Times are tough at Conde Nast. We understand that. But we're pretty sure the answer isn't for the company's fleet of magazines to start publishing stories about the same topics.

For the second month in a row, GQ and Wired have published articles that are remarkably similar. January's issues featured stories about increasing your office productivity (GQ's excerpted here and Wired's here). While they weren't quite the same article, they overlapped with sources and came to roughly the same conclusion.

This month's issues also feature articles on the same topic, this time something that hits close to home: how to talk to a fired colleague. GQ's is here (penned by Steven Ferris). Wired's isn't online, or at least we couldn't find it on their impossible to navigate Web site.

We know there are a limited number of topics for magazine editors to cover, and both sets of articles are timely but still, it rubs us the wrong way. It's hard to argue your publication is ground-breaking when another one in your company is printing almost the same exact story.

But the difficulties for Wired don't stop there...

In the "more bad news for Wired" category, Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson points out just how thin the book is getting. At three millimeters, it doesn't even fill the binding and contains only 31.5 ad pages. That's 27.5 percent for those keeping track at home. In other words, not enough to keep the pub afloat for all that much longer.