily basis that I used to only have to deal with a few times a month, during close, when I was at a magazine. I do probably three times as much work now as I did before. In return, they don't give me health insurance." (It's not like you can readily make up the lost income by freelancing online, either. Even at the flush Daily Beast, where they make a gesture of good faith and actually pay you for contributing, anyone not named Christopher Buckley or Meghan McCain is making only $300-$500 a story—less than half of what you'd have made sending the same word count to a place that uses paper.)

Obviously, no one gets into this line of work for the money. But I did go in thinking that there'd be a way to have some fun, maintain some integrity, and still hash out a decent living. Now? You better pick one of the above, 'cause you sure as hell ain't hitting the trifecta.

At least based on anecdotal evidence, it seems as if everyone has come to this realization at the same time. People also seem to realize that this isn't just some transitional phase in which the wheat is being separated from the chaff, either; even the best talent is getting screwed. So where does that leave us? I'm not really sure. If I'd have known things were gonna shake out this way in college, I'd have probably thought twice about applying for that first magazine internship. But now, after five years, the point of no return is getting awfully close.

If I haven't shot it by already.

Image via Shawdm's Flickr.

"Bri" (pictured, eyes) is a homeless blogger currently living in a car in a Wal-Mart parking lot. She wrote a letter to Elle columnist E. Jean about blowing a reality show audition, and E. Jean was so taken with her inspirational up-and-at-em go-getting can-do spirit that she offered Bri a four month telecommuting internship! It comes with this guarantee:

At the end of the four months, if you don't have a job and an awesome place to live, I will become your intern.

A media job!? In this economy! So the best part of all will be seeing an Elle columnist intern for an unemployed homeless person. But good luck to one and all!

[Let us know if we can help, Bri! Via Homeless Tales]

Before the talent agencies merged into one beast, William Morris Agency paid their assistants a higher rate than their competitor Endeavor. So to level the playing-field of broken dreams the newly formed WME decided to by drop their entry-level wages from around $13.50 to roughly $9.50.

Though there were some rumblings of a walk-out when the salary cuts were first announced, it's doubtful you'll see any Armani-clad assistants hopping up on a chair and singing solidarity forever in protest over the brutal cuts. So here's a cost saving survival guide for the meagerly paid Hollywoodhelpers.

1. Get off the fucking the Tracking Board!
The Tracking Board is a subscription based message board that Hollywood's assistants love to traffic. There they can dish on script specs, casting news, and which boss deserves the most spit in their latte. But access to the Tracking Board costs $49.99 a year! So while it's a great tool of catharsis (and networking!) with the rise of Twitter we're sure you can get your message (PLZ SEND HELP HARVEY HAZ A CATTLE PROD) out on the cheap!

2. Get the Screenwriting App instead Final Draft!
No need to spend a $135 bones on fancy script writing software! Who says you can't a meaningful tome about a uniquely rebellious lighthouse keeper who is in 'the dark' about women on your iPhone!?

3. Screw the movies! Just hoard the screeners!
Who doesn't love plopping down on a plush seat to watch the newest Kathy Heigl vehicle about the 'true nature of love'? But is it worth more than what you make per hour? Probs not! You've got access, you have an Xbox, suffer through that never-touched screener of 17 Again and stay in tonight.

4. Your family's prescription drugs are cheaper than cocktails!
People, if there's anything this recession can teach us is that life is better lived through pharmacology. Your lil' sis in the tunic and the white Jetta is hopped up on 'Lord Knows' What because her Brentwood shrink says she has 'problems focusing'. Use whatever she's popping instead of a Red Bull to plow through your day. Your real estate agent dad is stressed cause he can't flip that condo in Encino? We're sure the man has some Ativan to help you deal with your bosses tantrums!

5. Start a mean blog about the assholes you work with!
Nikki did it and so can you! You guys, $400k/year is knocking, aren't you pissed enough to take it?

If all else fails there might be some Executive Ball-Washer openings in publishing! Best of luck!

Guanabee went digging online for information about Barbara; it looks like the 25-year-old lives a fairly ordinary life. She studied business management and computers in college and tailgated at University of Miami football games.

Her brother Mario (aka Perez) is the face of PerezHilton.com, while Barbara cranks out posts, as revealed in a fresh lawsuit filed against Mario. Maybe when she finally learns to be half as elegant and charming as her big brother, Barbara will be allowed to share some of the glory that inevitably comes with doodling semen on people's faces.

Little Debbie told the interns of America that if they take a photo of themselves at the office holding up some cutesy sign with a plea, and looking pitiful, that Little Debbie will bestow upon them one (1) free box of muffins, which they may gobble up as quickly as possible in order to absorb the maximum number of calories before the fellow office hordes smell them out and descend like so many hungry bats, while the Little Debbie corporation receives, in return, rights to exploit their image in perpetuity. And interns are doing this all over the place. Hey, what's that, muffins? Give me some, I'm your boss. Is that a picture of you at the office? You're all fucking fired.
[via Adrants]

Rich was laid off as assistant managing editor of Portfolio.com in January; by March she was, the New York Times reports, going stir-crazy "living on top of myself" in a 12-by-17-foot West Village studio, where she practices yoga, runs the recession blog she started and, we're guessing, plans few outside excursions to restaurants and bars and so forth, since that costs money.

The Times hooked Rich up — lucky her! — with a designer who figured out how to make her studio significantly less miserable for $326, in part by moving her desk closer to the window from a "gloomy and depressing spot" in back, and by pairing the desk with a chair that was the right height.

Which sounds kind of "duh," but judging from the before-and-after pics, the feng shui makeover did make the place significantly more pleasant. Now Rich has "a new apartment" to be poor in, and a few more months of sanity. Which these days is a real victory even for those who have a job.

Metro reporter Hector Castro got one of maybe 20 job offers at the transformed PI. How was it?

He said the offer increased his health insurance cost, cut his salary by an unspecified amount, offered to match his 401(k) contributions, required him to forgo his P-I severance pay, reduced his vacation accrual to zero and required him to give up overtime.

We'd welcome you to the exciting future of journalism, Hector, if you hadn't turned down the gig as "too tech-oriented." That's an awfully polite way of putting it.

In industries like media, vast swaths of entry-level jobs have long been reserved for kids whose parents payed their freight, usually indirectly. Perhaps daddy invested in the property in question; mommy gave an exclusive interview; grandad let the editor's kid into his exclusive preschool. Or maybe the family just shelled out to keep their kid fed and sheltered during a lengthy unpaid gig .

But usually a scrappy outsider without rich parents could grab a toehold and quickly begin to make a living. That, the Wall Street Journal reports, is getting rarer as white-collar job-hunting comes to resemble something out of Grapes of Wrath. Among the sadder examples of pay-for-play cited in "Buying Your Kid An Internship:" "a one-week internship at a music-production company sold last month for $12,000."

The proceeds went to charity; similar donations can score internships at Rolling Stone and at Elle.

There are also placement companies like "University of Dreams," which charges $5,000 to $10,000 to get you into an (unpaid) internship at places like "fashion house Donna Karan International or public-relations shop Ruder Finn." Two months housing is included so, wow, tremendous value.

When will employers cut out the middlemen and start treating their internships as revenue streams, a la the Philadelphia Inquirer? Probably around the time the first big cluster of fashion, media and PR firms emerge from bankruptcy and realize how hard it is to make money the old-fashioned way.

(Image via)

The embattled editor would presumably make short work of these "Save Anne" t-shirts, if she deigned to offer her opinion on then. But creator Chris Sauve (pictured, right, with friend Jose), recently of Diane von Furstenberg and the Times design staff, found a shop in SoHo through which to sell them, and is no doubt cognizant of the importance of a nest egg to an itinerant graphic designer in these trying economic times.

Who will buy? Don't designers and editorial underlings alike relish the chance to escape the Prada-wearing "Devil's" clutches? Never underestimate the power of Stockholm Syndrome — or the nostalgia of enthralled dead-enders.

Thomas tried to break into theater for two decades, and has only deep emotional scars to show for it. Now he can't even hold down a personal assistant job.

I moved here in 1988 in pursuit of my dream to become part of the New York theater community—being laid off made me realize that two decades have passed and I've moved no closer to that goal...
I... watch a lot of TV... there's Stylista—it's like The Devil Wears Prada in TV format. I teared up during that movie. I totally identified with Anne Hathaway.... I like Ugly Betty, because I feel like I’ve been Ugly Betty so many times in my life.

Oh, man.

It's terrifying because it's relatable.

Eh, maybe. The two Street Team members we heard from were certainly happy about the money. One called it "a nice gesture on MTV's behalf." Another called an MTV executive a "class act" in the comments section of last week's story on Viacom's apologies. (There are several new comments there from Street Team members.)

But it's a safe bet that MTV is planning to seek more money from the philanthropic foundation that sponsored its 2008 election "Street Team" of citizen journalists, the Knight Foundation. Paying bonuses could help mitigate the fallout from how it handled the last $700,000 grant, unapologetically (until the end) withholding paychecks for weeks or even months.

Plus there's the PR benefit of doing right by screwed-over charity workers.

We'll grant that the $500 was a praiseworthy act of decency. But we also won't begrudge anyone who refers to the payments as "interest" rather than "bonus."

And, hey, is MTV paying any of the non-Street-Team freelancers we were hearing from as recently as ten days ago? If you have any news, email us.

MTV VP Ian Rowe called Sara Benincasa (pictured), a member of the Knight Foundation-funded "Street Team '08," to say "our bad:"

He called me to personally apologize for what he called their “mismanagement” of the payment situation, and to talk about how bad he felt that what had been a fantastic experience had turned out in so disappointing a manner.... Half the checks went out Friday, and the other half go out tomorrow.

Benincasa added that Rowe called the 50 other Street Team members to apologize for the fiasco, in which meager stipends for "grueling" work came late starting in the summer and were delivered even later as fall wore on. MTV accounting treated the nascent "Street Team" journalists with the same unfriendliness as all MTV's other unpaid freelancers.

Benincasa also sent us a nice note stating that coverage on Gawker (here, here) and the Huffington Post (here) "had a huge impact" in getting the team paid.

Not to wreck the positive vibes or anything, but we also got email from a former MTV News staffer familiar with the Street Team who shed some light on the network's attitude toward the experimental project:

I worked with some of the kids on the Street Team.

MTV is a big, mean company...but hey got paid to do ONE BLOG POST A WEEK! One. Uno. That is it. Every month they needed to post two text blogs and two "vlogs". Sorry, but I don't have much sympathy for people who get paid to do that. We were pretty rigid with our editorial standards,so there were a lot of requests for re-dos. That is because the Knight Foundation controlled the purse strings and they didn't want straight opinions (I can't tell you how many "Obama is awesome"-type posts were turned down).

When MTV stopped cutting checks for freelancers [[AHEM excuse us what's that?!]] our VPs hauled ass trying to get these kids paid since the money was already there from a non-profit. And they made it happen. Our Street-Teamers got paid before any other freelancers. I'm not going to defend how MTV dealt with their freelancers, it isn't my place to do so...but these kids had a sweet deal.

Maybe! But, hey, MTV wrote the grant, won the grant, and took the grant money. It literally wrote the rules. Then it hired the workers. And it can't just decide it feels like keeping all the paychecks in its bank account, in violation of its commitments. Come to think of it, the network can't do that with any of its contracts. (Except when it can.)

Elliott "spends much of his life jetting between New York (where he lives), London (from where he edits the Europe-Middle East-Africa edition) and Hong Kong (from where he edits the Asia edition)," according to a 2007 profile in the UK Independent.

That sort of travel can be taxing. But it brings career advantages. And according to one tipster, Elliott revels in it. "He likes to be everywhere at once," a plainly disgruntled staffer wrote.

And Elliott purportedly will travel only in business class. This produced, it is claimed, a 2008 Elliott travel expenditure of $250,000 — "about two-and-a-half [full-] time journalists" in the eyes of a rank-and-filer.

It is a measure of the anger among Time staff that business-class travel could produce such resentment. The magazine's layoffs have fallen especially hard on its international editions, and Elliott has been given hatchet duty. In November, amid the layoffs, one angry staffer described Elliott to us as the "international editor who has managed to bamboozle [Time Inc. Editor In Chief] John Huey into thinking he knows what he is doing."

Another tipster, the same one upset about Elliott's travel, wrote, "now he gets to be tallest dwarf in the room."

It's not hard to imagine Elliott fitting snugly into the future of the magazine. In press interviews, he has repeatedly made it known that he is the only journalist who has served as an executive at Time, Newsweek and the Economist, the three major international newsmagazines. The Economist was Elliott's starting point and, as it turns out, Stengel's model for the cheaper, more opinionated future of Time.

But Elliott's resume can' t insulate him from ridicule among the proud journalists at Time. The editor did not get his start in media; he was a lecturer at the London School of Economics and a would-be management consultant when he was lured to the Economist, which contains as much viewpoint as news. He also tried his hand as television host for ITV. "He has never been a proper reporter," writes our disgruntled tipster.

Sour grapes, sure. But relevant; if Elliott wants to show he can lead an organization racked by cutbacks, this is precisely the sort of anger he'll need to overcome. It will take more than high-handed gag orders. The fast-tracked jet-setter might just have to slow down.

Anderson, identified by name here, boldly posted an account of her experience to her personal website, EricaAmerica. And her coworkers bravely chimed in, names attached, to confirm her story in the comments.

Yes, they said, MTV has been severely dragging its heels paying contract workers — including, amazingly, for the philanthropic Knight-Foundation-sponsored election "Street Team," which helped MTV win a community service Emmy in November. Hoarding money until the end of the quarter may help the network meet its financial targets.

And by Anderson's telling, the network has long been willing to stretch boundaries in achieving its goals (emphasis in the original):

I, very fortunately, had another job that was more than understanding of my late hours and commitment to the network. What I didn’t have was more than four hours of sleep a night. But when you want something enough you make it work...

We were under tremendous stress to meet deadlines and produce quality, Emmy-award winning work. (The program won an Emmy last month.) One of our colleagues lost his job because he updated a MTV post at his office. Another quit (well, many quit), because the time requirements were so enormous and the pay was hardly enough to cover expenses. Soon, the resignations began to pour in.

Each time a Street Teamer resigned, he or she was replaced and an email from our Producers would follow. To be honest, I did not blame any of them. It was a grueling 11 months, one that required us to hold down other jobs, work late into the night and wearily try to use the MTV Brand to land unbelievable interviews and opportunities.

It's one thing to push a team of vastly underpaid (less than $1,000 per month) young people hard in order to win awards and provide a valuable learning opportunity. That's par for the course in the media industry, if too often taken to the extreme.

But to do so while not even doling out the meager wages on a timely basis, on a project funded with $700,000 in charity dollars, is reprehensible. The whole Street Team stipend disaster is an embarrassment even to the notoriously-exploitive managers at MTV. It would also be a shame, if the network had any left.

If you have any more information on Street Team working conditions or pay, we'd love to hear it. (Emails are presumed anonymous unless you say otherwise.)

(Disclaimer: As noted previously, I applied unsuccessfully to the same Knight Foundation funding program as MTV. This scandal came to my attention, however, from unsolicited emails arising from a non-Street-Team-related post.)

The Knight Foundation, a philanthropic journalism nonprofit, gave MTV $700,000 to "make possible" a "Street Team" of 51 "citizen journalists" to cover the 2008 election. We've already heard from three of them. They aren't getting paid!

The citizen journalists were supposed to each receive a stipend below $1,000 per month for the 11-month duration of the "Choose or Lose Street Team" experiment.

One wrote that paychecks used to be paid promptly, but got cut later and later as 2008 wore on. Then, "I wasn't paid for two months. Anytime I contacted payroll, they always gave me a run around response that blamed ME for being impatient." Contracts stipulated payment every four weeks.

This matches the stories we heard from other MTV freelancers, including at least two not involved with the Street Team experiment. It looks like MTV is treating workers on its Knight Foundation-supported project the same as people it hired entirely with its own money.

Another Street Team source said MTV was more than two months behind on pay by the fall, and confirmed that MTV accountants were uncommunicative and unfriendly about the delays.

A third Street Team member also reported being stiffed by MTV.

The most painful slight? Though the website where Street Team published, think.mtv.com, just won a Public & Community Service Emmy, members are not invited to MTV's upcoming Barack Obama party in Washington, DC. The reason? Community service and involvement is required for an invitation.

One would logically presume, then, that MTV brass won't be able to get in the door, either.

(Disclaimer: I submitted an application to the 2007 Knight Foundation News Challenge which was ultimately not selected. But I don't blame MTV!)

There were plenty of similarly nasty, bile-filled remembrances of the executive, following his death earlier this month from cancer, on the Yahoo Finance message board for JRC. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead," read one. " Another: "The guy was an @#$% on Tuesday, when he was still alive. He was an @#$% on Wednesday, when he died. And he is still an @#$% right now."

But the memorials that besmirched Jelenic's memory the most were the ones about how he was an awful person.

Jelenic's notoriety was fairly well established before he died. His company owned a chain of community newspapers — generally not well regarded — in the Northeast. The stock now trades at half a cent as the company struggles with heavy debt due to acquisitions.

Forbes profiled him under the headline, "Cheapskate Journalism," adding that "nobody cinches the belt tighter" and recalling how one large corporation refused to sell a group of newspapers to Jelenic, even though his was the highest bid by a significant margin.

Jelenic also lashed out at an American Journalism Review writer, pelting her with insults. "Flashes of his ego and temper are almost immediately on display," she wrote. "The interview lasts nearly two hours, and Jelenic appears to hate every question."

On Yahoo, this portrait of a small, angry man was fleshed out:

A call on the board for a modicum of respect, for the benefit of Jelenic's family, was rejected. Disgruntled former employees said the former CEO's loved ones should be faring far better than the families of those he laid off, fired, or put in peril through terrible business decisions. Fortunately, talk of bitter employees at the funeral, unloading their hatred on mourners, apparently did not come to pass.

Firing a ton of people to achieve 35 percent margins is probably not, even among salty newspaper types, and even on anonymous message boards, enough to stir this sort of public grave-dancing. But doing so while being a tremendous jerk about it apparently is. Moguls be warned.

"Evil Fucking" Insurance-Cheating "Bastard":

I was with the publication for 7 years while it steadily grew and prospered. We had a down year in 2008, however, and it coincided with yet another acquisition.

They had to save money, so they jettisoned me at the end of September, two days after my daughter was admitted to the hospital for another lengthy stay. I'm convinced that the outside insurance consultant that they paid to help us employees navigate the treacherous waters of Aetna-land was also paid to tip the bosses when an employee had high health care benefit usage. But to make things worse, they gave me no severance, arguing that I was a "new hire" to them, instead of an editor who grew that damn title into a 7-million property. Evil fucking bastard.

"my newest job is reading Gawker in my pajamas all day and getting
rejected by literary agents."

I have a journalism degree from NYU and three years of newspaper experience, including a very short stint at the Daily News last summer that didn't work out (that's a whole other story). This means I'm perfectly qualified to get laid off as a hedge-fund receptionist.

At my two-month gig through a temp agency, I watched analysts and traders freak the fuck out about Lehman Brothers and every subsequent turn of the market (examples: "Do I think the world is coming to an end? It's already come to an end and we're just picking up the pieces," "Let's do six hours of pregaming and relive our past glory," and "I've had it with this trading shit"). Then I restocked the candy
in the tiny front desk jar, made conversation about Smarties and got snapped at about mail sorting by from admin assistant who didn't even graduate from community college.

The hedge fund started liquidating its accounts and the woman who got me from the temp agency turned in her notice, but I still had hope that maybe, just maybe, I could fill that job during the final months
of the company, get health insurance and not pinch pennies anymore.

They started interviewing hot blonde temps for the job instead. By the way, I have dark hair. And that's when I learned of my demise in a Gmail chat window. One of the assistants led me to her desk to sign my
timesheet. As she signed it, my eyes fled to her computer, where I saw these words in the little Gchat box: "Let's use one of these girls to replace Kristie."

One week later, I got a call from the temp agency say that I just worked my last day there and that the company couldn't afford me anymore. Yeah, but they can still afford to hire hot blondes and company-wide bagels on Fridays, right?

Now, my newest job is reading Gawker in my pajamas all day and getting rejected by literary agents.

Sharing is caring and we'll all get through this together.