The people who run some of the (once) grandest institutions in print media are tumbling from their perches like so many fallen leaves, cast off in the face of a new season. It's not always their fault. Print is slowly wasting away, and as companies shrink, they cut off their own heads in a desperate bid to prove that they're doing something to address the problem. Not fair, but that's capitalism for you. After the jump, a list of recently deposed members of the old guard; mourn their passing, briefly.

The new issue of W is a fine example of a shameless girl-on-girl magazine cover: to this day, one of the surest ways to guarantee sales on the news stand, regardless how vapid the interior editorial content may be. Whether you loathe it (exploitation!) or love it (exploitation is hot!), it's a design trope almost as common as the between-the-legs A-frame photo. Below, five more famous examples from the recent past. The only way to fight the enemy is to know the enemy.

Sports reporters are making bank. Some of them, at least. While foolish idealistic journalists shell out cash to go to J-school and get petty jobs reporting on corporations or wars or political campaigns, a handful of lucky guys sit around spouting completely unverifiable opinions on ballgames and burning $100 bills to fuel their tailgating barbecues. A few of these people-who do nothing that an average American male does not do every weekend, for free (yap about sports)-are making millions. Millions, we say! The Big Lead has a list of the (estimated) top earners in sports journalism, which we have assembled into a handy chart, after the jump. Contemplate the fact that the 15 highest-paid reporters average close to $1 million per year; then go read Deadspin to find out how many of these guys are pricks.

Every big website in the world suckles at the teat of traffic like so many piglets fighting over a bloated sow. But figuring out the whims of the traffic gods is not as easy as you might think. If the oldest magazine in the world hasn't cracked the code yet (see the pitiful performance of the The Atlantic's Britney Spears cover), it's a lot to expect from the "new" media, even with all our fancy computerized counting machines. Sometimes it's out of your control; CNBC.com's chief just wrote that the business site's traffic took a dive yesterday when all of its golf-loving rich white guy readers turned away from their computers to watch Tiger Woods win the US Open. But there are some fairly reliable ways to build traffic successfully, which we will now reveal to you, after the jump. Is sex involved? Click now to find out!:

The Craigslist Cash-Waver is a certified internet star. When we posted the original photos from his Craigslist personal ad (showing him with a fan of $20 bills to impress the girls), and then his angry voicemail demanding that we take them down or else, little did we know how big he would become. His photos spawned an entire genre of visual remixes, which elevated the cash-waving theme to fantastic new heights. Some of the reaction was stupid, and some was even racist. But some was pure, hilarious magic. After the jump, a photo gallery of the ten most inspired Cash-Waving Craigslist Player Photoshop jobs-a testament to the scary power of smart, mean, bored people on the internet. We fear you all.

Men are sick and tired of having their masculinity degraded by the soulless, woman-dominated advertising and media machine! AskMen.com, a brave defender of testosterone rights, has assembled a list of the "10 Worst Male-Bashing Commercials." These ads' offensive, accurate depictions of men as bumbling idiots easily manipulated by females will make you ask yourself: "Dude, is this really happening in this day and age?" Sadly, it is. Men still suffer from sexist stereotypes today. The #1 worst male-bashing ad in the universe is below; "the most disturbing portrayal of all is the little girl's arrogance and sense of entitlement," AskMen opines. You greedy young tarts have manipulated a sundae out of us for the last time! Equality is on the menu!

Russian billionaires: they're powerful, they're flush with profits from semi-monopolized industrial concerns, and they're ready to party. So they think nothing of paying outrageous sums to international pop stars to come play private parties for them and their closest friends. The most recent example is poor drug-addled soul singer Amy Winehouse, who will be pocketing a cool $2 million to play a show for the girlfriend of billionaire politician and businessman Roman Abramovich. All $2 million of which will surely be spent to further Winehouse's ongoing demise. The point is, she's not the only superstar who's been seduced by a gig like this. Soon you won't be able to see anyone from Madonna to Rihanna without a plane ticket to Moscow and tight connections to the vestiges of the Kremlin's power structure. It's a trend!

The Perez Hilton brand is becoming an empire! Well, sort of. The off-putting celebrity blogger has been stamping his name on shitty clothing, he might be getting his own record label, and now he's had a damn musical written about him. Is he really becoming an unstoppable juggernaut corporation, or is it just hooey? We'll take a closer look at the corpulent stain-artist's side projects after the jump.

After we linked to Vanity Fair's blog matrix graphic earlier today, our inbox filled up with links to other, similar grids. Not surprising, since the format has been around for years and has spread widely. New Republic, to take but one example, published a "Bush Apostate Matrix" earlier this week. New York runs them regularly, here's the May 19 "Approval Matrix." Where/when did the first one of these grids crawl out of the primordial media ooze? (At Spy, probably. Of course.) And is anyone keeping track of their numbers in the wild? With Google and the rest of the internet turning everyone into short-attention-span clickmonkeys, it's only a matter of time before these random-access smorgasbords steal the listicle's place in the hearts of magazine editors everywhere. UPDATE: Two possible answers on the origins of magazine grids below!

Frank Bruni is pissed! The New York Times' omnipotent restaurant critic (pictured) today reviews a new Tribeca restaurant named Ago, which is owned in part by actor Robert De Niro. And Bruni's experience there is proof for the entire restaurant business that no matter how popular, expensive, or exclusive your place is, it is still quite possible to receive a terrible review if you act like an idiot. Please: Learn some lessons from Ago's fiasco. Here is what not to do when your restaurant is being reviewed:

When you're a professional entertainer—particularly if you're one of the Unfunniest Comedians in America—you have to know how to handle hecklers. Dane Cook, as you see here (click to enlarge), responds to a mere MySpace heckler by calling her "ugly like a trout." His reaction is ineffective, inefficient, and fails by every standard of the Heckler-Handling Handbook. Observe:

If you're famous, and you want to do cocaine (or smoke crack), our best advice is: don't do it, because you're a role model. Ha ha. But seriously, hopeless crackhead celebrities; if you're going to do it at least don't be an idiot. Coke is hardly even frowned upon in Hollywood, but getting busted while acting like a maniac can seriously impair your image and earning ability in middle America. So learn from your more unfortunate peers' mistakes; after the jump, five cases of cocaine-fuelled idiocy, and how not to reproduce them.

As if its listicle of the "50 Most Powerful Women In NYC" were not journalistically dubious enough, the Post also had to use the list for shameless self promotion, putting two of its own columnists on the list. Granted, some of the non-Post choices were also highly questionable, like the editor-in-chief of Cookie magazine, socialite Ivanka Trump and former hooker Ashley Dupre. But how can you even begin to take the selection of, say, Post columnist Cindy Adams seriously when the first qualification listed for her is "she's got a sandwich named after her?" The Post's self-serving choices are after the jump.

Design blog Signal vs. Noise today reminded everyone of the 1997 Times infographic reproduced above. Nicholas Kristof, whose article on world disease featured the chart, declared in an old-but-recently-surfaced email that "no graphic in human history has saved so many lives in Africa and Asia." Apparently it persuaded billionaire Bill Gates to start donating his money to disease prevention instead of global internet access. Kristof said the Microsoft founder was too lazy to read the full, 3,500-world article:

Wired ran the meth tutorial above under the headline, "Give Your Intellect A Boost — Just Say Yes To Doing The Right Drugs!" That was, like, a month ago, but the Times is now wondering if the article might, you know, give people the wrong idea about drugs. In addition to some positive words about meth, the article also praised drug Aderall and said it is "often prescribed to A.D.H.D. patients (wink, wink)," implying people should lie to their doctors to get the drug and "enhanc[e] concentration, turning mundane tasks into wondrous ones." This incident bodes well for Wired in two ways:

From dirty pillows to wire hangers, Rotten Tomatoes is rating the worst moms in movie history, complete with video goodness. Oh, they list the best moms too, but so what? My personal choice after the jump.

Pop culture is always a step behind the real cutting-edge culture that defines what's cool in the current zeitgeist. And mass media advertising, with its drive for universal appeal, is generally made from an even weaker brew than pop culture. What that means for us is that these ads from the 1950s and 60s—which lack not only today's sense of political correctness, but also their own era's sense of cool—are an entertaining lens through which to view the age of beatniks and free love. Groove your way to the hippie party with a 1969 stereo in your new General Motors automobile! Six classic examples [via Flickr/ Coudal], after the jump.

This whole Miley Cyrus incident, a young pop star being immodestly scandalized by Vanity Fair photos: it's so complicated! How should you feel? Who should you blame? Who is the biggest jerk in this whole sordid incident? Where should America direct its momentary outrage so that it can return to playing video games, eating snack foods, and conducting imperial conquest? Allow us to help. After the jump, a roundup of all the reaction from our most important opinion leaders to the Biggest Media Celebrity Scandal Of The Final Quarter Of April 2008. Was Rosie O'Donnell right, that we all need to lay off the heroic and intimidating Annie Leibovitz? Or is Germaine Greer, a Guardian critic, correct in predicting the beginning of Miley's existential decline? It's quite the heated argument:

As loud as the uproar over Miley Cyrus' too-racy photo shoot gets, she of course is not the first young star to be packaged as a sly sex symbol. The American print media, and its advertisers, have a history of getting into trouble for this sort of thing. The two common methods are to either portray an underage girl (or, less often, boy) in an overly sexualized light, or to use "barely legal" girls in a way that evokes underage taboos with a wink and a nod. It's really a standard form, at this point. After the jump, we've compiled some of the most famous ad campaigns and media spreads that play the slick jailbait game. Does this stuff work? Apparently so.

Today, the UK Telegraph unveiled its "50 Most Influential US Political Pundits" list. Though only entries 50-41. This merits a Drudge link? The rest of the entries will apparently be revealed as the week drags on. We anxiously await learning who some center-right Brits think pull our strings! Meanwhile, Nerve today posted the more satisfying "Top 10 Rich People Who Look Poor" list, so we figured we'd just combine them and present the Top 2 Influential Political Pundits Who Look Poor.