• The New York Times Co.'s bank balance is running a bit low, but that hasn't detered the company from handing out lavish pay packages. The company's CEO, Janet Robinson, received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up from $4.14 million in 2007. [NYP, HP]
• Is Rachel Maddow losing her glow? March was the lowest-rated month so far for Maddow's MSNBC show since its debut last fall. [LAT]
• The Chicago Tribune plans to cut another 20 percent of its newsroom staff as it looks to reduce expenses amid continuing declines in advertising. [CB]
• Yahoo posted a 78 percent decline in quarterly profits and said it would eliminate about 675 more jobs, or 5% of its work force. [WSJ]
• Tonight is Len Berman's last night at WNBC. [NYDN]

John Koten, the nautical-enthusiast CEO of Fast Company and Inc. publisher Mansueto Ventures, moved out of his office last week ... into a cubicle. The move has magazine workers "freaking out," a tipster tells us.

What thoughts keep magazines bosses up late at night? Late last night John Koten, the CEO of Fast Company publisher Mansueto Ventures, was wondering why his staff hasn't asked him about how great he is.

Here's a career tip from Ed Sussman, the fired head of Mansueto Digital: Have a startup in your back pocket. Since March, he reveals, he's been working on a side project while running the websites of Fast Company and Inc. magazines for Mansueto Ventures. His job was one of 20 eliminated in the cutbacks, which primarily hit the company's online and events divisions. He tells Mediabistro that he and his partners have "put some 4,000 hours into the project" — an effort to commercialize Drupal, an open-source blog software program. Gosh, do you think his boss would have waited until October to lay off Sussman if he had known how much free time his employee had on his hands?

Times are tough all over. That's the excuse bosses are now using for cleaning house, making hard decisions they were too timid to execute in bubblier times. We've just heard that Mansueto Ventures, the publisher of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, is laying off 20 people. Inside the company, it's being spun as an "economic move" — but if it's a financially motivated maneuver, why is Fast Company magazine being left untouched in the layoffs?Most of the cuts are hitting Mansueto Digital, the company's Web arm, previously the fiefdom of executive Ed Sussman. Sussman is leaving the company, and control of Fastcompany.com is now being handed to the magazine's editor, Bob Safian; traffic had fallen by about half on Sussman's watch, while rivals like Wired saw visits to their websites grow quickly. Robert Scoble, the self-obsessed managing director of Fastcompany.tv, will still be employed as of Monday, though he now reports to Safian. Darn!

We'd already heard that the October issue of Business 2.0 would be the last one published by Time Inc.; now, the New York Times reports on the Bits blog that it will be the last one, period. Talks with Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Fast Company and Inc., apparently failed; as we predicted, Time Inc. did not want to strengthen a competitor. A few staffers will join Fortune and Fortune Small Business. The rest will fall victim to what Bits colorfully calls "kill teams." This being Time Inc., don't expect black-suited corporate operatives. Or anything the least bit colorful. Instead, the teams will likely kill with kindness — and boredom. Time Inc.'s HR presentations — some of which, I should disclose, I sat through as a Business 2.0 employee — are legendary as cures for insomnia.

Keith Kelly repeats yesterday's Valleywag report that Mansueto Ventures, publisher of rival tech-business title Fast Company, is negotiating to buy Time Inc.'s Business 2.0, which is in the midst of publishing its last issue under the current staff. CNET, rumored to have also bid, has apparently dropped out of the sale process. [New York Post]

The writing is on the whiteboard for Business 2.0, the tech-focused monthly magazine published by Time Inc. (and, I should note, my former employer). The October issue is definitely the last one to be published by the current staff, some of whom have already secured new jobs. But could Business 2.0 live on in some fashion? Time Inc. is ostensibly still entertaining offers to buy the magazine, if only for form's sake. But even if the sale process is a charade, some serious bidders have nevertheless emerged. Who are they?