In the last two days, we told you about layoffs at Forbes.com, Essence, Entertainment Weekly, and National Geographic, with a bonus false alert at Nylon thrown in for good measure. And the sad fact is that these are just the ones we could get around to doing. All these media layoffs are like a band-aid being pulled off verrrrryyyy slowly, and—unfortunately for the laid-off—each progressive wave of cuts makes us want to tune out the pain even more. This is the saddest thing of all. When good people get laid off they deserve to elicit some shock; they deserve to be remembered, and talked about, and reminisced upon. They deserve for the people who cover their demise to go into detail about who they were, and what they've done in their careers, and the big stories they broke, and how they changed things, and who they knew, and where they might go from here. They deserve commenters to bemoan their departure and joke about their good lines and reassure them that they'll be missed. But we have to face reality here: it ain't gonna happen. The media now is like a city with a high murder rate, where people get shot dead with such mind-numbing regularity that it gets harder and harder to summon the appropriate amount of outrage for their doom. We all still imagine that when our time comes, there will be a collective pause amongst our peers, and everyone will silently cross themselves and wonder how it could happen to such a talented person. But realistically, we'll be just another number. The best you can do now is say your little blanket agnostic prayer at night for all these assorted victims, then keep your head down and hope that you can ride out the downturn until good days come back again. On that note, here's some more layoff news we didn't get to today:

Even in a perfect economy, the media would be having economic problems dealing with the internet's impact on the traditional media business models. That's more than enough to worry about. But of course the economy is far from perfect, so the media has an extra challenge: its advertisers are losing money. And for some, we're not talking about fluctuations; we're talking about huge ad buyers who might be wiped off the map. This is why every media company is really, really hoping that the government rushes to the aid of General Motors and its dying US auto industry friends. The auto industry is one of the biggest advertisers of all. Local newspapers reap a lot of their revenue from local auto dealer ads. (The recent decline of those, along with real estate ads and retail ads, has local papers scrambling to figure out what to do). But that's just one small piece; television auto ads and sponsorships are declining too. GM spent more than $2 billion on advertising last year, and when they make cuts, media companies can see tens or hundreds of millions of dollars evaporate. In August, GM pulled out of its sponsorship of the Academy Awards. In September, the company slashed its digital ad budget and decided not to sponsor the Super Bowl. Even when GM tries to spend money, they're cursed. They signed up for a big product placement deal in the craptastic new NBC Christian Slater show My Own Worst Enemy—but yesterday NBC announced it was going to cancel the show because of low ratings. Boy that sucks. And today we learned that, thanks the auto industry's troubles, Christmas has been ruined at yet another media company! A tipster sent us an internal memo to staffers at Sirius XM Satellite Radio from the CEO Mel Karmazin, the former Viacom exec; he's copying his old company by canceling the holiday party and giving everyone an extra vacation day instead. "The economy is slowing, our OEM and retail partners are hurting, satellite radio sales are not growing as we would like, and our stock price reflects that along with other issues," Karmazin writes. A major reason: all those new cars with built-in satellite radios aren't selling. How bad is it overall?

How long can the dying print media ride the feel-good Obama victory wave? Forever and ever and ever! Or at least another month, maybe. The effect on newspapers was only one day long (and for as long as they can sell reprints of that issue—six months?), but magazines are just starting to take their share of the American Dream, which is to pimp out our hopeful new black president for every last dollar his likable young ass can generate. Ready to pay extra for a thin, hastily assembled package of glossy photos and sickeningly reverent journalistic pablum? Sure you are!:

Nick Denton, who rules over the entire Gawker empire, is the most pessimistic man in the media. In a way, this is comforting, because you know it's very unlikely that things will be worse than he predicts. In another, more visceral way, it is not comforting at all. But nobody said it was supposed to be, so oh well. Today Nick has issued his 2009 Internet Media Plan, which amounts to one big Forecast of Doom. Highlights: The main point:

With the stock market officially crashed and the economy collapsed, everyone wants a piece of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout package, especially now that there's only $60 billion left. The cash line includes automakers, insurers, credit card issuers, boat financers, blah blah blah the important part is they all have to go beg as supplicants to a strapping man in a cowboy hat, who says no, and spanks them. Forget bald, hunky Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson or his young ski bum deputy Neel Kashkari: Jeb Mason will neg you for the win. Reports the Times:

Poor Starbucks is barely making any money. The coffee chain's profit dropped 97% in the fourth quarter, because it's spending so much money closing down all the stores it opened earlier, when they thought every block in the world needed a Starbucks. At least they're good at giving away coffee for free! Hey, remember when Starbucks was the emergency backup job of the creative underclass, where you could make some scratch and get health care as a starving artist? Now it's aspirational. The emergency backup job is burglary. [AP]

In keeping with the new law that every single ad for everything must how have a "Hard Times" theme, companies that want to sell any product to the public are now forced to talk about how cheap their stuff is, which just months ago would have been offensive to their "brand integrity" or some such bullshit. They've already started plastering coupons (gauche!) on the outside of everything and trying to convince you that their product fits into your new pauper lifestyle. How bad has it gotten? This bad:

Rember how Obama's election was the greatest thing to happen to the newspaper industry in a decade? People lined up across New York City to buy copies of the New York Times proclaiming his victory! And the smart ones put those copies right on Ebay. This chart shows the average of the five highest prices paid on Ebay each day for that November 5 issue of the NYT. One early seller fetched $400; today you can have your pick for less than $30. Oh, the metaphor.

Hey Ivy League students, did you think that the walls of the Ivory Tower would shelter you from this global financial crisis? Figured you'd be able to continue pulling in your financial aid and frolicking in your school's brand new buildings full of fancy professors who teach one class per year and spend the rest of the time writing little-read books? Think again! Because it looks like even the mighty Harvard is losing billions in the current market downturn. More billions than you might expect:

Here in New York, advertisers will toss up huge billboards on every flat surface, zoning laws be damned (see here for nice chart illustrating how much the police care about illegal advertising). Well that's pretty embarrassing for us, because they're even cracking down on the insane proliferation of billboards in Moscow. In Russia! Is America poised to take back the international "Rampant and Rapacious Uncontrolled Advertising In Service of Almighty Capitalism" title? Well, only if the economic crisis doesn't force Moscow to quit taking down billboards before it starts. It's a nice idea, but we don't want to cut into revenue here!

♦ Employers cut 240,000 jobs in October, bringing the year's total job losses to nearly 1.2 million. The unemployment rate is now 6.5%, up from from 6.1% in September. [CNNMoney]
♦ Why has the market been falling sharply in recent days? One reason is that hedge funds have been selling billions of their holdings to meet demands for cash from their investors and their lenders. [WSJ]
♦ Citigroup is reportedly planning another round of layoffs. [DB]
♦ Ken Griffin's Citadel says his fund lost about 22 percent last month. [NYP]
♦ The evidence is largely anecdotal, but it appears there's been an increase in suicides related to the financial crisis. [NYT]

The Times has new details about Eric Schurenberg's departure from Time Inc.'s Money: It is supposedly related to "talk within the company of a new editorial direction" for the 2 million-circulation title. Yes, the collapse of Western capitalism would seem to pose some, uh, new and unique challenges to a personal finance magazine, and it sounds like Money has already found more than its share of efficiencies on the business side, sharing an ad staff and website with other company brands. Who will be the Neel Kashkari of Money's editorial rescue plan? We hear the new editor might be Ellen McGirt, a former Money columnist and editor-at-large who later wrote for Fortune and Fast Company. (UPDATE: Not her, she says.) You may have seen her on the teevee!

Jesus Christ, while you weren't paying attention Disney has been busy insinuating itself into every niche of your consumer lifestyle. Do you consider yourself a fashionable person with fancy urban tastes who would never be caught dead wearing the winking Goofy sweatshirts and Tinkerbell baby-tees that are so popular in America at large? Better check your labels. Disney is determined to be included in your style, at all costs! The Death Star-like company is branching out, launching "exclusive" fashion lines that are only sold at upscale stores, home furnishings, and other products designed not for those people who love Mickey Mouse. Repeat: you may own a Disney product that does not have Mickey Mouse on it.

New York City Mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg is bringing his Midas touch to the ailing media industry! In the form of a year-long study sponsored by the city. It's not that Bloomberg, who got rich running his own quasi-media company, has a soft spot for newsprint; it's that there are 160,000 media jobs in NYC, according to the Observer, and it would be beneficial for the municipal tax base not to allow them to crumble away in the face of a changing economy. The question is, can the city actually do anything about it?

The 600 layoffs at Time Inc. that the magazine publishing giant announced last week will reportedly cost Time Warner, its parent company, at least $100 million. That averages out to $167K per layoff. How high is the severance pay over there? Time Inc. salaries are high, but Jesus. Even assuming they toss in a few months of health care benefits and hire some outside consultants to help execute the cuts, it's still a lot of money for only 6% of the workforce to leave. (It would cost $1.67 billion just to fire everybody. Fun with math!). Anyone with more info on the layoffs or the severance packages, email us. [All Things D]

Elite media types and financiers aren't the only ones suffering during this economic downturn, you know. Models are suffering too! And who better to shine a light on the travails of modeling these days than Isobella Jade, the short, self-made woman who rose from homelessness to microniche prominence by writing her memoir in the Apple store and then triumphantly eating a burger. Remember her? Yea! She's still a hardworking self-promoter, so we checked in and got her take on the crucial question, "How Does the Economy affect a Body Parts Model?":

Hey, stocks are up again! The Dow jumped 900 points today, the second-largest point gain ever. The largest point gain ever came two weeks ago, when the Dow jumped more than 900 points, only to crater once again in the following days. This illustrates the classic stock maxim, "Buy low, sell lower a day or two later as you're gripped by irrational panic." Click to watch the market's closing seconds, as traders in the background erupt in cheers. Hey guys, wild speculation on short-term stock price swings is serious business.

Wow: The Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected 100-year-old paper with a circulation a lot smaller than its reputation, just announced that it will stop printing issues for good in April of next year. It will continue to publish online only. In doing so, the paper essentially gives up the cost—and "prestige"—of its money-losing print edition in exchange for being able to hold onto more of its reporting staff, including several foreign bureaus. The CSM is by far the most important paper to take this step. Do you know that this means? That the CSM is very smart:

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the belligerent old Viacom and CBS owner: Sumner Redstone is facing the sort of debt that would send most people into a nervous breakdown. First he has to weasel out of paying an $800 million Bank of America Securities loan before the end of December. But that's not the worst of it. He then most get unanimous consent from 55 separate institutions to refinance another $800 million loan. The Post thinks he might be toast:

One more sign that these are tough economic times: more and more women are selling their eggs for cash. According to fertility specialists, the number of women willing to go through with the ordeal of hormone treatments and fertility drugs has risen 30 to 40 percent over the past few months as more women are tempted by the a payday that can be between $5,000 and $10,000. The trend isn't limited to eggs. Sperm donations are up, too, which may explain what former Lehman Brothers bankers have been doing as of late (when they're not selling stuff on Ebay, of course). [ABC News]