Warner Bros. plans to eliminate 800 positions, or 10 percent of its work force, cuts the company says will take place across "all divisions and all levels." [WSJ]

The top editors of Newsday: they're missing! From work. Or are they? Rumors say they've been fired! Other rumors say they haven't. One thing is for sure: Cablevision sucks a big one, managerially speaking.

Your cold (double meaning) Friday media column: Star Trib goes bankrupt, layoff rumors, and you can watch Al Jazeera instead of reading book reviews, which will soon be nonexistent:

John Battelle is the salesman for a host of indie sites, from the futuristic Boing Boing to the Web-obsessed TechCrunch to mommyblog Dooce. What does it say that his company, Federated Media, is canning workers?

In your Thursday media column: Foreign correspondents are anachronized, jobs are vaporized, and the Obamanaguration will not be televised. (Yes it will):

• Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., is forcing thousands fo employees to a week of unpaid leave. [NYT]
• The NYT-owned Boston Globe is cutting its staff by 12 percent. [NYT]
• Penthouse is laying off staff. [Portfolio]
• Newspapers are saving money by outsourcing foreign news coverage. [WSJ]
• Hope you're interested in reading lots more about Bernie Madoff. There are a total of eight books about him now in the pipeline. [NYO]
• Here's something you didn't expect to hear: A recent study finds that commercials actually make watching TV more enjoyable. [AdFreak]

The Magical Kingdom of Larry and Sergey has laid off 100 full-time recruiters, a tipster tells us. Inevitable, given the economy. But a crushing blow to Google's self-image as a kinder-than-thou employer.

The National Enquirer and Star could theoretically be out of business within weeks, what with publisher American Media facing a creditor takeover or even bankruptcy.

• NBC's Lauren Zalaznick is forming a "panel" to help marketers target women. Just a few who have joined the program: Maria Bartiromo, Meredith Vieira, Candace Bushnell, Shelly Lazarus, and Tori Spelling. [AdAge]
• Hearst's Cathie Black is expected to sign a new 3-year contract. [NYP]
• The FT has let 80 people go. [Guardian]
• The first Madoff-related book, Catastrophe: The Story of Bernard L. Madoff, The Man Who Swindled the World, will be out in March. [NYP]
• ABC is thinking about bringing back Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. [TVW]
• Magazines like O, Glamour, W, Marie Claire and Teen Vogue all posted sharp declines in sales during the last few months of 2008. [WWD]
• The networks that went home winners at the Golden Globes. [Variety, NYT]

Can Wenner Media go three weeks without another spurt of layoffs? Probably not, judging by its recent history. The latest seemingly whimsical cuts came earlier today.

Anyone know about the purported layoffs at Star? A tipster tells us the second-tier celebrity magazine is firing a "bunch of people."

In October, before Google's cost-cutting campaign began in earnest, the company had more than 10,000 contractors, founder Sergey Brin said. In a mid-December SEC filing, it reported only 4,300 temporary workers.

We hear Forbes, the fussily conservative business magazine, is laying off Web and print staff today, and merging the surviving editors and writers into a single newsroom. It only took them a decade.

Are a you laid off media person? Have you joined The American Society of Shitcanned Media Elites (ASSME)? You should, because they're a seriously legitimate organization now. They have T-shirts and everything!

The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.

Even as the New Yorker waxes nostalgic on the glory days of the Village Voice, the weekly is severing more of its legacy, including Nat Hentoff, hired in 1958.

New York magazine profiled seven city residents who lost their jobs in the economic meltdown. The most heartbreaking? That would be Marc Thomas, 44, failed dramatist.

Rolling Stone overlord Jann Wenner forgot to do some layoffs in his last round, two weeks ago, so he just fired some more people, less than a week before Christmas.

Sequoia Capital, the backer of Apple, Yahoo, and Google, ordered its startups to slash their payrolls this fall. We hear one CEO fired people so enthusiastically he had to retract some of his pink slips.

We all know that the LA Times is a dim shadow of a once-great paper owned by a bankrupt company. But now they may want to fire, basically, every non-local reporter. Problematic!