It's very logical and very sad: Publication shut-downs and layoffs are coming so quickly they can only be effectively tracked at 140 characters or less, on Twitter.

For weeks, the Anna Wintour rumors coming out of Condé Nast concerned the Vogue queen's failures and purportedly impending departure. Now someone is spreading word about the Dear Editor's glorious success. Hmm.

Women in 2008 "made no significant gains in winning more top U.S. business jobs," according to a new study released today. (If you work on Wall Street, consider it the Cruz-Callan conundrum.) The good news? Women are expected to make major strides in the year ahead, since Barack Obama's victory has led to an increased desire for—yes, you guessed—change. Oh, and because men have screwed up everything they've touched over the last few years. [Reuters]

Remember Josh Persky, the unemployed Wall Streeter who used up most of his 15 minutes back in June when he took to the streets with a "MIT Grad For Hire" sandwich board around his neck? Good news! He's landed a job! "After 11-odd months, plenty of interviews and many a TV appearance, the stunt resulted in a job at Weiser LLP, an accounting firm." Is this a sign the worst is over? Not really, but you're welcome to use it to cheer yourself amid the reports today of political corruption, stock losses, health epidemics and whatnot. [PEHub via Clusterstock]

Jay Leno will stay at NBC and move to 10pm weeknight slot after Conan O'Brien takes over his Tonight Show in June, Broadcasting & Cable and Nikki Finke are reporting. Everyone thought Leno was probably going to end up at ABC after he said in a July interview "I am definitely done next year - with NBC." But NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker persuaded him to stay! Probably with wheelbarrows full of money. The big loser in all this? That would probably be embattled NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who just survived a major corporate bloodletting but suddenly finds himself with five fewer hours a week to program. And to think he was having so much fun skiing in Utah this weekend!

In lieu of next week's (we're guessing) inevitable headline "Everybody Everywhere Laid Off," we'll continue to bring the grim news piecemeal, as it terribly unfolds. Today it's art! The market for fancy paintings and stuff has been crap lately, as, really, the arts are always the first thing to go when everyone's broke. Sotheby's and Christie's, our premierest and poshest auction houses, both announced today that layoffs and salary cuts are imminent.

"I have no intention of leaving American Vogue now or in the foreseeable future." [Post]

♦ A bruising day in the markets is expected to follow the scary job news this morning: Employers slashed 533,000 jobs last month, making it the most jobs lost in a single month since December of 1974. [CNN]
♦ Merrill Lynch shareholders will vote on the bank's merger with Bank of America today. [DB]
♦ Things are getting worse for hedge fund king Ken Griffin: His Citadel Investment Group was down another 13% in November. [WSJ]
♦ Neel Kashkari says the TARP is working; he and Hank Paulson may be the only ones. [Bloomberg]
♦ Citi has closed on the sale of its German subsidiary to Credit Mutuel-CIC for $6.6 billion. [MW]

With so many layoffs going down today, it's a good time to take a look at how, exactly, a layoff memo should be written. Actually, any time you're critiquing a flood of layoff memos is by definition a bad time. But we'll disregard that for the moment. People need to be let down in the proper way, lest they get justifiably angry enough to put managers up against the wall. After the jump, we analyze five elements of today's memos that illustrate everything you corporate flacks need to know about firing people like us:

This morning, it was announced that NBC Universal is cutting 30 people from its sales team. But that is just the beginning. TVNewser says that NBCU has started a round of planning 500 layoffs which could continue through today and into next week. We'll be updating this post as more NBCU layoff news comes in [More info on NBC News cuts now added]. Here's what we know so far:

Eliot Spitzer has a new job! John Koblin reports that starting tomorrow, the scandalized ex-guv is going to be writing a column for Slate called "The Best Policy." It will be about "the financial crisis and fixing financial markets and the economy generally," and will almost certainly be very informative (Spitzer was once a populist hero, remember!) and very boring. Because really, do you think Spitzer's going to run down his hooker stories (which is what everyone actually wants to hear) in Slate? He's saving that for the book. They should have gone after Ashley Dupre as a columnist instead. "THE SEX POLICY." It's a win-win. [NYO]

Eliot Spitzer has a new job! The former governor will be writing a column for Slate.com beginning tomorrow. [NYO]

Everyone's been talking about David Gregory moderating Meet the Press all week, even stretching the very definition of journalism to report on it. And yet the NBC News chief White House correspondent hasn't even taken the job yet, according to the Times, and all the leaks might even ruin his chances! But probably not, because it sounds like one of his competitors for the job spilled the beans:

Sean Avery has long relished his role as the National Hockey League's miscreant-in-chief, but the Dallas Stars forward's internship at Vogue seems to have sharpened his instincts for provocation to razor precision. Avery was just suspended indefinitely by the NHL for talking smack about two ex-girlfriends, actress Elisha Cuthbert and model Rachel Hunter, who ended up in the arms of other players. His own team said it would have suspended him had the league not done likewise. The truly insane part of the whole incident is that Avery sought out TV cameras so he could broadcast his self-destructive diss. (UPDATE: Video after the jump.)

The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart.

Only 50 more days of President George W. Bush. So many feelings, right? ABC has released the transcript of a Charlie Gibson sit-down interview airing tonight, and it must be said that our current president was, and remains, a very stupid man. For example, he blames the current recession on "a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in president." But now is a time to look forward. Is there a future for the man who wrecked our nation and the world? Yes, and his stupidity is what makes it work. Take our advice and prosper, George; here are the five keys to the revival of your image:

Monster.com and CareerBuilder, the two biggest job-search websites, are both planning to spend millions on Super Bowl ads! They want to promote their fancy website redesigns and big plans to get everybody jobs now that there are no jobs left. This economic downturn is leaving everyone laid off, which is a great business opportunity! Or so a lot of people seem to think. But is it really? We have detected a flaw in this largest of growth industries: Marketing to the Unemployed. It seems like a great idea at first. All these people without jobs, and full of desperation! We got a press release for a new "networking" event" called "Get Canned":

Back in 1996, cable news was still innocent, and even an evil Republican genius like Roger Ailes had to make a pretense of political objectivity. So Fox News Channel was careful to seek a token "Liberal To Be Determined" to balance Sean Hannity when the conservative pundit helped anchor the network's debut. These days CNN, MSNBC and Fox all carry unabashedly slanted shows on their lineups, so Fox apparently feels no compunction about giving Hannity formal title to the show he's always had his way with: The host will go it alone following co-host Alan Colmes' previously-announced departure, two sources told the Times.

When times get tough and employment becomes a far-fetched hope for many, it's good to know that you can still turn to the Paper of Record to direct you towards the last remaining employers. Specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency. They still need bodies! The shadowy government spymasters are the lead advertisers under the "Jobs" tab on the New York Times' website (the ad clicks straight through to their homepage). There are only two possible explanations for this. Both of them are bad. Conspiracy: The recession has forced the Times' true role as a government propaganda agent to the surface! You think Judy Miller's WMD coverage was a mistake? The paper has been promoting the CIA's position to the publi for years! Open your eyes, people! This ad is but the tip of the iceberg! The Job Market Is Even Worse Than You Thought: I mean, they couldn't even get Wal-Mart or somebody to sponsor the Jobs page? Campbell's Soup isn't hiring factory workers? Clandestine operations in the War on Terror, it seems, are the last place to get reasonable health care coverage. And Jesus Christ, you can't even make 80K for parachuting into Pakistan with a submachine gun to hunt Al-Qaeda. Times are tough.

After we went to all the trouble of offering Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre seven—seven!—different career choices yesterday, what does she do? She goes and tells Diane Sawyer, "I want to go after my music and do what I love. And not lose track of who I am on the way. I'm trying to pursue my music. I'm still living for it. I'm not gonna give up my dream. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to let this change who I am. And what I love." All of those short declarative sentences do not change the fact that your song "All We Want" is just the sort of generic R&B bullshit blathering that has already largely destroyed our nation's airwaves. We say this as a friend! Regrettably, Ashley is listening to her other friends: her MySpace friends. Like Whitney Houston, and "Fin" from Williamsburg: