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Mort Zuckerman's sleep-inducing U.S. News, which has played third fiddle to rival news weeklies Time and Newsweek for years, announced this week that it will be switching to a biweekly publication schedule next year. Not a huge shock—the mag started abandoning news coverage in favor of "Best Colleges in America"-type lists last fall, and reduced its annual issue count from 46 to 36. But does the move signal that the Canadian-born tycoon is moving away from media and focusing on his first love, real estate? And as crappy as the newspaper business is right now, is commercial real estate really the place to be putting your money these days?

Zuckerman has been dialing back his media holdings for some time now. This week's cutbacks at U.S. News (which, perhaps most tragically, will result in 10 fewer editor letters from Mort each year) follow similar cutbacks carried out in 2005 and 2006. Things aren't much rosier at the Daily News: The paper continues to lag behind Rupert Murdoch's Post, and while Zuckerman seemed prepared to expand his newspaper operation when he bid on Newsday in May, his $580 million offer was viewed as a more defensive measure to counter Murdoch's proposal, rather than the result of any actual interest in taking over yet another money-losing local paper.

But as his media dealings have ebbed, he's been busy expanding his real estate activities. Last month he announced he was teaming up with Goldman Sachs and the governments of Qatar and Kuwait to buy four buildings from debt-plagued developer Harry Macklowe for $3.95 billion, including $2.9 billion went to pay for the GM Building, making it the single most expensive building in commercial sales history. The deal, which came after a bidding war with Steve Roth's Vornado, closed on Monday, which means Mort is officially the new landlord of the Apple store in Midtown. (Guess Mort's won't have to wait on line for his new iPhone.) But there are already rumblings that he's buying in as real estate values continue to dip:

Yet, it surprised many to see Boston Properties jump back in so quickly and agree to pay the highest price ever for a single office tower, as $2.8 billion of the deal price, including debt assumption, is solely for the GM building. The company is buying the portfolio at a time when New York employers continue to shed thousands of financial jobs.

The good news: If Mort runs into any trouble, he can always turn to one of his new tenants in the GM building, the tony law firm of Weil, Gotchal. It also happens to have one of the top bankruptcy practices in the city.