The way Newsweek employees get fired now: Shamelessly and publicly, via mass emails from their boss singing the praises of their incoming replacements while encouraging their co-workers to wish their shit-canned asses "bon chance" on the way out the door.
In this economy, ABC can't afford to only let go every gay, gay-adjacent, or gay-hating actor on Grey's Anatomy. Other ABC series are feeling the burn, and two newly departing actors were announced today.
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the domestic queen's massive publishing and television conglomerate, has just announced that its CEO, Susan Lyne, has (ahem) "stepped down." Replacing Lyne will be two co-CEOs—an equivocation that often signals that a company was not well prepared for an executive transition. Lyne came on as head of the company when Martha Stewart went to jail in 2004, and has presided over a big drop in MSLO's stock price. But while her departure may have been inevitable, it's not necessarily a productive move. The magazine industry is in an irreversible decline, and no number of firings will change that fact. Sorry!
Late last night, we received an anonymous email explaining the details behind an ugly incident that recently went down between two Vice Presidents at Showtime, an incident that ended up with one of the two Veeps getting fired. This email was initially distributed to a number of Showtime staffers but quickly made its way to the outside world (Nikki Finke is proclaiming it as being "the talk of Hollywood"). The full tale involves an intimate birthday dinner, an expense account gone wrong, an employee in a position of power known as "Mr. Untouchable" and a whole Valley full of tears. While names have been redacted to protect the (potentially) innocent, that doesn't make the juice any less tasty. Read the sordid tale of the people we'll call Thing 1, Thing 2 and Thing 3 after the jump!
Forty people (twice as many as originally thought)An iVillage spokesperson "can confirm for you that 13 employees were affected today" by layoffs at the NBC subsidiary, not the larger number we reported earlier based on employee accounts. "Nobody saw it coming," an insider told us. Editor-in-chief Jennie Baird, who was hired away from AOL in April to helm the women's content company is among the victims, according to a source. The sneakiest part we're hearing though, is how NBC may have enticed iVillage employees to move to the network's New Jersey location. "These people were good enough to agree to go to hell (aka Englewood Cliffs) and they got canned," we were told. "Many of them were promised bonuses to move...but they had to stay until Dec. 2008. Big bonuses. 20% of their salaries." If we could think of a less-offensive term than "indian-giver" for NBC, we'd use it, but we totally can't!
Anal annal-er and New York Press sex columnist Kelly Kreth was fired Friday after just three months by editor David Blum, who hasn't been satisfied by any of the four three sex columnists he's fired in the last year. Neither Rachel Kramer-Bussel nor Kreth's Press-predecessor Stephanie Sellars did it for the ex-Voice editor. The co-authors of his short-lived "Married Not Dead" sex column at the Voice (kicked to the curb a couple of days after Blum was replaced) didn't do it for anyone. "My feeling is, when you hire a columnist, you let them express themselves in their own way," Blum told us. "Ultimately you have to decide whether it works or not." Kreth was fired for "taste," which admittedly, came in short supply in her columns. In large supply? Gems like this: "I write about my tight starfish because I know, even while disgusted, people will be compelled to read. It doesn't matter if it is out of titillation or horror, want or need, we just want their eyes on the page and on us." Kelly, honey, we hate to break it to you, but the Press is no stranger to a tight asshole.
Turns out, as we heard, that Oxygen has indeed shitcanned a whole slew of people—25 percent of its staff, actually. The company fired 65 employees across various departments. The news comes two months after NBC announced it was buying the network and just two weeks after the sale was completed. Anyone getting the feeling that violence will be up more than usual over the holidays?
Previously: NBC Makes Oprah, Paul Allen Slightly Richer
Johnson Publishing brought down the axe on three of its top-level advertising executives at Ebony magazine. One of the pink-slipped, associate publisher Ed Burns, told Folio that he was "shocked" by the move and floated the theory that all three firings were connected. Hard to imagine why this comes as a surprise to the guy; Ebony's ad revenue was down 8.7 percent this year, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures.
Julia Allison, our generation's very own brain-damaged Bradshaw, and free newspaper AM New York have mutually decided to end their relationship. We're sensing this won't be the kind of breakup where sometimes the former couple unites for intense hatefucks and crying: "We've enjoyed working with Julia for the past year and a half. We wish her all the best in her career," is all AM New York wanted to say when we asked whether Julia had been fired. We're guessing that maybe the blog post where Julia called AM on its lack of "journalistic integrity" might have had something to do with the split. But Julia's not looking back: "There's other shit I want to do, most of which involves marrying rich, but I've wanted to leave AM for a while now, and I was really passive aggressive in the last few weeks ... oh yeah, baby, it's all downhill from here. ;) i do hope i can stick with tv. writing is far too much effort ;)" she volunteered to us via (obvs) instant messenger. We have nothing to add.
Good news for Times Square, for New Jersey Uggs-wearing high school girls, and for people who like it when Jossip is wrong. At least according to MTV president Christina Norman, MTV's TRL will continue to "air like always," although things will "operate more efficiently downstairs." We can only assume that's some sort of veiled jab at Vanessa Minnillo. Anyway, the full email— in which the words "eternally grateful" are applied to MTV2 staffers—is after the jump.
The latest:
This just in:
You hear it first:
