Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Rumor: 5 cut at WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY

Cut by cut Conde Nast is trying to return to profitability.  It's said to have lost $200 million.  The latest layoffs, reports GAWKER, are the 5 at WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY. 

Wonder how many communications folks in the Class of 2010 will be coming to Manhattan?

FORTUNE - Troubled Publication

Remember when FORTUNE was hot.  Well now it's not, at least not to advertisers.  As ad sales continue to decline, FORTUNE has announced it's cutting back the number of issues and probably reducing staff.

The web is not new.  Why hasn't FORTUNE been able to take that leap into the digital age?  Other print publications have managed to not only survive but thrive.  They include FAST COMPANY and INTERVIEW.

Balloon Boy - Even White House Got Into It

Balloon Boy might just be more famous than the Lindbergh Baby.  The White House spokesperson Bill Burton went on record as saying the Obama Administration is relieved that the boy is safe.

Media Fear and Loathing in Manhattan

The three most recent hotspots for fear and loathing in Manhattan are NEW YORK Magazine, all of Conde Nast's empire, and jobs at BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK.  The fear is for getting the ax.  The loathing is for self, in choosing to work in the vineyard of truth, justice, and the elite way, usually when one could have earned a lot more hustling on Wall Street or, at least during the boom, pulling serial all-nighters at law firms.

The infrastructure of even Manhattan can't absorb all this uncertainty, redundant talent, and self-hate.  Is there a solution, as we Friends of Bill rhetorically ask?  Yes.  Here are parts of it:

• Leverage your solid communications skills to more marketable areas such as marketing communications, sales, and digital start-ups.

• Re-locate to a more affordable area.  Here in New Haven, Connecticut, where public transportation is right up there with that of Manhattan, my rent is $625 monthly.  The Brookings Institution ranked New Haven among the 20 cities that are thriving in the downturn.  A number of others are in Texas.

• Everything, and I mean everything, depends on where you put your attention.  You can focus on the past and present or making future opportunities happen.  A useful read on that is "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher.  When I shifted my mindset from how much I had lost to what my new labors could reap I began to succeed - effortlessly.  Here is my former sad story, which now has a very happy ending Download Geezerguts.

• Change your networks, professional and personal.  Those on them know the former you.  You require a new you.  Those contacts will hold that process back.  I know.  It took time and strength but I got rid of all the folks pre-2003 in my life when I was exiled from Professional Eden.  I wouldn't have reached a new Professional Promised Land had I kept them in my life. 

Manhattan will come back.  It always has.  But perhaps not as the media capital of the world.  The world is digital and influence and power can be created any where.

Graydon Carter vs Michael Moore

Who weighs more?  Who is more influential?  Who will endure? 

If we can answer these questions we will learn plenty about how to be a player in the new economy.

CQ-ROLL CALL Says No More Layoffs: That can't be predicted in Black Swan Economy

Perhaps it reassured some at CQ-ROLL CALL that the managing director Laurie Battaglia told Politico reporter Michael Calderone that there wouldn't be any more layoffs.  Last week, Calderone tells us that 44 staffers got the ax and then this week the long-time editor Brian Nutting also was let go.

But "no more layoffs" is not what in-touch communicators want or need to hear.  They know the score.  It's now a Black Swan economy in which unexpected developments become the norm and those developments have game-changing impacts.  Financial-markets expert Nassim Taleb published a book with that title in 2007.  Many were dubious of this "theory."  Not too many are now.

Isn't it more reassuring to a workforce for leadership and management to demonstrate they're facing reality by saying: We don't know what will happen so we can't predict hiring or layoffs.  In essence, the new economy has made us all day laborers.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL vs. POLITICO.COM

It's all about influence.  Not prestige.  Not even profitability.  So, those with a message about changing the game are likely to want to be in Politico.com, not THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, as is Philip K. Howard today.  Howard's rant is against the plaintiff bar.  No surprise, its tone is preachy and corporatese, its content too much.  In new media, we select the documentation which has the most weight and leave the rest on glaze-over-ville.

Nothing wrong about having an op-ed in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  Some leaders, who are out-of-touch, would see that as a plus.  That might even give them access to being a guest on those Sunday morning talk shows that no one cares about any more.

Most, though, would opt for having their message in Politico.com.  There it will be heard and resonate through the media, both new and old.

Harvard Medical School - When War Is Peace

The powers-that-be at Harvard Medical School had enacted a policy restricting students talking with the media.  The School's Dean of Students Dr. Nancy E. Oriol, reports THE NEW YORK TIMES, "said the policy was intended to help students, rather than limited speech or control what they say on controversial topics."  Yeah, Dr. Oriol, war is peace.

Well, students didn't see it the same way.  They pushed back.  And now the School is backing off. 

This could be another major hit to Brand Harvard.  It has been taking plenty in how its endowment lost about $16 billion and how it entered into a loan whose interest alone would eat up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Cindy Sheehan 2.0 - Will Camp Casey Play Well on Martha's Vineyard?

The media as well as the public are a fickle bunch.  The last time anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was out there the president was an unpopular one and the economy was still humming.  The lady in her lawn chair near George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch got plenty of attention.  Her persistence reinforced that.  Her book wasn't too bad either.

Now the president is not hated and we feel we have to give him a chance.  The economy had tanked and parts of it might just be stirring to life a little bit.  So, we gotta wonder if Sheehan 2.0 on Martha's Vineyard is going to rattle anyone's cage.  She's plopped herself with her Camp Casey banner outside the media center for journalists covering the President's vacation.

Me? Nobody is gonna rattle my cage.  The past 18 months of economic hell have been like the Holocaust.  I want normal.  I want not to think angry thoughts.  I want to give this President, yeah, a chance to wrap up the wars.

Should media folks get their forks ready? Rupert Murdoch, Done

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has stumbled before.  But never as badly as he has in the past few years.  He might be done. 

Digital may not be his space.  In fact, his purchase of MySpace was a bomb.  And as David Carr reports in THE NEW YORK TIMES, Murdoch's baby News Corporation hasn't been doing so hot. My hunch: Murdoch may not know how to make money in this brave new world of media mashups: Print, digital, video, audio, and in-person. 

For 4Q,  notes Carr, News Corp's "operating income, adjusted for certain items, dropped more than 30 percent and after taking $680 million in charges, mainly from the unit that houses MySpace, the company reported a net loss of $203 million."

Carr speculates that Murdoch might have recently announced he will be charging online for all content in order to deflect attention from the lousy earnings.   Will Murdoch leave with dignity?  Or will he keep trying to prove he remains a mover and shaker in media?  Too bad, like Johnny Carson, he didn't exit when he was on top.