For magazines, the first quarter of this year was hell. Particularly for Conde Nast. Now, ad sales figures for the first half are out. They're hell. Particularly for Conde Nast!

Downside: You're a laid-off autoworker. Upside: Free trip to see Eminem in LA. Downside wins.

The Way We Live Now: Schizophrenically. By Friday everybody was like "Stocks have recovered!" and this morning everyone panicked and sold everything, predictably. Monkeys are rampaging through this weak economy!

It's time for newspaper and magazine companies to start reporting how they did in the first quarter of this wondrous year, 2009, when The Lord smote them for their sins. It was epically terrible.

2009 is a terrible time to be young, if you're the type of young person who wants a job in the media, as opposed to the drug distribution industry. The "entry level" is...closed.

Conde Nast could really use some good news. Instead, today's news is that the company is planning cuts in its media group, which handles its biggest advertisers and marketers. That's even worse than it sounds.

Conventional wisdom says that smaller local papers are safer than bigger papers, because they have less competition. Then again, an amazing number of people do not give a fuck about their local papers.

In his memo yesterday, Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend told the company's employees that "difficult decisions" are coming. How bad could Conde's 2009 really be? Catastrophic, potentially.

It was bad enough when a Fox News producer was fired for possessing child pornography. But now a former NPR correspondent has been charged in a child porn case. The problem is media-wide!

The stock market closed down almost 300 points today, almost equaling its November low point. CNBC anchors have been so flustered all day that they can barely speak English, as this clip illustrates.

The New York Times Co. released its fourth quarter financial results this morning. They are bad, bad, bad, and apparently without any upside on any front anywhere. Observe:

Just because we're in the midst of an apocalypse, people these days like to say, "Oh, the media is so negative. What about the good news?" Here's some good news: shut up. Times are bad, and if there's one thing the media loves, it's bad times, because bad times= lots of NEWS. Though the media does prefer bad times that don't involve media layoffs. Regardless, the important thing here is that bad news is not what you have to fear. Be scared when you start to see the good news. That's when you know the end is nigh.

Don't blame the Radar staff for those horrible celebrity gossip items going up on the site today. The entire staff has been locked out of the office since Friday afternoon. After the news the magazine would be folding was announced on Friday during an interminable meeting, an HR official came in to tell the staff at 1p.m. that they would need to empty their desks by 3p.m.Staffers were, of course, a bit disgruntled that they had just two hours to clear out their things, but the HR official made a little speech about how he had just lost his mother and learned in the process that stuff didn't matter nearly as much as the memories. Of course, employees looking to copy their email address books and collect their things may have disagreed. Said one unnamed ex-Radar staffer: "I'm not even sure he had a mother." But with the number of pink slips flying these days, we're sure there are worse layoff horror stories out there. Please send yours to tips@gawker.com.

Hey, how about some more terrible news? The LA Times is laying off 75 people from editorial. "This is about 10% of our total staff and these cuts are comparable in scale to those made on the business side of The Times last week." Sigh. So soon after their redesign launch! Yes well innovation director Lee Abrams will probably have something innovative to say about all this, soon. This is not even the extent of the bad news. See, over the weekend the FAS-FAX circulation numbers came out and basically everyone lost. Circ was down more than 5% for the LAT. Meanwhile, on our coast, the Newark Star-Ledger is slashing 40% of its newsroom staff. They are trying to sell the paper but no one wants it. It is basically a bad time to enjoy getting a paycheck. Sadly, the Newspaper Industry is not too big to fail.

Oh, this is really not what you want to hear if you are a fan of the newspapers, or journalism as a whole, or especially if you're an investor in the NYT Co.: In the wake of shitty third-quarter earnings, the ratings service Moody's is warning that it may downgrade the company's debt to junk status. It's currently at Baa3, the lowest rating before junk. A downgrade would make it even harder for the company to borrow money, which—without going into a lot of financial mumbo-jumbo—is not what they need right now (Pictured: their year-to-date stock price). Financial mumbo-jumbo quote from Moody's analysts below:

So, major music magazines: are they in trouble or what? The music industry is driven by young influencers, who are some of the most tech-savvy people in the world, meaning they're turning away from print magazines in droves, if they haven't already. In addition to that, the majority of major music magazines are crap. Ad revenue at most of them plummeted in the first quarter: Blender's revenue was down 9%; Vibe's was down 19%; and Rolling Stone's was down 27% (Spin was up 27%, huzzah). But savvy managers like Blender publisher Ben Madden aren't concerned, because they know that you all turn to them when you want to real authentic info, man:

Anthony Martignetti, proprietor of the Douchebag Restaurant Hall of Fame contender Bar Martignetti, is contemplating opening another restaurant. He tells New York "I had a breakfast meeting at Pastis with a real-estate broker. We're looking at a couple of spots downtown [for a new restaurant] — I can't really say until we sign the lease. Pastis is very close to one of them we're looking at." BLAARG!!!

RZA, former head of the Wu-Tang Clan, weighs in on the sexual assaults at current hotspot The Box: "'Inside the club and outside the club are two different things. I think when you leave the club the good time ends." [NYDN, quote oddly not online]

Yesterday, real estate agent to the stars, former Ramones manager and ex-wife of Belle and Sebastian muse Seymour Stein was found lying in a pool of blood in her multimillion dollar apartment. The medical examiner has since ruled that she died from "blows to the head and neck." She lived, as the Times writes in a "building, at the corner of 78th Street, [that[ has the security of doormen, elevator operators, and surveillance cameras mounted on the sidewalk canopy and in the lobby." However: "a reporter found an unlocked service door on the side street."

Serge Becker and Simon Hammerstein's Chrystie Street nightclub The Box has seen its cachet folding in on itself. Just last week, the New York Times even called it over. But hold on! Turns out it is the spot for horrible and scary rapists. Or maybe just one really horrible one.