In your troubling Wednesday media column: layoffs at Conde Nast and the Boston Globe, Bill Keller fights back, King's officially dead, North Korea's still mean to journalists, and more:

The rumor we heard yesterday about King magazine folding has been confirmed. You'll have to get your ass elsewhere, gentlemen.


Multiple sources tell us that 20 or more employees were laid off at Conde Nast Digital today. Designers and product management types were among the casualties. The Conde crumble continues. Also, a tipster tells us that the Boston Globe laid off four full-time union employees this week, all of whom were women, they say. And we hear that yesterday's Forbes layoffs actually stretched into today, because the company couldn't get to everyone yesterday. Harsh.


Bill Keller is getting salty! The NYT editor wrote Vanity Fair a kind of pissy letter dismissing its recent piece on Pinch Sulzberger. "I'll bet on Arthur Sulzberger finding the answer to that question [of journalism making money] before Mark Bowden does," Keller wrote. Zing! We must admit, we do like Bill Keller. He's a feisty one.


Oh hell, those two poor Current TV journalists who got caught sneaking into North Korea are now facing up to 10 years in prison there, according to the wacky NK government. Good lord. If that's not a bluff, it's time for some Rambo.


The list of Pulitzer Prize finalists hasn't leaked this year as usual, probably because everybody in newspapers is too sad to care much.