It is TV on shrooms, of course, just like Lee Abrams' day job is running a newspaper on shrooms. You don't think Lee Abrams himself wrote this description of his edumacational teevee project? It bears a certain resemblance to his memos!

We can't embed but there's a nice clip here about sperm that Lee Abrams dug up. Go, Lee! Straight to Jupiter!

John Koblin gets more info on today's Conde Nast hatchet-swinging: Roughly 180 layoffs, including Cookie editor Pilar Guzman. No solid word yet on the fate of Gourmet's Ruch Reichl. Any Conde people who want to share, vent, cry, or complain: Email us.


One argument: The Tribune Co. is bankrupt, its media properties have dim prospects across the board, and all of its employees are bearing the brunt of the managerial incompetence that's left it saddled with a hopeless debt load. Therefore, Tribune trying to pay $66 million in bonuses to top executives is borderline fucking criminal. Counterargument: Lee Abrams is priceless.


Very very predictable news that is nonetheless kinda sad: After the Rocky Mountain News folded, a hardy band of ex-journalists there decided to try to get together and launch an online, subscriber-only local news website, and, long story short, it has folded. But many of those same journalists reportedly found other jobs already, so, bright side.


Tim Wheatley, the business editor of the Baltimore Sun, was killed when his car was struck by a UPS truck this morning.

A few weeks back we caught wind of talk that Zell would give up his stake of the company and walk away, head hung low but relatively intact. Well, now anonymous sources say that the "jury is still out" on Zell and that he may, in fact, be sticking around. Wha?!

Apparently the company's creditors, who supported bankruptcy, aren't entirely sure if they're ready to give him the boot. Nor is he necessarily ready to leave the company, which he helped take private back in 2007.

Now the company's barreling toward its inevitable restructuring and hoping it can salvage something from this fucking disaster. Still, despite the doom and gloom hanging over the company, chief operating officer Randy Michaels recently sent out a memo in which he asserts the managing team, which includes Zell, and its lenders are happy with the ways things have been going.

While the ownership structure of the company is likely to change, current operating management is committed, and intends to remain in place during and after the restructuring.

Why? We haven't the foggiest. Zell's 2007 privatization only brought on more debt. He also reportedly dragged his feet on selling the Chicago Cubs, which brought in a scant $845 million and his presence created a general sense of unease for the company, its staff and the rest of us.

In the meantime, the company's negotiating its new structure and hopes to clear itself of nearly $12 billion in debt. It's good to have goals. Of course, the company's being sued by bondholders and employees who saw failure from the get-go. Perhaps they should be in charge?

Here is a bizarre thing that we will chalk up to some deep conspiracy. NYT, real estate section, August 21: Look at this adorable couple that lives in a Fort Greene brownstone:

Two recent arrivals to this stretch, a pair of 30-year-old newlyweds named Alec Friedman and Skye Parrott (yes, everyone asks if that's her real name, and yes, it is),

Okay sure. And then the Metropolitan Diary, yesterday:

Dear Diary:

Many years ago, I took my daughter, Skye, and her friend Katie, both 7, to MoMA. The girls were bored. Not wanting to waste a trip into the city, I decided to take them to Tiffany's. That was a hit.
When we got back to Hoboken, Katie announced to her mother very seriously, "Mom, I've decided that I like rubies best when they're surrounded by diamonds." Virginia Parrott

And a god damn wedding announcement last month! Skye "Sulzberger" Parrott? Who are you?
[Clearly she is an upscale hippie but what else?] [Pic via]


The Tribune Co. has finally completed the sale of the Chicago Cubs, for $845 million. In the 28 years it owned the team, Tribune Co. brought as much success to the Cubs as Sam Zell has brought to Tribune Co.


The Hallmark Channel is restructuring as its parent company tries to cut its own copious debt load. Reader's Digest officially filed for bankruptcy today. And JPMorgan is now a bigger publisher than Time Inc., thanks to all the publishing companies falling into its lap after financial collapse. The new media!

Advertisers are fleeing from Glenn Beck's show because he's a little too crazy, but could the backlash spread to slightly less crazy political talk shows, as well? Ad Age believes it just might happen! First, you know, Procter&Gamble pulls its ads from Beck, but then they figure why not just pull them from everything politically controversial, and before you know it O'Reilly and Olbermann are outta advertisers too! 1. As long as these shows pull big ratings they'll have advertisers. 2. Maybe those advertisers would then flee to, you know, worthwhile journalism shows? And blogs like ours, hmmm? 3. But if they did eventually savvy marketers would take advantage of the ad dearth to sneak back onto political talk shows, and there you go. Don't worry, fans of drivel.

Newser.com, the aggregation site run by Most Important Man In The Media Michael Wolff, has seen its traffic fall by about two thirds since May. This is directly attributable to Michael Wolff being annoying.


Rupert Murdoch's paycheck this year plunged 40%, to $18 million. His wrinkles held steady, at a skillion. Tangentially related: News Corp is folding its free London commuter paper.

The latest on the Tribune "saga," of Sam Zell slowly being shown the door, and told to walk the fuck through it:

Tribune Co. said its ownership is likely to change as the newspaper-and-television company emerges from bankruptcy-court protection, a shift that people familiar with the matter say would likely put the company in the hands of its lenders and shrink primary debt by more than 90%.

Lefty magazine The Progressive, needs to raise $90,000 in the next two weeks or it will fold. Now you cannot cry ignorance.

Is this the end of Sam Zell, failed newspaperman? The NYP says the gnomish, mean rich man is "on the verge of giving up his claims to buy a huge stake in the company and, according to a source familiar with the matter, is ready to walk away from the company." Tribune Co. employees—whose money Zell used to buy the bankrupt company—will be happy to see him go. But not as sad as they were to see him come.


A federal judge ruled that former WSJ assistant managing editor Carolyn Phillips can pursue her lawsuit alleging that Dow Jones fired her in 2002 because she was black. The WSJ's former editors deny it all. And Rupert Murdoch is just cold sitting back being like "I didn't even own the paper back then, suckas." Then he fires a black person somewhere, just for fun.


Former NYT Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman didn't like the NYT's (pretty awesome I thought!) profile of Harvey Weinstein last weekend—for one thing it was by a reporter Waxman referred to as "David Segal (um, who?)." Turns out she worked with him at the Washington Post and even shared a byline with him. Our editor Gabriel Snyder knows Hollywood and would probably have something insightful to say here, but unfortunately I have no idea who Gabriel Snyder is.
[New insta-joke: "UM WHO?" Haha!]


"Huffington Post + Facebook = the Future of Journalism." No.

The Village Voice talks to recent Columbia J-school grads to figure out what the fuck they were thinking, going to J-school. "I might be crazy, but I'm optimistic," says one. That sums it all up.


The Food Network is doing great! Not doing so great: the restaurant industry. Soon all food will be consumed via television.


Media conglomerate news: the bankrupt Tribune Co. could exit bankruptcy as early as the end of this year! If, uh, all goes well; The AP got rid of 100 staffers, with buyouts; Media profits at McGraw-Hill and Time Warner were down significantly; and Viacom had a bad quarter, but they're "hopeful." Let's all be!


As predicted, the crazy saga of Daily News reporter Adam Rubin being accused of fishing for a job with the Mets has sparked a discussion about journalistic job-fishing! Everybody does it, says D. Carr. Kelly McBride offers some incredibly easy ethical guidelines. And every sports reporter in New York is on Rubin's side, because they could be next.

Highlights of Sam Zell's tenure as America's most horrific newspaper company owner:

• Zell, who knows nothing about newspapers, buys the Tribune for $8 billion in 2007, at the very very last moment anybody could semi-plausibly argue that maybe, somehow, a newspaper company could do well again, one day. Good start.
• Everybody's kind of enthusiastic about this crazy bearded upstart, at first!
• Zell tells a journalist he employs: "Fuck you."
• Lee Abrams.
• Mid-2008: Things at the Tribune papers are going... not so well.
• Tribune Co's most coveted asset: Its parking lot.
• Zell sued by his own employees at the LA Times. Employee relations are...not so good.
• In December, Tribune goes bankrupt.
• And now, the reorganization plan indicates that Zell might be getting out of the game:

  Bankruptcy experts said the plan's outline raises questions about whether the senior lender group would want to retain Zell and his management team or seek new leadership for the company. It also poses the question of whether Zell would want to stay without a large ongoing stake in the company.

Sam Zell now admits that his hugely leveraged purchase and subsequent destruction of the now bankrupt Tribune Co. just before the definitive crash of the newspapers business was "a mistake." No shit! So was hiring Lee Abrams, dude. If it makes you feel any better, Sam, Chicago's homeless paper is doing bad too. And New York magazine can't even afford large font!


James Renner, a reporter for the alt-weekly Cleveland Scene, got fired, apparently for sass-talking the paper's owner after the owner decided to spike a story about an affair-having state senator. Now the writer says he's going to file a wrongful termination suit, and, more importantly, he sent the entire spiked story to a blog, which published the whole thing. Streisand effect!

Spotted at the Grey Gardens premiere in NYC last night: NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger commiserating with PR man Dan Abrams! "They were all smiles and buddy-buddy touches," reports Choire Sicha, spy. He also overheard recently canned Fox gossip columnist Roger Friedman "telling people that the firing was entirely News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch's doing." Parties are a great place to spy!


This whole "the Boston Globe may be closed" situation: what does Ben Affleck think about it? The best actor to ever come out of Boston gave this actual quote to a Globe reporter: ""I fundamentally misunderstood what was going on. Boston.com has 5.6 million readers a month, and yet this hugely successful news gathering operation is going out of business." Which is immediately followed in the story by this parenthetical: "(For the record, Boston.com had 5.7 million unique visitors last month.)" Once again, Ben Affleck has ruined everything.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore: "I'm absolutely sure each of the Time Inc. brands I work on will be standing after we're all gone." We'll all be gone next week.

PR trade mag PRWeek (my former employer) is scrapping its weekly print edition and going monthly, starting in June. They'll keep putting out daily news and weekly newsletters online. No, they're not changing the name.

That "Ehhhh" is the sound of forlorn media watchers collectively saying, "Jesus Christ, what the hell is the point, by now?"

The Chicago Tribune plans to cut another 20% of its newsroom staff in yet another bid to reduce expenses amid continuing advertising declines.

Staffers were told of the impending layoffs last week, according to three people who attended a meeting on the topic. The cuts will take place over the next several weeks, the sources said.

This is an attempt to "cut expenses," but at some point—we're not saying the paper has necessarily reached that point yet, but they sure are ambling down the road towards it—it's just time to really cut expenses, by folding the paper. On a human level, of course, we hope not, but fuck. At some point, again, you pass the point of diminishing returns, where every cut just accelerates your demise. One-fifth of your newsroom is a hell of a cut. Can the Tribune Co. really, seriously, cut its way back to profitability, and out of billions and billions of dollars of debt?

Let's hope so!

In other good, breaking newspaper news: six dozen newsroom buyouts at the walking dead Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

After almost 150 years in business, the Rocky Mountain News is dead. It's the first major big-city paper to die in this new age of declining newspapers, but it won't be the last. It will publish its final edition tomorrow, leaving Denver with only one paper. Which, to be honest, is all that Denver could reasonably hope to support. Still, very sad for those folks who will go down with the ship. May they all go on to find more stable journalism jobs at...I don't even know.


The Pentagon will now allow the media to cover the homecoming of dead soldiers if the families agree, which seems like a fair idea. This marks a change from the Bush administration's official policy of "The dead who, now?"


The New York Times is cutting back the frequency of its T fashion magazine, from 15 to 12 issues per year. T is one of the paper's most successful and profitable products, but it depends on luxury advertising, which is now drying up. The downside of this: as we explained earlier, "T is one of the paper's most successful and profitable products."


A major part of the bankrupt Tribune Co.'s plan for turning its finances around was to sell its flagship skyscraper, the Tribune Tower in Chicago, along with the company's most coveted asset, the building's precious parking lot. But now they're giving up on that plan, because the economy sucks and nobody's buying huge buildings these days, so they'll have to come up with another way to help pay down the Tribune debt, which is so huge I can't even bring myself to say how huge it is. $13 billion.


The New York Times is shutting down four ad sales offices, laying off 27 ad employees, and leaving open 28 vacant positions. The internal memo:

A MESSAGE TO THE STAFF FROM DENISE WARREN AND ALEXIS BURYK

Dear Colleagues,

You are all aware of the challenges that we continue to face in these
rapidly changing and volatile economic times. Over the past year, we have
taken a series of cost-cutting measures to better align our expenses with
our revenues including a voluntary buyout, a freeze on excluded salaries,
as well as cuts in promotional spending and T&E.

Unfortunately, more must be done. This challenging business environment is
forcing us to make tough decisions that involve staff reductions. We have
made the extremely difficult decision to close the New Jersey, Long Island
and Westchester regional sales offices, and the Washington, DC national
sales office. Additionally, we have reduced a small number of sales
positions in New York.

As a result of our decision, we will reduce staff by 27 employees in the
advertising department. We have also gone dark on 28 open positions. All
employees who leave the Company as a result of this move will be given a
severance package and counseling.

Today and tomorrow we will say goodbye to colleagues we have worked with
and care about. It will be a difficult and emotional time for all of us.
We wish each of them well and we will work together to ensure the smoothest
possible transition for our customers. The suburban sales region will be
covered by our telesales department and the D.C. market will be handled out
of New York by the appropriate teams.

Though we will face challenges in our business moving forward, we will need
to continue to work together to weather this economic storm. We must now
focus our attention and energy on the future and the formidable challenges
we all face.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. Together we can make a
difference and continue to build on our many achievements.

Here's a creative spin on laying people off: all employees at Johnson Publishing, home of Ebony and Jet, are being required to re-apply for jobs at the company. Maybe they'll get their same one back! Oddly, this will allegedly result in "a net gain" in "employee head count." Maybe if you count the heads rolling on the floor. [Folio]


The bankrupt Tribune Co. tells a judge "the company anticipates 'a number of layoffs' this year." They also anticipate the earth will rotate around the sun this year.

A former McClatchy exec absolutely unloads on those fools with the "musty smell of the mausoleum all about them" advocating that newspapers adopt a nonprofit model. Because if there's one guy who knows how to build a successful newspaper company, it's a McClatchy exec [2 yr. stock chart shown!].

Poor nasal economic droner Ben Stein had to withdraw as commencement speaker at the University of Vermont because the communist hippie students there don't like him, because he's kind of a wingnut when it comes to evolution. Well Ben Stein has a far better accountant that you hippie, so there!

It is decidedly preferable for a Tribune Co. media outlet to underestimate its own importance these days. And nothing the Chicago Tribune or LA Times does will change the American Celebrity Cultural Disease. Lee has already made clear his belief that "SEX AND RELIGION ARE THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT TOPICS ION THE WORLD!", so I don't know why he doesn't think he can fit celebrities into that paradigm.

Jeff Bercovici points out that, in the course of this short and inexplicable memo, Abrams managed to fall for a thoroughly discredited internet fake quote. But really, the fact that Lee Abrams is able to operate an e-mailer machine at all is so astounding that we're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

THINK PIECE: CELEBRITY CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT

CELEBRITY CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. What I mean here is that We can't underestimate our importance these days. We can change this cultural disease. Exciting and important time to be in the information business like the 80s was an exciting time to be in show biz....we can't blow it by offering dated TV that's over slick and cliche ridden or Print too sluggish and bland. Our position is too important.

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
Miss America 1995 from Alabama
Heather Whitestone (and she won??!!)

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
Popular Pop Singer Mariah Carey

Scary stuff...we can't feed this machine. we need to work hard at being Intelligent but unconvemntional. Inspirational. Agents of change.

[Mixed Media]

Sara Nelson, the former Post books editor and columnist who got the top job at Publishers Weekly four years ago, has been laid off from PW. She was the most prominent victim of a 7% across-the-board cut at PW parent company Reed Business Information. The firing of Nelson, an alumnus of Inside.com, is probably a sign of the weak economic climate in the book publishing industry more than anything else. Full details of the RBI layoffs haven't emerged, but it's a safe bet that they'll affect their higher-profile trade mags—Variety in particular, is looking at a rumored 30 layoffs.


Former New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has launched her long-awaited new website, TheWrap.com, which will be "an exciting new space to cover Hollywood in the digital age." Though Sharon doesn't like us, we wish her luck in her quest to not be totally blown out of the water by Nikki Finke.


Bad news for big media: Deutsche Bank forecasts a 22% decline in earnings for News Corp this year; the last surviving member of the Reuter family dies; and bankrupt Tribune Co., where reckless memo writer Lee Abrams is threatening anyone who opposes the REVOLUTION, will now formally grade employees on their "positive attitude." Smile or die.

It's not all about the Great Magazine Die-Off. Hardcore Gamer magazine was able to successfully sell itself on eBay! Better than, you know, dying off! [NYT]

Public service announcement for fame-hungry romantics: a Good Morning America correspondent has sent out a request that the show is ""Looking for an attractive Cougar Couple to appear on Good Morning America Weekend Edition. Professional Couple - woman at least 10 years older than the guy. This show will air on Valentine's Day Weekend. Couple needs to live in California." The perfect Valentine's gift for your boy toy!

Item: The NYT Co. is in "advanced negotiations" for a sale-leaseback deal of its headquarters, in which the company sells the 19 floors that it occupies in its fancy new building, then stays there while paying rent, with an option to buy the space back in ten years. The deal should net the company $225 mil, which it will use to pay debt, which may or may not prove to be the equivalent of setting the deed to the building on fire, just for fun.

Item: Tribune Co. picked the Ricketts family of financiers as the lucky winning bidders to buy the Chicago Cubs, because they offered $900 million, and much of it is in cash, and the Tribune Co. could really use cold hard cash right now, because it is bankrupt.

Item: And there are still plenty of actual newspapers for sale. Bid now! Anything at all!

Outsourcing is in! At newspapers. The Tribune Co. is trying to strike a deal with the Washington Post to use the Post's foreign coverage, which is really a testament to just how fucked up and decrepit Tribune has become. And the NY Daily News wants to use foreign coverage from the newly launched GlobalPost.com, which, hey, sounds like a good idea, because GlobalPost is gonna need a lot of clients to support all those foreign correspondents it hired. This is probably the new model for foreign coverage for papers who are just slightly too prestigious to run foreign sections composed totally of AP wire stories about BUS PLUNGES in Peruvian mountain towns. [WSJ]

Dreary media layoff news roundup of the day: PlanetOut, which is merging with Regent Media, is rumored to be laying off 50% of its remaining staff. The Boston Globe is cutting 50 newsroom jobs, through buyouts. A tipster tells us the FT has laid off at least four sales reps (the company recently announced 80 total layoffs coming). And American Express publishing is laying off 33, presumably including the Travel & Leisure victims we heard about yesterday. Read Media Crack every day, or you miss out on bad news.

Uncool Bush-appointed Republican FCC chairman Kevin Martin is running, full of Obamafear, straight to a new job with the Aspen Institute think tank, where he will ponder how to eliminate sexual thought in America, or some such foolishness.


Press release: "NPR will be the only radio broadcaster of “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at The Lincoln Memorial." Weelllllllllll, isn't that just fancy, hmmmm? We just wanted to imagine Homer Simpson saying that in his mocking falsetto. [UPDATE: Just-received additional NPR press release: "SEVEN YEAR OLD SHARES HIS BELIEFS ON NPR’S THIS I BELIEVE SERIES." Fancy.]

Oh look, talking person Glenn Beck's new show on Fox premieres Monday, and his first guest will be none other than Wasillan elected official Sarah Palin. Who is clearly still not paying attention to our advice. [TVNewser]

Jarvis, a former ink-stained wretch, calls it a historic moment. Perhaps it is for him, since the Entertainment Weekly founder has made a career out of guiding old media organizations into digital nirvana. To make his living, it helps if he can argue that there's a pot of gold at the end of the online rainbow.

So LA Times editor Russ Stanton's recent disclosure that the newspaper's website revenues covers its editorial overhead — print and online — makes a handy PowerPoint slide for Jarvis.

But Stanton's claim doesn't withstand casual scrutiny for anyone familiar with the economics of online-only publications. The LAT newsroom, even after considerable cuts, still houses 660 people. And yet, in December, according to the newpaper's own figures, its website only generated 120 million pageviews. At that rate, that's 2.2 million pageviews per employee per year. One Gawker Media blogger, in a much-cited example, did double that figure in a month.

And fishiest of all, Jarvis's scenario doesn't include any expense for actually selling those ads. Do Stanton and Jarvis think ads, online or off, get magically sold through the simple grandeur of the wordsmithing to which they're attached?

Perhaps the Tribune Co., the publisher of the Times, is phenomenally good at running its business, but I doubt that, since it recently filed for bankruptcy. More likely: Stanton is engaging in wishful accounting. And since Stanton's tale suits Jarvis's needs, he's reprinting it without applying a media critic's needed skepticism.

"At yesterday's discussion of Tribune's bankruptcy and other journalism cuts at USC, L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton was asked by one of his staffers about the latest newsroom gossip that the Times was considering getting rid of its national and foreign bureaus. (The most live rumor is that the Washington Post has offered to provide foreign and national coverage, and Tribune is listening.) Stanton is reported to have replied, 'You can assume ... everything and anything is being looked at.'"

Think about this: The LA Times, which only a decade ago was all hot to challenge the NYT as the greatest paper in America, may now fire its National and Foreign bureaus, entirely.

Those are important bureaus.

If this happens that LA Times will be no different from the Staten Island Advance, so, nuff said. And in terms of journalism pride, the LAT taking all that copy from the Washington Post would be kind of the equivalent of the LAT editor putting on a ball gag and letting the Post editor penetrate him with a strap-on as long as he wishes, and then asking for more, and also paying for the privilege. (But not really being into that sort of thing, deep down). [LAO; pic via]

You know how sometimes you're playing Monopoly, and you land on Boardwalk with a hotel, and you go into major debt, and you scramble and sell all your hotels and houses and a bunch of property to pay off that debt, and then you're left with no money and barely any assets that could produce money either? Do you often come back and win after that? No. You do not.

So no, the Times shouldn't sell the Red Sox stake. They'd get $200 million and they'd pour that right down the debt hole and then it would be gone forever, and the company would be in the same bad place, but without one of the few assets they have that is not tanking.

If they hold onto that stake, it will only get more valuable. Besides, the Cubs are already for sale! By Tribune, another newspaper company! And unless a consortium of brain damaged Chicagoans pays about $5 billion for the team, even that sale won't pull Tribune out of bankruptcy. NYT Co. should only sell the baseball stake if they're pulling together cash to go private, which is really really what they should do, but they won't, because Pinch Sulzberger will keep trucking right down the same path he's on now, because he's too proud to take business suggestions from disreputable blogs like this that repeatedly call him "Pinch" and talk about his moose nonstop. Well boo.