Just yesterday, we were hearing gossip about how Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, had spared Wired while slashing Portfolio, its troubled business magazine. Not so: Wired.com is having layoffs due to "unexpected cutbacks," Silicon Alley Insider reports. No details on numbers yet; the publication is having a conference call to discuss the cuts now. Wired.com, which is managed separately from the magazine, had gone on an acquisition spree of late, having bought Reddit, Ars Technica, and Webmonkey recently. It also had plans to resuscitate HotWired, a '90s-era Web property which popularized the banner ad; those may now be on hold. Update: More details have arrived on the cuts. A quarter of the 50 or so staff in Wired.com's San Francisco newsroom are gone.

♦ Keith Olbermann has signed a new, four-year contract with MSNBC. He'll earn $7.5 million a year, which is 25 percent less than what his arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly is collecting from Fox News. [TVDecoder]
♦ MSNBC's new slogan—"Experience the power of change"—has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama's victory, naturally. [NYT]
♦ The job cuts at Time Inc. are underway. People is looking for 18 people to take buyout packages. Time is looking for 20 volunteers. [WWD]
♦ Jared Kushner says revenues at the Observer are up 40 percent, although the paper is still losing $2 million a year. [Guardian]
♦ Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, from DreamWorks/Paramount, reeled in $63.5 million in its first weekend. [NYT]

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]

♦ John McCain's appearance on Saturday Night Live didn't generate Sarah Palin-like ratings, but it was still an impressive showing nonetheless. [THR]
♦ No word yet on who will take over NBC's Meet the Press. Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Gwen Ifill, and even Katie Couric all remain possibilities. [NYT]
♦ CBS is on a primetime ratings roll, although Sumner Redstone is still screwed, apparently. [NYT, NYT]
♦ Another profile of Rachel Maddow, just in case the 237 other pieces on MSNBC's rising star in recent weeks have yet to whet your appetite. [NYM]
♦ In case you missed it, the clip of Sarah Palin getting punked by a couple of Montreal radio personalities, who explain how they managed to get through to her. [ABC]

We hear that this morning Joanne Lipmann notified the unlucky Portfolio staffers who will be losing their jobs as part of Conde Nast's cost cuts and the top of the masthead was hit hard: four of the magazine's seven senior editors have been ushered out. If you know names, please let us know. An email is also supposedly going out to the staff later today with management spin on the cuts.

♦ What does Bravo have in the works to replace Project Runway if it moves to Lifetime? There's a Runway ripoff called The Fashion Show. There's also Celebrity Sew-Off, in which "celebrities" will compete in a competition for their own clothing label, which should be totally awesome because we've always wanted to buy jeans designed by Jill Zarin. [THR]
♦ The sponsors for Bravo's fifth season of Top Chef? Campbell's Soup, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Quaker. [AdAge]
♦ Because you haven't heard enough about Bravo today, the NYT magazine profile of Bravo boss Lauren Zalaznick (left) is now online. [NYT]
♦ More details on the cuts and layoffs at Condé Nast. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast's glitzy Fashion Rocks show is no more. [AdAge]

Remember when people aspired to be magazine editors? So archaic. Editing a magazine has become pedestrian. Now one must be a magabrand curator, lording over an entire stable of loosely related titles that make up your own media mini-empire. Why should Anna Wintour settle for editing Vogue when she could become the "editorial director" of a whole slew of Vogue spinoffs? That was good aspirational thinking. Until yesterday. Yesterday, Men's Vogue folded. That was a major embarrassment for Anna Wintour. She was a force in the women's fashion world, but she thought she was destined to build her own fashion magazine empire in her own little corner of Conde Nast. MV was supposed to be a big part of that. Now it's dead, along with Fashion Rocks, the huge advertorial project that Conde Nast put on each fall. Teen Vogue is rumored to be shaky as well! That means fashion advertising is weak overall, and Anna's dream is deferred. If not dead. You know who this should be of concern to? Dave "Abs" Zinczenko! And every other aspiring magabrand mogul. Dave Z made his name editing Men's Health, but now he oversees a bunch of "Health" titles, writes ridiculous "Health" books, and goes on the Today show as an expert all the time. He's not an editor, he's a brand name. Until the advertising collapses! Then he's back to being just another dude checking copy and approving pages and hopefully getting out of the office in time to go to the gym, not so he can look good on TV, but just so he can feel good for himself. Don't worry. Pretty soon you'll be thankful just to have those editing jobs. [Pic via Reuters]

Condé Nast announced yesterday it planned to scale back publication of Men's Vogue to two times a year. But not before Condé took one last opportunity to rope in Men's Vogue readers to renew their subscriptions! A reader was kind enough to send in this renewal offer he received last week, which offered two years ("20 issues!") for the price of one. But as he pointed out, when a Vogue title stamps "Free Gift Enclosed!" on the envelope and the gift turns out to be a flimsy bookmark, that's a pretty good sign the end is near.

Portfolio, Conde Nast's $100 million business magazine, has finally hit what will probably prove to be a permanent downward slope. The latest word is that the magazine is laying off 20% of its total staff—including the vast majority of its web staff—and cutting publication to ten issues per year. Of all the troubled magazines lately, Portfolio is the most significant. Because the decline of Portfolio marks the final, incontrovertible end to the days of big, brash print magazine launches. The good times are over, kids. Portfolio had lots of things against it from the start. The $100 million investment from Conde Nast placed almost superhuman pressure for immediate success on the editor. And that may have been the biggest problem of all: the editor, Joanne Lipman, was not particularly good at her job. Lately she may have even been losing the patient support of Si Newhouse, her overlord and protector. She never really had the support of her staff, and even her deputies may have had waning enthusiasm for her management. Lipman remains in charge for now; but if the magazine survives in the long term, it will probably not be with her at the helm. The magazine's immediate problems are the same ones that face everyone else in the business media: that at the time of this economic crisis—the biggest possible story—there are also the fewest possible advertisers. (It didn't help that the magazine decided to ignore the crisis altogether on the latest cover). Portfolio made a big show of attracting high-profile talent with big paychecks; that was when Wall Street was doing well. Now, they'll have fewer issues to put those writers' material in, and a vastly simplified website without a need for a lot of daily content. Some people will have to go. Big names will be leaving Portfolio soon, upset that they signed on there in the first place—and left without any prospect of receiving an equally good offer somewhere else. Here's the takeaway, as the business types like to say: the Portfolio gamble failed. It wasn't meant to be. Not even a bottomless budget could counteract the fundamental forces that are pushing the media online. The magazine had a lot of talent, a lot of resources, and a lot of good content; but it couldn't put together a package that justified the exorbitant investment in print. Certainly, Portfolio doesn't need to fold just yet; if they can ride out this downturn, streamline the staff, and come out stronger on the other side, they might be around for years and years to come. But their future, like everyone's, is not in the old model of no-expense-spared print behemoths. Magazines will be targeted to niches. General interest publishing will move online (which makes it strange that the mag is laying off its online staff—might be a move in the wrong direction). Thanks for giving it one last shot, Conde Nast; you offered enough proof for anyone.

The 5% across-the-board cuts at Conde Nast are already manifesting themselves. Men's Vogue has been officially scaled back to a twice-a-year publication—meaning that it's folding, in the sense of being a regular (almost) monthly magazine. Tipsters tell us that the MV staff is getting laid off, although Conde's own statement uses the vague phrasing, "Men's Vogue will be absorbed into Vogue," leaving open the possibility of some staff retention (MV editor Jay Fielden is staying on). And All Things D reports that the entire staff of Conde's troubled business title Portfolio has been summoned into a meeting that's going on right now. Ominous. Anyone with specific info on layoffs, email us. [UPDATE: Portfolio has indeed suffered a serious cutback, along with layoffs]: The bad news at the meeting: Portfolio is going to be published ten times per year, rather than 12. The December and January issues will be combined, as well as the June and July issues. Alley Insider says that Porfolio's web staff is being cut from twenty employees to five. More layoffs may be coming. The magazine has a lot of high-profile, highly-paid journalists on its staff—and now, one-sixth less space to publish their stories.

As predicted, a "bloodbath" at Condé Nast Portfolio is unfolding at 4 Times Square this afternoon. Silicon Alley Insider has the ugly news that editor Joanne Lipman shared with the mag's staff here. [SAI]

With media companies announcing layoffs in recent weeks that have amounted to anywhere from 100% to 6%, the news of a 5% budget trim at Conde Nast seems fairly mild by comparison. But Conde Nast has always been seen as the media's promised land: a mythical place where Uncle Si's benevolent rule doesn't follow the laws of economics and the one place where a person who types for a living might make enough money to be able to afford (or get a friendly publicist to "loan") some of the accoutrements proffered in the glossy pages of Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ. Working for Conde Nast isn't just a job, it's an aspirational lifestyle. So it's not just those holding some of the cushiest journalism jobs in the universe (I should know) who are trying to figure out what Conde Nast budget cuts mean. (Rice-a-Roni in the cafeteria? Curtailed black car service? Or shiver expense account caps?) It's every single person in the print media world who believed that if they did well enough at their crappy, low-paying print job, they too could one day gain admission into the Conde Nast circle. But details are sparse right now on just what Si Newhouse will be cutting back on. Who's getting laid off? What perks are being cut back? Where are the memos? If you can enlighten us, please send email (from your personal account!) to tips@gawker.com or call our tip line at 646-214-8138.

Quelle horreur: Conde Nast is cutting the budget of all their high-class rags by 5% across the board! Five percent of payroll and 5% of every title's expense budget. And that goes for the editorial and the business sides. The Observer calculates that it will be impossible to accomplish the cuts without layoffs. One less assistant for Vogue's Anna Wintour! A slightly less long tail for Wired's Chris Anderson! And, worst of all: could this be the end of the long road to oblivion for that emasculating Wintour plaything, Men's Vogue [UPDATE: Sort of!]?

Condé Nast publishers and editors have been instructed by the powers-that-be to cut both their staffs and budgets by five percent immediately. Also, to the 29 faithful subscribers to Men's Vogue, please be advised the magazine may be closed down in the near future. [NYO]

♦ The Rachel Maddow publicity machine rolls on (not that we mind, of course): According to today's Times, she's a "fresh face," MSNBC execs adore her, and her show's ratings have defied all expectations. [NYT]
♦ For reasons we will never understand, Fox & Friends is now more popular than CNN's American Morning and MSNBC's Morning Joe combined. [LAT]
♦ Sarah Palin will sit down with Brian Williams tomorrow. [TVNewser]

♦ It's confirmed: Sarah Palin will appear on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. [NYDN]
♦ Yet another tragic consequence of the economic meltdown: Suze Orman is making money off the crisis with big-money endorsement deals. [WSJ]
♦ Playboy is cutting costs. How? With energy-efficient lightbulbs, naturally. [WWD]
♦ The Grammy nominations—not the actual awards, mind you—will be a TV special. [NYT]
♦ A hiring freeze is now in place at Condé Nast. [NYP]

This whole Wall Street thing is pretty big news, right? So how did Condé Nast's struggling business mag respond to the biggest economic story of a generation? They put Dov Charney, the founder of American Apparel, on the cover of the November issue. [Gawker, previously]

Who did (troubled?) business magazine Portfolio select to put on its cover this month, in the midst of the greatest financial upheaval since the Great Depression? Dov Charney. Pervy, pacing, dog-loving American Apparel chief Dov Charney. There must be an explanation for this, right?

"Dear MR HAMILTON NOLAN: Your Condé Nast Portfolio subscription is about to expire...If you fail to respond, your account will move to our 'expired' files...Your Charter Subscriber privileges, savings, and perks will no longer be available." Perks?

Condé Nast has devoted an enormous sum to launch its new business title, Portfolio: While initial estimates pegged the cost at $100 million, it was recently reported that the media conglomerate may be planning to spend $150 million to get the magazine off the ground. Since its debut in 2007, Portfolio has struggled to gain subscribers and advertisers, fired editors and hired new ones, changed its cover strategy, and emerged as the perpetual train wreck that media obsessives can't get enough of. But now we hear things are worse than ever. "With everything that's happened over the past few weeks, everyone is much more concerned," an insider tells us. For good reason.