Although it seems like Time Inc. has laid off upwards of 37,000 staffers in the last few weeks, the fact is that that company is still marching slowly towards its goal of 600 newly unemployed people. Today could be the worst day yet; Keith Kelly predicts as many as 250 Time Inc. layoffs by the end of the day. Cottage Living folded late yesterday, and other titles in the company's lifestyle group could be up for cuts today. Please send any layoff details and memos to us just before you walk out the door with the office stapler, never to return. [NYP]

Dave Kansas, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal and TheStreet.com, is out as the president of personal finance site FiLife.com, Portfolio reports. Kansas will keep a title with FiLife, but it'll be as "editor at large." And given his connections to the WSJ newsroom, we wouldn't be surprised to see him land back there eventually. But Kansas is a reminder that journalists — especially reporters on media and financial beats — are particularly prone to thinking they could do a better job than the folks who handle the money in the business—the only people, it seems, who stand any chance of getting rich.This syndrome is partly occupational hazard, since reporters and editors spend so much time talking to real business people who like to flatter with effusions of how brilliant and right on their analyses are. No one has been more of a poster-boy for the yearning to cross the editorial-managment divide than Kansas, who signed up in 1999 with Jim Cramer at TheStreet.com first with an editorial tile and then more venerated monikers like Executive Vice President and Chief Strategic Officer. At one point, his stock in the company was worth $9 million, but even more importantly it was the sort of gig that could position him for management positions down the line. But the dot-com crash wiped out the paper money and Kansas was soon back at the WSJ again, editing stuff. Last year he left again to run FiLife, taking the title of president. We can't blame him for trying to make the jump: editorial employees are being laid off left and right, and even the superstars in the field are looking burnt out and less special every day. Maybe next boom, eh?

You'd think that in these hard times more people would be scaling down to cottages, but no. Time Inc. just announced to its staff that Cottage Living—which had a rate base of 1 million(!)—is folding. The website will also die. According to an internal memo, "the economy inhibited its ability to grow and therefore, sadly, we had to make the decision to close it." Sad for cottage-livers. More sad for the apartment-living employees.

Arianna Huffington is branching out and branching out some more! Fresh off her adventurous night subbing as the host of Rachel Maddow's show, the accented mogul (and current non-friend to us) announced today that the Huffington Post "is going to raise money to fund investigative journalism projects." How does she plan to come up with the cash for this, the most expensive type of reporting? She won't say! Yet. According to Reuters, she said there won't be any details for three months. Perhaps in that time the economy will improve and donors will look to throw money at investigative journalism? Ha, no. So where will this cash come from? Some guesses:

Lucky, Conde Nast's magazine about, um, shopping, has laid off three editors. [Portfolio]

A fresh batch of media layoffs were reported today, including cuts at Condé Nast's Lucky, Time Inc.'s Cottage Living, and Forbes. New York's Daily Intel has a rundown of the carnage. [NYM]

Remember that column in the Murfreesboro (Tennessee) Post last week, in which the columnist rewrote the Jeffersons theme song for the Obama election? If you're a true music fan, you may recall the killer lyric, "Well we’re movin’ on up, To Washington, D.C. To a deee-luxe pimp pad, Painted whiiiite." Yes. Well that columnist is also, fittingly, a principal at one of the town's fine schools. And he's very sorry:

Nine people have been laid off at American Lawyer Media (now called Incisive Media). The cuts are all in the company's real estate group—about 15% of the total staff—including both editorial and sales positions. The company already laid off 42 people earlier this year.

There's nothing easier than hating on dumb young telemarketers and their annoying sales pitches. Though it is possible to summon some sympathy for the unfortunate Bloomberg sales caller who mistakenly thought that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin was a Vanity Fair PR person. Outrageous! Doesn't this anonymous business services salesman read Seth Mnookin's stories? Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:

♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦ Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦ ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦ Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦ Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts." [HuffPo]
♦ Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]

The trailer for the movie version of the hugely popular graphic novel by Alan Moore, The Watchmen, is out. Since 1986, various attempts have been made to turn it into a film— it'll be out for real next March. Of course, Moore won't be watching—he didn't want to be attached to a film adaptation and has told Entertainment Weekly that he wouldn't watch the movie should it happen—but it looks awesome. Click for pretty stills from the trailer.

Hey, let's all be disappointed! Did you hear that President-elect Barack Obama is already a huge sell-out? He's not even going to cut Joe Lieberman's nuts off! (We think it's dumb to give Lieberman subpoena power over the incoming president but whatevs, it's Barry's call.) Now, he's apparently going to let Hillary Clinton be Secretary of State. That is, if you believe The Guardian. The lefty UK paper says the Clinton selection is a done deal, though no US paper has been quite so bold. Michael Wolff thinks this is brilliant media strategy on the part of either the Obamas or the Clintons, to punish the New York Times for some unspecified crime or simply to bypass them in order to teach them a lesson about who's in charge. We, uh, aren't so sure. Neither the Clintons or the Obamas seemed to show much favor to the foreign press during the campaigns, and no UK paper, let alone The Guardian, was handed a scoop of this magnitude over the domestic press. So why now? As Wolff points out, the Europeans love Bill Clinton much more than we do, here where he used to run things, because we had to see his shouty red face so much during the primaries. So maybe it's just wishful thinking? But now the speculation has lasted days, without denials from anyone, so, yeah, it seems like the SecState gig is Hillary's. The trial balloons been floating out there for a while now, and no one's yet come up with a great argument against the nomination that doesn't boil down to "the Clintons are a headache." We are probably happier with her than with, say, hilarious clown Bill Richardson or old man Richard Holbrooke, but we were kinda warming to the John Kerry idea. That guy's been in the Senate way longer, and is clearly way more sick of being there, right? He was investigating Iran-Contra when Hillary was in Arkansas doing whatever she was accused of doing in that Whitewater thing! (Remember that?) Both of them were dead wrong on Iraq, obv, but we're probably not going to sell anyone on Secretary of State Russ Feingold. At least she's smarter than Condi Rice. Still, Clinton's rehtoric on foreign policy has always seemed more resolutely, defensively hawkish, in that "Democrats can be war-mongering badasses too" way we deplore, than that of genuine old-timey liberal John Kerry. Of course, Obama's language has been similar, so we probably shouldn't expect the doves and peaceniks to run the foreign affairs department in an Obama administration. Which means it's disappointment season! Turns out the new politics of hope might involve some hopeless old politicians! Because, hey, the only Democrats hanging around Washington with any experience in the executive branch are old Clinton people (there might be some Carter guys, at Brookings or something, but no one talks to them). So the faces of triangulation did not melt, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style, when Obama won the nomination. It is a great excuse for us Coastal Liberal Elites to Hate America Again, for the very first time. Just keep Mark Penn far away from 1600 Pennsylvania, Barry, for the sake of the country.

LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used his blog yesterday for the entertaining purpose of viciously mocking Variety and its Hollywood fixture editor, Peter Bart. Mocking them for being poor! This column is awesome for the following reasons: because media outlets don't usually air their dirty laundry like this; because Peter Bart and Variety certainly deserve the mocking; and most of all because Patrick Goldstein seems totally unconcerned that his own paper does the same exact thing he criticizes Variety for, and that that very thing keeps him employed. Ha: Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: "Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?" WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:

The New York Times folded Play magazine yesterday, which actually had good editorial content but bad business prospects, because many of its advertisers were auto companies, and they are all crumbling and taking the media along with them. On the plus side, the NYT business section actually hired somebody yesterday! (David Segal, from the Washington Post). The paper's special magic investment fund dedicated to Biz section hiring is obviously paying off. At least the good editorial=weak advertising equation has a flipside: the vapid T fashion mag lives!:

Oh my God, shut up, Tim Robbins! There are few people more insufferable than rich, self-righteous Hollywood liberals. Remember how he thought his name was taken off the voting rolls on November 4 and threw a fit that drew the cops—when the real problem, explained the New York Times very patiently, was that he had showed up to the wrong voting place? He's still traumatized (the rest of us have moved on with our lives), and has written an "open letter" on Huffington Post—the LiveJournal for celebrities—to the Board of Elections:Robbins' letter, in part:

Walk by a newsstand today and it's nothing but Barack Obama and his family. As we said, treacly Obama worship will save magazines (this quarter)! But whatever Barack Obama said earlier about keeping his daughters out of the limelight seems to have given way to the American public's (and therefore magazine editors') interest in the most adorable family without a baby named Shiloh. In July, explaining why he regretted letting Access Hollywood do a brief interview with the girls, Daddy Obama said, "Generally what makes them so charming is the fact that they're not spending a lot of time worrying about TV cameras or politics."And since then, Obama has begged the press to back off while trick-or-treating and declined an invitation from Miley Cyrus for the daughters to appear on Hannah Montana. But unless the Obamas are trying to play it both ways (a well-worn gambit when it comes to politicians and their kids) then they might want to keep Sasha and Malia off magazine covers, too.

Not surprisingly at all, there are serious media layoffs today. TV Guide is laying off "up to 33 people," or 3% of its total staff. Also, Forbes—which cut chunks of its online staff last week—is laying off dozens of staffers as it merges its print and online operations into one. Read the full memo at Valleywag.

Ending a longstanding internal split that dates back to the days of the first dotcom boom, Forbes Media is merging the staff which puts out the conservative-leaning business magazine and its online component, which run separately and with a ludicrous amount of mutual suspicion and jealousy. (Valleywag had gotten wind of these plans last month.) An internal memo sent by CEO Steve Forbes to staff says that print and online sales and marketing will be immediately integrated, reporting up to an "office of the chairman" which includes Forbes.com publisher Jim Spanfeller, whom rumors had previously pegged as the head of the combined operation. Integration of the Web and print editorial staff won't happen until early 2009. Translation: No one in the newsroom will know what's happening to their job until next year. Here's the memo:

Arianna Huffington is filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program this evening. Until then, the Huffington Post co-founder has been snooping around Rachel's corner office and getting prepared for the show. Arianna's video tour of Maddow's collection of pantsuits after the jump.

Last week, we told you about the Newsweek reporter searching for sources to answer this question: Did you make love in the name of Obama? Election-night sex resulting in conceiving an actual baby must have been too hot a trend piece to pass up. Even worse, some earnest libs actually did fornicate in the name of Obama. The resulting article is out now, and we'll admit it has a great lede—Obama himself was born "almost nine months to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected."No hard stats here, other than the fact that people under thirty voted for Obama "by a margin of 2 to 1." However!