Remember when actress Minnie Driver took that really humble celebrity baby photo and we all thought it was nice and simple and not showy? Well, dear old Angelina Jolie—actress and professional child-haver—is doing the same, with a just-released beatific, breastfeeding (like Maggie!), earth mama portrait, taken by her hubby Brad Pitt, apparently. Except, oops. She's wearing makeup and it's on the cover of W magazine. So, OK, the intention is good—unadorned, real, human—but the execution is still a bit showy (W is awfully fancy). [CoverAwards] Gawp at a larger version after the jump and judge for yourself.

Yesterday we brought you the epic, outraged email chain that ensued when Hip Hop Weekly mistakenly sent an invite for a fancy party it was throwing to a list of freelancers who hadn't been paid for their work. It only took one day for them to propose a class-action lawsuit and a protest march. Energetic! And while half of HHW's leadership is apparently trying to calm everyone down, the other half is dealing with the situation by screaming threats over the phone: From an unpaid photographer on the email list:

As we pointed out earlier this week, things have taken a turn for the worse at Condé Nast's glossy (and very expensive) business magazine, Portfolio. Another sign today that the ship may be sinking: deputy editor Blaise Zerega, who has been with the magazine since its launch in 2006 and was widely viewed as one of the brightest talents at the mag (in contrast to mediocre editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman), has announced he's leaving the company for Fora.tv, an new online-video site. [Valleywag, previously]

♦ Sumner Redstone is being forced to sell about one-fifth of his stake in CBS and Viacom to meet the terms of various loan agreements. Also: Shares in Viacom plunged after the company announced third-quarter earnings fell short of estimates. [Bloomberg]
♦ It's official: Hearst's Cathie Black announced CosmoGirl will fold. [Portfolio]
♦ A little perspective: Time Warner is now less than one-quarter of what AOL alone was worth before the merger. [SAI]
♦ After much drama (and a few leaked emails), Scott Rudin has decided to talk away from The Reader. [THR]

Jeff Bercovici is reporting that CosmoGirl, Hearst's teen-targeted girlie mag, is folding. It was just confirmed by the company, which says it's consolidating the mag with Seventeen. At least it lasted slightly longer than Teen People and ElleGirl! But this could just be the first of many titles to succumb to the horrible new economic environment for mid-tier media outlets, in particular. So what other magazines are going to fold next? We have a couple of guesses. Do you?: Men's Vogue? It's been getting thinner and thinner lately, and could be on its last legs, judging by outward appearances. Details? The men's mag recently came out of the closet—which is nice, but no guarantee of success. It's in a challenging place, and it's not that strong. (Though we hear it's on slightly firmer footing these days than it has been at times in the past). Your thoughts about who could be next in the comments, please. This may be the beginning of something bad.

It looks like CosmoGirl magazine has bit the dust. [Jossip]

♦ Some 66 million tuned in to Tuesday's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, up from 55 million for the first debate on Sept. 26th. [NYT]
♦ A recap of Michelle Obama's appearances on the Daily Show and Larry King last night. [NYT]
♦ Barack Obama's campaign purchased a half-hour of airtime from CBS for a primetime special on October 29th. [THR]
♦ CBS's Dean Reynolds isn't happy about how the Obama campaign treats the media; fellow reporters take Reynolds to task. [CBS, Radar]
♦ Arianna Huffington: Not such a nice boss! [Gawker]
♦ Haute Living: Not such a fun place to work! [Jossip]

Hip Hop Weekly is an execrable, half-assed attempt at a hip hop version of Us Weekly. HHW was founded a couple of years ago by Dave Mays and Benzino, the guys who ran The Source into the ground through sheer selfishness before being forced out. Suffice it to say there's no reason to have a sympathetic view of the magazine's existence. Which makes this epic email fuckup on their part—reprinted below!—that much more enjoyable: HHW, we hear, has trouble paying its vendors, writers, and photographers. Or just doesn't want to. Either way, lots of people who have done work for the magazine are pissed at it. So it was pretty dumb for HHW to (mistakenly?) blast out an invitation to its 50th issue release party to a long list of contributors who hadn't been paid yet. Cue the responses!

Earlier, we called for Brit teen socialite-cokehead and It Child Peaches Geldof's firing, deeming her a menace to society. And then there's her friend, Internet phenomenon Cory Kennedy, famous for, um, being an "Internet It Girl" and dating that Cobrasnake dude? Anyway, when they are not "writing" and "modeling" for Nylon, Peaches is spilling the beans on what drugs certain co-workers at the downtown fashion mag—who might actually have to work!—are usin'.

Ever since gay men's magazine Details launched, sharp-sighted observers—those with two eyeballs—have pointed out that it is, essentially, a gay magazine. We were writing about it five years ago! It's led to years and years of jokes about the magazine's gay contests and gay covers and gay vending machines. But now, at long last, we have actual proof that Details is, without a doubt, a solid member of the homosexual magazine cabal: One of our tipsters subscribes to different magazines under different names, in order to smoke out those that are selling his name to various marketers. He's a Details subscriber. And lo and behold, which other magazine just sent him a discount voucher? The Advocate—the oldest LGBT magazine in America:

Is Portfolio on the rocks? [Cityfile]

It was something of a coup when Vanity Fair, in May, did what its Condé Nast sibling Portfolio couldn't and poached Fortune's winsome star writer Bethany McLean. If Portfolio's uncertain editor Joanne Lipman was annoyed then, she must be really steaming now that rival Graydon Carter snagged his latest catch from her own magazine. Vanity Fair's editor just inked an exclusive deal, the Observer reports, with Michael Lewis, who had contracts at both Lipman's glossy and with the Times magazine. Carter lured Lewis even though the Liar's Poker author recently saw his pay upped at Portfolio and despite a grudge the financial writer harbored against Vanity Fair for 10 years over an an unflattering 1997 profile. How did Carter do it?

"Sessums, originally hired to write this month's J.Lo cover story for Elle, was pulled from the assignment after his first interview 'got much too personal' and the magazine put another writer, Peter Rubin, on the profile at the request of Lopez's reps." [Post, Previously]

Actress Minnie Driver recently gave birth to her son Henry last month, and in lieu of some splashy magazine cover (I mean, not that she's that big of a star to warrant that, but you know), she decided to just post a humble, makeup free, mom and baby photo on MySpace. It's a refreshingly un-self-indulgent photo that is heartening to see in this time of the splashy money-making, high gloss, celebrity baby industry. Maybe it represents a new era? Celebrities like Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan have retreated to MySpace and blogs to issue PR statements, so maybe the baby business will become less of a controlled and manipulated cottage industry as well. The owners of OK! magazine, one of the biggest baby buyers, recently stopped the crazed spending the tabloid had enjoyed indiscriminately for some years. Maybe Driver's new, simpler way will help drive the baby market down and babies will just become babies again, rather than increasingly cynical magazine tentpoles.

It seems like just last April that the venerable old Atlantic Monthly (wait, sorry, it's just The Atlantic now) launched a web-focused redesign based on the helpful input of presumably expensive "brand consultants." And, what do you know, it was just last April! But now we're in phase two of the magazine's makeover, which means increasingly insane covers and slightly more attractive blogs for their hundred bloggers (NB: we do actually like most of their bloggers, especially Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Fallows, and crazy Andrew Sullivan—all better than TNR, basically). Here's the announcement! But will this save the magazine? While the newish Harper's website fits that magazine's fusty, "who needs to turn a profit anyway" aesthetic (and subscribers get full access to the indispensable indexed archives), The Atlantic's recent branding campaigns don't seem to have anything to do with the magazine's identity, whatever the hell that is anymore (plus: 300 articles for $100 with nothing from 1964-1992 just doesn't compare to the Harper's deal.) Honestly the Atlantic's identity crisis still stems from the move from lame Boston to miserable DC followed by a new focus on, you know, politics, though that crisis has actually produced what might be a better magazine with more interesting (to us) features. And hey, the website looks good, the new logo is a cool appropriation of their '60s logo, and the mag redesign will probably look very nice (unless it's as pointlessly busy as that first cover). Still, a massive ad campaign and a expensive rebranding for a smart current events mag seems a bit '90s, right? BUT! Atlantic Media also owns the expensive subscription-only political trade journals of the National Journal Group! And if there is a market for political journalism in this nation, that is the model, so far, that seems the best able to weather the storm. So, thankfully, Global Security Newswire will subsidize Andrew Sullivan well into the Obama administration and on until he turns conservative again.

The publication of a relatively juicy interview with Jennifer Lopez—rejected by an unnamed fashion magazine—reminds us that magazine articles are often dropped not because they're bad but because they're good. Or—more often—simply because they've been overtaken by events or clash with some other article or because an insecure editor has over-commissioned. (Tina Brown, who published Kevin Sessums' J-Lo profile on her new Daily Beast website, was notorious for assigning three times the articles she ran.) Anyway, here's an alternative for journalists who've spent weeks slaving on an article only to see it spiked: Gawker's unspiked files.

Did you know Jennifer Lopez once had a nervous breakdown? Or that she's a pretty big fan of crackpot religion Scientology? By the standards of the average modern celebrity profile—where a diarrhea story counts as a scoop—this is pretty good material. So why did it end up running today in Tina Brown's newly launched Daily Beast, instead of in a real magazine? Because a real magazine spiked it. Because they were scared of J-Lo! Sez the Beast:

Although Sarah Palin said yesterday she was "impatient" and "annoyed" with Katie Couric's irrelevant questions about her book learnin' and whatnot, the CBS Evening News anchor wisely avoided firing any direct return fire when confronted with a camerman from TMZ, of all places. But it's all too easy to read — or invent? — meaning between Couric's lines, especially if you can successfully look past her usual smiling charm. Who might Couric be talking about when she says she doesn't "lie" about reading The Economist? Is "luckily I'm not running for vice president" some kind of swipe? It's harder to tell than you might think. Click the video icon to watch.

So, you want to be a journalist? Ha ha ha. Jeez. Your timing sucks. But hey, it's a perfectly semi-honorable profession; nobler than finance, not as noble as being a postman. So whether you're already in journalism and wondering about what direction your career should take (besides down), or a terribly misguided young go-getter looking to get into journalism, we're here to help. Every freaking thing you need to know about the real state of the media job market, after the jump.

The New Yorker festival culminated in a rockin' dance party. (Our publisher offered us his spare tickets, which we sniffily rejected. "The New Yorker dance party?" snorted a friend.) IvyGate went, though, and they were scared for their future social life. "This could be you in eleven years," warned the headline. "It was mostly professionals in their late 20s to early 30s talking and grinding." Oh, no, not that! Yep, that's how us post-collegiate Olds party. And then we stumbled home, drifting off to sleep imagining what type of hit our Roth IRA took with the latest crash. [IvyGate]