Update: The rumors are true, confirms staff blogger Jeff Bercovici. We (and others) hear a rumor that Conde Nast is folding long-suffering $100 million business magazine and object of our fascination, Portfolio.

Just last week, Hachette cut pay across the board and increased work hours. Today employees got the memo below, telling them that "certain functions" in IT and finance are going to be outsourced by the end of the year. We also got a tip that Hachette is notifying freelancers that it's cutting their rates—by 3% in one case, although it may vary.

In your inhumane Friday media column: Layoffs at NPR, another freakin' Dubya('s dad) book, newspapers burn as usual, New York mag has ad trouble, and Sean Hannity's waterboarding money appears!

Hey, battered magazines: Elizabeth Arden will trade advertising for a little bloodsport. Do you have what it takes to stab another title in the neck?

In your smooth Thursday media column: Pinch eschews privatization, BET targets the olds, newspapers are tragic and sad, and let's help waterboard Sean Hannity!

As the recession takes a toll on print media, magazines have been busy looking for new ways to drum up cash and stay in the spotlight. Sadly, they don't have much to show for their efforts. The once unmalleable line between art and advertising has been getting blurrier by the day, leading purists to point their fingers at publications like ESPN and Us Weekly for gussying up their front pages with ads meant to look like actual articles. Esquire's silly "blinking" issue last year, which featured a computer chip embedded in the cover, earned the title some press, but it didn't exactly boost circulation. But with print publications starved for cash to the point of emaciation, are there any gimmicks that will lure readers to newsstands?

In your hacked Wednesday media column: Rachel Maddow's less fascinating, 4Chan's smarter than Time, online news fails, and newspaper layoffs reported not in newspapers:

• The New York Times Co.'s bank balance is running a bit low, but that hasn't detered the company from handing out lavish pay packages. The company's CEO, Janet Robinson, received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up from $4.14 million in 2007. [NYP, HP]
• Is Rachel Maddow losing her glow? March was the lowest-rated month so far for Maddow's MSNBC show since its debut last fall. [LAT]
• The Chicago Tribune plans to cut another 20 percent of its newsroom staff as it looks to reduce expenses amid continuing declines in advertising. [CB]
• Yahoo posted a 78 percent decline in quarterly profits and said it would eliminate about 675 more jobs, or 5% of its work force. [WSJ]
• Tonight is Len Berman's last night at WNBC. [NYDN]

A world famous evolutionary biologist writing for America's most prestigious magazine can get away with calling New Guinea tribe members murderers and rapist. But do not accuse them of stealing pigs. Now it's on:

John Koten, Fast Company's volatile CEO, has reportedly departed, as underlings suspected he would.

Surface magazine popped up on our inaugural chart of print media's worst late payment offenders. Is that because the magazine is dead? [UPDATED below]

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]:

• The New York Times Company reported a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million today, as advertising revenue plunged by more than 28 percent. [NYT]
• Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's Wenda Harris Millard is stepping down as the company's co-CEO and president. [Crain's]
• One magazine that hasn't been crippled by the recession: Hearst's Food Network Magazine, which is now ramping up circulation. [AdAge]
• What's former Condé Nast star James Truman up to these days? Among other things, he's working on the in-room magazine for Ritz-Carlton. [Portfolio]
• Washingtonian magazine has a shirtless pic of Obama on the cover. [WM]

Everyone else is cutting circulation, but Food Network Magazine expects to ride the whole "I can't afford restaurants but would like to still eat" meme to 1.1 million copies, triple the current level.

• The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. [Pulitzer.org]
• It's been six years since the release of The Da Vinci Code, but Knopf says Dan Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol, will hit stores in September. [AP]
• Hollywood agencies Endeavor and William Morris appear to have cemented a merger, although an official announcement is still forthcoming. [THR]
• With the radio business struggling, some commercial stations are now following the lead of public radio and asking for donations. [WSJ]
• 17 Again was No. 1 at the box office with a gross of $24.1 million. [THR]
• Fran Drescher says she's in talks to host a cable TV talk show. The program would cover politics, culture, and health issues, and she claims she's in discussions with MSNBC, PBS, and Oprah Winfrey's OWN. God help us. [USN]

How disturbing and shocking! It seems the Vogue promotion offering new subscribers a free "exclusive red handbag" may be misleading. Although the photo that accompanies the ad shows "a red leather bag with a crocodile embossment and a clasp with over-the-shoulder straps," what actually comes in the mail is a "red canvass bag with 'pleather' handles about the size of a small gym bag." Innocent mix-up or further evidence of budget cutbacks at Condé Nast? You decide! [NYP]

We hear rumors that XXL magazine executive publisher Jonathan Rheingold resigned abruptly last night.
UPDATE: A press release just went out confirming this:

In your springy Friday media column: a maybe-savior for the Boston Globe, traumatized journalists are everywhere, Newsweek bites HuffPo, and more!

Rolling Stone gives up on birthplace: "The business just is not in San Francisco now."

Us Weekly became the third magazine in a week reprimanded by the American Society of Magazine Editors for impure ads. It's as if Us, Entertainment Weekly and ESPN the Magazine don't care about purity!