In essence, after reading this blog if the take-away is simply knowing if you’re in an exclusivity contract with your current employer, then we’ve done our job.

It’s always best to know your employer’s policies up front rather than find out too late that you’ve been given the pink slip due to freelancing for a competitor whether it’s writing, reporting, fact checking or designing layouts. Sure, some people may get by with a pseudonym byline and figure nothing’s wrong with freelancing on the side to earn extra cash and make new contacts but all we’re saying is this story can create a spark in terms of your own situation.

In case you missed the piece, sources told the newspaper that Condé Nast’s international chairman, Jonathan Newhouse, has been telling his photographers and editors to say away from a former French Vogue editor’s new publication.  continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Mediaweek reports that the company also is thinking of allowing editors to speak at the next publisher’s meeting, which have always been reserved for the sales group. It’s just another sign of the changing times in the old media world.

“You have to respect church and state, but you also have to know you’re going to get through,” said Haworth Marketing + Media president Andrea Luhtanen to Mediaweek. “I like the credibility that has, but they’ve got to change with the times.”

No word on how much of a credit the editors will get for travel, but although Condè needs to be careful, why not reward editors for bringing more money into the fold? Just don’t let it cloud their editorial judgment, and you could have another motivated employee working to find revenue. They should be rewarded for that.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

- Condè Nast employees received quite the email today, when a company-wide alert was sent out saying “We have received reports that a firearm has been discharged on the 10th floor of 750 building, 3rd Avenue in New York. If you are in a safe location, remain where you are,” reports Gawker. Minutes later, staffers received another alert, saying “Conde Nast Security Operation Center apologizes for a message received initially of reports of an active shooter at 750 3rd avenue. The message was sent in error. It was a department drill. Please accept our apologies. Please disregard.” Worst drill ever? Possibly.

- Publisher of the Denver Post Dean Singleton really wants to give his son, 18, every opportunity to get into the journalism game. He even went as far as to email people within the paper, asking for their help in showing the kid the ropes (as long as it’s not too late on a school night). According to the email obtained by Westword, “He [the son] can work a later shift, but Mon-Thur are school nites, so the aim is not to be too late getting him to bed — say 9 p.m . the latest…He does not drive, so it needs to be an assignment easily accesible via public transportation… or the staff member needs to pick him up and return him to the Post building.” Jeez, asking much? Who’s not going to jump at that opportunity?

- After 30 years at Bloomberg Businessweek, managing editor Ciro Scotti has decided to step away from the magazine. He didn’t specify where he would head next, but it seems like he’s leaving on good terms. “I’m going to skip the boilerplate about a great ride and smart people,” said Scotti in his farewell email. “The richness of my memories at BusinessWeek deserve more than a passing line, and if you weren’t brimming with brains and possibilities, believe me you wouldn’t be here.” Now that’s how you exit.

- Two other high-profile departures occurred today. First CNN fired its president of U.S. operations Jonathan Klein and replaced him with Ken Jautz, head of CNN’s sister channel HLN. Klein had stood at the top for six years, but CNN’s ratings decline meant this was only a matter of time. Also CEO of NBC Universal Jeff Zucker announced he would step away from the company once NBC completes the sell with Comcast. I just wonder how this will be worked into 30 Rock’s storyline?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Editing a weekly newspaper and a daily Web site is consuming enough so that if you want to think about abstract or new models, it becomes impossible.” Kaplan said. “I made up my mind that I wanted to see if I could squeeze out another act in my career.”

Of course WWD still needed a scoop to interest readers, so they mixed in some idle industry gossip. Some of those juicy bits include the following: Observer owner Jared Kushner maybe looking to get rid of the paper; Kaplan was unhappy with the direction of the paper&#151less long features and more of a push to break news online first&#151and was looking for an out. None of these rumors are verified by Kaplan though.

What we do know is that some editors had their salaries cut by five percent over the last couple of weeks and there have been layoffs in accounting and payroll departments recently, a source confirmed.

If Kaplan is moving from the Observer to Conde Nast Traveler, we’d like to think this is very good news. First it means that jobs are still available in the industry and second, industry veterans are landing on their feet. I say this is a yay for publishing all around!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The closing of Domino was certainly a sad event. What were some things you did immediately after you were notified that helped pave the way for your new career opportunity?

The week we got the news, I was pretty shaken up, but soon after that, I dusted off my resume and emailed every person I knew in New York (former bosses, old coworkers, friends, friends of friends, you name it) to try to set up meetings. People had heard the news and wanted to help. I pursued every lead I received&#151even those that seemed unlikely to pan out or weren’t quite related to my background. You just never know.

What advice would you give people currently in a similar position?

Treat each day like a work day, and each meeting like an interview. Try to meet with as many people as possible&#151you never know who someone knows. And I don’t mean this to sound glib, but try to make the most of your time off. It might end sooner than you think!

For more from our exclusive interview, check out the article after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So far the sponsored links&#151which do have a “sponsored link” tag&#151have succeeded in two ways: click-through rates for the ads are running at around five percent&#151higher than the industry average&#151and Reddit users haven’t complained.

Reddit now attracts five million unique visitors a month, up from one and a half million uniques when the publisher bought the site. The Reddit community is very vocal and anti-advertsing&#151around 20 percent of Reddit users have ad-blocking software on their computers&#151so the fact that they have not fought back in this first major attempt to monetize the network is a spectacular feat.

Of course even the CMP for these ads&#151Conde charges $7 for every 1,000 views of the ad&#151does not bring the company a torrent of cash. Josh Stinchcomb, head of sales and marketing for the business group of Conde’s digital properties says they are toying with the idea of creating a cost-per-click/performance model. This would be the first for model of its kind for the company.

Digg, Reddit’s progenitor, is also considering creating a similar link model for its site. Though the business has been valuated at around $40 million, the actual revenue for the site has been quite small.

So it seems this area is ripe for experimentation and for the first time Conde Nast might be on the cutting edge. Of course, as TechMeme notes “we’ve seen versions of this model for as long as we’ve had mass media.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Instead, going to work everyday, you can now see New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick, Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl, David Carey, a group executive president who oversees Golf Digest, Wired and Portfolio, and Portfolio Publisher William Li. all riding the subway. No one had asked where Anna Wintour is yet.

Will all this sacrifice really matter in the end though? Rumors from Conde Nast say that the company is still gearing up for another round of layoffs.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last year Beckman’s group generated an estimated $2.5 billion for Conde Nast. Unfortunately, with the postponement of Fashion Rocks 2009, the group’s biggest annual marketing program, Beckman’s team has had significantly less work on its palate. Now the staff of 135 people, including creative services, production, marketing and sales, are facing possible reduction.

CEO Charles Townsend warned Conde Nasters two weeks ago that they were going to have to make “difficult decisions” to cut cost. In addition to staff cuts, the Observer reports managers can expect another 10 percent reduction of their non-salary, discretionary budgets. Staffers will also see the elimination of their pension plan, FishBowlNY says. Currently pensions are frozen, there will be no more company contributions to the plan for eligible employees and those who are not yet vested will not have the option to become vested.

On the heels of all this tragic news, Gabriel Sherman was kind enough to point out, that if we look closely at these setbacks, we’ll actually see before us a “hopeful portrait of the magazine business.” In an article entitled The Magazine Isn’t Dying, which Sherman penned for Big Money, the prescient journalist says, “It’s not that magazines are dying; it’s that magazines that were created solely for advertising or market-share purposes are.”

If Conde Nast is any indication of how the magazine industry is fairing in this economic climate, we’d like say you’re wrong Mr. Sherman. Thankfully we don’t have to say it ourselves, since Conde Nast numbers speak for themselves.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.