We hear that around 20 people are getting laid off from the "consolidation" of the trade mags Brandweek and Adweek. It's not clear if the layoffs will affect other Nielsen Business Media titles (the company owns E&P and several other trades). Anyone with further info can email us.

John McCain's presidential campaign won't let Time columnist Joe Klein aboard its campaign plane because, according to an official statement, " we don't allow Daily Kos diarists on board either." Translation:

Neal Boulton, the motorcyle ridin', guitar-playin' editor of gay magazine Genre, is expanding his unique... brand, with a website that's the " first and only pansexual sex & relationships site for ALL men." It's called BastardLife. "I can't believe how you guys make [Boulton] out to be some kind of American hero," a jilted lady-love of his once e-mailed us. Yeah, but how can we not? The dude once wrote us a letter asking us to please, please explain to girls everywhere that he's not hitting on them—just friendly! Anyway, the website launched over the weekend, and it asks the hard questions: "Who feels David Beckham would be a great lay?!"The site has ten posts so far—all uploaded by Boulton himself. "Not as good at this as you yet—but what the fuck. I have two generous investors thank god. Like John Lennon said, "I can't be what I am not," and THIS is what I am," he told us. THIS = the following subjects: strap-on sex (for straights!), erection tips n' tricks, hottie pinups (male and female), and advice on female orgasms from a lesbian. Thanks for that last one, Neal.

You may have noticed that a large percentage of flat surfaces in America are currently occupied by those vaguely enraging tri-panel HSBC ads, where identical images are given different captions to prove that—I suppose—HSBC does not believe in a Kantian sense of moral absolutism. "A child: Love. Responsibility. Welfare Fraud." Now the bank is sponsoring this week's entire issue of New York magazine, meaning you'll have more than a dozen new chances to soak in HSBC's triumvirates of relativism. But considering the timing, it's worthwhile to ask: "Banks sponsoring entire issues: Smart. The Future. Monumental Fuckup?" This issue has been "in the works for several months," meaning that the bank sure as hell didn't know it would be running in the midst of The Great Depression Pt. 2. HSBC says it's all very "timely and appropriate." Mm hmm. Regardless of the intent, the real question is, is this sort of thing wise? With a bad economic outlook for advertising in general, publications themselves certainly hope so. Banks are mostly wandering trying every possible ad strategy right now—from comedy to doomsaying—in search of something that's effective. They don't really know what to do. Shhh! But! The one thing we know is that the proliferation of media makes it increasingly hard for advertisers to get their messages out. So buying all the ad space in a magazine or on a website is probably just going to gain favor as a tactic. They just need to make sure they're not buying it in something that's about to fold. That would be embarrassing. [NYT]

Oh no! Bad things are happening to the already trod-upon desolate dead-eyed employees of the mighty Hearst Company! The magazine business sucks, and the economy's cratering, and CosmoGirl closed, so Hearst has decided that this year there will be no Hearst Christmas Party. Ye gods! Last year the party already moved from Tavern on the Green to their office (it's a big fancy brand-new office, but still), who knew there was yet more indignity to be suffered. This is a bad sign, for America. Now we are officially in another depression. Surely William Randolph Hearst threw opulent Christmas parties during the Great Depression, right? (Well, the Depression saw Hearst lose control of his company and sell off many of his vast and glorious treasures. But he still threw parties dammit.) This Depression must be even Greater! It's official! The only chance Hearst has of making it through the coming dark times is to gin up support for a foreign war, probably. Can we get Marie Claire to work on the Spanish threat, people? The fate Christmas itself hangs in the balance!

More tenuously-concluded recession sex! Two "econometricians" looked through 46 years of Playboy's Playmate of the Year cover models, and compared their physical attributes with the year's economy. Their findings: "Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year... were selected." During hard times, they concluded, men prefer women who are better fit for "production" than "reproduction." All bullshit, we'd say there is no connection. Here's why:This assumes that there's a wide range of Playboy cover models. We're talking about a 18-26 age range, and the weight range cannot possibly be more than ten pounds. Taller? Everybody looks the same height in print. Bust size, which is also duly noted? BREAKING: straight men prefer breasts, regardless of economic conditions. There, done. Anyway, here is their data, collected from 1965-2006. The age of the Playboy models ranged from 18-31—although there was only one 31-year-old and just two 27-year-olds. The rest were 26 or under. [Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin via Kempt]

This whole Wall Street thing is pretty big news, right? So how did Condé Nast's struggling business mag respond to the biggest economic story of a generation? They put Dov Charney, the founder of American Apparel, on the cover of the November issue. [Gawker, previously]

Who did (troubled?) business magazine Portfolio select to put on its cover this month, in the midst of the greatest financial upheaval since the Great Depression? Dov Charney. Pervy, pacing, dog-loving American Apparel chief Dov Charney. There must be an explanation for this, right?

Playboy is cutting 80 jobs , including 55 layoffs, in an effort to save $12 million. The company is also exiting the DVD business completely, moving far-flung employees into the LA office, using cheaper paper, and cutting entertainment expenses (noooo!). This has all been easy to foresee. We hear Playboy's main money source at the moment is international brand licensing, along with distribution of their archives online. Not even nekkid women can convince people to buy magazines these days.

Cosmopolitan is purportedly a magazine for women, but judging from its headlines, it's mainly there to encourage our pursuit of naked men—and to tell us how to please them. Yet, they have a huge problem with actual naked men: when Jossip found Internet porn photos of two of their "50 Hottest Bachelors of 2008," the magazine promptly uninvited them from their Hottest Bachelor Party, reports Page Six. Oh, come on—one was an amateur porn site, and the other was Playgirl.com (see middle pic.) We can't expect these hotties to be monogamous! Cosmo—she of the "dirty, shocking things men want from you" headlines—is acting so uptight. But! The real weirdness comes from one of the 48 non-naked Hottest Bachelors. OF COURSE there's a Sarah Palin connection—it's Wasilla, Alaska's other Levi:

Although the business media can't sell any ads during an economic meltdown like the one we're having now, it sure is a great chance for reporters to make names for themselves. Business reporters absolutely live for the periodic destruction of the American economy. This is their Normandy! After the jump, we survey the media landscape and pick out the winners and losers—all your favorites, from Paul Krugman to Jim Cramer, ranked on a merciless 10-point scale! [Ratings are on a 1-10 scale—with 10 being the best—and are based on how much the media person or outlet has benefited from the crisis, how right they've been, and how much influence they've had.] WINNERS

Tuesday afternoon we asked about rumored layoffs at Niche Media, publisher of socialite city magazines. From what we've heard since, it sounds like the bloodletting does, indeed, go well beyond Philadelphia Style and is in fact related to the Wall Street meltdown and advertising recession. "Top management is on it's way to Miami to repeat the same," one tipster writes. "Slash up the staff at Ocean Drive." Another writes, "There were more layoffs on Monday at [DC-based] Capitol File. The senior editor and two sales reps were let go." It should come as little surprise that plummeting real estate values and stock market contraction should sharply curb the number of people who think of themselves as affluent, and who thus read these sorts of magazines, particularly in recently fast-growing cities like Miami and DC. CEO Jason Binn made things worse by expanding to aggressively, one tipster claims:

New York magazine's daily online chats about the election are usually just mildly interesting, since the journalists involved tend to be overly polite to one another, because who knows who you're going to be sending a job application to someday? Even Gawker Media veterans and that Daily Kos maniac act all pleasant. But Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has never been one for such fraternal niceties, and when nymag.com threw him a sparring partner from National Review, the predictably caustic lefty went to work with his fangs, at one point typing, "tell me you're not ashamed." It was awesome and just really uncomfortable at the same time. Highlights:

There's a silver lining to the dismal magazine ad page numbers for the most recent quarter: the rest of media will soon be equally depressed.

Yesterday, we started hearing rumors of big layoffs on the way at Niche Media, that stable of glossy, journalism-free socialite-focused city magazines across the country. Today the Philly Daily News confirmed that Philadelphia Style had "much of its editorial and creative staff" laid off yesterday. But that may have been just the beginning; another tipster tells us that there are "massive layoffs" across the company, and "people are getting fired with no notice from editorial on a lot of different magazines — Hamptons, Boston Common, Philadelphia Style, LA Confidential..." Is Niche CEO Jason Binn's company the latest entrant in the Great Magazine Die-Off? If you have more specifics on the cuts, email us. [We're also hearing that the rumored looming layoffs at Viacom could actually be coming next week—stay tuned.]

So Christopher Buckley, the smart-ass novelist son of late conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, went and endorsed Barack Obama in the internet pages of Tina Brown's Daily Beast. He explained, in his endorsement, that he was writing for the Beast because he didn't want to read the hate mail he'd get if he wrote the endorsement at his usual venue, the back page of the National Review. Joke's on him, everyone who reads the National Review Online is even crazier, and the NRO linked everyone to the endorsement! Now it is time for Buckley to write a "wow look at my crazy hate mail" column. And also to quit the National Review! Like forever! Buckley's hate mail column, though, has the advantage of quoting an unnamed editor from the magazine his father founded! "One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions 'cretinous.'" Ha, ha, that is probably from Rich Lowry? Buckley continues:

Is People magazine totally in the tank (like Pareene) for John McCain and his non-English-speaking VP lady? We hear that some staff members of the nation's leading smiling-coverperson mag are grumbling that People is giving too much positive press to the Republican candidates—for example, this feature where they ask readers to submit questions for the Palin family, without once mentioning they engage in moose-killing and other scandalous activities! Or this, with a headline quote that will make you exclaim "Har." Besides, doesn't People know that only Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston are qualified to appear on celebrity magazine covers? Science has proven it!: Forbes did an actual pseudoscientific study of a year's worth of celebrity mags and found that Angelina and Jennifer are the two most successful coverpersons. Britney Spears: nobody cares any more. These conclusions could have also been obtained simply by sitting quietly with your thoughts. In any case, the real question is: Is People in the tank? Feel free to email us if you're an employee who thinks so. Though we would remind you of this:

Women have been wondering since they entered the workforce if they can really, truly "have it all": a great career and a (rich) husband and a killer wardrobe, house in the Hamptons, and a baby. And guess what: they can. Atoosa Rubenstein is the former EIC of CosmoGirl and Seventeen, and now a teen-girl empower-er who has "opted out" of the rat race. And guess what: "I'm still pretty young—young enough to ENJOY the fruits of my labor." Also, she is sad that CosmoGirl just folded because she started it and was, she will remind you, the "the youngest Editor in Chief in the 100 year history of Hearst Magazines."

In recent months, new online business sites like Clusterstock and Slate's The Big Money launched—and what timing! The current meltdown of all things money-related is the biggest business story in a generation or more. But therein lies the quandary that is currently fucking with most of the big business media brands. Understand this, and you'll understand everything (about business media): Market crashes are, almost without argument, the biggest business stories there are. They're the wars of the financial world. Bull markets, runaway successes, and bubbles are all well and good from the reader's point of view—and they do tend to spawn new titles—but they lack the element of tragedy and fear that mark truly great stories. Ten years from now, business outlets will be judged by their coverage of this meltdown in the same way that the New York Times was judged by its 9/11 coverage, or the Littleton Independent was judged by its Columbine coverage. That said, the business side of business media should be booming, right? Audiences are up! Everyone is addicted to CNBC! The Wall Street Journal has been unmissable for a solid month! And it's fair to assume that readership and viewership is up across the board for business outlets, to varying degrees. Fear makes people extremely interested in information. Here's the quandary: The biggest story for business media always comes along at the same time as the worst ad market. By definition, unfortunately! Market crashes are great from a reporter's standpoint. From an ad salesman's standpoint, they're horrible. So a site like The Big Money, which would seem to have had the good fortune to launch on the wings of a massive story, is actually getting choked by the very same conditions it's reporting on. There's already speculation that Portfolio, Conde Nast's $100 million business offering, is on shaky legs. We know that the Great Magazine Die-Off caused by this shitty economic period is already underway. And ironically, mags like BusinessWeek or Fortune could be likely candidates for severe cutbacks, if not actually death. And hey, the publisher of Fast Company—actually a good magazine!—was just forced to lay off 20 people. That's a lot for a mid-sized place like that.The publisher, Mansueto, is also ending free snacks, gym reimbursements, and, worst of all, closing its Events division. That's a terrifying sign, since there are lots of business publications out there that (shhh!) make more money off their events than they do off their publication. In some cases, a shitty magazine is just a loss leader for a moneymaking side business of awards shows, seminars, and other branded events that companies will shell out for in order to "network" and have allegedly independent awards to use in their marketing materials. But when the businesses themselves tank, the business media tanks harder. It's as if Sports Illustrated saw all of its ads evaporate at Super Bowl time. It sucks, but it's a fact of media life. The survivors will come out stronger than ever, and can feast on the carcasses of their dead competitors, picking off choice talent at low prices. Journalism!

"Dear MR HAMILTON NOLAN: Your Condé Nast Portfolio subscription is about to expire...If you fail to respond, your account will move to our 'expired' files...Your Charter Subscriber privileges, savings, and perks will no longer be available." Perks?