In your inhumane Friday media column: Layoffs at NPR, another freakin' Dubya('s dad) book, newspapers burn as usual, New York mag has ad trouble, and Sean Hannity's waterboarding money appears!

NPR is laying off 13 employees and sending all employees on five-day furloughs to help close an $8 million budget gap this year. Oh and in a new creative twist they're also not paying employees for three standard holidays this year, so there's a new and exciting tactic to try out and screw your workers with, corporate plutocrats! Who's to blame for this? You, for not donating enough. If you have some interesting NPR layoff dirt to share, email us.


Newsweek editor Jon Meacham is writing a new biography of Dubya Dubya's dad. [We corrected the subject of the book here, but we leave the subsequent snide comments]. Who wants to read more about that guy? No idea. Maybe he's done some interesting stuff, since getting the fuck out of office? Newsweek editor Jon Meacham aims to do some findin' out of that.


Now we take a big deep breath and spit out all the bad newspaper news of the day all at once: McClatchy and the NYT Co. ("four notches into junk") had their debt ratings cut, pay cuts at the Star Tribune and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Boston Phoenix, and asshole CEO of the broke-ass bankrupt Philly papers, Brian Tierney, made $1.175 million last year, including hundreds of thousands in bonuses and 81K for "transportation costs," and another exec there called his own pay "very low," so suck on that, newsroom.


New York magazine is cutting two issues this summer, and one in January, because they can't sell enough ads for them.

And in an admirable bit of public service, Keith Olbermann has pledged to give $1,000 for every second that Fox manimal Sean Hannity has himself waterboarded, as he said he would do. Sean?