In your dark Friday media column: Every print media company is cutting everything, hipster baby site Babble is clean, and nobody at Davos knows how to save newspapers:

Belo Corp., owner of the Dallas Morning News, is laying off 500 people, suspending 401(k) matching, and even making employees pay for parking. Sucks, and is mean.


A tipster tells us Wenner Media, home of Rolling Stone and US, is also ending its 401(k) matching. Sucks.

Gannett is writing down the value of its newspapers by nearly six billion dollars. Sucks, in a historically large way.

The decrepit LA Times won't print a separate local news section, to cut costs, despite "the unanimous and vocal objections of senior editors." This will surely make even more people cancel their subscriptions. Sucks.

And a Time Inc. tipster tells us: "Today (Friday 30) all staff are to be told that subscriptions for ALL outside newspapers and magazines are to be cancelled. Read em on line, is the new edict." Funny thing, for a magazine company. Sucks.

Nerve Media is spinning off Babble.com so that investors can invest directly in Babble, a "hipster parenting" site that falls in the same vicinity of cultural repulsiveness as Park Slope, without having to invest in Nerve.com, the "hipster sex" site that at least has the benefit of having naked pictures of adults on it.


At Davos, lots of the remaining important people are discussing media business models. Or at least the biased media is reporting that. To sum up the ideas so far, "Good companies have a better chance, maybe? Do something on the internet?" Nieman Lab estimates you could endow every newspaper in America for a mere $114 billion. Get started!