• Is Time Warner planning to shed its Time Inc. magazine division? [Crain's]
• Condé Nast is hunkering down for a big round of budget cuts, as you've probably heard. One Condé title that happens to be doing quite well: Vanity Fair's Italian edition, which having its best year ever, apparently.
• Saturday Night Live's Jenny Slate won't be punished for cursing on the air. But it's looking like Darrell Hammond may have been dropped from the show.
• Tina Brown's Daily Beast is planning to get into book publishing. [NYT]
• Former Times film critic (and Turner Classic Movies host) Elvis Mitchell is in financial trouble again: He reportedly owes $500,000 in back taxes. [P6]
• How much the cast of The Hills makes might make you nauseous. [TDB]
• Can Twitter ever earn enough in advertising revenue to justify its recent valuation of $1 billion? It's highly unlikely, say some observers. [AdAge]
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was No. 1 again this weekend. [LAT]

In your wispy Monday media column: the New York Times performs unnecessary duties, Wesleyan spends unnecessary money, a hockey team gets a pet reporter, and people like to read about gangsters.

Weep, struggling members of the creative underclass, for your secret aspirations are drawing to a close: this may be the very last month of Conde Nast, Luxury Version. Coming soon: Conde Nast, Wailing Version.

Newsweek's Johnnie L. Roberts reports that Ebony, which was founded with a $500 loan in 1942, is in "big, big trouble" and shopping itself to Time Warner and Viacom.

Attention media bosses: The summer has ended and your intern guard has changed. But maybe there's one apprentice you'd like to keep, hmmm, providing regular "feedback" to? Jessica Wakeman has been that intern, and she has some tips.

• Condé Nast editors and publishers may be forced to cut their budgets by as much as 25% now that the consultants reviewing operations are completing their tour of duty. Not surprisingly, "significant layoffs" are expected. [NYO]
• More trouble for Harvey: The Weinstein Co. says it plans to cut 35 additional positions at the film company over the next month or so. [THR]
• A new bidder for beleaguered BusinessWeek appears to have emerged in ex-BMG chief Strauss Zelnick and former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz. [BW]
• WSJ, the glossy owned by the Wall Street Journal, is expanding [WWD]
• The CW is planning a reality show about what it's like to be a Virgin flight attendant in search of "good times, great parties, adventure and love." [Wrap]
• Mark Consuelos (or Mr. Kelly Ripa) has been given the boot by Oprah. [NYP]
• The Observer is moving from the Flatiron district to a Jared Kushner-owned building in Midtown: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." [NYO]
• Eight out of ten Americans say they would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to bail out failing newspapers. You're shocked by that, we're sure. [E&P]

In your wonderful Wednesday media column: the NYO's getting a new home, the WaPo redesigns its magazine, Michael Moore has fancy party, and Katie Couric meets Glenn Beck and they totally make out (or do they?).

For weeks now, a scary number has been floating through the hallowed halls of Conde Nast: 25%. That's how much the gossipmongers speculated McKinsey would chop the company's budget. Evil rumors! Now it looks like that frightening number was correct.

• Barack Obama's appearance on David Letterman's show last night helped the Late Night host score his second-highest ratings ever. [NYT, WP]
• Dan Rather scored a couple of victories in his suit against CBS: A motion by the network to dismiss the case was denied by a judge; and Rather's lawyers will be permitted to question Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. [Reuters]
• Yesterday, activists handing out fake copies of the Post outside its offices were detained by cops. Today, the paper says it was "flattered" by it. [NYP]
• Book deals: Jenny Sanford, the estranged wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, is writing "inspirational memoir" for Random House. And Andrew Young, an aide to former Senator John Edwards, has landed a deal with St. Martin's Press' Thomas Dunne Books to publish his tell-all memoir.
• In an effort to keep more viewers tuned in, ABC plans to reduce—yes, reduce—the number of commercials in the premieres of its new shows. [LAT]
• Fox won the opening night of the fall season, a first for the network. [THR]

In your warming Tuesday media column: The New York Post softens its stance on the Fake NYP, foolish kids flock to J-schools, a few magazines do not so poorly, and NYT stock is for sale!

In your momentous Monday media column: Conde Nast mag closure rumors continue to leak, everybody's selling weed these days, the Amish organize their newspapers in an insane manner, and a "joke," about J-school!

In your fading Friday media column: America's most august lefty magazine learns how to makes Ca$h the Ebay way, Ivy League murder obsession explained, Suze Orman may wake you up soon, and some assholes still love Tom Friedman.

The New Yorker Festival is coming up! It's Lollapalooza for the urban intelligentsia. Tickets go on sale today at noon, and if you don't buy them immediately then forget seeing the good stuff. A guide to the good stuff, below.

Conde Nast! Every scrap of news about it is precious, because everyone's afraid that this McKinsey review is just an excuse to gut the once-fancy magazine empire. But! Conde's weakest magazines might even make it through this alive.

In your unexpected Thursday media column: Michael Moore's reputation as the foremost authority on newspapers is challenged, the Sun-Times' unions play a dangerous game, Jenna Bush does a TV thing, and Alex Balk is persecuted without end.

In your willful Wednesday media column: Meghan McCain is the queen of all media, BusinessWeek's sale grinds on, Lou Dobbs catches a boycott, and you can finally find political opinions, on the internet.

New York magazine has a new story about a Nepali woman who came to visit her daughter in Woodside, Queens and got lost, wandering alone for more than two days. How's schmancy New York mag track down these outer-borough oddities?

• So how did Jay Leno's new show do? He hit it out of the park ratings-wise, roping in an estimated 18 million viewers. The reviews were all pretty lousy, though, so don't be surprised if it's all downhill from here. [AdAge, LAT, THR]
• The sale of BusinessWeek: Bruce Wasserstein has dropped out as a potential acquirer of the struggling mag. And it's cutting 20% of its staff. [BW, NYT]
• ABC News has apologized to the White House for Nightline anchor Terry Moran's tweet about Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass." [LAT]
• Speaking of the White House, Barack Obama will be David Letterman's guest on Monday night; it's the first time a sitting president has done the show. [NYT]
• Oprah's season premiere scored big thanks to Whitney Houston. [Wrap]
• The House of Harvey has sustained another blow: Harvey Weinstein's 70 percent stake in the home-video distributor Genius Products, once worth as much as $400 million, is now pretty much worthless. [NYP]
• Speaking of the film mogul, The Weinstein Co. picked up the rights to A Single Man, designer Tom Ford's debut film, at the Toronto Film Festival. [THR]

In your revenue-generating Tuesday media column: the BusinessWeek bidding draws to a close, Americans would pay only a pittance for newspaper websites, Peter Shankman's getting rich somehow, and the WaPo is determined not to write about dwarves.