In your thrashed Thursday media column: More Conde layoff rumors, Martha Stewart's evil company gets sued, media hair racism persists, and Choire Sicha declaims on the current technomedia foofaraw.

The Conde Nast cuts are apparently ongoing. After a massacre at Brides yesterday, a tipster today tells us there are "Mass layoffs at Conde Nast in Chicago today (lots of advertising people). Chaos." If you have more details, email us.


Kiki Paris, a former employee of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is suing the company for "forcing her to return to work too soon after a debilitating injury and then firing her soon after." Due to our irrational and sensationalistic one-sided "feud" with Martha Stewart, this doesn't surprise us one bit.

Renee Ferguson, a black TV journalist, discusses how her television employers told her to stop wearing an afro, because it would intimidate white viewers. Yet Lou Dobbs' hair draws no complaints? Astounding.


What is Choire Sicha exercised about today? The FTC's new rules about bloggers being forced to disclose their freebies! It's a pointless and arbitrary rule, he says in an NYT op-ed, and furthermore "Stealth marketing, direct advertisement and product placement work only on the clueless, and our immersive, hippo-like wallowing in the marketplace serves only to make us resistant to these viral contagions." Always with the hippos.