Just because you work 8 hours a day doesn't mean you can weasel away 60 whole minutes on your lunch break. At American Lawyer Media, you'll now be expected to be at your desk "NO LATER THAN" than 9 and "wrap it up" at 6. That leaves eight full, unmolested hours of work, not including lunch. The change doesn't look to be directly recession-related, although they laid off 42 people in April. That said, you can certainly expect to see more of this:

The implosion of American capitalism could not leave the Wall Street Journal unscathed. Newsroom staff, already working long hours covering the financial panic, now have to contend with a computer crunch. The paper is dropping its lavish policy of allowing staff two PCs, including one opulent "ultra-lightweight" notebook. Reporters who want the luxury of working from home or filing from the field will have to haul their full-sized laptops — bought from the company that spied on them — back into the office when done, because the Journal won't spring for a dedicated desktop PC. Those cost literally hundreds of dollars a piece, computer hogs. Also, no Macs, because those are for communists. Just be glad you didn't get laid off like those New Jersey people. Yet. The full internal memo is after the jump.

Less than four months after he "broadened" the Wall Street Journal's Page One desk, promoting P1 editor Mike Williams to deputy managing editor and giving him oversight over investigative re porting, Journal editor Robert Thomson is again reorganizing the storied team. Williams, a pre-Thomson veteran once rumored to be in the Rupert Murdoch lieutenant's crosshairs, stays in place. But his deputy Mike Allen is moved to a new job where he will "nurture investigations" in foreign bureaus, under the title Page One Projects Editor. Allen was recently billeted to the international desk for a stint assisting another Deputy M.E., Nik Deogun, so the change isn't entirely out of left field. Moving up: Alex Martin, a Newsday veteran at the Journal just three years. Thomson's full memo on the changes is after the jump.

It's the nature of the media business to take profits from the suffering of others, and coverage of the recent financial meltdown is no exception, helping to drive online traffic and (no doubt) newsstand sales. But the Wall Street Journal should be more discreet about its gloating, particularly given the newspaper will soon eject 50 of its own staff into the economic wilderness now home to the likes of Lehman Brothers. At least one Journal staffer was none too pleased to see an internal news item today headlined "Market Turmoil Provides Hook to Sell U.S. Journal in London." (It's reprinted in full after the jump.)

Ariel Foxman is the new editor of Time Inc's In Style. Foxman spent five years at the magazine previously, leaving in 2003 to edit the men's shopping magazine Cargo. Is a gay male fashion expert a strange choice to lead a magazine with a heavily female readership? "While he may not be a buyer of Manolo Blahniks, he is a keen observer of fashion and popular culture," writes Time Inc. editorial boss John Huey, by way of explanation. Okay! Read Huey's full memo introducing the stylistic Foxman to the staff, after the jump.

The pressure of financial woes at the New York Times must be getting to its Metro editor Joe Sexton. (That's him, dancing to hip-hop on the last day in the paper's old W. 43rd Street building last year.) Remember, his section is the one they're planning to consolidate with sports. His most recent memo takes comfort in a bought-out Des Moines journalist's farewell speech. The Bible is involved!

We just received a sternly-worded missive from the Orange Center Elementary School in Fresno, asking us to cancel their subscription to US Weekly. Presumably this is part of the wave of cancellations related to their totally controversial Sarah Palin coverage. This raises so many questions: what exactly is an elementary school doing with a subscription to US Weekly? And why did they e-mail us to cancel it?From: Wayne Werning [redacted] Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 4:03 PM Subject: subscription To: ——@gawker.com Hello, Please advise how our school can cancel its subscription to US MAGAZINE so that we do not receive any more copies. Your publication has become offensive. Thanking you in advance, Orange Center Elementary School 3530 S. Cherry Ave. Fresno, Ca 93706

Time Out New York president Alison Tocci just sent out a memo to the magazine's staff addressing the "anonymous, typo-riddled post on Gossip, I mean, Gawker.com, which alludes to our imminent demise." She confirms TONY's money troubles, which were the subject of our rumormonger post yesterday, but says that the magazine's trusty investors are ponying up cash to ensure that everyone is paid! Within three months. The full zing-y memo:

As Labor Day approaches, remember: wear no more white after this weekend! This is not a suggestion—it's company dress-code policy at Planet Out, the gay online portal. (Although West Coasters are allowed to wear light colors for a bit longer than their East Coast comrades.) Click for the memo.Is it a joke or for real? Hard to tell—therein lies its genius.

Employee benefits are perking decidedly down all over medialand, as we found out last night Conde Nast sent out that memo limiting employees to five (5!) expensed lunches a month. So we were soothed to hear that the New York Times, whose ad sales have in the words of one analyst "fallen off a cliff" this year,* remains committed to the healing power of complimentary backrubs. Massages on the house in the two days leading up to September 11! But then we got the memo announcing said benefit. And it was sort of the opposite of a "happy ending"…They will be "tracking" No Shows! So Alberto Gonzales of you, New York Times!

The painful cost-cutting at Citigroup continues. The company is now asking bankers and traders to refrain from making color copies and print out internal presentations on both sides of the page. Oh, and unless you're eating with a client, you can forget about expensing your lunch. The official word was sent out to Citi employees by John Havens, Citi's head of investment banking (left), two weeks ago. Thanks to Dealbook, you can gloss over the memo in its entirety after the jump.

So the "really angry" e-mail sent out to New York magazine's freelancers and others—warning them to stop using their New York associations to get into events—wasn't so mean after all. It's just that "at least one party crasher and one overly ambitious editor" have been getting, well, a bit overly ambitious! Click for the memo. Update: we think we know who the party crasher is!

Seriously—they're asking their readers in a survey. "Check any of these names if you definitely would NOT buy the next issue of Wired if they were on the cover. Check as many or as few as you like."Our choices:

Ah, the Congressional internship. Stepping-stone to a lifetime of tireless public service, or just entitled whining and constant intoxication paired with exponentially growing cynicism about the entire process. Fun! We just obtained an email from an outgoing summer intern at a Senate office that, in the words of our tipster, is "comparable only with Washington's Farewell Address." It is a "gentle reminder" that today will be this young go-getters last day at the office. It goes on to explain "the nature of democracy" and features the phrase "the noblest self-disclosure." The young intern sent the email to everyone in the damn office, of course. "Dear colleagues and respected staff members," it begins, ominously...

Chez Pazienza, fired from CNN six months ago for his blogging, would "really like to let the subject of my untimely dismissal from CNN go once and for all." But! He just got hold of a juicy memo, CNN's brand-new guide for blogging. "You know, the policy they didn't have in place when they made the decision to fire me and a few others like me, and the one that I've openly criticized them for neglecting to enact and clarify?" Yeah, that one. The missive, regarding all the questions you may have about "personal writings online," chat rooming, and (snort) Second Life:

Author Brendan Halpin wrote a post on his blog using the phrase "life-changing fiction," and soon received a missive from the desk of Christian/inspirational author and NYT bestseller Karen Kingsbury, who has trademarked the term. Now we're using it, and can't wait to receive our own copy of the cute lil' cease-and-desist order. Let's all use it on our blogs, actually. Nobody gets to own a phrase—sorry! (Click to read.)

Two internal memos from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang dropped yesterday: one for all the Yahoos and one for all the Yahoo's bosses. Neither are disgraced with one single Microsoft-esque capital letter nor any of the blind optimism that plagued Yang and Yahoo president Sue Decker's earlier memos. In one of yesterday's, Yang writes: "proposals and attacks by microsoft and carl icahn leading up to our meeting are likely to get even more contentious. i know this could is distracting at the very least." Now, one might argue Yang's grammatical miscue in the second sentence stems from a physical weariness only too obvious in recent photographs of the CEO. But given Yang's taste for poetical punctuation, we like to think the "this could is distracting" refrain is actually Yang's attempt to offer the Yahoos a mimetic clue — a warning, even — of the days of confusion and anarchy shortly ahead. Decide for yourself, though. Both of Yang's memos are below.

The New York Times standards editor Craig Whitney recently saw something strange and terrible while out "on the road," as they say: "bumper stickers." These are like tiny billboards, affixed to automobiles, that feature sayings, jokes, or even brief political arguments. They're on display for everyone to see! And, according to a memo he sent out, they're inappropriate for Times staffers.

Paragraph NY is a Manhattan "work space for writers." It's nicer and quieter than your apartment, and don't worry: "Publication is not required for a membership; only serious intent and a strong drive to write." (Required: the desire to pony up $1,400 a year.) However: there will be rules, a recently leaked memo tells us! For example, "If you're wearing heavy or hard-soled shoes, please bring slippers to wear in the writing space." Um, will do. With all these rules, it's like an super-uptight library that you pay out the snout for:

Freelancer-helping website MediaBistro's upcoming conference, the unfortunately-named MediaBistro Circus, may not be coming along so well: boa-wearing propriestress Laurel Touby recently emailed, like, literally every single person she knows, begging them to register for "two days of inspired programming designed to bring very senior-level media people up to speed on what's happening in digital media." Another bad sign? Hiring circus freaks via Craigslist—on the cheap.