Among the victims: Klaus Kneale, nephew of CNBCer Dennis Kneale, and Lauren Sherman, girlfriend of Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer. We're told the layoffs are hitting both the magazine and print Web sides of the publication — and that they're not yet done. Still, we're told the growing list of names is long enough to soon meet expectations of 40-60 layoffs.

We first reported about a new round of layoffs at Forbes three weeks ago, and the rumors have only grown louder and more persistent since then. Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes finally confirmed them earlier this week, blaming "seismic shifts wrought by the Web." He had shot down layoff rumors just five months earlier — a period of time that, in the context of print journalism, used to seem like a brief flash, but which can now deliver brutal new realities.

UPDATE: We're told the Los Angeles bureau has been eliminated, along with LA-based staff writer Evan Hessel. We also hear Scott Woolley has been axed.

UPDATE: Other casualties we're hearing about: The London bureau; one correspondent each in Japan and roving Europe; Becky Buckman, lured from the Wall Street Journal to Forbes' Silicon Valley bureau; banking writer Bernard Condon; plus "a bunch of junior people." Killing so many — virtually all? — the bureaus is apparently part of a concerted effort to save on real estate costs.

UPDATE: Former Forbeser Peter Kafka tweets that he's seen a list of 27 editorial staff let go today alone. We've heard the layoffs will span multiple days.

Sporting some kind of hideous quarter-goatee, Kneale, then at Forbes, allowed the Today show to confiscate his BlackBerry, back in 2007. He surely though it would be a glorious publicity stunt on a national stage; that Kneale only lasted 40 hours out of a week indicates he lost control of the situation, and that his on-camera tears were real.

Kneale has trimmed himself up nicely since this was shot, but we hear he's still partial to journalistic theatrics. And NBC is still turning his humiliation into easy buzz.

After Kneale's repeated on-air outbursts against bloggers, in which he has called them "dickweeds" (see June 30 video above) and "digital imbeciles," Kneale told our source who spoke privately with him that the crusade was dreamed up with his producer, former Fox News man Jerry Burke. The idea was to draw attention and drum up buzz.

Which is kind of pathetic, if you think about it, that a major cable news channel is trying to scare up viewers in the puny financial and media blogosphere. Still, there's an outside chance the strategy could eventually produce PR gold; Kneale scored yesterday with a friendly article in the Observer.

Without specifically addressing what he's said to other people, Kneale told us in an email his feelings are "particularly heartfelt:"

My "animus" toward vicious, anonymous bloggers and blind comments pre-dates my joining CNBC... Look at the scary and brilliant Forbes cover story on net anonymity, which I edited, in October 2007: it should make bloggers feel ashamed.

Kneale's campaign against shame is something of a transformation for the one-time Forbes editor whose antics became legendary after editor Bill Baldwin lured him from the Wall Street Journal in 1998. The most famous story — we've heard others, but this is the one that was widely told on the Forbes staff; i.e. the kind of gossip that pre-dates blogs — occurred at the company Christmas party shortly after he was hired. As relayed by people who worked for the magazine at the time, it goes like this:

After the party, Kneale shared a cab back to Park Slope, Brooklyn, with three other people: a female Forbes writer, a male Forbes staffer and the staffer's wife. Somehow, in the course of the ride, Kneale managed to grope both women. The next morning, the male staffer showed up at Kneale's house to avenge his wife's honor, and when the story reached the office Kneale had to beg several layers of the Forbes masthead to keep his job.

The incident was purportedly the foundation for this Feb. 12, 1999 Page Six blind item:

WHICH business-magazine editor, who keeps a jar of blue jellybeans on his desk labeled Viagra, was called on the carpet for feeling up an underling's wife? The co-workers and their spouses were in a taxi heading to Brooklyn after an office party. The underling later went to the groper's home to get an apology. The groper's boss told him that if it ever happened again, he'd be fired.

Kneale declined to comment on the story, writing, "As a rule I do not respond to blind comments... if Gawker will publish the names of the people behind these 11-year-old rumors, maybe I'd have more to say." We know the names of two of the people said to be in the cab with Kneale and emailed them for their version of events. We'll update if we hear back.

We don't begrudge Kneale some purported drunken mistakes in his past. We all have them. Though the number of tales that have crossed our transom in recent days suggests Kneale has more than his fair share. And so we have to wonder if his hype-seeking crusade against gossipy, anonymous bloggers is less about principle and more an exercise in self-defense.

The CNBC Reports host clearly wanted to push back at the "cowardly" critics, and a CNBC segment about his feud gave him the chance to call his online enemies "dickweeds" and slam one in a live interview (see heavily-edited excerpt above). In the end, though, it's the bloggers who win: Whatever his ratings, Kneale's on-air pushback against a lone, anonymous blogger is sure to be a traffic boon to the targets of his ire — and a revelation to viewers who might never have heard them.

Full video:

Charlie Gasparino
The Bullying Older Brother. He's kind of like Bill Paxton's character from Weird Science crossed with Vinnie Barbarino. Watch him torture poor Dennis Kneale and hear him leave threatening voicemail messages for his sources. Look out!—he just put hot sauce in your underwear.

Erin Burnett
The Hot Sister. (We'd feel badly about objectifying Burnett that way, but that's all her colleagues ever do). She wants to go to college, but mom and dad think she should find a nice boy and get married. They just don't understand! The only reason your friends hang out with you is because they want to sleep with her.

Rick Santelli
The Angry Neighbor. He steals all the baseballs you hit over his fence. Stay off his lawn!

Mark Haines
The Drunk Uncle. Pull his finger!

Joe Kernan
The Class Clown. He hides his pain with humor. One day, you'll head over to his house and find his mom passed out on the couch with a bottle of vodka and some pills scattered around. But he'll distract you with fart noises and make a big joke out of it. Oh, Joe.

Dennis Kneale
The Geek. Alex P. Keaton with a receding hairline. He's putting his lunch money in the market, reading Atlas Shrugged, and patiently waiting for the day when he will make you all pay for dipping his retainer in the toilet.

It's Fast Times at Ridgemont High meets Network meets Wall Street. Will Erin go to the prom with Charlie or Joe—or will Chris Matthews come back from college to steal her away from both of them? Will Old Man Santelli ever relax? And what is that kookie kid Kneale doing down in his basement every night, anyway? Find out this summer at theaters nationwide.

[Clips compiled by video intern Dominick Caggiano.]

Via TV Newser:

Gasparino: The bonus question, we shouldn't be talking about it. It's a stupid, fucking...it's a stupid debate.
Deutsch: Wow, did he?

Gasparino: I'm sorry.

Sue Herera: You're agreeing. We're leaving it there, you're agreeing. That's it.

Gasparino: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You can't put me on this show!

Dennis Kneale: Hello, YouTube.

YouTube, Gawker — close enough, Dennis!

In an intro to a segment, Power Lunch anchor Dennis Kneale, the BlackBerry-deprived crybaby, asks if Jobs had cancelled his keynote speech at tomorrow's Macworld Expo because of "PMS," alluding to the hormonal imbalance Jobs confessed to this morning in a letter posted on Apple's website. This sparked sputtering outrage from Silicon Valley correspondent Jim Goldman, who has proven to be a consistent Apple apologist. (A sample of his awestruck prose: "The power of technology. The power of Apple and Steve Jobs.") Kneale apologized at the end of the segment. Come on, Dennis! We hoped you might prove to be the one journalist at CNBC to escape Jobs's reality distortion field.

• DENNIS NEAL CAPITULATES [YouTube]

*Because it is sort of overpowered by the logic of "CNBC cannot tell everyone to put their money in Yen because the Bank Of Japan is not going to buy all their advertising slots duh." Actually, if they did tell their viewers to put all their money in Yen the Bank Of Japan might pay them just to stop, but that is a whole nother story.

Dimon, you see, was on Charlie Rose's TV show last night, where he said the following about the fall of investment bank Bear Stearns:

Where there is smoke, there's fire... I think the Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate it, okay? I think if someone knowingly starts a rumor or passes on a rumor, they should go to jail.

Set aside, for the moment, the absurd notion of financial markets functioning without the free flow of all kinds of information, rumor included.

Consider, instead, how Dimon's proposed censorship would impact his onetime fan Kneale in light of how Vanity Fair described Kneale's own role in the spreading gossip about Stearns:

By noon, when CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth opened Power Lunch, Bear’s stock was down more than $7, to $63. “There are rumors out there that some unnamed Wall Street firm might be having liquidity problems,” Griffeth noted. A correspondent on the show, Dennis Kneale, a veteran of The Wall Street Journal, said, “The speculation at this point is that it’s Bear Stearns. They’re down the most in the market today. Supposedly, a couple of weeks ago, they started looking at a way to try to shop their clearing operations [They] couldn’t find a buyer. At least that’s what one guy says.”

Does Kneale think it's something other than rumormongering to pass on the "supposed" information that comes from "what one guy says?"

More likely, he is just slower on the uptake than his rival Gasparino, who was also depicted by Vanity Fair spreading unvetted information and thus another likely victim of Dimon's prison policy. Perhaps if Dimon has his way, Kneale will have the chance at an extended tutorial of some sort from Gasparino, in their cell.

[Dealbreaker, Vanity Fair]

What happens when Forbes managing editor Dennis Kneale is forced to go one week without email, a cell phone, or his BlackBerry? The "Today Show" put him to the test. The result? Tears. (Within 40 hours!) Also laughter, but only on our part.