The broader economy is showing signs that we can at least interpret as positive, but this doesn't extend to the media industry, it seems. Condé Nast's ad page results are out for its 2009 issues, now that the last issue of the year has been sold for each of them ... and the situation is grim.

Condé Nast lost 8,359 ad pages this year, according to a report released on Wednesday. Ad pages have plunged 30% this year. Cost cutting has been used to offset the revenue declines, with more than 450 positions removed this year and several magazines shuttered, including Gourmet and Modern Bride.

Bernie Madoff's long-time secretary Eleanor Squillari is capitalizing on her shot at 15 minutes of fame, co-authoring a 9,000 word article for the June issue of Vanity Fair. A sneak peak is available on the Vanity Fair website now.

What does she have to say about Madoff? According to Squillari, Madoff "had a roving eye and . . . a habit of getting frequent massages."

"One day, I caught him scouting the escort pages that run alongside pictures of scantily clad women in the back of a magazine," she said. "He straightened up in his chair, startled, and said, 'I'm just looking!' " The most interesting bit is this one:

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

2008 was Tina Fey's year as the award-winning TV star, writer, and creator of 30 Rock, then completing her first hit movie Baby Mama, followed by a return as SNL's Sarah Palin. Fey is now one of the most sought after people in Hollywood.

Evidence of this can be found in the recent Barbara Walters interview listing her as one of the ten most interesting people of the year as well as the current issue of Vanity Fair.

Sarah Palin was a gold mine for political pundits, tabloids, and comedians alike during her run as the vice presidential sidekick of John McCain, but to none more than Tina Fey, the seven-time Emmy award-winning star and writer. Fey's satiric renditions of Palin brought more publicity to both women then either of them could have hoped for.

The average American family has seen its income fall over the last eight years while its expenses have risen. Not so for the top 1%. They've been building 40,000 square foot mansions and flying in private jets to visit their vacation homes in Aspen and the Hamptons and so on. But since the fall of 2007, things have headed downhill for the rich along with the Dow -- which has lost 36% of its value since its peak in October 2007.

They're changing their lifestyles. How so? Vanity Fair provides examples of how the super-rich are downsizing in wine, shoes, fitness training, air travel, grocery shopping, and maid service. To illustrate these changes, the list below contrasts their behavior in these different categories between the fall of 2007 and the fall of 2008:

WINE

• 2007: $1,950 bottle of 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2008: $15 bottles of wine

SHOES

• 2007: $600 or $700 pair of shoes as "retail therapy
• 2008: No retail therapy because "It just doesn't feel good."

FITNESS TRAINING

• 2007: Fitness trainer three times a week
• 2008: Fitness trainer once a week

The Wall Street Journal today corrected a story reporting that Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) would host a Miley Cyrus performance at today's shareholders' meeting. Could the change have anything to do with those Vanity Fair photos?

Of course not. The 15-year old billion dollar phenomenon won't appear "because of a scheduling conflict, the company said." The Wall Street Journal owes its readers an explanation for its faulty reporting. And the way to do that would be to investigate the scheduling conflict. Here are some questions for the Wall Street Journal's reporters to ask Wal-Mart and Miley:

• What was the exact scheduling conflict that came up so suddenly between Thursday and this morning?
• Did Miley decide to book another concert appearance on Thursday just so she could have an excuse to cancel her appearance with Wal-Mart?
• Or did Wal-Mart suddenly decide that Miley's Vanity Fair photos made her "inappropriate"?

Can't Rupert Murdoch hire any competent journalists? We need to know what Miley's scheduling conflict was. A one line correction won't do.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Wal-Mart securities.

What does Vanity Fair have to do with the stock market? Plenty, according to a tongue-in-cheek item published in Brandweek.

It turns out that when things go well for the glossy magazine, whose cover this month features "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini with a naked woman on his lap, investors should be worried.

"Consider: VF's March 2007 Hollywood edition ("Our Biggest Issue Ever!") clocked in at 500 pages," BrandWeek says. "During the week of Feb 26, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average collapsed, from 12,647 to 12,114. (Remember that the magazine hits the streets the month before its pub date). "

Brandweek senior editor Jim Edwards also found similar connections with record issues in 2001 and 2000.

"The correlation is a good one," Edwards told me in an interview. "It holds."

Though I thought this was almost as stupid as the "Super Bowl" stock market theory, the thinking behind the joke was interesting.

When an economy gets overheated, companies start plowing some of their excess profits into advertising. This is particularly true with high-profile media outlets like "Vanity Fair."

"It makes a lot of sense that advertising would increase at the top of the market," Edwards said.

Remember that Edwards used the term "correlation." As our friends at Wikipedia point out, correlation does not imply causation. In other words what he found was an interesting coincidence.