Gawker: The New York Post will layoff ten people in its next round of cuts, a tipster says.

Silicon Alley Insider: College Humor's Ricky Van Veen has hired Anna Wintour's daughter Bee Shaffer as his assistant at his new venture, Notional.

Reuters: Australian freelance photojournalist Nigel Brennan and Canadian reporter Amanda Lindhout were released from captivity in Somalia today, after 15 months of imprisonment and torture.

MarketWatch: Should Bloomberg LP acquire Newsweek?

• Google-owned blog Hot Girls removed their racist picture of Michelle Obama, though it still shows up in a Google search. -WebNewser

• You can now buy books you read about in The Washington Post with their new direct link system to Amazon.com -GalleyCat

• NBC affiliate channel 15 in PA Alabama has about the worst billboard in history. And of course it involves Twitter. - FishbowlLA

• The "Real World: DC" trailer looks positively...boring. We'll tune in to see if Washington Post's Joe Curl makes out with any of his housemates -FishbowlDC

Sam Zell is not going to be having the greatest Thanksgiving this year: not only has The New York Times enlisted some of his former Tribune Company employees to write the paper's new Chicago edition, but the newspaper publisher's request for an extension on its exclusive right to file a reorganization plan to lift the company from Chapter 11 is a being challenged by the company's creditors, Editor & Publisher reports.

It's been almost a year since Tribune filed for bankruptcy and it wants to maintain control over its reorganization plan, which it has yet to file to the court for approval. Two weeks ago, top execs at Tribune asked for an extension for the filing of the plan until May, with the promise that the fourth quarters are traditionally the strongest at the company's papers. Now some of Tribune's lenders are seeking to block Tribune's extension request and asking to see more evidence for their allegations that the company's 2007 going-private deal was a fraudulent conveyance.

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It's tough to be a media company these days. But IDG, a leading technology company with publications like PC World and MacWorld and their related brands, as well as events and a vertical ad network, seems to have girded itself against the worst.

IDG's CEO, Bob Carrigan, told FishbowlNY that although 2009 was a tough year, the company has big plans for growth over the next three years. "The tech media category is not immune to the recession and has been challenged by that," he said. "But our three-year plan calls for growth."

That growth includes the less than two-year-old ad network, the IDG TechNetwork, which offers ad space inventory from 250 Web sites to technology marketers. Carrigan says its "one of the most successful businesses we've launched in a long time."

After the jump, we talk to Carrigan about his company's business model, the ad network and his plans for the future.

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Hearst Corp. may not be having its annual Christmas gala for the second year in the row, but the company is still doing relatively well compared to the rest of the industry.

While layoffs plague rivals like Time Inc. and Condé Nast, Hearst is in the process of hiring and promoting staffers. Their latest move? Taking former Cooking Light manager and maternity leave sub at Marie Claire to head up its Pacific Northwest Manager position at Country Living.

Cooking Light is owned by a subsidiary of Time Inc., so Hearst's (relative) job security must come as something of a relief to Griffis.

Full press release after the jump.

Related: Thinking Different Helps Hearst Survive

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Looks like the fact checkers at The New York Post may have taken off early for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Today's paper features a headline about former "American Idol" contestant Adam Lambert and his scandalous "Good Morning America" concert cancellation and shift to CBS but, as our sister blog TVNewser points out, the Post has confused what network "Good Morning America" is on.

That would be ABC, not NBC, Post headline writers.

Previously: Good Morning America Cancels Adam Lambert Concert

According to a new study, the field of journalism is one of the most stressful jobs in the world, right after surgeon and real-estate agent, and we don't have to tell you that this profession gets less recognition and appreciation than the latter. That's why whenever one of our own gets recognized for their accomplishments in the field, it's a cause for celebration. Gardenia Mendoza Aguilar, who spent the last year covering the trials and abuses of Mexican immigrants and human trafficking for Central America's impreMedia's La Opinión is one of those women today, as she was awarded the prized Guillermo Martínez-Márquez Award for Latin American Reporting.

Full press release after the jump.

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Mediabistro has scored an interview with Gayle King just days after her best friend Oprah Winfrey announced plans to leave her broadcast television talk show behind in 2011. "Oprah shared her thoughts with people she trusts, but at the end of the day, she made this decision on her own," King said.

Interviewer David Hirschman also asked the Sirius XM radio show host and O, The Oprah Magazine editor-at-large about Oprah's plans for the future, whether King would ever considering hosting a television show again and if she plans to get involved in Oprah's new cable network, OWN.

Read on for more of Mediabistro's interview with King

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If you're among the hundreds of people cut from media jobs this fall, take inspiration from the story of Isobella Jade. The petite model wrote a memoir while standing in heels in the Apple store in SoHo, then self-promoted the heck out of it until she got an agent, dumped her, and self-published the book herself. As she's continued to model, she's launched a successful brand, parlaying her fame into a popular podcast, an advice blog and a new graphic novel. If you're looking for a second career, following Isobella's advice might not be such a bad idea.

Isobella joined the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast this morning, where she spoke to host Jason Boog of GalleyCat and special guest host FishbowlNY editor Amanda Ernst about her self-promotion techniques and advice for aspiring writers.

"Writing is not enough," she said. "You can be a great writer, you can have a wonderful story...but it really comes down to marketing these days."

Also discussed: this week's sad layoff news from Time Inc. and The Washington Post.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Time Inc. slashed a number of jobs yesterday as part of its goal to cut its budget for next year. Among the casualties was quarterly spin-off magazine InStyle Weddings, which was shuttered, costing around nine people their jobs. But the carnage didn't stop there; Fortune and Sports Illustrated also suffered losses.

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Let the pre-Thanksgiving bad news dump continue.

Washington Post editor Marcus Brauchli sent a memo to staffers late yesterday announcing that the paper was shutting down national bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago at the end of the year. Three news aides lost their jobs because of the move, although the six reporters in the bureaus have been offered jobs in D.C., our sister blog FishbowlDC reported.

The move highlights the Post's desire to concentrate its "limited resources" on coverage of local news that it feels is important to its readers. Explained Brauchli in his memo:

"At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government."

In an interview with the Post's media columnist Howard Kurtz, Brauchli added, "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or cable channel."

Guess that leaves The New York Times as the sole "local" newspaper that still serves as a "national news organization of record," are we right?

Washington Post shutters last U.S. bureaus --Washington Post

WaPo Closing LA, NYC And Chicago Bureaus --FishbowlDC

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