In your foreboding Friday media column: Rumors of impending Forbes layoffs, more details on the Conde Nast Traveler cuts this week, an editor quits over her commute(!), and a former AP newsman kills himself.

We're hearing from multiple sources that a major round of layoffs will be hitting Forbes next week. So if you work at Forbes...um, just be nervous, I guess. And if you know more details, email us.


Danyel Smith was the editor of Vibe. Then Vibe folded. Then she got a job as editor of TheRoot.com. Now, after just six weeks on the job, she's quitting "because of issues related to her commute." Huh. Well I was coming home late one dark afternoon/ A reporter stopped me for an interview/ She said she heard stories and she heard fables/ That I'm vicious on the mic, and the turntable/ This young reporter I did adore/ So I rocked a vicious rhyme like I never did before/ She said 'Damn fly guy I'm in love with you'/ And the Casanova legend must have been true/ I said: TELECOMMUTE.
Hip hop has a message.


Details from a tipster regarding this week's cutbacks at Conde Nast Traveler: "A majority of the full-time research staff was 'severed.' Although, purportedly, there will be an arrangement in the coming weeks for those let go to remain as freelancers—a mitigating demotion, ostensibly. But the axe also fell on some editorial and copy edit staff, and several other senior editors, while not fully terminated, will see their work weeks shortened to two or three days only." That's marginally better than being laid off!


An 80 year-old man who retired as Baltimore's AP bureau chief in 1991 killed himself last weekend after being charged with molesting two young boys.