The Times is resorting to desperate measures, but the Atlantic thinks that, like, might not make a difference. Forbes is laying off more staffers, and that dream you had of escaping it all and running away to a little publication in Tulsa? Forget it, bud. As the world turns, this is the day in media news, after the jump.

This morning, news came that much-loved light humorist Sloane Crosley is coming out with a follow-up to her bestselling book, I Was Told There'd Be Cake. Crosley is often described as a blend of David Sedaris, Nora Ephron, and Candace Bushnell (which, judging by her Website, is a formula her publicists are trying to get across). Seeing this again today reminded us of something that always stuns us: There are only ten writers that you can be compared to in blurbs or publicity materials. Out of the thousands of great writers in American history, this is all we can come up with? In Sloane's case, we're not even sure it's a compliment! Below, we've compiled the top ten (sometimes entries are paired if they are essentially the same writer) most overused blurb comparisons for new, zeitgeist-y writers:

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald or Edith Wharton: If you write about society, you write about rich drunks, or you write about crumbling marriages and decadence, you're one of these two. If you're a boy, you're Scott; if you're a girl, you're Edith. If you're a girl pretending to be a boy, maybe you get to be George Eliot.

Name: Joan Osborne
Age: 40-ish
Neighborhood: Cobble Hill
Occupation: Singer-songwriter, performs and speaks at the 92nd Street Y January 15

Who's your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Walt Whitman.

What's the best meal you've eaten in New York?
New Year's 2001 at my friend Maura Robinson's home.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Inhale deeply, exhale honestly.

Anne Hathaway, whose character in the upcoming buddy comedy Bride Wars endures a terrible "blood orange" spray tan, is notoriously fair-skinned, so it came as a surprise to find that she tested out the procedure in real life. "I had a spray tan done once," she told us at last night's premiere of the movie. "I wound up looking like a zebra. An orange zebra. And then when it came off, I started, you know, because I'm so pale underneath, I looked like a giraffe with leprosy. And I smelled like nachos and maple syrup the whole time, so it really wasn't a good idea."

So what made her do it? "I was trying out a different look for a role. It's weird, though, because I couldn't get it off in time for the start of filming, and I didn't want to keep it up, so I'm half-orange for 10 percent of the film." [Ed: Our reporter couldn't get out of her which movie had her semi-ochre, but our guess is Ella Enchanted, duh.]

View our Party Lines slideshow for more fashion disasters from last night's premiere.

Everyone knows that, like peanut butter and jelly or Southern Comfort and vomit, drinking and random sex go hand in hand. But today's amNewYork gravely brings our attention to some stunning statistics, gleaned from a citywide health survey on drunk sex.

In fact, a binge drinker is three times more likely than a nondrinker to have two to four sex partners in the past year, according to the health survey. Binge drinking men who have sex with other men are particularly at risk, doubling their likelihood of having five or more sex partners in the past year.

Residential real estate industry insiders are letting loose with their fourth-quarter market reports today, and the news is, well, not great. But it’s not the spanking some may have expected. Some highlights:

• The average sales price of a Manhattan apartment finally fell, at least according to Halstead Property’s findings, but only slightly — 2 percent — from the previous quarter. It’s still steep: $1,449,621. (Jonathan Miller’s Prudential Douglas Elliman report shows prices practically unchanged from the previous quarter.)

• Resales most definitely took a hit. Median sales prices are down 10.1 percent from the previous quarter, and 3.1 percent compared to the same time period in 2007, per the Elliman report. Streeteasy.com saw resale median prices for co-ops dipping 5.2 percent from third-quarter figures, and by 2.4 percent compared to 2007. Corcoran’s numbers found the biggest dips in East Side two- and three-bedrooms, which fell by at least 22 percent.

By picking Leon Panetta, a former congressman and Clinton-era chief of staff, to head up the CIA, Obama is finally hearing a reaction to one of his appointments that isn't "good job." Two Democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee — both of whom Obama snubbed by not informing them of the pick — have already criticized Panetta's lack of intelligence experience. It's been widely acknowledged that Obama faced a difficult task in finding someone untainted by the cavalier, torture-friendly, domestic-spytastic Bush years, and Panetta brings with him solid anti-torture bona fides. Can his purity overcome his untraditional background? Who knows, but sometime soon Obama's outside-the-box tendencies should stop being so surprising to everyone.

The poor Noels: They lost half their fortune in the Madoff mess, but people on Mustique are so happy the megabrood won't be on the island this winter that one bar has created a "no Noel" cocktail. Donna Karan was googly-eyed for A-Rod on Parrot Cay over New Year's, but he's "still hung up on Madonna" — just like the name of Madonna's driving, hypnotic, thoughtful 2005 hit! The Gossip Girl cast and crew donated 500 pounds of canned goods to City Harvest, but Dorota had to lug it all there. A Christie's V.P. was caught with his pants down along with a guy from the Bronx in Central Park near East 75th Street (in this weather?!), but we'll spare repeating his name here because, hey, that just as well could've been us on an off day. Caroline Kennedy would sass off to the press even when she was 6 years old. "What, do you guys write for Highlights or something?" Well, not quite that, but in the same spirit.

Scribner paid only $1.6 million for Laura Bush's memoir, the Post reports today, which is a slap in the face, even during a time when book-publishing companies can barely afford lunch. First Lady memoirs usually fetch big bucks — Hillary Clinton's Living History got an $8 million advance, and she didn't have a war, a financial crisis, or a house full of entertaining drunks. It seems like, probably, Laura just didn't bring the goods: One publisher who met with her said she wouldn't talk about anything of substance and called it "the worst, or the most frustrating, meeting ... I’ve ever had.” But it's probably because after Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, everyone feels like they already know the Laura Bush story — and they don't want her messing it up by offering her own version of what really happened. “Do you remember after Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston separated, it was more interesting to wonder what Aniston thought than to find out what she thinks?” Sittenfeld told The New Yorker. “Sometimes when people share their thoughts it’s sort of disappointing.” That said: If LB wants to pose naked on the cover of GQ, we'll buy it.

LAURA BUSH GETS $1.6M ADVANCE [NYP]
First Memoirs [NYer]

"It's not easy competing with a Kennedy," reads the lede of today's Times story about the competition to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. Don't we know it! How could we forget our ill-fated campaign for People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1988! But seriously, the paper talked to Steve Israel and Carolyn B. Maloney, two U.S. representatives from New York who are trying to vie with Caroline for the spot. And the results kind of made us sad:

They have variously invited reporters to lunch, cheerfully passed around cream-filled pastries and publicized every stop on their schedules, but still attracted scant attention compared with the heiress to America’s most storied political dynasty. Mr. Israel was greeted by four reporters Monday afternoon at the Mar-Logg Restaurant in Utica, where patrons barely seemed to notice as he held court in the rear of the diner … “If this is a celebrity beauty contest, I am not going to win,” Ms. Maloney said.