Hugh Hefner's daughter Christie is stepping down as chairman and CEO of Playboy after 20 years. As a protest against the objectification of women. Ha, no, really it's cause nekkid girls come for free on computers now. [Folio]

People spent last week getting rid of people, but whatever the magazine saves next year by eliminating 18 editorial jobs, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what the magazine has to pay celebrities for pictures of their babies and weddings. To preserve its place at the top of the celebrity weekly heap, People has long stuck to a policy that it will never be outbid by the likes of In Touch, Us Weekly or OK!. Because celebrities auction off their most precious moments, the competition typically knows the sort of bottomless budget they're up against. And it's jaw-dropping: just these eight covers, all from this year, have set the Time Inc. title back by about $25 million.

We hear that Outside's "upscale travel and style magazine" GO has laid off several staffers, and may be planning to fold after a couple more issues. If you have any info on this or any other candidates for the Great Magazine Die-Off, email us. UPDATE: The magazine's PR person emailed us a press release from two weeks ago saying the magazine is cutting back to two issues next year. There you go!

Here's Vanity Fair editor and Waverly Inn/Monkey Bar owner Graydon Carter at Robin Hood Foundation breakfast at the Plaza Hotel this past Tuesday. At a panel yesterday, he said he wasn't worried about the sad state of the magazine industry: "All three of these magazines are, you know, a few years on either side, 100 years old and we've been through many ups and downs." We pointed out that while VF was founded in 1914, it had a "brief 48-year-long Great Depression-induced hiatus." [Photo via Melissa C. Morris] [Thanks for this caption, commenter TedSez!]

Why does the public not sufficiently appreciate the hardworking people at OK! magazine? Last month there were rumors that Richard Desmond, the billionaire British publisher of the laughable celebrity mag, actually flew to America to personally investigate why new OK! boss Kent Brownridge was losing money. The magazine's flack denied this, saying they where "doing fine." Shockingly, it appears what that flack said was not entirely true, because OK! has decided to skip four issues at the end of this year:

"I have no intention of leaving American Vogue now or in the foreseeable future." [Post]

Neal Boulton is reportedly orgasmic. The editor of a magazine for gays and a website for bis signed a book deal (with an agent) and claims to be drowning in reality show offers following a profile in Page Six Magazine. Everyone wants to screw and/or sign the sexual libtertine, supposedly, because of his oh-so-exciting and freewheeling life. But all indications are that his most famous antics were manufactured in the press. Take his alleged macking with Rolling Stone Jann Wenner, for example, Boulton's claim to "pansexual" fame.

People editor Larry Hackett sent out a memo late today indicating the celebrity magazine got rid of 18 editorial staff, per the goal it set in early November. The communique, reprinted after the jump, gave no indication of whether the voluntary buyouts the Time Inc. title sought had to be supplemented with involuntary firings. Nor did it specify which staffers were leaving, or which bureaus were most heavily affected. But then it was written by the same guy who let his magazine slide into the common tabloid muck it was once a cut above, only to rationalize and narrowly deny the whole scandal, so what do you expect, forthright, expansive honesty?

New York City was lucky enough today to play host to a fancy panel discussion featuring the world's three fanciest magazine editors: Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, Vogue's Anna Wintour, and The New Yorker's David Remnick. And Joe Nocera of the Times uncouthly "lashed out at the editors and asked how each of the them could be so sanguine about the future." Pish posh! Graydon Carter is convinced his invincible publication will weather this economic storm as it always has:

It took less than 24 hours for Sean Avery to apologize for saying yesterday that his National Hockey League opponents "fall in love with my sloppy seconds." In fact, he's already flown to New York to grovel before the league commissioner. Although Avery is famous for picking these kinds of fights, it appears the recent Vogue intern's media instincts pushed him way over the line:

Glossy city magazine publisher Niche Media had layoffs at several titles in October. Now the company has folded Atlanta Peach. Neither Niche Media nor the South can have nice things. [AJC]

Back in September, we reported rumors that deluxe listings magazine Time Out New York was having trouble paying its bills. There was speculation that the magazine "won't make it to the end of the year." TONY dismissed the rumors and assured its staff: "Happily, our New York investors, who understand the value of the brand you have all built and have been entirely supportive over the past 14 years, remain fully committed to us." Can you guess what happened today? Yes, those investors are putting the magazine up for sale:

Sean Avery has long relished his role as the National Hockey League's miscreant-in-chief, but the Dallas Stars forward's internship at Vogue seems to have sharpened his instincts for provocation to razor precision. Avery was just suspended indefinitely by the NHL for talking smack about two ex-girlfriends, actress Elisha Cuthbert and model Rachel Hunter, who ended up in the arms of other players. His own team said it would have suspended him had the league not done likewise. The truly insane part of the whole incident is that Avery sought out TV cameras so he could broadcast his self-destructive diss. (UPDATE: Video after the jump.)

Conde Nast boss Si Newhouse will have you know that that rumor going around about him going to Europe to work out the details of replacingVogue editor Anna Wintour with her French counterpart is utter hogwash! "This is the silliest rumor I ever heard," Condé Nast's Si Newhouse told us via flack (first quoted in the Wall Street Journal). "There is no truth to it." Si finally sent in his denial from Europe, where he is, ah, not talking to anybody about any magazine jobs. [Pic: NYO]

The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart.

We made fun of NYC's latest teen sybarite socialite (the Brooklyn version) Peaches Geldof, for barely having a "real job," what with her Nylon fashion mag columns and "modeling," etc. However, the U.K.'s Guardian reported she is launching... oh God... a magazine. It's called Disappear Here and co-edited with former GQ editor James Brown. It'll be handed out for free in New York (in secret places) this Thursday! How do they pay for it? Listen, cutting-edge hip freemag editors can't stoop to talking about money.

With a recession in progress, but lots of robber barons left in a society that the media has just now noticed is more stratified than ever, the headline "Party Like It's 1929" has proved too irresistible for even the most austere of publications. This Sunday's New York Times "We're Going to Party Like It's 1929" header in the Styles section represents the apotheosis of the trend. Journalists and editors: it's been done. Retire the headline now. Proof after the jump.

The funny thing about the holiday season this year (besides the unreported death of Santa) is that Americans no longer have any money to buy expensive presents for each other—but magazines are plunging ahead with their year-end holiday gift guides as if everything was fine and dandy! Okay, that's not really "funny." Nor is it tragic, because hey, if these magazines want to walk themselves off a cliff, that's their business. It's ominous. What the hell does the future hold for luxury magazines in a world where those cutesy "Gifts Under $100" are a necessity, not a niche?

Media critic Michael Wolff's new book, The Man Who Owns the News, is excerpted in the London Guardian today. But it glosses over the details of a joke in particularly poor taste that the reptilian Newscorp billionaire told his Sun tabloid editor Rebekah Wade—who was was arrested a few years back for assaulting her supposed "hard man" British actor husband—after "a few drinks in a posh London restaurant," about gay sex. "Seeing [Wall Street Journal publisher Robert] Thomson arrive, Murdoch whispered: "For God's sake, don't tell Robert what I said. He's a gentrified man ... very clever," it reads. The actual joke, as it appears in the book, comes after the jump.

Is it possible that college students—rather than being our nation's elite—are just unsophisticated dolts, like the rest of America? According to a new survey, college kids' favorite magazine is Time. Last year it was Cosmopolitan. What, they don't teach book-learnin' in universities any more? But then you realize that the same survey says college kids' favorite restaurant is McDonald's and their favorite clothing brand is American Eagle and their favorite band is Coldplay, and it all starts to fit. [Ad Age, Previously]