Internal drama at baby picture factory OK! magazine? You don't say! Richard Desmond, the crappy celebrity mag's billionaire owner, brought in former Wenner Media exec Kent Brownridge to be GM of the American version of OK! just a couple of months ago. But apparently Brownridge hasn't been able to make any money yet, and it's making the Brit Desmond mad enough to get on a plane to the distasteful nation of America!: A tipster tells us:

Entertainment Weekly took its turn in the Time Inc. layoff machine today with 15 editorial layoffs, according the the Observer [UPDATE: Another source tells us the number is 22, including the research chief, two librarians, and "a bunch of AEs"]. And they didn't even offer anyone a chance to volunteer for buyouts—they just got fired. We also hear that Essence may be having its layoffs today, too. If you have more details, email us.

As we hear they're having lay offs right now, we're a little reluctant to kick Entertainment Weekly when it's down. But, meh, what the hell. Why is the magazine so ridiculously gung-ho about Twilight? You know Twilight, it's that book series and soon-to-be movie about a cloudy young woman named Bella and the irritatingly chaste relationship she has with a chiseled demigod of a vampire named Edward. Sure it's set a good deal of teen girl and sad lady shut-in poonani afire, but srsly EW? They've had some 50 mentions of the books or the movie in the past six months, including two, count 'em two!, splashy sexy covers.

We hear that National Geographic just laid off 13 people on the magazine staff—including a cartographer. We also hear that they are planning 5%-10% cuts across the entire company. This is bad. What will become of the cartographer? When a magazine cartographer can't get a job at National Geographic, the rest of the magazine cartography market must look especially barren. If you know more about the layoffs, email us. [UPDATE: We hear that the mag has "over a dozen" total cartographers on staff. And further, "They did similar 'restructuring' in the 1990's and laid off lots of people, but they were quite generous with severance and benefits."]

♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]

What with the economy and all, Christmas is totally going to blow this year. Especially for those of you (us?) in the media industry. The precious holiday was already partially ruined when the Hearst Company cancelled their historically awesome annual Xmas bash, and now Condé Nast is following suit. A tipster tells us that their annual Holiday Luncheon has been shut the heck down. Probably because every company everywhere is hemorrhaging money. Why Condé itself axed dozens of employees just yesterday. The real shame in all of this, though, is now we won't get the valuable "who sat where" insight into the magazine giant's power structure. You see, whoever sits closest to head honcho S.I. Newhouse at the Luncheon is deemed to be the boy or girl du jour. No coal in their stockings! Because we would never be invited to such an event we've had to rely on the Post's Keith Kelly's annual kremlinology. Now how will we know where everyone stands?? (Though we can make a guess: everyone stands to get laid off). In lieu of the shindig, we imagine that Vogue editrix and Big Table mainstay Anna Wintour will quietly drink spiked eggnog in her office, thinking back on better days. When Christmas still meant something. Even to those on the brink of catastrophic financial collapse.

Chin up, unemployed journalists! Though media companies seem to accelerate their layoffs every day — Time Inc. Europe, People and CondeNet were on deck Tuesday — the optimist looks for opportunity in the panicked horror. One might, for example, sell one's soul to the horrid zombie Web corpse of a long-dead print magazine. Or beg, probably in vain, for a job at Starbucks. And if none of that works, you can always write, for free, for PumpsMag.com, an "Exotic Dancing Industry" publication where editors "equate ourselves with Forbes, Esquire, and/or Cosmopolitan magazines in our demographic and content." You know it's a classy gig because it says so right in the ad! Details after the jump.

Sometimes, don't you wish you didn't have to get out of bed every morning, and could just wander the city all day, window shopping and drinking at whatever goddamned hour you choose? Time Out has a roundup about where recently laid-off media and finance proles go to drink, and they featured our former writer, the totally unjustly fired Moe. Look how happy and healthy she looks in the photo, due not to some South Beach vacation but from being away from the cancerous glow of her computer screen and the repetitive-stress injuries of typeblogging. It's almost enough to make us want to get fired.As Moe tells Time Out about her dream job:

Yesterday we heard about the beginning of the pricey 600-person layoffs at Time Inc.—memos went out at several major magazines announcing that dozens of staffers would be cut. But this is an international company, and its trouble isn't limited to America. We hear that the European offices of Time, People, and Fortune could be facing severe cuts as well: A tipster tells us:

With all the recent layoffs, it seems like there are no media jobs left in New York. So we bet every female in town under 35 is getting ready to pounce on Double X, Slate's forthcoming answer to successful ladyblog (and Gawker sibling) Jezebel. (Former Gawker Elizabeth Spiers is planning her own, "less urban" women's site.) But! Double X will be a magazine (a web magazine—because web-content can be called magazines if they feel like it), which will "spin off" from its pre-existing XX Factor blog. Here's the "we're hiring" memo, gals. (Hurry—we hear that interviews are already taking place!)Excerpted from this announcement:

In a move oddly prescient of the HuffPo's model—soliciting mundane content from famous names to make ya look—Esquire is posting celeb and political Thanksgiving recipes from its 1984 issue—Walter Mondale, Nancy Reagan, William Styron, et al. Mmm, tastes like morning in America and trickle-down economics! It raises so many questions: Was Bill Blass being serious with his homoerotic recipe for "Hot Giant Pecans"? Wait, Ted Turner's Applesauce Cake? Was hardline conservative William F. Buckley's recipe for "Thanksgiving Pheasant with Chestnut Cornbread Stuffing" flavored with the blood of the innocent? As it turns out, it's currant jelly:

As the publishing heiress wrote this summer in her now-defunct Page Six magazine column, "It’s official. I am a Playboy cover girl. But get your mind out of the gutter—it’s a different magazine altogether. I was shot for French Playboy, which is very high fashion, sits next to Vogue on French newsstands and isn’t wrapped in plastic. No nudity for me." ...as you can see from the pic. The mag's out now. But why agonize over classy vs. non-classy, nude vs. barely-nude? Girl looks good. There's no need to waffle and get defensive, even though the double standard requires it. [Daily Intel]

People magazine just sent out a staff memo soliciting buyout candidates, as part of the 600-person company-wide layoffs announced at Time Inc. two weeks ago. Although People has a large staff, the reporting cuts they seek in both New York and LA—which total 18 editorial employees—would add up to a significant loss of celebrity-watching resources. Click through for the entire memo [UPDATE: and details of similar buyout offers at four other titles]:

How bad is the Great Magazine Die-Off? Thanks to the internet, it's the most terrifying media recession yet. Because for once the living shall envy the dead, if the fates of print-to-online-only publications are any guide. You'll recall most recently the example of Radar Online, turned to celebrity mush by AMI. A tipster also pointed us to the sad state of FHM,which went online-only in early 2007 and was sold to Bauer Publishing at the end of last year. Here's an excerpt from FHMOnline.com's awful, awful review of raunch-com Role Models:

A fine Friday news dump: a tipster tells us that a slew of layoffs just went down at Wenner Media, publisher of Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, and Men's Journal. Let go, we hear, were several online people, several marketing people, an assistant, a sales rep, and three unnamed people from Men's Journal. Also, "the entire Detroit and San Francisco office," according to our source. That's harsh, but quite possible. Know any more details on the Wenner layoffs? Email us.

O At Home—the quarterly magazine for those who liked Oprah but were exclusively concerned with her take on home furnishings—has folded. Its content will be absorbed back into the mothership, O magazine. Simultaneously, O At Home's former editor, Sarah Gray Miller, is becoming the editor-in-chief at Hearst knick-knack mag Country Living. Much of the rest of the magazine's staff will surely be laid off today. It's becoming quite clear that folding magazines is becoming the new favorite version of the Friday News Dump technique, so we reserve the right to tell you about more magazines folding later on today.

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]

The layoffs at Hearst this week have already hit Redbook and Good Housekeeping. So as not to be sexist, now they've come to Esquire. We hear the upscale men's mag laid off four editorial employees yesterday, including two editors, and decreed that another open assistant editor position won't be filled. "They gathered everyone together to tell them not to tell anyone the exact number cuz they don't want any media," says a tipster. That's somewhat embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as the spending habits of another layoff-happy mag, the recently decimated Conde Nast Portfolio: According to P6,

"By late yesterday, Time, which published more than 100,000 extra copies, had already gone back to press, while Newsweek, which also added 100,000 to its print run, was very close to doing the same." [Post]

In some prior election year, the behind-the-scenes footage of a president-elect's first moments might have been captured by a photographer for, say, Life, or at least distributed through a glossy magazine like that. It must have been some small comfort to Barack Obama to be able to rely instead on a longtime photographer of his own, David Katz, at such an intimate moment, and at such a tender one, a day after the death of his grandmother. As for distribution? Photography's bridge to the 21st century, Flickr. The campaign's remarkable set of 82 behind-the-scenes pictures includes the one above, of Obama watching McCain concede, and our other favorites, after the jump.