More sunny economic news for the newspaper industry: yesterday the financial ratings firm Fitch put out a report predicting that "several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010." Oh joy! You won't have to complain about your shitty local fish wrapper much longer, if you live in "some cities" (*NEWARK*, ahem). This would really be a serious change in American civic life, people. Crooked city councilmen and religious nut school board members are bound to run wild without any reporters telling people what they're up to. Well, buck up, doomed papers in "some cities"—every other newspaper will have a hellish year, too:

Today's Dining section of the NYT is dedicated to drinking and the "cult of the cocktail," which is sort of like Martha Stewart hosting a show live from a dive bar. I mean, there's an honest-to-God listicle in there about 8 Bartender Philosophies, and something about alcohol and bundt cakes. The most puzzling bogus trend piece, however, is about the popularity of the college-girl and manchild drink called the White Russian, which was apparently drank by a character in the excellent but ten-year-old cult move The Big Lebowski. That fact serves as the big news peg, as cult followers of the film regularly gather to imbibe what one enthusiast calls a "big boy milkshake."

Cox Newspapers, publishers of papers including the Palm Beach Post, Austin American-Statesman, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (among 14 other local dailies) is closing its Washington Bureau. The bureau was founded in 1974 and has won Pulitzers and all that jazz. This also means the end of Cox's five foreign bureaus! Also they're selling three papers! Cox Enterprises co-owner Anne Cox Chambers is the fourth richest woman in America, with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. She shares the privately-owned company with the children of her late sister Barbara Cox Anthony, whose net worth was estimated at a paltry $12 billion upon her death last year. (Pictured: James M. Cox founds a newspaper that will no longer be profitable in 100 years.) [AP via Google]

Tragedy of the elite: we hear that Sheryl WuDunn, the wife of Times columnist Nick Kristof, has been laid off from her job as a private wealth advisor at Goldman Sachs—a casualty of Goldman's plan to cut 10% of staff. She was a longtime journalist, and wrote for the Times, Reuters, and the WSJ before going into banking. She married Kristof in 1988 and won a Pulitzer in 1990 for her reporting in Beijing. Rather ironic that the journalist in the family is now the breadwinner over the banker, no? The lesson here: just when you thought you were getting out of the crappy journalism industry... it PULLS YOU BACK IN! And lays you off at your new job. Care to watch Nick and Sheryl appear together on Charlie Rose back in happier days? Then click through to do so!

With a recession in progress, but lots of robber barons left in a society that the media has just now noticed is more stratified than ever, the headline "Party Like It's 1929" has proved too irresistible for even the most austere of publications. This Sunday's New York Times "We're Going to Party Like It's 1929" header in the Styles section represents the apotheosis of the trend. Journalists and editors: it's been done. Retire the headline now. Proof after the jump.

Tribune Co. crazy man Lee Abrams to staff: "Revolutions are about 'we'. The leaders need to engage EVERYone. And EVERYone needs to engage the cause. You are either WITH the revolution or AGAINST it. You will either be embraced by the company and win or the company will beat you." Yea, he's lost it. [Romenesko]

♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]

The Associated Press is said to be planning staff cuts. Customers and readers are up in arms over its drift away from hard news. CNN, meanwhile, is fat and happy, and getting moreso by the day, investing in free food, holograms and international staff. So there was probably more than a little jealousy behind AP chief Tom Curley's disdainful swipe at the cable network's plan for a "CNN Wire" to compete with AP.

The Fake New York Times that blanketed America last month was an impressive stunt. A vast coalition of liberal groups and assorted artistic types came together, worked for months, and managed to pull off the writing, production, and distribution of a faux newspaper without word leaking out beforehand. The general public was impressed. So how to put the cap on this classic work? With some good old-fashioned public ideological squabbling by those involved. It's just like the 1970s! Is Greater Than has an interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore, who was involved in the paper's production but bailed out prior to distribution day due to ideological differences. It's interesting! It also includes the following complaints:

Web publishing zealot Jeff Jarvis like to yell Darwinian slogans at print journalists . "There is no divine right for newsroom jobs," he wrote earlier this month. "Nor is printing and trucking an eternal verity of the field." It was surprising, then, to hear the media futurist's complaint about today's cover story on him in the Observer: The paper didn't promote his new dead-trees book! And after he gave the reporter so much of his precious time:

Hey, whoa, BLOW UP your television and get ready for DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT sound and visuals comin atcha from a WIDE SPECTRUM OF NEW HOOKS. This is the future, people. The Tribune Co.'s "Chief Innovation Officer" and craziest dude in the newspaper industry Lee Abrams has some new memo-fied ideas that will have you looking at TV weeded out of your mind a whole new way. Consider: "The old line 'Don't fix it if aint broke' makes no sense. It's like saying: Let it break...then we'll fix it." And that's just the beginning!:

Embattled Porfolio editor Joanne Lipman interviewed embattled Tribune publisher Sam Zell recently, in a dynamic meeting of the embattleds! Zell is a well-known asshole, but kind of lovable too (if you don't work for him), because he tells the hard truth no matter what. He admits that newspapers' business model was screwy and outdated. He admits that newspapers will never again be able to "break news" in print on a regular basis. He talks shit to Arthur Sulzberger. And he charmingly scoffs at the expensive pursuit of Pulitzers by newspapers that can't even cover daily news in their own cities:

Fallen former newspaper mogul Conrad Black—Baron Black of Crossharbour, to you—is currently serving out a 78 month sentence in a Florida prison for fraud and obstruction of justice, related to his looting of his own company's funds for his personal use. Or so the government claims. The martyred Lord used to write editorials decrying the injustice of his convictions in the New York Sun, but they folded. Now he's writing the same damn thing in the Times of London. And the man who was once the world's third-biggest newspaper magnate sounds like the second coming of Eldridge Cleaver:

When times get tough and employment becomes a far-fetched hope for many, it's good to know that you can still turn to the Paper of Record to direct you towards the last remaining employers. Specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency. They still need bodies! The shadowy government spymasters are the lead advertisers under the "Jobs" tab on the New York Times' website (the ad clicks straight through to their homepage). There are only two possible explanations for this. Both of them are bad. Conspiracy: The recession has forced the Times' true role as a government propaganda agent to the surface! You think Judy Miller's WMD coverage was a mistake? The paper has been promoting the CIA's position to the publi for years! Open your eyes, people! This ad is but the tip of the iceberg! The Job Market Is Even Worse Than You Thought: I mean, they couldn't even get Wal-Mart or somebody to sponsor the Jobs page? Campbell's Soup isn't hiring factory workers? Clandestine operations in the War on Terror, it seems, are the last place to get reasonable health care coverage. And Jesus Christ, you can't even make 80K for parachuting into Pakistan with a submachine gun to hunt Al-Qaeda. Times are tough.

When the NYT Company slashed its dividend and announced ominous October revenues yesterday, we asked you, our kindly readers: Might this company go into bankruptcy? If so, when? And if not, what should they do? Many of you answered! And virtually every viable option for the company was suggested at least once. The Sulzberger family should just read the following list of your responses and pick one, depending on how optimistic they're feeling today:
The optimist:

High profile press fight! People magazine editor Larry Hackett just sent out an internal memo blasting the page one New York Times story today about People's alleged shady dealings with Angelina Jolie. Specifically, the Times cited two anonymous sources "with knowledge of the bidding" for the photos of Jolie and Brad Pitt's most recent newborns—which cost People $14 million—who said that there was an formal agreement that "obliged" the magazine to offer only positive coverage. Of course, as Hackett acknowledges, their coverage was positive; but he strongly asserts that the magazine would never "purposely slant coverage as condition for acquiring pictures." And indeed, the Times may have oversold that angle in their story. There's certainly a difference between what Jolie asks for, and what a magazine would explicitly "promise" to do. Read his full memo below:

The financial reports of the New York Times Co. yesterday were predictably awful. Print ad revenue was cratering even before the stock market collapsed, so it's hard to see any turnaround in the near future. And as if the economy itself isn't giving the Times enough problems, they're also dealing with Rupert Murdoch trying to crush them, advertising-wise, in a pincer grip; the Wall Street Journal is falling on their head, and the New York Post is coming right up their ass. Rupert made a lot of noise about taking on the Times directly when he bought the WSJ. But he has a big advantage: another major newspaper in the same market. So while the WSJ is trying to steal away the NYT's high-end advertisers (and succeeding)—luxury watchmakers, Tiffany & Co., expensive liquors, and corporations running "message" ads—the other News Corp. paper, the unprofitable Post, is competing with the Times for middlebrow advertisers and upper middle class retailers in New York City—Bergdorf Goodman, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, car dealerships, cell phone companies.

♦ ABC has ordered up new episodes of Life on Mars, but it has no plans to shoot new ones of Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, or Eli Stone. [THR]
♦ Penguin's Ann Godoff will be publishing pollster Nate Silver's two books as part of the deal he signed for $700,000. [NYO]
♦ Michael Phelps has signed on as a pitchman for Subway. [AdAge]
♦ Ted Turner's autobiography will make its debut on the New York Times bestseller list this week at No. 8. Also: Artie Lang, Howard Stern's sidekick, has landed a six-figure book deal. [NYP]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a five-year low today, closing down nearly 450 points. And the New York Times Co. had an even worse day. The company's stock dove almost 10%, lower than it's been in decades. And just after the close of the markets came the payoff: the company is cutting its dividend to six cents per share, down from 23 cents last quarter. How bad is it? Very bad. How long can the company last before calling bankruptcy if things keep going like this? We're putting the question to you. In one sense, it's wise for the company to cut the dividend, because it needs to conserve all the cash it can get. But it's pretty apocalyptic for its stock, because it just makes it that much more unattractive to investors. The company also released its October revenues just minutes ago. How are those? Horrible! Total revenues are down 9.4% from last year, and ad revenues are down more than 16%.

We're hearing from a good source that Tom Curley, the head of the Associated Press, just held a town hall meeting to tell employees that the AP "will lose 10% of its staff next year." At a current headcount of over 4,000 employees, that would translate to at least 400 jobs lost, which could theoretically come through either layoffs or voluntary buyouts. Several cash-strapped newspapers—including the entire Tribune Co.—have recently announced plans to drop their AP subscriptions. Still, this would be a massive cut for what has always been one of the steadiest possible realms of journalism. AP employees with more details on this, email us. UPDATE: The AP has sent us a statement, which doesn't contain any numbers but acknowledges that cuts may be coming—though mostly through attrition, they hope: