In your overblownTuesday media column: Time is a biter, Michael Wolff is an exaggerator, Portfolio is a fantasist, Newsweek is stank, and Esquire is an [expletive deleted]:

Esquire's ad revenue dropped 22% in the first quarter, which actually put it above average. But we hear that the magazine's staff, and its corporate overlords, are on edge. There was a meeting yesterday [UPDATED]...

• The Times is folding in several sections of the paper (City, Escapes); scrapping the weekly fashion spread in the New York Times Magazine, and cutting the budget for freelance writers. Grim times, indeed. [NYT, Gawker]
• NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is reportedly concerned that CNBC has become too conservative and is becoming "the anti-Obama network." [P6]
• The new Ben Silverman? That would be ABC's Stephen McPherson. [NYP]
• Bill O'Reilly tends to ambush liberals more often than he does conservatives. Could that mean he, like, has an agenda or something? How surprising! [NYT]
• Twitter on fire: Traffic is up 131 percent from February. [AdAge]
• Gannett Co. reported a 60 percent decline in first-quarter profit today. [AP]

In your magaziney Thursday media column: Maxim UK's dead in print, Airline magazines go terrestrial, Michael Wolff's Vanity Fair retribution piece, and Esquire plays with toys:

• Pamela Anderson hit the catwalk at Vivienne Westwood's show in Paris today. Her boob popped out of her dress at the very end, which was totally an accident, you can rest assured. [SW, HP]
• Reports from various shows at Paris Fashion Week. [WSJ, NYM, T, Telegraph]
• You can credit/blame Barack Obama's inauguration in January for the recent resurgence in fur. [WSJ]
• Michelle Obama is wearing Michael Kors for her new O cover. [Fashionista]
• Ikram Goldman, Michelle's fashion guru, is in Paris for the shows. [FWD]
• Madonna is teaming up with Ed Hardy on a new clothing line. [Mirror]
• What's it like to be Bernard Arnault, France's richest man and "arguably the most influential tastemaker in the world of luxury"? Quite nice, actually. [WSJ]
• Try not to fall out of your chair—we'd hate you to get hurt—but Esquire has named Prince Charles the "best dressed man in the world." [Guardian]

Esquire editor David Granger loves the Amazon Kindle. Sort of. The e-book reader gives him hope that Internet-shortened attention spans will lengthen enough to spark a renaissance in books and magazines. He's utterly delusional.

Esquire has a profile of every liberal's favorite Fox News jockey Shep Smith this month. It's cute-ish and funny, but a bit murky. Just who is this guy? Is he friend or foe?

• HarperCollins announced layoffs and a major reorg today. [NYO, Gawker]
• No one wants to take the editor job at OK! [Page Six]
• Ron Burkle's magazine distribution company is suing a bunch of publishing companies for trying to drive it out of business. We should be so lucky. [NYP]
• Michael Kinsley explains why micropayments won't save newspapers. [NYT]
• Time's Walter Isaacson, however, argued the opposite position last night when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. [NYO, TDS]
• Hachette is dropping out of the Magazine Publishers of America. [AdAge]
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster have announced plans to merge. [NYT]
• CBS scored big ratings on Sunday thanks to the Grammys. [AdAge]
• A day in the life of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. [Esquire]

Ever since Vice plastered an ad on its cover that was only visible in the dark, magazines have been researching better ways to sell out. Now Esquire has made a breakthrough in invisible cover ads!

Obama will make your weed legal because he models himself after FDR, a presumably stoned Esquire writer asserts.

Esquire can now retire their esteemed old "What I've Learned..." feature. Paris Hilton has filled out the questionnaire, and once you find out that someone has a nightclub in their house, there's just no topping it.

Oh, it's a terrible time to own a magazine. Advertising is falling and expected to plummet further. Everyone's laying people off, going online only or outright shutting down. But every editor worth his salt knows how to put a contrarian, positive spin on a dire situation. Time Inc. may be in the process of laying off 600 people, but, hey, the magazine group's executive vice president told Peter Kafka the layoffs are "pretty much" done, and if you're still employed with the company you probably won't get laid off between now and New Year's. Why, that's positively delightful! And dig the way Newsweek tried to positively spin a purported 1 million-copy-cut in its rate base:

Chin up, unemployed journalists! Though media companies seem to accelerate their layoffs every day — Time Inc. Europe, People and CondeNet were on deck Tuesday — the optimist looks for opportunity in the panicked horror. One might, for example, sell one's soul to the horrid zombie Web corpse of a long-dead print magazine. Or beg, probably in vain, for a job at Starbucks. And if none of that works, you can always write, for free, for PumpsMag.com, an "Exotic Dancing Industry" publication where editors "equate ourselves with Forbes, Esquire, and/or Cosmopolitan magazines in our demographic and content." You know it's a classy gig because it says so right in the ad! Details after the jump.

When Vince Vaughn first made his mark with Swingers, he was so whippet-thin that his wild, improvised riffs almost seemed to be a unique form of cardio. Now that a decade has passed, though, things have changed — a fact that Esquire's new issue takes great pains to point out. Vince Vaughn is not thin anymore, each line of its cover story (entitled "The Biggest Man in the Room") seems to say. No, Vince Vaughn is now a fatty, a great big fatty fat person. Think we're joking? Enjoy this opening paragraph, with all the ooky, relevant parts bolded in Defamer ChubbyFont™:

In a move oddly prescient of the HuffPo's model—soliciting mundane content from famous names to make ya look—Esquire is posting celeb and political Thanksgiving recipes from its 1984 issue—Walter Mondale, Nancy Reagan, William Styron, et al. Mmm, tastes like morning in America and trickle-down economics! It raises so many questions: Was Bill Blass being serious with his homoerotic recipe for "Hot Giant Pecans"? Wait, Ted Turner's Applesauce Cake? Was hardline conservative William F. Buckley's recipe for "Thanksgiving Pheasant with Chestnut Cornbread Stuffing" flavored with the blood of the innocent? As it turns out, it's currant jelly:

The layoffs at Hearst this week have already hit Redbook and Good Housekeeping. So as not to be sexist, now they've come to Esquire. We hear the upscale men's mag laid off four editorial employees yesterday, including two editors, and decreed that another open assistant editor position won't be filled. "They gathered everyone together to tell them not to tell anyone the exact number cuz they don't want any media," says a tipster. That's somewhat embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as the spending habits of another layoff-happy mag, the recently decimated Conde Nast Portfolio: According to P6,

♦ Cuts have arrived at Hearst: Cathie Black (left) is "going floor by floor at the Hearst Tower to trim costs and staff positions." [WWD]
♦ Lloyd Grove talks to Tina Brown about her new site and the economic climate: "It's pretty scary. It's scary, scary, scary." [Portfolio]
♦ The New York Times Co. reported profits fell 51 percent for the quarter amid the drop in advertising sales. Traffic to the Times website, however, is up. [Bloomberg, AP, NYO]

Let's play the game "Who said it, and about what?": "It was a silly gimmicky thing." "Ridiculous." "I was embarrassed by it. I think most people at Hearst were embarrassed by it." "I was embarrassed that the Esquire name was on it." "That wasn't great, that was just ridiculous." "This Mickey Mouse light clicking on an off. It's not an idea." "When will they learn, oh lord? How long will it take for them to learn?"

♦ Sumner Redstone is being forced to sell about one-fifth of his stake in CBS and Viacom to meet the terms of various loan agreements. Also: Shares in Viacom plunged after the company announced third-quarter earnings fell short of estimates. [Bloomberg]
♦ It's official: Hearst's Cathie Black announced CosmoGirl will fold. [Portfolio]
♦ A little perspective: Time Warner is now less than one-quarter of what AOL alone was worth before the merger. [SAI]
♦ After much drama (and a few leaked emails), Scott Rudin has decided to talk away from The Reader. [THR]

Unlike People's definitive Sexiest Man Alive title, Esquire faces a great many challengers to its fairer-sex equivalent, from Maxim's Power Cleavage 100 to the Stuff Bang-Worthy Countdown. Still, Esquire is to be commended for repeatedly rewarding quality over gravity-defying quantity, and so we applaud their 2008 choice of Halle Berry. Now 42 and a new mom, Berry's humble acceptance speech acts also as a master class for any fans interested in learning what gets the Perfect Stranger star going: