Remember they did like a "bailout" thing a while back, when our economy had that momentary hiccup? So apparently now our government is going to have to be paying that back, to the tune of $700 billion per year. Which is not to say we' can't do it—we're not here to worry you, or upset your mind in any way whatsoever with technical issues of "the prospect of not having money ever for the rest of your natural life"—but we need a plan here, to get this thing taken care of.

So here is the plan, without further ado: Everybody take all your money and put it into gold right now. That shit is as high as it's ever been right now and it has nowhere to go but up. Then take the rest of all your money and put it into stocks. They are totally going through the roof today and we for one see no sign of this trend stopping any moment. If you're an executive now, don't stop being one, because as long as you are, you get to keep all the money. Next, find the dude selling life insurance in the subway—his name is Eric, he's down there all the time. Purchase a $700 billion policy.

Right, everything is going swimmingly. To complete the financial wizardry in action here, kill yourself. Don't feel bad. Everybody's doing it.

[Pic via]

Summary of what's going on in newspaper industry stocks in the last couple of years: They're finally tanking, and rationally so. Warren Buffett—partial owner of the Washington Post!—declared this year that he wouldn't buy a newspaper at any price. The last bits of hopefulness have left investors, even the contrarians. The newspaper industry is the buggy industry during Henry Ford's time, and other cliches.

But! Here in the muddy, mythical end of the recession, it's become fashionable (primarily amongst newspaper company executives) to say that a comeback is in the offing! The worst is over! The New York Times' recent $35 million quarterly loss, for example, is a sign of the great progress the company's making. Get in while the getting is cheap!

Well, as the WSJ ably points out today: What's really happened is that newspapers saw momentarily more encouraging numbers thanks to vicious cost-cutting across the board, and a somewhat less horrific economy at large. But there's not a whole lot of cost-cutting left to do before you cut your paper down to nothing. And the newspaper advertising business isn't looking up.

The reality is that newspapers are suffering severe declines in ad revenue this year on top of the double-digit percentage declines they suffered last year.
Compared with the first half of 2009, their recent performance doesn't appear to be getting much worse, but it has yet to show any real recovery.

The print ad business is in an irrecoverable dive, there's no comparable replacement revenue source, quality will likely continue to decline (unto death) at many old-school newspaper companies, and the internet still exists. Sorry.

A tipster tells us that there have been "dozens" of layoffs at Reader's Digest yesterday and today (and maybe for the past couple of weeks too, we hear now), possibly involving the outsourcing of the mag's web department. [Related: The company's bankrupt, and looking to move to cheaper headquarters.] Know more? Email us.
UPDATE: One of the laid off staffers tells us, "Everyone is basically gone. The top web person resigned yesterday...the other was laid off." The employee says there are as few as three people left running the RD website now.
UPDATE 2: We got this email from William Adler, VP of communications at Reader's Digest:

Reader's Digest recently (not this week; a few weeks ago) ADDED about a dozen staffers in digital at readersdigest.com... did not "lose" any; it's the exact opposite of what you wrote...

and there was / is no outsourcing... readersdigest.com is staffing up, and is going great guns with traffic, advertising, etc.

The digital staffers came to RD as part of a realignment of the CORPORATE digital group... as responsibilities for branded websites have been moving into the businesses. Highest profile among those who transferred from corporate to Reader's Digest was Jonathan Hills, who was promoted to General Manager, readersdigest.com — which we announced a couple of weeks back. Some digital staff also moved into Food & Entertaining, specifically to work in Taste of Home and our digital advertising group.

The corporate Web team is focusing on driving RDA's digital Center of Excellence and applying technology to build audience, profits and revenues. The corporate web team had a small number of layoffs at the time that staff transferred into the business divisions (not this week), effectively reducing its total size. The corporate team continues to be very important to the company's growth strategy and now reports directly to Amy Radin, our Chief Marketing Officer, and they are part of her global plan. Key Web heads in the business units have a dotted line report to Radin.

There are about 20 people on the corporate digital team now.

How soon will the layoffs be coming at Conde Nast? Maybe next week at some magazines, maybe weeks or months down the road at other magazines, according to John Koblin. So you really don't know when you might go! Always fear, Nasties.


The Village Voice has a long cover story this week about the newspaper industry in New York City, which we'll sum up as: It still exists. But it's getting smaller.


Another perspective, from the NY Post, a newspaper: The newspaper industry is back! Gannett's earnings are higher than expected, so investors are piling in to newspaper stocks. Upside: They're cheap! Downside: They will get cheaper. Just you wait. Just you wait.

[Additional reporting by Hunter Walker!]

Lay back and light your cigar with a one hundred dollar bill in a gleefully stereotypical manner as you take in this information from the respected Wall Street Journal: "A fresh round of corporate dealmaking on Monday helped lead to broad-based gains for stocks, which are closing in on the best quarterly climb in more than 10 years." They says "Stocks Leap," which is a powerful and evocative action word.

Leaping, upwards!

When you're right in the midst of a big huge once-in-a-decade rally directly on the heels of a hellish financial apocalypse followed by a totally jobless "recovery," there is only one thing to do: the most risky thing possible! Investors are fleeing from investing in Iraq just because of its total lack of safety or functioning government? Rush in headfirst, waving bags of money! Analysts are wary of the secular nature of the ongoing horrific collapse of all ad-based media? Go to Ad Week and party the fuck down! It's a party! An ad party.

Scared of the fact that statistically most corporate M&A's are failures? Fuck it! M&A's: Do them! Everyone else is. Do it for the economy of America. Do it for financial trade reporters, and corporate culture consultants, and, most of all, for the bankers.

They need this. Otherwise they're just floating around and getting spooked by the possible metaphorical significance of a 1,400-pound bull rampaging down the streets of Paterson, NJ, before being forcefully subdued by police. Which is not good.

"Cautiously, Small Investors Edge Back Into Stocks." Here's some news for you, small investors: you're screwed either way. If you really had balls you would have bought heavy into stocks the whole time they were cratering. If you were incredibly prudent you would have plowed it all into CDs and bonds and been satisfied with slow and steady. But, "Cautiously," you edge out just far enough on the plank to see what's going on in the wild seas, and woops—get pushed right off by all the other suckers crowding on that same plank with you.

I don't really know much about stocks.

Another thing I don't know much about: the art market. What's this we hear about auctioneer Phillips de Pury & Co. adding 18 new sales of contemporary art in the coming year? I would swear it's some sort of hunger-crazed rat burrowing into my ear canal in desperate search of food now that all the edible scraps have been snapped up by unemployed human hobos, but no, it says it right there in the WSJ. And furthermore the head of this alleged auction house is named "Bernd Runge" and he calls himself an "art virgin" and he says he wants to sell this art, including some about "Sex," to people who haven't even bought art before? We have a name for those people: "Suckers," we call them, and their preferred form of "art" is colorful marker drawings of their own name by Chinese men sitting on stools in Times Square, okay. Just forget it, "Bernd." We remember what happened last time a bunch of idiots started bidding and bidding on dumb art: Damien Hirst.

The new census tells us something a little different, you snake oil salesmen. It tells us we won't be buying many stocks or art or anything else from "Bernd," because one in five kids under 18 live in poverty, and our median household national income has fallen to barely over $50k. That's not even enough to buy Damien Hirst's left nut, the one without the diamonds on it.

Never forget that we are all financially illiterate.
[Pic: Flickr]

What has been going on in "the market" today, you may ask? Sell! Sell! Sell! The stock market was on a big tear the last week or so and now everybody is selling everything off as fast as possible because, as we all know, the US financial system is built on a foundation of rotten balsa wood, and the termites have been hungry lately.

People are especially selling off their financial stocks because, ha, you invested in that??

Not to fear, foolish investors! Your friendly neighborhood loan shark is ready and willing to give you a much-needed loan, as well as maybe a shark bite (from a gun). Shop around! Interest rates range from 60% to 2347%, so don't just jump at the first usurious deal you hear!

Hey, it's better than selling your parents, right? Eh? Well what kind of price are we talking, here?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.It sucks to be a writer these days, yet another writer confirmed today. Best-selling author Joe McGinniss, author of The Selling of the President, is soliciting book ideas on Facebook, because he can't come up with anything people actually want to buy. Furthermore, freelancing sucks:

"Some of you may have seen my cover story on Sarah Palin and the Alaska gas pipeline for Portfolio . . . At least they paid well, which not many places do any more. Among those that don't is The Daily Beast. I recently wrote a short piece for them . . . They said they'd pay $250. But then they said they'd only pay if I signed an agreement that is the nuttiest, most onerous, restrictive contract I've seen in 40 years . . . I said I couldn't sign it . . . and, of course, never got paid."

A successful, celebrated writer, kids.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The canny private equity firm that recently bought the San Diego newspaper, in exchange for actual American currency, has put two of the buildings it got in the deal up for sale at prices "significantly higher" (by millions) than the prices they paid for them, two months ago. As you know, real estate prices have skyrocketed in the past two months. As have newspaper valuations. Carry on.
[Though there is an outside chance that financial professionals know what they're doing.]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Haha yesterday the New York Post was all, hey, Media stocks look like a "good bet." But then yesterday, that same day, media stocks "took a dive." This is why everybody writing about stocks, in a newspaper, is just guessing, hey, 50/50 CHANCE.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.CBS and ABC both had all-time lows in nightly news viewership last week, which they're probably going to attribute to the digital TV switch, because the confused olds who still watch the nightly news regularly can't figure out how to get these new teevees working, and this is probably the actual reason.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.W magazine's L.A. bureau chief Gabé Doppelt—who worked with Tina Brown at Talk magazine—is moving to the Daily Beast as its West Coast editor.

The paper already took out a $250 million subprime loan from Carlos Slim. The best they can hope for there is not to allow him to leverage it to sneak in and take over the whole company. It was reported earlier that Hollywood megamogul David Geffen was trying to buy a 20% chunk of NYT stock from a hedge fund, but today one or both sides are pooh-poohing it as one mere phone call—a flight of Geffen fancy, if you will, not a real bid.

So the outside saviors are both...predatory at best, nonexistent at worst. What about saving itself, with a plan to not be cannibalized unto death by the internet? They're going about it, albeit quaintly! Today John Koblin has more details on the Times' theoretical plan to rake in more money, somehow. There are two possibilities!

1. A "'meter system,' in which the reader can roam freely on the Web site until hitting a predetermined limit of word-count or pageviews, after which a meter will start running and the reader is charged for movement on the site thereafter." Tick tick tick!

2. A "membership" system in which you donate money to the NYT and get a t-shirt or a key chain or extra content or a private relaxing "massage" from Jon Landman and Janet Robinson, whatever, they haven't worked it all out yet.

The sunny backdrop to all this is that if the company doesn't come up with some miraculous way to pay down its debt, fast, the Sulzbergers will likely have to give up their family control of the paper. So uh, they're still open to better ideas!

[NYP, NYO, WSJ]

I mean can you believe the nerve of this fuckin' guy, coming on CNBC and saying amateurs should follow a proven successful passive investment strategy and shouldn't try to time the market according to the rantings of a man whose stock picks have a losing record? The nerve of this fuckin' guy. Shove your "index funds" up your tight ass!

Cramer's rant here is only 5% less shouty than that.
[Clusterstock]

Boston Globe: Still angry about this whole "Give up all your money or be shut down" thing. Union members are upset, defiant, and vowing to fight. Good luck to them, but in the end they'll have to give in, along with their bosses, along with everyone else at the NYT Co., and everyone else in journalism anywhere.


Media company stocks have been doing slightly better recently, but don't worry: forecasters are sure that things will "turn ugly again" soon.

....Although you can always go the LA Times route and put a fake advertorial on your front page, or do one better, as the UCLA student paper did: wrap their entire paper with a full, mock front page advertorial, which was designed and written by a marketing department. The paper's editors ran a pissy editorial about how much they hated it but ultimately ran it anyhow, because they needed the money. This would have been a great thing for us to get all judgey about, a year ago.


WSJ.com, the only major newspaper website that successfully got people to pay for it, now has a plan to expand its paywall and make even more people pay for it. Those guys are the absolute vanguard of money. No joke.

How dainty is Politico? It's quite dainty indeed! The site wrote a story about Arlen Specter appearing on Howard Stern's show, and pulled info from a site called MarksFriggin.com. This was written up on Politico.com as: "So, here are some of the exchanges, via MarksFr—--en.com, a site run by a guy who live-blogs Howard's every on-air utterance." Haha, they can't say "Friggin." Would you like a tea cozy to go with your milquetoast that you eat with your pet chihuahua in a pink sweater on the veranda while wearing a tutu made of lemon drops? Ha. Politico.

What is he, some small-town stockbroker? Seems so. At least he didn't repeat any of the nonsense he heard from the crowd of Internet hipsters he met with Friday.

Indecently sexy ABC newsman Jake Tapper (his blog even promises "probings") declared Obama's statement a remarkable utterance. Was it?

What you're now seeing is ... profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it.

The only remarkable thing was how unremarkable Obama's advice was. It's the kind of thing you might read in Money magazine. What would be remarkable is if Obama actually acted on his advice and started buying up stocks outright, like Singapore does when the market gets below government-approved levels. In which case we should really worry, since Obama's stockpicking skills are downright questionable.

(Bizarre Obama-Wall Street metaphor art by Gawker-favorite artist Dan Lacey)

The market's now lost more than half of its value since its October 2007 highs. And one economist says that based on the previous history of stock market busts in the past century, big stocks could have—are you ready, now?—another 35% to 55%. OR, the sunny scenario: "The market could simply move sideways for 5-10 years... This is what happened in the 1970s." So either a decade of stagnation, or another huge way to fall!

A couple months ago I was in K-Mart buying socks and some young guy who was obviously in finance was talking loud on his cell phone, saying, "Yea, guys at work now are talking about Dow Five Thou, Dow Five Thou..." And I thought, "whatever man, what kind of finance guy is shopping in K-Mart, anyhow?"

Turns out the answer is "the smart ones."

Just a few months ago, the NYT Co's dividend was 23 cents per share. In November it was cut to six cents. And if you think about it, the reason it got cut that time is only more of a reason now:

"Today's decision provides the company with additional financial flexibility given the current economic environment and the uncertain business outlook," said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman, in a statement. "We expect the suspension of the dividend, coupled with our other actions, will help us decrease debt and improve the liquidity of the company, a difficult but prudent measure in this operating environment."

It's economically sound for the cash-strapped company, although it won't make the stockholders incredibly happy. Especially the Sulzberger family members who were living the easy life off that dividend money. Now their company actually has to make money in order for them to make money! Joe Hagan wrote in New York last fall:

Sulzberger and CEO Janet Robinson raised the dividend by an extraordinary 31 percent last year-even as the stock price declined. Of the $132 million a year the paper gives to shareholders, about $25 million of it now goes directly into the coffers of the Ochs-Sulzberger trusts.

That's all gone, and the company needs every penny it saves to pay down debt. Henry Blodget points out that a share of NYT stock is now cheaper than a Sunday copy of the paper. Time for the young Sulzbergers to get to work. At least one of them has a job. For now. [AP]

Um, could be worse! Thanks to crack Gawker intern Dominick Caggiano for the clip.

Hey, looks like those 1930s were really bad. This is a mere bump on the road to prosperity! [Today's news of doom]

Just a few of our winners:

• Netflix: Profit was up 45% in the fourth quarter.
• McDonald's: Opening 650 new restaurants.
• Spam: Parent company Hormel is "Enjoying Growth in a Slowing Economy!"
• Wal-Mart: Hey they're not doing too bad at all!
• Campbell Soup: They're a blue chip stock!

Anecdotal evidence also indicates that Crystal meth dealers and Online porn are doing just as well as expected. [Previously]

Why no Obamarally? Obama's pretty inaugural speech gave no promise to shareholders of a quick buck:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Translation: the short-term reward seekers of Wall Street won't get any more bailouts. Shareholders are going to share in the sacrifice. Therefore, stocks are down. Can we dispense with the theory that Obama has a magical hold on the stock market — and that the Dow is a perfect proxy for the health of America?

The latest stock jock to retake the field is Thom Calandra, the founding editor of MarketWatch, a financial-news site now owned by News Corp. He has launched a new investment newsletter, Ticker Trax, on Stockhouse.com. A gutsy move, considering that's exactly the vehicle which crashed his career at MarketWatch; an SEC investigation found that Calandra was buying shares of stocks he recommended before he wrote them up in a MarketWatch newsletter, and then selling them after publication. He surrendered $416,109.58 in illegal profits, and paid a $125,000 fine. As part of the settlement,

Calandra joins Henry Blodget, who was banned from the securities industry for privately trash-talking stocks, but now runs Silicon Alley Insider, a tech-stocks blog. He's been profiled in Wired and explaining Wall Street's woes in The Atlantic. CNBC shouter Jim Cramer draws higher ratings than ever for his populist on-air rants. As a money manager, he was investigated by the SEC and cleared, but later admitted to manipulating stocks. Nevertheless, he's now nominating himself as the SEC's next chairman.

So why are we taking advice from admitted crooks? I think we all cynically subscribe to the theory that it takes a thief to catch one. The mortgage meltdown revealed abuses at Wall Street firms that encompassed the entire business; it wasn't a matter of bad apples, but a rotten barrel. If the game is rigged, then who better to guide your play than the most expert of riggers?