Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the domestic queen's massive publishing and television conglomerate, has just announced that its CEO, Susan Lyne, has (ahem) "stepped down." Replacing Lyne will be two co-CEOs—an equivocation that often signals that a company was not well prepared for an executive transition. Lyne came on as head of the company when Martha Stewart went to jail in 2004, and has presided over a big drop in MSLO's stock price. But while her departure may have been inevitable, it's not necessarily a productive move. The magazine industry is in an irreversible decline, and no number of firings will change that fact. Sorry!

Kittens: they just won't go away. You must look at them! They and their assorted cute friends—puppies, monkeys, duckies, hippopotami—have taken over the internet, and have already become a leading addiction among men and women alike. Cute cravings must be fed, productivity be damned. A baby bear licking a swan! A parakeet wearing a tutu! A kitten roller skating on the back of a pink stingray! The Observer predicts a "cuteness surge." This will be our downfall. Our supposedly sophisticated elites have allowed their cutie wootie nom nom nuzzle muzzle urges to become their drug, their porn, their shame:

Mort Zuckerman's sleep-inducing U.S. News, which has played third fiddle to rival news weeklies Time and Newsweek for years, announced this week that it will be switching to a biweekly publication schedule next year. Not a huge shock—the mag started abandoning news coverage in favor of "Best Colleges in America"-type lists last fall, and reduced its annual issue count from 46 to 36. But does the move signal that the Canadian-born tycoon is moving away from media and focusing on his first love, real estate? And as crappy as the newspaper business is right now, is commercial real estate really the place to be putting your money these days?

The plan to turn the LA Times' Sunday magazine over to the paper's business staff, ending its four-decade run as an editorial product, is now a reality. LAT editor Russ Stanton acknowledged that he didn't like the idea, but said that the paper's budget issues make holding onto editorial control of the magazine "impossible." So who is the Tribune Company's leading candidate to take charge of the troubled magazine now? The perfect choice: a host from the Home Shopping Network HSN.

At the time she was fired, HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman was expected to post "strong fourth-quarter results... at the end of the month," according to the Observer. That only deepens the mystery as to why Friedman was fired — if not over bad numbers, then why? It does look like the book executive was pushed. She reportedly did not look distressed at an 11 am Wednesday meeting, just before News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch told her she would be replaced by her deputy Brian Murray. She supposedly had no clue as to the purpose of her meeting with Murdoch, the sort of blindsiding one would expect in a firing. And Friedman's replacement, Murray, started acting tense when he got the news of his promotion two days prior, according to the Observer's sources — hardly the behavior expected of someone replacing a voluntarily-departing executive. The weekend prior, Friedman had been in high spirits at a HarperCollins party. So many things don't add up:

Hillary and Bill Clinton keep — oh, sorry, their "aide" keeps — a big ole list of everyone who has done them wrong, including allies who are perceived to have defected to the Obama camp. Many of their supporters and associates also have lists of the "ingrates," "traitors" and "enemies" who wronged the former president and his wife. Are there any media people on this list? Are you kidding? They are "charter members," because if there is anyone Hillary and Bill hate, it is the press. (Chelsea too, probably.) Some names:

Two commenters argued today that our coverage of the brewing civil war inside Hachette was way too harsh on digital VP Todd Anderman, who we dubbed a "digital dunce." Anderman, you'll recall, is said to have offended the sensibilities of deputies Joe Berean and Keith Pollock with a mind-numbingly-long series of reorganizations and content aggregation strategies. The case against Anderman as an all-thumbs manager was only cemented by his accidental big-screen projection, at a staff meeting, of some instant-messenger venting of work frustrations to his wife. But our comments say the fault for the disaster at Hachette lies not with Anderman but with fashion primadonnas like Zee and his allies, including former store-salesman Pollock. "Todd's reputation in this business is stellar and for you to put such a nasty hit piece like this is deplorable," one wrote. Well, his reputation isn't universally "stellar," judging from the fallout from Berean and Pollock's resignation, reported in our original post. But every feud has two sides, and far be it from us to ignore either. The pro-Anderman comments are reproduced after the jump.

Many members of your Gawker editorial team are not in the Gawker office at the moment. Why? Because the AC there is a crap shoot (or has been), and SOME PEOPLE don't want to take their chances in DANGEROUS HEAT like we have today. I'm in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, and I'm sweating here, too! But it's not just us; a trendworthy number of key media figures are facing air conditioning problems. The media cannot work like this!

Remember those pictures of boxing champ Oscar de la Hoya wearing fishnets and stilettos that surfaced last fall? And he said that they were fakes, but everybody was like "Ha, yea, right. Of course you say that, trannie boy." Well, turns out they were really fake! I'll be darned. Oscar's reputation will never fully recover, but it must be said: this was great Photoshop work:

Former Daily News gossip hack Lloyd Grove has a lengthy interview with New York Observer owner and golden-boy-about town Jared Kushner out today, in which the 27-year-old Kushner yacks and yacks about his real estate holdings, his media holdings, and how the Observer's revenues are way up this year (although it's doubtful the paper has made him money yet). He's guarded, and talks a lot like a PR person. But one thing comes through quite clearly, just by his use of examples: this is a rich, rich young man. And maybe done dating Ivanka Trump? He won't say. Still, the time to snag this wealthy media baron is now!:

A new survey of newspaper editors finds that 44% of them wouldn't let their reporters have personal blogs without prior approval. On the other hand, 100% of reporters with personal blogs secretly hope to get fired so that they can become heroic blog martyrs. [Bloggasm, Previously]

WSJ. (note important period), the Wall Street Journal's new glossy magazine, is rolling out in only three short months! Lo, how the idle rich of the world pine for its insights. The paper is already in strong PR mode for the launch, touting its roster of luxury advertisers. More importantly, what will the new rag—with an international circulation of almost a million—look like (besides the single prototype page, pictured)? We put together the clues:

Whoa. We all know the Tribune Company and its biggest paper, the LA Times, are in trouble. But this seems drastic even for them: the paper is considering a plan to fire the entire editorial staff of its Sunday magazine, and turn the whole operation over to the business side of the paper. It would no longer even be an editorial product. (Just try to imagine what would happen if the NYT Magazine did this). The newsroom is pissed, with LAT editor Russ Stanton reportedly asking the publisher to change the magazine's name if the plan goes through, so it doesn't tarnish the newsroom's credibility. Gee, we remember another LAT Sunday magazine scandal in 1999, back when these types of things actually provoked outrage rather than resignation:

Old things are worthless in this computer world of the future! Look at old, venerable magazine titles. Life? Gone. The Saturday Evening Post? Ha. But the Sporting News—the throwback, stat-filled, serious sports magazine that started publishing in 1886—is trying to stage a comeback against the dominant glossies of today like ESPN Magazine. The Sporting News' three-pronged revival strategy: A digital newsletter; more (ghostwritten?) columns from retired sports stars (Troy Aikman speaks!); and a new column by the soon-to-be-former Deadspin.com cult figure Will Leitch. Hey, one of those might be beneficial!

Britain's Daily Mail this weekend tackled head-on an issue most U.S. papers have danced around: John McCain's first wife, Carol, who faithfully raised his children and awaited his return from a North Vietnamese prison. Unfortunately, she was in a terrible car accident while McCain was a P.O.W., and the doctors had to cut away at her leg bones and pump her full of medication, making her both shorter and fatter than the swimsuit model she had once been. McCain bought her a beach house, ran around with other women and left her for his current wife, Cindy, then 25 and rich.

The Post's efforts to slam Keith Olbermann are getting increasingly desperate. In its latest attempt to lash the MSNBC personality on behalf of owner Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. comrade-in-arms Bill O'Reilly, who are in a feud with the Countdown host, the tabloid somehow managed to work an Olbermann dig into a story about bad gym behavior. Well, actually, not into the copy of the story itself, but into the accompanying infographic, pictured above. It's an awkward enough dig to make one miss Olbermann's Rupert-Murdoch-as-a-pirate imitation. [Post]

The plague of viral video has an epidemiologist: NewTeeVee Station, a spinoff of GigaOm's NewTeeVee, a blog which tracks the online-video industry. "Basically, we think this online video stuff is more and more legit," NewTeeVee editor Liz Gannes IM'd me earlier today. "We are betting on that, and treating it like a real entertainment medium." Liz Shannon Miller, pictured, will edit NewTeeVee Station's reviews of popular videos. First up: YouTube sensation Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance." More importantly than just describing the videos, the site will track who made the videos, who appeared in them, who funded them, and whether they profited. (Laipply, for example, hasn't made money off YouTube, but he did get on Oprah.)

Reality-show subject, Hamptons auto menace, and PR party planner to the stars Lizzie Grubman is helping her client YRB Magazine put out its most glam issue ever! But to do it, she needs the help of you, young tastemakers who "embody street couture." Select stars of the scene are invited to YRB's sweet party and photo shoot, where they can pick out their own outfits from "racks and racks" of designer clothing, get their pictures taken, and—bonus—get a free tattoo in the "adult playground!" I can't imagine why anyone would turn down this opportunity to pimp themselves out. The YRB store has the freshest selection of t-shirts on Lower Broadway! Grubman's full email invite to the "beautiful people," after the jump:

Sam Zell's Tribune Company is making drastic cuts in news pages, and adding more colorful charts and graphs. Analyst Ken Doctor says that strategy is doomed to fail, since it just weakens papers' brands further, and charticles haven't impressed anyone since the early heyday of USA Today. "People and paper" are business' two biggest costs. Our BOLD prediction: The four-day print edition (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday) will arrive in mid-major cities in the next 5 years. [via Romenesko]

Ah, Profnet—the easy-peasy electronic service that lets reporters put out requests for even the strangest sources. Then those requests are leaked to us, and we can all have a sympathetic laugh about the endlessly debasing things that freelancers have to go through just to pay the rent. Maybe you can help! Do you know much about smelly feet and/ or vaginas? Please get in touch at once!