More trouble seems to be brewing for Steve Rattner, the mega-financier who runs Quadrangle Capital and the man responsible for managing Michael Bloomberg's vast fortune. Last week the firm announced plans to shut down a $500 million hedge fund focused on media investments after the value of the fund declined and investors started demanding their money back. Now comes word that Quadrangle's magazine holdings are in trouble. In 2007, Quadrangle paid $250 million for Alpha Media, the company that publishes Maxim and Blender, and lured Jann Wenner's former right-hand, Kent Brownridge, to run the company. Brownridge departed Alpha in August amid rumors the publishing company was in trouble. Today the Journal reports that the company really is in deep trouble, having fallen behind on its debt payments to Steve Feinberg's Cerberus Capital. Rattner may ultimately be forced to hand over Alpha to the company's creditors. But that's not the only disappointing news that has landed at Rattner's feet in recent weeks.

Last week the New York Times Co. slashed its dividend and announced poor earnings and saw its stock plunge to lows not seen in decades. Times journalists must be afraid for their financial futures. Well the company has a suggestion: how about buying some New York Times Co. stock? Cheap! The company just sent out an unfortunately-timed internal memo offering employees the chance to buy stock at a discount. Don't forget that you should consider "your future financial objectives" first. Do you want to lose money in the future? Buy now! Read the whole hot stock offer below:

♦ Alan Colmes, the "liberal" who supposedly serves as co-host of Hannity & Colmes with Sean Hannity, is leaving the Fox News program at the end of the year. [HuffPo]
♦ A daily news program hosted by Christiane Amanpour is in the works at CNN. [NYT]
♦ Despite screwing up nearly everything he touches, NBC golden boy Ben Silverman may see his contract renewed in the next few weeks. [NYM]
♦ USA Today has announced plans to cut staff. [E&P]
♦ Twilight was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, raking in $70.5 mil. [LAT]
♦ Forbes is not being sold to a shady Russian billionaire. [SAI]

Wild-haired and possibly murderous publisher Felix Dennis sold Alpha Media—home of Maxim and Blender—to a private equity group last year for about $250 million. Now, hey look, Alpha Media may have to be turned over to its creditors because, you know, advertising revenues are down thanks to the economy. The company is currently "in restructuring talks." So Felix Dennis has a quarter of a billion dollars, and the finance whizzes who paid him have cornered the market on Tila Tequila covers. Felix Dennis is smart. [Folio]

Hey, the government has agreed to bail out Citigroup. Surely we'll now be saved from worldwide insolvency! Right? Or is this a profligate waste of money? We have to level with you: this whole bailout thing has now exceeded the media's ability to critically analyze it. You've heard everyone throw around figures like $750 billion for the earlier bailout costs. This Citigroup thing includes a guarantee of $306 billion in assets. But think about this: according to Bloomberg, the US government has now pledged more than $7.4 trillion to rescue the financial system in the past 15 months. How much is 7.4 trillion?

When times get tough and employment becomes a far-fetched hope for many, it's good to know that you can still turn to the Paper of Record to direct you towards the last remaining employers. Specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency. They still need bodies! The shadowy government spymasters are the lead advertisers under the "Jobs" tab on the New York Times' website (the ad clicks straight through to their homepage). There are only two possible explanations for this. Both of them are bad. Conspiracy: The recession has forced the Times' true role as a government propaganda agent to the surface! You think Judy Miller's WMD coverage was a mistake? The paper has been promoting the CIA's position to the publi for years! Open your eyes, people! This ad is but the tip of the iceberg! The Job Market Is Even Worse Than You Thought: I mean, they couldn't even get Wal-Mart or somebody to sponsor the Jobs page? Campbell's Soup isn't hiring factory workers? Clandestine operations in the War on Terror, it seems, are the last place to get reasonable health care coverage. And Jesus Christ, you can't even make 80K for parachuting into Pakistan with a submachine gun to hunt Al-Qaeda. Times are tough.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore shamed all of the United States of America by ceding hegemony over House Of Windsor gossip to filthy British tabloids. People is flying the white flag of surrender over its London bureau and shutting it down, two tipsters inform us, sending its handful of staffers, like writers Courtney Rubin and Pete Norman, packing. Former bureau chief Simon Perry was purportedly told to work from home after a demotion to "correspondent," but there's skepticism he'll comply. Good luck trying to crack the Brits' white-glove treatment of their silly "royal" family now, People! Meanwhile, a reckoning is coming in the U.S.

According to some reports, the Huffington Post has raised $15 million in a new round of investment. But nobody really knows for sure whether that's true, yet! Let us say right up front that if it is true—and the Times UK says it is—this will be the coup of the media meltdown. Raising cash like that in this economic environment is impressive, and we would have to tip our hats to HuffPo, and acknowledge that we have wildly underestimated them. Here are all of the details from various reports on Arianna's maybe-triumph:

When the NYT Company slashed its dividend and announced ominous October revenues yesterday, we asked you, our kindly readers: Might this company go into bankruptcy? If so, when? And if not, what should they do? Many of you answered! And virtually every viable option for the company was suggested at least once. The Sulzberger family should just read the following list of your responses and pick one, depending on how optimistic they're feeling today:
The optimist:

High profile press fight! People magazine editor Larry Hackett just sent out an internal memo blasting the page one New York Times story today about People's alleged shady dealings with Angelina Jolie. Specifically, the Times cited two anonymous sources "with knowledge of the bidding" for the photos of Jolie and Brad Pitt's most recent newborns—which cost People $14 million—who said that there was an formal agreement that "obliged" the magazine to offer only positive coverage. Of course, as Hackett acknowledges, their coverage was positive; but he strongly asserts that the magazine would never "purposely slant coverage as condition for acquiring pictures." And indeed, the Times may have oversold that angle in their story. There's certainly a difference between what Jolie asks for, and what a magazine would explicitly "promise" to do. Read his full memo below:

Into the jaws of an advertising recession comes the launch of the most hubristic media venture we've heard of: a "super-stealth new online company backed and funded by some legendary billionaires." The requirements for the top job go from laugh line to laugh line.The startup seeks a candidate who is an editor-in-chief at a top business magazine like Forbes, BusinessWeek, or Portfolio. All, mind you, based in New York. And yet he or she must live in San Francisco. Oh, and having worked at Yahoo, Google, or eBay is a "big plus." All of this to run a website targeted at "SMB" — advertiser jargon for "small and medium businesses." Most small-business publications fail to draw an audience, precisely because they think of their readers' businesses, contemptuously, as "small." Too bad. In every other way, these guys are dreaming impossibly big. This job description is curiously similar to one posted in October with the same Gmail address as a contact. The main difference? The newer listing plays up the billionaire backers, and no longer mentions that it is "bankrolled by a respected 50+ year old offline company." A 50-year-old company? Sounds way too old media. Here's the job listing:

The financial reports of the New York Times Co. yesterday were predictably awful. Print ad revenue was cratering even before the stock market collapsed, so it's hard to see any turnaround in the near future. And as if the economy itself isn't giving the Times enough problems, they're also dealing with Rupert Murdoch trying to crush them, advertising-wise, in a pincer grip; the Wall Street Journal is falling on their head, and the New York Post is coming right up their ass. Rupert made a lot of noise about taking on the Times directly when he bought the WSJ. But he has a big advantage: another major newspaper in the same market. So while the WSJ is trying to steal away the NYT's high-end advertisers (and succeeding)—luxury watchmakers, Tiffany & Co., expensive liquors, and corporations running "message" ads—the other News Corp. paper, the unprofitable Post, is competing with the Times for middlebrow advertisers and upper middle class retailers in New York City—Bergdorf Goodman, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, car dealerships, cell phone companies.

♦ ABC has ordered up new episodes of Life on Mars, but it has no plans to shoot new ones of Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, or Eli Stone. [THR]
♦ Penguin's Ann Godoff will be publishing pollster Nate Silver's two books as part of the deal he signed for $700,000. [NYO]
♦ Michael Phelps has signed on as a pitchman for Subway. [AdAge]
♦ Ted Turner's autobiography will make its debut on the New York Times bestseller list this week at No. 8. Also: Artie Lang, Howard Stern's sidekick, has landed a six-figure book deal. [NYP]

Yesterday New York magazine laid off Gael Greene, a food critic there for the past 40 years. Apparently the recession is hurting New York like everyone else—not as drastically as everyone else, of course, but enough to have to pare down their fat roster of restaurant reviewers. So is this just a longtime employee being pushed out, or a sign of something worse under the surface?
New York is owned by billionaire Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of investment bank Lazard. Does he have money problems? Well, let's see:

In this paranoid media climate, you can't even write an salient tongue-in-cheek piece about "desperate drinking" in a desperate media landscape without people assuming that you're sending some message that you've lost your job. Foster, author of a piece for BlackBook called "Desperate Drinking in Desperate Times," says that ever since he and co-writer Ben published the piece, "I've had at least 20 calls and/or emails asking if [editor] Chris Mohney laid me off via [Blackberry message] last night."

The Post reports that Bob and Harvey Weinstein's film company announced plans to lay off 11 percent of its staff, or 24 people, at a company meeting moments ago. The news was apparently delivered shortly after 2 p.m. But the studio would like to make it clear that this does not mean that the Weinsteins are having any financial trouble, even if they have failed to come up with a hit in ages, longtime execs are fleeing, and the company embroiled in a messy lawsuit over Project Runway. "If this was a real financial emergency for the studio, I imagine the layoffs would be greater than 24 people," a source tells the paper. [NYP]

So the, uh, long-awaited interview with Eliot Spitzer's call girl has finally arrived! If this had come out six months ago, you all would have been hanging on her every word; now it's more of a novelty, like meeting Tonya Harding. But there are highlights, and we've collected them in this handy clip! Click to see some ill-advised hooker empathy, the real difference between an "escort" and a "prostitute," and lots of Diane Sawyer's famous "Bitch, what?" face.

Media layoffs are becoming so frequent, and our email inboxes are getting so overloaded with tips about firings, that we figure that we might as well start a daily liveblog on the topic. Know about layoffs hitting a media company? Post it in the comments below. We'll be updating this post as new reports come in. So far today, we've heard the Life&Style marketing staff got whacked yesterday and that Source Interlink, publisher of Motor Trend and Soap Opera Digest is rumored to be cutting 150 jobs ... Sadly, we're expecting more to come. [For the squeamish you can always email us at tips@gawker.com (but not from your work account, kids!) or call our tip line at 646-214-8138.]

Prepare to die, entitled Conde Nasties! Conde has always had a well-deserved reputation as the most opulent and self-important of all magazine publishing companies. Those days are coming to an end. The (gender-neutral!) diva culture that spawned The Devil Wears Prada and a million young aspiring media people who thought that a magazine employee could live the lifestyle of an investment banker—it's all on the way out. We come to bury you, Conde Nast culture, not to mourn you. Contemplate this, special ones: you may soon be forced to travel in (and pay for) common taxi cabs, like the poors! And it gets worse:

Former Time Inc. drones tired of their company's massive layoffs are fighting back. In email form! Susan Haynes, a former editor at Coastal Living, struck back at the parent company for slashing jobs at all of the titles in its Southern Progress division (which sounds like the name some 1965 white civil rights group, but that is not pertinent). We're willing to bet Haynes' "scathing memo" was laughed off by the bosses, right up until it landed in the New York Post this morning [UPDATE: the full emails are now pasted below]: Besides saying that Sylvia Auton, the head of Time Inc.'s lifestyle group, is horrible at her job, Haynes said this in an email to the top Time Inc. bosses: