Something is stirring at Forbes Media, the publisher of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com, two similarly named but otherwise uncooperative publications. Bill Baldwin, the paper tiger who runs print editorial, has issued a memo to his staff announcing two promotions. The Dickensianly named Stewart Pinkerton "will continue to spend a lot of his time overseeing the contributions of print writers to Forbes.com and vice versa." The other guy, Tom Post, will remain another faceless middle-management drone, but we're inclined to like the guy, since he went to the University of Chicago.

Got layoffs? Don't spend hours crafting the perfect "Hard Times, Hard Choices" blog post for your leader. Here's how to hack the media to deliver your message:

Jason Calacanis is a master storyteller. Like most writers, he needs an editor. Here's a summary remix of Calacanis's secret insider mail, sent a few hours after Mahalo's layoffs were expertly leaked to everyone but me, thanks pal.

Why did Yahoo's Gary Gale Twitter about a Wi-Fi network labeled "Valleywag" at Yahoo's quarterly all-hands meeting? If I worked for the New York Times, I'd give you all some blah-blah-blah about how we don't discuss our reporting methods. But I run a gossip rag, so I'll just play coy. We did gather that Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen was asked about the company's pending layoffs of 10 percent of the workforce.Yahoos at the meeting were told that the job cuts would come after Thanksgiving. And the severance? Jorgensen said the company would "do right by Yahoos" — and referred to the legally mandated notice period required by the WARN Act. Translation: Yahoos will get 60 days' severance, because it's the law. Oh, and there's no point in cancelling the holiday parties, because they've already been paid for. After the all-hands, Gale and other Yahoo employees proceeded to an Oktoberfest party.

I'll give Yahoo's culture this much: It is democratic and egalitarian, treating all employees equally. Equally like children. Yahoo's "start wearing purple" campaign was a clue — really, where do you see adults wearing purple, outside of a science-fiction convention? But I didn't realize how institutional the infantilization was until I got an eyeful of Yahoo's management-training materials. They are Web 2.0 meets The One-Minute Manager — all bubbly, rounded corners, big quotes, and emoticons. There's even a mirror, to remind Yahoo's leadership what preciously unique snowflakes they are. The richest part for me was the letter from CEO Jerry Yang, calling for "managerial courage." If only he could take his own advice. Here's Yahoo flash-card-sized advice for managers:

Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Hornik's invite-only dealmaking conference, The Lobby, takes place again next week at a plush resort in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. Camp Cyprus was nothing compared to this funeral pyre of cash. Who cares that twentysomethings spent their own money to vacation with friends, and filmed an over-the-top video of their frolics? Hornik's hoedown is the ultimate marker of what-me-worry excess in an age of recession. And Valleywag has the complete list of who's going.Here's what should enrage you as you read it: Unlike the Cyprus trip, this one is ostensibly a work event, paid for by investors and shareholders. (I suppose a handful of entrepreneurs may have bought their own tickets, but in the hopes of paying themselves back by scoring an investment.) What's the agenda for this passel of languorous corporate dealmakers, ebullient entrepreneurs, and phlegmatic venture capitalists? They party. You pay. Later on, they consummate some deals with their pals that they would have struck anyway, crediting the boondoggle junket for "making the connection." Last year's event was an epic caper, marked by drink-throwing, late-night excursions, and salacious rumors of barside canoodling. Here's whose exploits we're looking forward to reporting, thanks to the moles we've placed throughout Hornik's guest list:

A tipster tells us that Yahoo plans to cut 3,500 jobs, chiefly in sales and finance, on December 10 — while keeping plans for a multimillion-dollar holiday party days before the cuts:

The Wall Street Journal snagged a copy of an email sent around the world's fourth-largest enterprise software company. I'm impressed that a firm with 50,000 employees and two CEOs managed to restrict its leaks to the Journal. Here's the raw email reconstructed from the Journal's blog post, which spends too much time framing and excerpting the missive. Notice how the story gets the awful irony out of the way first — SAP is freezing its own IT spending — then spells out a three-pronged plan that never once says "layoff."

A longtime reader sent me this classic post-layoff notice in response to our plea for more crowdsourced content. Instead of just telling me a story in text, he gave me a Word document mailed to all employees, so I could screencap it for you. This would've been an awesome post ... in July, when the doc is dated. Yahoo did everyone a favor by including Valleywag in its training video All Hands, the Movie. The lesson? Tipping us isn't about whether or not you get caught. It's about watching how long those idiots in HR take to figure it out.

We've got our first layoff-memo story — and it's actually about a layoff conducted without a memo. Read on, and don't forget to send in your own:

Silicon Valley is obsessed with a presentation by Sequoia Capital, the backer of Google, titled "R.I.P. Good Times". The venture capital firm's partners delivered it to its portfolio companies at a special meeting, predicting a long, painful recovery and advocating immediate cost cuts. We'd gotten notes from an attendee, but VentureBeat got its hands on the actual PowerPoint deck:

Bad times have hit sunnily optimistic northern California. Does it matter if the mayhem on Wall Street had any real connection with the tech-powered Silicon Valley economy? Some of the region's most influential power brokers believe it will — and by pushing others around, they can make perception reality. A helpful insider has provided notes from a recent meeting of Sequoia Capital, a backer of Apple, Cisco, and Google which has risen to become the Valley's preeminent venture-capital firm. Michael Moritz had summoned CEOs of Sequoia's portfolio companies to tell them to prepare for a long, hard downturn. The bottom line: All startups must become cash-flow positive — in other words, earn more than they spend. Or in other, other words, act like the real businesses they always should have emulated. Here are what our tipster claims are notes from the meeting, apparently forwarded by one of the attendees:

Nothing brings out a boss's penchant for doublespeak and obfuscation like a layoff. Take, for example, eBay PR boss Alan Marks's instant-classic "simplification" memo. Cutbacks are sure to continue as companies agonize over just how deep this recession will go; so, too, will the self-contradictory jargon and false logic which only makes bad news worse. Send in the worst layoff memos you've seen, and we'll publish them here.

"She shows up at noon - often w/hangover and then pisses everyone off with snarky arrogance and then leaves early to have drinks back in SF with digerati latte crowd ..." Quick, who is this about? Right, it's about anybody, so nobody cares. Now that Valleywag is down to two people who've already spent 12 years bickering with each other, we're looking for more crowdsourced gossip. From you. As Squirrel Boy said the other day, "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool." Valleywag wants to be your tech gossip brand. You send it in, we make it public without getting you fired. Readers have told me they'd send more stuff if they knew what we wanted. Here's a 3-step guide to what makes a good story:

Carat president Scott Sorokin found himself explaining to AdAge his version of a major company restructuring for the struggling ad firm, which focuses on Internet and interactive TV advertising. Carat clients have included Adidas, Hyundai, Microsoft and Ofoto. Yes, the downsizing will affect Carat's San Francisco office on Brannan near 4th. How do we know? Because someone accidentally sent PowerPoint and Word attachments meant for upper management to the entire company.

A tipster sent our gadget sister site, Gizmodo, a copy of Verizon's talking points for its employees to use against iPhone mania. Like last year's leaked "iWhatever" email from COO Jack Plating, it comes across mostly as validation that there's no phone like the iPhone in buyers' eyes.But I disagree with my esteemed colleague Kit Eaton at Gizmodo on one thing: AT&T's network is indeed the iPhone's weak spot. At least 50 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area not served by AT&T 3G. Even David Pogue's iPhone musical called out AT&T service quality as a minus. Verizon's EVDO network — which reaches 80 percent of Americans, per the cheat sheet — would be a much better match. Someday.

After Fark.com's Drew Curtis sent us a firsthand account last week of life on the set of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, the upcoming comedic movie masterpiece written by fratire dude Tucker Max, another crew member followed up with his own list of gripes to us about working under a first-time movie maker who's also one of America's foremost assholes. I enjoy these leaks because-unlike our own in-house appraisals of Tucker's style-they come from people with no real ideological reason to dislike the man. Some people just want to work in peace! After the jump, our tipster's account of Tucker Max-"usually pricks like him are surrounded by pricks," he says, but in this case, "there's just one dick and he's a big one."

Yesterday, we introduced you to the leaked chick-lit manuscript of mogul wife Leslie Zemeckis, who is married to Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis. Our publishing elf dubbed in "exhausting" as well as "derivative... clichéd and unpolished" in a reader's report. When we last left off, 24-year-old heiress/divorcee Natalie was sitting on the floor of her condo wearing a Juicy couture tracksuit, watching Entertainment Tonight and reading tabloids while spilling marinana sauce on herself. Now, we're introduced to Finn, the hottest young actor in town, who lives with his elderly Irish mother: "Finn took a swig from a 1992 bottle of Beaujolais and washed his mouth out as the blonde with the killer fake tits strolled by his bed..."

After EMI hired paisley-shirted IT exec Douglas Merrill away from Google to run the record label's digital business, other music groups have been on the hunt for a digital savior. Sony BMG, we hear, has been trying to fill an EVP position to run its digital music ventures. But after dangling a $700,000 salary in front of prospects for 8 months, its search firm, Korn/Ferry, still hasn't been able to fill the job. What this tells us: No one wants the job. One requirement: The candidate must "have a keen eye to find money on opportunities at hand." That graspingness is precisely why the record labels are so unpopular with musicians, their fans, and the the technologists creating the online tools through which people are increasingly stealing — sorry, "discovering" — music. The industry's in such a pathetic state, we thought we'd help Sony BMG and Korn/Ferry by airing the confidential job listing:

If Jerry Yang records a video for all the Yahoos and the best feel we get for it is a clever comment from Wabewalker — "You would think that they could shell out a few hundred bucks for a Teleprompter rather than having Jerry (excuse me, jerry) bob his head like a drinking bird" — well, then clearly Valleywag's Yahoo tipsters aren't doing their part. You know what to do, people — capture the video and send it in.