In your fabulous Thursday media column: John Madden retires, newspapers just falling apart everywhere, Martha Stewart gets a fat contract, and Fiji's version of The Onion:

• The Times is folding in several sections of the paper (City, Escapes); scrapping the weekly fashion spread in the New York Times Magazine, and cutting the budget for freelance writers. Grim times, indeed. [NYT, Gawker]
• NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is reportedly concerned that CNBC has become too conservative and is becoming "the anti-Obama network." [P6]
• The new Ben Silverman? That would be ABC's Stephen McPherson. [NYP]
• Bill O'Reilly tends to ambush liberals more often than he does conservatives. Could that mean he, like, has an agenda or something? How surprising! [NYT]
• Twitter on fire: Traffic is up 131 percent from February. [AdAge]
• Gannett Co. reported a 60 percent decline in first-quarter profit today. [AP]

Hockey's reigning bad boy Sean Avery turns 29 today. Mandy Moore is 25. Haley Joel Osment is turning 21. Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds 51. John Madden turns 73. Q-Tip turns 39. Actress Laura Bell Bundy is 28. Writer Paul Theroux is turning 68. Editor Kate Medina is 66. And Steven Seagal is 57. Weekend birthdays below!