Sometimes, don't you wish you didn't have to get out of bed every morning, and could just wander the city all day, window shopping and drinking at whatever goddamned hour you choose? Time Out has a roundup about where recently laid-off media and finance proles go to drink, and they featured our former writer, the totally unjustly fired Moe. Look how happy and healthy she looks in the photo, due not to some South Beach vacation but from being away from the cancerous glow of her computer screen and the repetitive-stress injuries of typeblogging. It's almost enough to make us want to get fired.As Moe tells Time Out about her dream job:

Conde Nast has laid off dozens of people today from CondeNet, the company's internet division. We hear from one source that 60 people were let go this morning, most in tech, some in marketing. We also hear that an additional 20 staffers were fired from "Conde Connect," the company's internal intranet division. Conde itself hasn't released specific numbers, but these are part of the 5% across-the-board cuts the company ordered two weeks ago. If you have info, email us.

Ted Turner: simultaneously a crazy old coot and a totally awesome and admirable ex-media mogul! The CNN founder is out promoting his new autobiography, which gives him a chance to go on and on and on about his pet grudge, the scalawags at Time Warner who blew up his fortune by merging with AOL. Dude, it was only seven billion. Let it go! Here he is on David Letterman talking about how CNN sucks these days, without him, Ted Turner, around. Ted, we sincerely want you to come back, you crazy, crazy wild man. It would be great for us. He was also interviewed at the Time/Life building today, where he talked about nothing but how much Time Warner sucks (and prairie dogs):

Oh boy, hot news from Random House: once-popular entertainer Ann Coulter has a new book coming out! It's on sale, uh, five days after Christmas, and it's called.. well, apparently the title is embargoed. "This book is so hot we can't tell you what it's about," Random House claims. "Ann Coulter never disappoints." Man. They sure sound excited to be promoting this one, right? We can guess the book will be full of the usual Ann Coulter material, slightly updated for a new age of Democratic ascendence, but what is the over-arching theme? How will she top SLANDER: Liberal Lies About the American Right, TREASON: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and GODLESS: The Church of Liberalism? Maybe this one is called "SOCIALISM." Or "GAYNESS." Or "BESTIALITY." Or "BAD THING: Liberals Being Not Good From Pontius Pilate to Kim Jong-il." Or "NEGRO: That Is The Color Of the Liberal Heart In Illegal Immigrant Spanish, Not a Racist Reference to Barack Obama (Wink Wink)." Or "ALIEN LIZARD PERSON: What I Am." Whatever it's called, we're sure it'll be a big hit, because Ann Coulter is still very popular and relevant.

Jerry Portwood is the editor of the New York Press, and he does a lot of theater reviews. Like lots of theater reviewers, he gets free tickets for plays from publicists. But last week, he was abruptly disinvited and taken off the list for the play "The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents," just before he was scheduled to attend. The reason: the play's publicist didn't like a NY Press story that pointed out that the play's publicists were marketing it by hyping up the fact that Meryl Streep's daughter is a cast member. Losing a pair of free tickets isn't the world's biggest tragedy, but it brings up the interesting question: How are flacks supposed to handle bad press? Answer: a lot better than this. The shortest bit of advice that smart PR people can take about bad press is to just suck it up. Nobody likes a negative review, but you have to take the long view of things. Cutting off news outlets for one story you didn't like is the equivalent of selling all your stocks as soon as the market has a bad day; a panicky way to ensure that you get nothing good in the future. Jerry Portwood tells us that when he spoke to the PR guy in question,

Apocalyptic pronouncements have been made in publishing amidst the layoffs and rough economy; even megastore Borders is struggling. Barnes and Noble's chairman told the Wall Street Journal last week that "never in all my years have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in;" he's preparing for a terrible holiday sales season. It might not be all bad, reports Motoko Rich in today's Times. After all, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind sold a million copies in a year—in 1936, the middle of the Depression. Other literary types remain true to their wishful thinking: the whole nation was simply distracted by the election and that's why they weren't reading books for the last year!

Hey, so, a little bit of news came out of the historic Bush/Obama handover transition secret White House surprise meeting. Details of what the president and the president-elect talked about were leaked to the press: apparently Obama tried to convince Bush to bail out the auto industry, and Bush said he might if Obama supports CAFTA. Hey, you know what the real news is, here? Someone in Obama's camp leaked this info to the New York Times, which led someone in the Bush camp to leak a "we're not very happy with that" story to Drudge! Whee! We think we know who's responsible, and he's a dreamboat. Let's closely examine these two paragraphs from the New York Times exclusive on the Oval Office meeting:

Did you know that at Huffington Post you are now allowed to use your position as a "blogger" to simply run ads for your own craptastic imaginary version of a ripoff consulting business? It's true! Exhibit A-Z is the new column by "Jack Myers," a "Media futurist" and one of the most jargon-talking jargonists that you may ever hope to jargon with! (Actual bio item: "Jack Myers has nearly 3,000 Facebook friends"). Media futurist Jack Myers interfaces with end users of HuffPo by communicating a strategic column-formed digital word item that "originally appeared at JackMyers.com." Okay Jack hit us with some of your forward-facing media marketing advertising knowledge!: Media futurist Jack Myers knows how to make billions of dollars for the media!

♦ Following a small incident yesterday, MSNBC is reportedly planning to institute a tape-delay on Morning Joe beginning on Monday. [TVNewser]
♦ Vivian Schiller, the head of NYTimes.com, is leaving to join NPR as its new CEO. [Gawker]
♦ NBC political director Chuck Todd is co-authoring a book called How Obama Won that will be published by Knopf before the inauguration in January. [NYO]
♦ Ted Turner doesn't have too many good things to say about Time Warner as he hits the trail to promote his new book. [Portfolio, Gawker]
♦ Why was Cindy Adams so furious about her Wikipedia entry a few weeks ago? It says she's 83 when she's actually 78. [HuffPo]

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's loudest, angriest, not-votingest, network-controllingest personality, just signed a sweet new deal. It's a four-year extension of his Countdown show, with two NBC specials and occasional nightly news "essays." It's also worth $30 million! Good work Keith! It was bound to happen, as MSNBC's ratings were way up this election cycle, and Olbermann's show is now a vital part of the network's brand. But it was also brilliant of Olbermann to get the deal now, because there's a good chance he's peaked. Keith Olbermann became the voice of Bush's second term. After eking out a narrow victory and calling it a mandate, the President really outdid himself. The war went to hell, the lies that got us into the war were further aired out, the details of his various unconstitutional surveillance programs came to light, the ideological disdain for effective governance and the bubble of true believers led to the Katrina disaster, and America basically got a serious case of buyers' remorse. One guy on TV sounded as perpetually pissed off and outraged as you did, from 2003 onward: Keith Olbermann! His newfound glee at casting moral judgment on the mendacity of the lunatics in charge was, you know, refreshing after a couple years of the newsmedia wandering in the post-9/11 desert of breathless Bush-worship. Everyone felt kinda bad for selling that stupid and pointless war, but no one quite wanted to be the first to go whole-hog anti-authority. But Olbermann's voice of the opposition was the best thing on TV, leading right up to the 2006 midterms, when America first wholly rejected the Republican party. But now we've just had an election about Hope and Change, and the new guy in charge is not a fire-breathing pissed-off Howard Dean, but a calm and cool unifier promising to bring dispassionate rationality back to the White House. Meanwhile at MSNBC, Olbermann's charming protege is a Rhodes Scholar who's specifically pledged never to have more than one guest on at a time, because shouting and argument and cross-talk don't actually advance the discussion. Rachel Maddow's ratings are phenomenal, and every month there's a new fawning profile of her showcasing how... normal (and nice!) she is. If Olbermann was the voice of the opposition, Maddow is the voice of the new liberals in charge. It won't necessarily diminish Olbermann's popularity and influence (or even his ratings), but he's not on top of the zeitgeist anymore. Let's pray for a great 2012 race to get him across that next contract renegotiation hump. Gingrich/Palin '12!

Vivian Schiller, the General Manager of NYTimes.com, is leaving the Times to become the president and CEO of NPR. National Public Radio, people! This is a huge announcement for lovers of the liberal media. Schiller has overseen lots of evolution at the paper's website—including the rollout of comments—which is the single best thing the Times has going for it. She became famous for her weekly memos and her devotion to slideshows. The Times had better choose her replacement very carefully. Her going-away email to the staff is after the jump:

Neel Kashkari, where has your steely-eyed charm gone? When the Ferrari-loving young Republican banker took on the post as our nation's new Head of All Money, we had such high hopes for him. His eagle-like visage commanded respect; his brash overconfidence meant he was destined for greatness. But yesterday the markets tanked after his first big speech, and now the media is grumbling about his performance. Neel, what's wrong? Allow us to help, my rich bald friend. The Post says reporters and finance people alike were pissed yesterday because he only answered two or three questions, and those with "a tone of impatience." And how do you expect to excite the markets with a speech like this?:

Yesterday we heard about the beginning of the pricey 600-person layoffs at Time Inc.—memos went out at several major magazines announcing that dozens of staffers would be cut. But this is an international company, and its trouble isn't limited to America. We hear that the European offices of Time, People, and Fortune could be facing severe cuts as well: A tipster tells us:

It's just a brief item, reporting that NBC chief Jeff Zucker was spotted with "old pal Katie Couric huddling over dinner at Elio's." But Page Six's sighting of the CBS Evening News anchor with her old Today boss will inevitably stoke further speculation about the possibility she might take over for Tim Russert at NBC's Meet The Press. The alleged dinner comes barely a week after the Times reported NBC executives were bandying Couric's name as a possible anchor for the Sunday-morning interview show. Gossip aside, let's move on to speculation: Wouldn't the gig just be an awful reprise of the CBS Evening News disaster?

More than a month after the New York Sun went bust, the final vestige of the neocon paper seems to have come to an end: The NYSun.com website has been down since yesterday. Guess you'll have to go elsewhere to get your stale news from mid-September!

Listen up, voters: It was not Sarah Palin's idea to try and fool you by wearing fancy clothes she would not normally have anything to do with! The Republican National Committee bought an opulent $150,000 wardrobe for her and seven family members before she even showed up at the convention, the former vice presidential nominee told Fox News Channel's Greta Von Susteren Tuesday night. The legendary MAVERICK was just "goin' with the flow... if that's the way they do this." She's never even been to a Saks or Neiman Marcus. Why on earth is she telling everyone this now?

Is Matt Drudge completely over in the wake of his ill-advised hyping of pro-McCain propaganda?If you're even bothering to ask the question, the answer is self-evidently "No," it can always be argued. It was thus inevitable that someone — Slate's Jack Shafer, it turns out — would emerge to swat down the greatly exaggerated reports (from Media Matters and so forth) of Drudge's demise as an influential blogger. He works too hard and has drawn too much traffic to go away so easily, Shafer argues:

Let's check in with Washington Post media guy Howard Kurtz. What's he up to today? He wonders how the press will deal with Obama, and vice versa, and instead of coming to any interesting conclusions about anything he quotes some people saying the press will turn on Obama and some people saying the press will cheerlead for Obama and none of it means anything, it's just free-floating cliche and partisan cant. Here are two paragraphs that basically sum it up:

With all the recent layoffs, it seems like there are no media jobs left in New York. So we bet every female in town under 35 is getting ready to pounce on Double X, Slate's forthcoming answer to successful ladyblog (and Gawker sibling) Jezebel. (Former Gawker Elizabeth Spiers is planning her own, "less urban" women's site.) But! Double X will be a magazine (a web magazine—because web-content can be called magazines if they feel like it), which will "spin off" from its pre-existing XX Factor blog. Here's the "we're hiring" memo, gals. (Hurry—we hear that interviews are already taking place!)Excerpted from this announcement:

At a time when some blogs are trying to reinvent themselves as news websites, the Financial Times, a U.K.-based rival to the Wall Street Journal, is considering a redesign adapted from blogs' reverse-chronological-order presentation of stories. [Silicon Alley Insider]