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.

Maybe one day if you are young and cute, they'll call you a Sloane.

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.

Oh God, the smell.

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 a href="http://nymag.com/nightlife/partylines/2008/12/15" title="Click to read this article" class="popup">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.