Forbes laid off almost 20 people to save money. It is putting its online newsroom and print writers together. Yesterday, McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MGP), the publisher of BusinessWeek, cut several hundred people. US News, which used to have a strong business and personal finance section, is going from weekly to monthly to save money. There are rumors in the market that SmartMoney, a joint venture between Dow Jones and Hearst, is losing money.

The horrible thing about all of this and the layoffs at business sections of newspapers, is that the reporters who work the business and financial beats are writing their own obituaries. As they chronicle the demise of print media, the slowing of Internet advertising, and deepening recession, they have to go to work every day hoping that they will not find a pink slips on their desks.

What happens to these people?. They will not find jobs in the traditional media, but there is a model in the newspaper industry that may given them some hope. In many cities where dailies are struggling to survive and layoffs are plentiful, out-of-work writers are banding together to start websites to compete with the local press. Setting up these websites is cheap. The reporters already know their subjects as well as anyone else. They only need very modest ad revenue to do relatively well.

Business reporters may go the same route. Look for a lot of new, smaller financial websites to open staffed by laid off writers and watch them give the traditional press a run for its money

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7wallst.com.

Day after day the media reports on the "reasons" that the market is moving up or down. Nobody seems to challenge these reports even though they are often patently bogus. And since the reports seem to change every day, we just get used to the idea that nobody offers a real explanation of daily market movements. So just like we simply have to accept that our portfolios are worth 40% less than they were last October, we have to accept that nobody will bail us out or even explain why the market moves up or down every day.

Yesterday, for example, there were two "explanations" offered -- both of which are silly. One was that investors were buying stocks yesterday in anticipation of a Fed rate cut, the other that investors were snapping up bargains. Yet just a little analysis suggests that both "explanations" are probably wrong. The Fed rate cut explanation makes no sense because the market has been anticipating a 50 basis point cut since last week -- if this was news why didn't the market rise last week?

The other -- that investors were snapping up bargains -- is also shaky. That's because a lower stock price does not necessarily mean that the stock is a bargain. Investors must evaluate a stock based on its price in relation to some measure of value -- such as its earnings growth or its net worth. But most analysts agree that 2009 earnings projections are not worth the paper they're written on. Some anticipate that earnings will decline 35% or more next year so P/E ratios are meaningless. And for many companies -- particularly those holding asset-backed securities -- net worth as stated on their books is a fiction that does not reflect the diminished value of this toxic waste.