Jim Downey was once fired from Saturday Night Live, along with cast member Norm Macdonald, for repeated "OJ Did It" jokes on Weekend Update. He eventually made his way back to the show as chief political satirist, which basically puts him near the center of both politics and pop culture this year, with his sketches, no less pointed than his OJ material, earning mention in televised debates and re-airing on cable talk shows. But the influence of Downey and his show has been artificially inflated, he tells the Observer, by fearful news networks, who would "like to make sarcastic comments about candidates , but their role as news people prevents that:"

Steven A. Smith was considered to be one of the most innovative newspaper editors in the country, Webcasting his morning news meetings, building a radio sound studio and shifting staff and focus to the online edition of his paper, the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review. So of course the self-destructing newspaper industry had to go and ruin that, by asking Smith to fire most new online people less than a year after he hacked away 25 percent of the overall staff. Smith naturally resigned, an event that was covered by NPR. Some old newspaper hands are grumbling that Smith should have toughed it out, but up-and-coming print journalists will be looking at his decision and reaching the opposite conclusion: If this guy, of all people, can't deliver newspapers safely to the future, it's probably time to leave. (Photo via NPR)

Tuesday afternoon we asked about rumored layoffs at Niche Media, publisher of socialite city magazines. From what we've heard since, it sounds like the bloodletting does, indeed, go well beyond Philadelphia Style and is in fact related to the Wall Street meltdown and advertising recession. "Top management is on it's way to Miami to repeat the same," one tipster writes. "Slash up the staff at Ocean Drive." Another writes, "There were more layoffs on Monday at [DC-based] Capitol File. The senior editor and two sales reps were let go." It should come as little surprise that plummeting real estate values and stock market contraction should sharply curb the number of people who think of themselves as affluent, and who thus read these sorts of magazines, particularly in recently fast-growing cities like Miami and DC. CEO Jason Binn made things worse by expanding to aggressively, one tipster claims:

There's a silver lining to the dismal magazine ad page numbers for the most recent quarter: the rest of media will soon be equally depressed.

Look, there's an incredibly lengthy new seven-part survey of journalists who blog, exploring how blogs have affected their journalism, and how journalism has affected their blogs, and what they think about blogs and journalism and the effects that they have upon one another, and also upon the journalists who sit astride these two dynamic fields—blogging and journalism. We haven't read it yet, because we already know (from personal experience!) the five-part process that all blogging journalists use: 1. Look at a blog in your beat (Romenesko for media, Deadspin for sports, Andrew Sullivan for politics, etc.). Find something there that looks interesting. 2. Chew pen for a few minutes. 3. Rewrite the item you stole, taking a slightly different angle than the original blogger. 4. Send what you wrote back to the original blogger, in search of a link. 5. Celebrate newfound internet fame. [Optional sixth step: fill out lengthy survey. Pic via CJR.]

One-man gentrification-play performer Danny Hoch, profiled in the Observer today, has lived in the neighborhood for twenty years. He's fascinated by the collision of the formerly downtrodden area's old and new residents. One such person: his neighbor, an "old school Puerto Rican cat," who watches the ATM machine on Grand Street and retrieves the receipts that hipsters leave behind, just to see how much money they have in their bank accounts.

Yesterday, we started hearing rumors of big layoffs on the way at Niche Media, that stable of glossy, journalism-free socialite-focused city magazines across the country. Today the Philly Daily News confirmed that Philadelphia Style had "much of its editorial and creative staff" laid off yesterday. But that may have been just the beginning; another tipster tells us that there are "massive layoffs" across the company, and "people are getting fired with no notice from editorial on a lot of different magazines — Hamptons, Boston Common, Philadelphia Style, LA Confidential..." Is Niche CEO Jason Binn's company the latest entrant in the Great Magazine Die-Off? If you have more specifics on the cuts, email us. [We're also hearing that the rumored looming layoffs at Viacom could actually be coming next week—stay tuned.]

Jim Cramer has changed his mind! Just last week, you may recall, the shouty CNBC stock picker appeared close to tears as he begged Americans to pull all the cash they'd need for the next five years out of the crippled stock market. Well, whatever, that was last week. Now he says that we've already reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." That sure was fast! This, of course, is in line with his (physical and intellectual) penchant for wild gesticulation. Let's take a brief look back at Mr. Cramer's unpredictable recent past, shall we?

So Christopher Buckley, the smart-ass novelist son of late conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, went and endorsed Barack Obama in the internet pages of Tina Brown's Daily Beast. He explained, in his endorsement, that he was writing for the Beast because he didn't want to read the hate mail he'd get if he wrote the endorsement at his usual venue, the back page of the National Review. Joke's on him, everyone who reads the National Review Online is even crazier, and the NRO linked everyone to the endorsement! Now it is time for Buckley to write a "wow look at my crazy hate mail" column. And also to quit the National Review! Like forever! Buckley's hate mail column, though, has the advantage of quoting an unnamed editor from the magazine his father founded! "One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions 'cretinous.'" Ha, ha, that is probably from Rich Lowry? Buckley continues:

If you were planning on going to the awesome MTV Games party tomorrow night to preview AC/DC Live video game, we have some bad news: the Viacom company's PR firm says it's been postponed "Due to other scheduled events in the area." Other scheduled events like...rumored massive layoffs? Well that would certainly be one theoretical possibility. Click through for the sad cancellation notice. [UPDATE: And a statement from MTV Games]:

Everybody knows that the L.A. Times has been in trouble lately, with shrinking ad sales and dealing with the outbursts of their eccentric billionaire CEO and threatening to suing their staff memo-leakers. But LA Observed reminds us that back in the day, the paper was so big that it killed a dog:

♦ Gordon Gekko will live again: A sequel to Wall Street is in the works, although Michael Douglas has yet to sign on to the pic. [Variety]
♦ The downturn has been good for financial news sites: CNNMoney.com and BusinessWeek.com have both experience record growth. [WWD]
♦ The new issue of Rolling Stone is shorter and skinnier than issues past. [AP]
♦ Andy Lack, the former president of NBC News (and, more recently, the relatively unsuccessful CEO of Sony Music) is joining Bloomberg L.P. as CEO of the company's multimedia group. [NYO]

That long-awaited round of layoffs at MTV and other parts of Sumner Redstone's hip media conglomerate may come as early as today, according to a tipster. Anyone else have news?

Lee Abrams is back—in memo form! The most high innovative exec at Tribune Co., Abrams' job is just to sit around and compose memos full of CAPITALIZATION and deep thoughts on the newspaper industry. Which are classics! His new memo includes the following things: his thoughts on redesigns; one of his old blog posts, in its entirety; a list of the top-grossing music acts of 2008; and a disquisition on old and ratty hotels. After the jump, enlightment:

"The modern-day story will again center on Gordon Gekko, who has recently been sprung from prison and re-emerges into a much more tumultuous financial world than the one he once lorded over." [Variety]

It's not clear whether Kenneth from 30 Rock had anything to do with it, but NBC's page program now gets 7,000 applicants each year for roughly 70 slots, an admission rate of about 1 percent versus 7 percent for the undergraduate college at Harvard University . The $10-per-hour work consists of fetching coffee, guarding studio doors and giving tours for "at least six days" per week, the Times said this morning. You may have to live in Harlem and work at a bar to make ends meet. Then there are the long hours and flashcards:

You know a story is sketchy when even a British tabloid looks at it and goes, "You know, this seems a bit salacious and over the top," as the Daily Mail has just done with the rumor, dating to August but now resurfaced, about how Barack Obama maybe got too close to an anonymous young staffer during his 2004 senate campaign, before Michelle had her exiled to the Caribbean, but probably the whole thing is just a big Republican smear. The Mail tracked the woman down somewhere in the West Indies — they won't give her name or location, dodgy Fleet Street hacks! — and she said "nothing happened. I just left... I switched careers. That’s it." Then the paper got a mysterious call from a London lawyer, and now the right-wing bloggers are saying the scandal has been basically proven.

Three's a trend, right? Take the false report of Steve Jobs's heart attack, spread by a CNN website and Digg; a six-year-old report of United Airlines' bankruptcy, resuscitated by Google News; and a silly story about Oprah and Sarah Palin. And what do you get? Lies, lies, lies on the Internet! Some Web operations are promising to factcheck Wednesday's presidential debate in real time. Right! I ran a magazine's factchecking operation, and much to my fellow editors' chagrin, a thorough vetting of the accuracy of a report does not happen instantly. Passing on some concocted tale that confirms your worldview? That takes no time, or thought, at all. All the Internet does is speed things up a little. (Illustration via The Second Road)

The aspiring fashionistas at Teen Vogue know a hot trend when they see one, and they're not about to let Us Weekly, Saturday Night Live and the National Enquirer have a lock on randomly and unexpectedly influencing American politics beyond all reason. So they've started something called, adorably, the "Political Partier Blog," which is all about how hot college boys are reshaping the election and, like, other political stuff, such as a funny Peanuts website. Anyway, let's have a look at the five young people (four of them boys, squee!) mentioned, always with their ages attached, in blogger Lindsay Talbot's 10 posts:

Newspapers have always been selfish when it comes to giving credit to anybody else for anything. Good reporters are always conscientious about noting when someone else broke a story, but as a rule of thumb, the more self-important a news outlet is, the less likely they are to credit a competitor (or anyone else) for a scoop. But everything has changed now! Thanks to the internet and how it is beating the shit out of newspapers. Are you ready for a revolution in how you consume your news? Click through for a glimpse of the future of information! Newspapers—the forward-thinking beacons of journalism—have invented something totally new. Imagine this: you read the New York Times' website, and, abracadabra, you see a "link." This "link" sends you to a site that is not owned by the New York Times, where you can read information on a certain topic. NBC and the Washington Post are about to start doing it too! This could be big!