In your blizzardy Monday media column: rumored layoffs at Men's Health, David Simon is righteously angry again, Ladies Home Journal's integrity—its most valuable asset, next to yarn—is questioned, and more!

A tipster tells us that "Men's Health and Women's Health are merging advertising and marketing staffs today," a move they say will be accompanied by "big layoffs." If you have more info, email us. [UPDATE: Another tipster says "Looks like it was only one dude." If so, big whoop over not much, on our part. Please continue to emails us more info. UPDATE 2: "Rodale, publisher of brands such as Prevention and Men's Health, has cut another 20 sales-side employees," Mediaweek reports.]


The American Society of Newspaper Editors, which is, by the standards of newspapers, a pretty important organization, is canceling its annual convention, because they figured out that attendance would be low because all newspaper editors are currently bogged down writing layoff memos. Sad.

David Simon was a Baltimore Sun reporter on the police beat before he went and made The Wire and (hopefully) millions of dollars. And now he's so fed up with the god damn state of the city and the police department and the reporters there since he left that he had to go and start making calls again, himself, just recently, to get to the bottom of a crime story! And furthermore he sure as hell didn't see any "bloggers" or "citizen journalists" out there finding out the facts! Some people think David Simon is a jerk cause he's always mad and lashing out at ill-chosen targets, but I think David Simon is a great man, in his own angry way.


The LA Times: not paying its freelancers. Pay up, fuckers!

Ladies Home Journal is accused of violating the advertising/ edit wall in its recent issue featuring Ellen Degeneres. Well they took the cover photo from Cover Girl, the company for which Degeneres is a spokesmodel, and which bought ads right next to the cover story on Ellen, so yea. Still it's just incredibly hard to get outraged about crumbling journalism standards at Ladies Home Journal.