Your cold (double meaning) Friday media column: Star Trib goes bankrupt, layoff rumors, and you can watch Al Jazeera instead of reading book reviews, which will soon be nonexistent:

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune filed for bankruptcy last night, in a thoroughly expected move. Whose fault is this? The crazy economy and the industry at large, according the paper's private equity owners. No, it's the stupid private equity owners themselves, says an economist. Hey, don't argue, you're both right. This is a "reorganization," so, like Tribune, the paper is going to try to get their affairs in order and stay in business. It's the biggest paper in Minnesota, so let's hope they come up with something. Can you save them, Garrison Keillor?

Your daily layoff roundup: 30 employees at O'Reilly Media, a publisher of tech-related books; and, we hear from a tipster (unconfirmed), massive ad agency McCann Erickson laid off more than 50 employees this morning.

Another rumor: Washington Post editor Marcus Brauchli is going to try to eliminate the paper's Book World section for budgetary reasons. Luckily most citizens of DC are functionally illiterate. [Critical Mass]


Time Warner says it's "not averse" to selling off Time Inc., if they can find somebody out there who would like to pay them a whole lot of money for it, because they could really use a whole lot of money, thx. [Marketwatch]

Al Jazeera finally has a national syndication deal in the US. It will run some content on "Worldfocus," which is syndicated via PBS to most major US markets. It ain't great, but it's better than the just-about-nobody who could watch Al-Jazeera before. Maybe this will make jobs for reporters, somehow! [Reuters]


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is losing a million bucks a week. Christ. [Fresh Loaf]