• Newsweek is planning to cut staff as well as give the mag a makeover. [WSJ]
• NPR is cutting 7 percent of its staff and dropping two shows. [NYT]
• Ad spending fell 2 percent during the third quarter, although online advertising continued to grow. [Adage]
• Les Moonves isn't too worried about Jay Leno's move to primetime. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Entertainment Weekly may go web-only. [Gawker]
• Reed Elsevier, which has been trying to sell trade titles like Variety and Publishers Weekly, is pulling them off the market. [NYP]
• Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning. [HFPA]

Happy Holidays from Viacom, the home of hundreds of holiday layoffs! Employees, please observe these piddling, needless rules as you slave away in our caverns on Christmas. MEMO AHEAD:

The rumor we heard yesterday has been confirmed: Time Canada, which has been around more than 65 years, is folding at the end of the year. [Masthead Online]

Annie Leibovitz sat down with CNN yesterday for an extended interview to promote her new book. The whole Miley Cyrus scandal from this past spring didn't come up—just an oversight on the reporter's part, we're sure!—but Annie did address one of her other high-profile run-ins, the shoot in 2007 with the Queen of England when she got into hot water for daring to ask Her Majesty to remove her crown. Video of Annie's meandering explanation is above.

With camera crews staking out space outside Yahoo's Sunnyvale headquarters, some employees are striking back, uploading photos of the TV reporters to Flickr before the sluggish old media can get their broadcasts together. And that's part of the big story.

Tina Brown, who's edited Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and now the Daily Beast, wrote an essay this week decrying the "Media Zombies"—the "feckless bureaucrats" who spent money unwisely and are really responsible for all the media layoffs going on right now. That's a bit rich (ha), coming from a woman who is famous, above all else, for throwing money around like confetti. Let's take a wildly abbreviated tour of Tina's spending history, shall we?

Time Europe was gutted last month, and now a tipster tells us that Time Canada is folding completely after its year-end issue. If you know any more, email us.

Open bars are de riguer at media parties, and they're just about the only fringe benefit of working in this godforsaken industry. But what happens when the parties themselves start to disappear, like what's happening this holiday season? NO MORE FREE BOOZE! Portfolio's Mixed Media reports that there is a new group called "ASSME: the American Society of Shitcanned Media Elites"—which I guess I should probably join—that will carry on the noble tradition of an open bar in season where everyone else is a god-damned Scrooge. If you're laid-off and broke, you can still keep on drinking—at least for one magical night.

A source has given us the names of some of the high-profile employees who are (alleged) victims of today's layoffs at NPR. If true, it's apparent that NPR definitely wasn't sparing anyone just because they had longevity. The names—including two former hosts of All Things Considered—and the company's internal memo to employees, below [UPDATED below]:

Five years ago, National Public Radio got a donation of more than $200 million from McDonald's fortune widow Joan Kroc. So you'd think they'd be set for a while, money-wise. But the economy sucks and it's a safe bet that individual donations to public radio are plummeting. We heard rumors of layoffs this morning, and now it appears that they're true [UPDATE: it's official], and at least two shows are dying:

Just about every media company, from us (small) to Time Inc. (big) to many others of varying sizes, shapes, and predilections have been laying people off lately. Because everything is terrible, especially the prospects of media employment! Still, we don't want to be perceived as negative. So we've assembled a roundup of the major media companies that haven't had any big layoffs throughout this new depression, and analyzed why they've been so fortunate. Praise them:

A tipster tells us that National Public Radio "just began first wave of layoffs and show cancellations this morning." Really? If you know more, email us.

Liberal media watchdog Media Matters has revealed its true colors. In an email blast just now touting the "most inane punditry of 2008," MM offers this option: "Barnes: Obama 'not strong on national security' because he opposed war 'when the entire world believed' Obama had WMD." THEY MEANT 'SADDAM' BUT THEY WROTE 'OBAMA.' When will Media Matters stop being so racist?

♦ David Pecker's AMI, the publisher of the Star and National Enquirer, has been near bankruptcy for months. Now it's one step closer. [NYP]
♦ The details of Judith Regan's settlement with News Corp. have been revealed: It cost the company $10.75 million to make her go away. [Bloomberg]
♦ Janet Robinson says there are no plans to sell the Times. [E&P]
♦ A brief explanation for why newspapers are so screwed right now. [NYT, AP]
♦ An increasingly desperate OK! has cut the price of the mag. [NYP]
♦ The reorganization of Random House will likely leave Sonny Mehta the big winner. [NYO]
♦ Les Moonves on the state of network TV: "The model ain't broke." [THR]
♦ Gus Van Sant's Milk was named by the New York Film Critics Circle as the best film of 2008. [THR]

This ROD BLAGOJEVICH scandal is just awesome for newspapers. I mean, who would have thought the Tribune company would ever have a starring role in another political scandal even as a reporting entity, much less as some sort of "powerful" media outlet that inspired fear and hatred in elected officials? The Chicago Trib editorial page was what you were worried about, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, really? Well that suits the Chicago Trib editorial page just fine!:

So, the new Jay Leno variety hour. Are you dying to learn more about it or what? Ha, network statistics show that you are! Advertisers are also very enthusiastic about the move of the not-quite-funny entertainer into prime time. Perhaps the enthusiasm stems from the fact that Leno now has a mandate that his show not suck quite so much as it currently does. Is this guy trying in vain to rip off the Daily Show, or bring back vaudeville?:

Is AMI going to go bankrupt? Nooooooooo! Do you know what that would mean: trouble for the new zombie version of Radar.com! Keith Kelly reports this morning that AMI, which publishes Star and the National Enquirer in addition to zombie Radar, missed a deadline on an interest payment and is "feverishly negotiating" with its lenders. How can you publish the National Enquirer in its finest year ever and still be coming up short of cash? We blame Bonnie Fuller, a little bit.

From page 8 of this week's New Yorker: "EDITOR'S NOTE: On the Contributors page of the December 1st issue, the book "In Sickness and in Power," attributed to the New Yorker writer David Owen, was in fact written by a different David Owen." Even funnier? The "other David Owen" is, in fact, the former British Foreign Secretary one of the founders of their Social Democratic Party. And it's Lord Owen to you.

Let us not, at this crucial moment, forget how much shit the Tribune Co. is in. Executives at the Tribune Co. are quite literally wading to work today through rivers of bad news—deep, deep rivers. Yesterday they freaking went bankrupt. Today they find themselves smack dab in the middle of Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH's outrageous corruption scandal—because gnomish asshole Tribune CEO Sam Zell allegedly agreed in principle to fire a troublesome editorial page editor in exchange for $100 million in state money. Obvious question: Did Blago's corrupt scheme help drive Tribune into bankruptcy? We examine THE FACTS for you below!

Michael Sneed is a local gossip columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. And she's the latest journalist to be steamrolled by Chicago's US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald—the same prosecutor who sent fallen Times reporter Judy Miller to jail! But Sneed won't have to go to court to try to keep her sources secret, because they're named right in the complaint against corrupt governor Rod Blagojevich. You see, Sneed was allegedly the guv's go-to reporter for planting fake rumors designed to help his scheme to extort money in exchange for Obama's replacement in the Senate. Oh, this one is good.