When false reports of the deaths of Lady Gaga or Jeff Goldblum get blasted all over Twitter, it becomes a trend piece in The New York Times. “The Internet Who Cried Wolf” serves as a gentle reminder that not everything you read online is true.

The media equivalent of course, would be Anna Wintour‘s departure from Vogue. There have been so many rumors, sworn testimonies and first-hand accounts of the editrix leaving Condé Nast that sometimes it seems like she’s hanging on there just to spite the morning’s headlines.

But recently, the magazine departure watchdogs have had a new person of interest: BusinessWeek.com‘s editor-in-chief John Byrne. Except this time, the gossipers were right. Turns out, Byrne is leaving the Bloomberg LP-owned business magazine to launch a digital media company in San Francisco.

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To say it’s been a rough week for BusinessWeek would be an understatement. Yesterday, the axe fell hard, and new parent Bloomberg LP has cut around 130 people for the business mag’s staff — including 60 to 70 from the edit side.

Among those getting pink slips were big names like media columnist Jon Fine, community manager Shirley Brady and tech writers Steve Wildstrom and Stephen Baker.

Business journalism blog Talking Biz News has kept a running tally of outgoing BusinessWeekers since yesterday, and today has an updated list. Blogger Chris Roush says senior writer Pete Engardio, Atlanta bureau chief Dean Foust, Philadelphia bureau chief Amy Barrett, management department editor Jena McGregor, associate editor Hardy Green, senior editor James Cooper, senior photo editor Kathy Moore and Prudence Crowther, head of the copy desk, will not be making the transition to Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek.

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Today, we have been following the tweets of departing BusinessWeek writers and editors as they get word from the bosses at Bloomberg LP about layoffs.

Although we knew no one was safe, we were shocked to learn that media columnist Jon Fine, who has been enjoying a six-month sabbatical since September, would not be returning to the magazine after it gets taken over by its new parent. So what will become of respected media reporter Fine and his column Fine on Media?

The sad irony of the situation is that the magazine’s own media columnist missed the opportunity to cover the sale of BusinessWeek, a deal that ultimately ended up eliminating his job. But we have a feeling that when Fine returns from his travels abroad, he won’t have trouble finding some place to write about the media and the new Bloomberg-owned BusinessWeek.

Update: We asked Fine if he had any regrets about taking his sabbatical when he did. “I have absolutely no regrets,” he told us, while enjoying a burger at Peter Luger. “We had a chance to do it, to go around the world and talk to media people on the ground. And that’s going to serve us well no matter what.”

Fine and wife Laurel Touby wrapped up the first leg of their worldwide tour earlier this month, and they’re planning to depart to places unknown in early December.

Follow all the BusinessWeek layoffs tweets here.

Earlier: Jon Fine Says Goodbye

News of this week’s layoffs at BusinessWeek is starting to trickle on to Twitter.

Looks like technology editor Steve Wildstrom and innovation and design writer Damian Joseph are among laid off by new owner Bloomberg LP. Good luck guys!

We’ll keep updating with Twitter news, but if you know of anyone else who got dumped by BusinessWeek (as Joseph says), drop us a line

Update: More tweets after the jump

Earlier: Bloomberg Looks To Cut BusinessWeek Staffers

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Anyone who comes to mediabistro.com for media news, job postings or classes has Laurel Touby to thank. She started the company in 1994 as a series of media mixers, which led to the founding of a Web site in 1996 — before the dotcom bubble burst. Over the years, Touby navigated uncharted territory as a digital entrepreneur and Internet pioneer, obtaining funding from venture capitalists and eventually selling the company just over two years ago.

When she sold her baby to Jupitermedia (now WebMediaBrands) for $23 million in July 2007, Touby signed a two-year contract. When that ran out a couple of months ago, she became a contractor for the company. Although she stayed involved in the day to day of mediabistro.com, she also started planning her getaway with her husband, BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine.

Earlier this month, the couple announced something big: a six-month sabbatical that they plan to spend traveling the globe, visiting foreign countries, blogging and — not surprisingly if you know these two — doing a little work here and there. But not too much. That’s not the point after all.

“I just feel like I’ve really gone balls to the wall for so many years and I just wanted a break, a real serious break, so I could come back fresh and renewed with new ideas and a new vision from this travel around the world,” Touby said. “Who knows what that vision will be.”

We couldn’t resist asking Touby a few parting questions as she headed out the door after 15 years at Mediabistro. In this exit interview of sorts — conducted via phone as Touby and Fine explored the Piedmont region in Italy one week after leaving New York — Touby opened up about her proudest moments, her regrets and her plans for the future.

“I have some ideas,” she said of her future plans. “But nothing has gelled yet.”

FishbowlNY: Why did you decide to take this sabbatical?

Laurel Touby: I’ve been looking forward to taking an extended break because I haven’t taken a real vacation since I started the company in 1994. I really have been going full speed ahead, always worried, always kind of logged in at home. Even if I was away from the office or “on vacation,” I was always doing work constantly just like anyone who is tethered electronically to their job. Only this was my responsibility and I felt very much like it was a child in many ways. You feel this maternal feeling towards this company that you’ve started, especially as a woman. And especially as a woman with no other children.

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Although BusinessWeek‘s media columnist Jon Fine has already departed for his six-month sabbatical, his publication is still closely tracking its own sale.

Bids for the business magazine were due yesterday to BusinessWeek‘s owner McGraw-Hill, and at least four parties have submitted revised bids, according to Tom Lowry, who has taken over Fine’s “On Media” column:

“Among those submitting revised bids were financial data giant Bloomberg LP, private equity firm Open Gate Capital, and investment firm ZelnickMedia LLC. At least one other bidder, which BusinessWeek was not able to identify, also submitted a bid.”

Although details of the bids are unknown, Lowry said Bloomberg has been “the most aggressive in its pursuit of BusinessWeek.” According to Lowry, Bloomberg’s chief content officer Norm Pearlstine met with various members of the BusinessWeek editorial team last week, including editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, executive editors Ellen Pollock and John Byrne and Ciro Scotti, BusinessWeek‘s managing editor. These meetings discussed topics like the possibility of integrating content from Bloomberg into the magazine and adding more editorial pages to the book, which “suggests Bloomberg might be looking at tinkering with BusinessWeek‘s traditional 60-40 mix of editorial pages to ad pages,” Lowry said.

Right now, it’s all speculation. The sales process is just at the beginning, but we’re bound to learn more as it progresses. But a successful media company like Bloomberg taking over the reins of a struggling pub like BusinessWeek certainly seems promising, even if the editorial mix of the mag may change in the future. If BusinessWeek survives in any form, and jobs are saved, it’s better than the fate suffered by other magazines, like Portfolio.

BusinessWeek Accepts Revised Bids From Potential Buyers –BusinessWeek

Earlier: Getting The Skinny On The BusinessWeek Deal As Bid Deadline Looms

Today, BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine said his goodbyes before jetting off on a six-month sabbatical with his wife, Mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby. Although he seemed excited about his adventures, Fine said he would miss his readers most of all:

“The biggest surprise to me about this whole taking-time-off thing is how hard it is to step away from the keyboard with the knowledge that it’s going to be a while before I come back and hang out here with you all again. Really. I can’t adequately convey how much I will miss your comments, your challenges, your wit, your exasperation with my lazier moments, and, more than anything, the attention that you’ve so kindly granted me. ‘Privilege’ is an overused word. But it’s also the only one that seems appropriate in this situation.”

Ron Grover and Tom Lowry will be updating Fine’s “Fine On Media” column while he is away. Lowry has already taken up the BusinessWeek sale beat, reporting yesterday that investment firm ZelnickMedia LLC and L. Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal are in talks to make a play to buy the business mag.

It seems like every day there is news of another media reporter leaving the fray, so the loss of Fine will not go unnoticed. He may be missing out on some of the biggest stories in his career as he departs amid the BusinessWeek sale, but hopefully there will still be a magazine for him to come back to when he’s done globetrotting.

A Note Before I Dash Out The Door –BusinessWeek

Earlier: Mediabistro Founder Announces Sabbatical

BusinessWeek‘s media columnist Jon Fine reported yesterday that Bloomberg LP has made its official bid for the magazine, although Fine himself admits he has no info about the bid’s details:

“A bid from Bloomberg is widely expected to make the business information giant the prohibitive favorite to purchase BusinessWeek. (Caveat time: I write that phrase as one ignorant of the exact details of the bids for the magazine I work for. And if you’d asked me around a week ago who’d win BusinessWeek. I’d have told you Lazard Chairman Bruce Wasserstein — who last Monday night decided against submitting a final bid.)”

However, Fine has done his homework about privately-held Bloomberg, which is said to earn about $5 billion a year thanks in part to the terminals its subscribers must purchase. The company has even seemingly weathered the recession pretty well. Says Fine:

“When I looked at their media operations, around a year ago, Bloomberg was employing 2,350 journalists — or around 15 percent more than the combined staffs [of] The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And Bloomberg’s staff has grown since then.”

More information about the bids for BusinessWeek should come out soon. Despite the other parties who were said to be interested in the magazine did any one else make a final bid? We’ll wait to see.

Bloomberg Submits Its Bid For BusinessWeek — BusinessWeek

Earlier: Getting The Skinny On The BusinessWeek Deal As Bid Deadline Looms

After tracking the upcoming BusinessWeek sale all summer, the magazine’s own media columnist Jon Fine has compiled all the known information about the transaction and put together this helpful guide.

So what do we know? The deadline for any interested parties to place a bid for the magazine is tomorrow. And Fine knows of at least seven potential bidders who have gotten debriefed by BusinessWeek execs and the management of the magazine’s owner, McGraw-Hill:

“They are New York Magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein; Fast Company and Inc. owner Joe Mansueto; and four private equity firms: Platinum Equity, Warburg Pincus, OpenGate Capital, and ZelnickMedia. The seventh player is Bloomberg LP, which despite having previously rebuffed McGraw-Hill in talks regarding a deal for BusinessWeek, apparently got very interested very quickly and is expected to meet with BusinessWeek management Monday, Sept. 14.”

Fine also said there are as many as three other unnamed parties who have shown interest, although he has been unable to dig up any info about them. (Know something? Send us an email.)

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Mediabistro.com’s founder Laurel Touby is planning some time off.

This morning, Touby and her husband, BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine, tweeted about their plans to take a six-month sabbatical to travel the world, starting later this month. The first two countries they’ll hit: Italy and China. Touby and Fine also plan to launch a blog to document their travels, and it will focus on travel, arts, culture and, of course, media.

In mid-July, Touby announced via Twitter, that two years after selling Mediabistro to WebMediaBrands, her full-time contract had run out and she was now working for the company on a consulting basis.

Today, Touby said she will return to Mediabistro as a consultant after her trip. Fine, who has recently been tracking BusinessWeek‘s impending sale, will also return to his gig at the magazine after their travels have concluded.