If you work for a magazine publisher, don't be fooled by management, you're fucked!

-BETH So you work in the magazine publishing business, and heads are rolling all around you at other magazine publishers. Word starts to spread that cuts may be coming to your company as well and you start to worry because you just started your holiday shopping and you planned to take a nice vacation in the New Year. Your boss hears all this talk about cuts coming and calls a meeting to assure you and your co-workers that everything is fine and the company is doing well. Don't buy it, chances are cuts are coming and you and your boss's names are on the list and he or she doesn't even know it. From Directors on down, sometimes from Vice Presidents on down, don't know shit about whats really going on in the corporate suite of a company. So my message to you is........ hell who am I kidding? This is what I had to do after getting the boot from the magazine publisher I worked for. Guess what? My boss gave us the talk, two weeks before bunch of us were escorted by security out of the building.

Tipster: Jeff Bewkes has been running the show for a year now, no shit!

-MARTY According to a tipster, Time Warner CEO elect Jeff Bewkes has been CEOing the ship for about a year now. Not news to us or to you because we all know Dick Parsons lost interest when he said running the world's biggest media company is just a job not his life. But what other light did the so called tipster shine on the coming of the Bewkes era? Hi, I know the company made this huge thing when announcing Jeff Bewkes as the new CEO which we already knew from within but the truth is, come Jan1st 2008 that will be the day he is publicly recognized by the company as the CEO. But out of the public's eye he has been calling the shots across the whole company. Dick Parsons seems bored and over the media business. everything is all about jeff and the new cfo But hold. Do CEOs really run the companies they head up? Isn't that the duty of the President and Chief Operating Officer, who then tells the CEO how shit is going on a phone call because usually the CEO is burning the corporate jet on his/her way to some exotic island or something?

TIP: Time Warner could announce succession plan this week

-LENN HINDSMANN Checking our tip box this morning which is usually packed with spam or shit we already know, one stood out due to its very attention grabbing subject line which is the title of this post. Now we can't confirm this but we felt we should put it out there in hopes that someone can. Below is the actual email sent in by the tipster as is. Hi, I am familiar with inner plans within Time Warner and wanted to give you a heads up that some major news will be coming out this week regarding the future management of the company. The board is planning to announce Jeff Bewkes as CEO elect of the company. I think Dick will be holding on to the chairman title after even when Jeff is named CEO because the board loves his diplomatic approach to issues. Can't say anything else because thats all I know for now. Any tips sent to Mediawiredaily.com are rumors, hearsay, gossip etc until proven via an official press release or published report. EARLIER: Our mock Businessweek cover with Jeff Bewkes is getting closer to reality, well at least the headline is

Taking a look at Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's stock exercises

-Shomari Hines Perhaps this is something we should have thrown on over to our friends at Dealbreaker.com but being that it has to do with a company we cover, we decided to take a crack at it. Over the weekend we got a very interesting tip about Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and his options. Well we wont really call this a tip being that the info we’re about to share is available to the public or most of it anyway. But what’s interesting about this is that, it has stayed under the radar while other tech/internet CEO’s were in the spotlight about their stock options and practices. Well this weekend thanks to an email from a man we will call Johnny, who is a former options market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Pacific Options Exchange for over ten years maybe Semel deserves his share of the spotlight. Below is what “Johnny” had to share with us after the click. CONTINUED... I am a former options market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Pacific Options Exchange for over ten years, having traded and held the largest positions personally as anyone who ever walked on those trading floors. So with that in mind, here are the specifics. On April 16, 2001 there was an agreement made between Terry Semel and Yahoo where by he was granted options to buy a total of 10,000,000 shares of Yahoo at various prices. That agreement says that the 5,000,000 options is to be bought at Fair market value(as defined in the plan) on the date of the grant.The Fair Value of those 10,000,000 options if they were indeed granted on April 16, 2001 with the stock at 17.62 would have been over$110,000,000.00. If those options were granted on May 1, 2001 when the stock was trading at 22, the options were worth perhaps $135,000,000.00.If the Ageement was indeed dated April 16, why did it not just specify the exercise price of $17.62 for the 5 million shares. Why did it leave that price open.Semel did not begin as CEO and Chairman untill May 1, 2001, when the stock was 22. Although, I have no hard evidence that the shares were back dated, April 16 was at the trough with 20 days on each side.What is most significant is that the 10 million grant was the largest in history in terms of total value as calculated by the SEC and FASB, even if it was not back dated. The most glaring abuse is the grant of 2,900,000 (pre split) options on March 10, 2004 at the strike price of $41.70 ( 5 cents above the lowest closing price of the year and prior to the biggest 30 day advance of the stock in 6 years since. He sold 2 million shares at 55.25 pre-split prices on April 12, 2004 and another 1,500,000 (pre- split shares at 60 in July 2004) after an announced 2/1 split on April 7, 2001 together with great earnings.I am certain that this grant at $41.70 was backdated and spring loaded. He has been granted more options and exercised many of the options and sold the stock.Since he became CEO on May 1, 2001, the stock has gone up 185% 11-30. Many other stocks have advanced much more than that, but no CEO received more options grants or exercised and sold more stock.

Wonder if Kurt Eichenwald got his cut?

-Shomari Hines Former New York Times reporter and one of our idiots of the week Kurt Eichenwald's $2,000 payment to teen porn star Justin Berry,seems to have been put to use almost right away to revive Berry's website. The chart above sent in by a tipster allegedly shows how the cash flowed in for Berry's website. Business dropped drastically as 2003 came to a close and remained down until the reported payment from Eichenwald saved the day, and as you can see business spiked only to fall again. Looks like another cash injection is in order.