The Baltimore Sun has laid off 61 people in its newsroom, including veteran editors and managers, columnists, photographers and designers. The cuts represent about 27% of the newsroom staff at the paper, which is owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co. The paper says the cuts are part of a broad reshaping of the Sun's newsroom that's meant to eliminate distinctions between print and online content. "We are repositioning our newsroom to be a 24-hour, local newsgathering media company. We will be more effectively gathering our content and distributing it across all our platforms," says a company rep. "This is …

Interpublic's results for the first quarter of 2009 suggest that layoffs at its agencies may not be over yet. The reason: IPG continues to hemorrhage cash. The company reported that revenues declined 10.8% to $1.3 billion resulting in a loss of $74 million. The cashflow statement saw a loss of $466 million, due mainly to a loss of $557 million on its operating activities. IPG blames the cash loss on the season. During the upfront, agencies have to buy a lot of media that they won't get reimbursed for until later in the year. But when pressed, CFO …

Talk about shelf life. A magazine spawned a book, and now the book is spawning a TV show. Publisher Rodale and independent TV studio Reveille have teamed up to produce a reality TV program based on "Eat This, Not That!" the bestselling book inspired by Rodale's Men's Health magazine. Hoping to copy the success of "Biggest Loser," the show would expand on the 2008 book, a consumer guide to making healthy food choices. The project is currently being shopped around to various networks. Rodale and Reveille have partnered for six seasons on "Biggest Loser" on NBC, which features …

Sumner Redstone, executive chairman of CBS, says he thinks the U.S. stock market is at the start of a bull market. And when a bull market begins, nine months later the economy turns around, he says. "We are in the throes of something we have never seen in our history. [But] it's clear in recent times the market is looking for a bottom," says Redstone. This week the news was extremely bad on the GDP and the market went up. "In a bull market, the market ignores bad news. This week we ignored extremely bad news," he says. …

Inside the $2 billion Condé Nast empire, speculation is rampant over which other magazines may go the way of Portfolio. Vanity Fair, for instance, is down 37% in ad pages, fueled in part by a dizzying 52% drop in ad pages in the May issue, per Media Industry Newsletter. Vogue through May is down 31%, while Glamour is off nearly 22%. Ironically, Vogue and Glamour battled it out to become Condé Nast's most profitable magazine earlier this decade. "Conde Nast is operating the way General Motors did a few years ago," says a former executive. "They are bloated …

The most entertaining cable network is Comedy Central, according to the 2009 Beta Research Brand Identity Study. Behind the comedy channel are Discovery Channel, Disney Channel, National Geographic Channel and Investigation Discovery. The online study surveyed 4,491 cable subscribers and measured 58 networks. When respondents were asked what network they were "more likely to buy products advertised on" the top choice was Food Network. For the number two spot HGTV tied with Speed. Investigation Discovery came up fourth. The networks deemed the most "distinctive" by respondents in the study were History, barely edging out Discovery Channel and Animal …

Bristol-Myers Squibb has placed its media assignment in review. The company spent $170 million on media in 2008 and $175 million in 2007, per Nielsen. The incumbent agency Mindshare is defending the business, and contenders include Universal McCann and MPG. Mindshare won the business in 2001 after a review. Previously, the company had handled its media planning and buying internally. The company's top selling brands include Plavix, Abilify and Sustiva.

At the Financial Times readers are now able to help shape the paper's editorials through its Arena blog, which launched yesterday. On the blog, Financial Times writers join readers in online debates about topics for upcoming columns. Robert Shrimsley, the FT.com managing editor, says, "I've long wanted to share the quality of the debates we have inside the building with our readers. Our community of readers is perhaps the most sophisticated in the business world. This is a chance to draw on their expertise and invite them into the editorial process." This week editors opened a debate …

While big newspapers across the country fight for survival, small-markets papers are drawing new investment from industry veterans. Last month, for instance, Tennessee Valley Printing, a family-owned publisher of smaller papers, agreed to buy a paper owned by the New York Times Co. in Florence, Ala. The price: about $12 million. Earlier this year, newspaper executive Michael Schroeder bought two Connecticut dailies and Pennsylvania publisher Richard Connor is close to acquiring a group of Maine papers, including the state's largest daily. The buyers' confidence reflects the divide between big-city papers and relatively healthy small-city papers. Advertising revenue fell …

DirecTV is launching an interactive TV application, called ScoreGuide, which lets viewers track live sports scores and tune directly to channels broadcasting the games. A small on-screen icon alerts subscribers to ScoreGuide. It is available on DirecTV's 200 sports channels, including regional sports networks, subscription channels and national sports cable networks, such as ESPN. The free feature displays sporting events in progress and upcoming daily and weekly events. The app can be minimized to show just one game at a time, so a viewer can follow a game while watching another channel. Viewers can also see DirecTV channel …