“What people don’t understand is that there is a huge psychological factor to the job,” Huffington Post community manager Justin Isaf told Adweek. “Moderators deal with some horrible stuff and genuinely difficult things every day, and at other sites they are often under-cared for in terms of their own mental health. That is a real shame, because it gets draining.” HuffPo moderators actually get trained on defusing threads about Israel and Palestine.

Meanwhile, all of the ever-expanding BuzzFeed stable has just one community moderator, Ryan Broderick.

“The Trayvon Martin period was a rough couple of weeks,” he said.

But according to Mr. Broderick, the anonymous commenting impulse can't be entirely suppressed.

"There is a social realm where things are rationally sorted and then there’s the anonymous place that brings out a person’s base instincts. It can become a frothing, bubbling cauldron of insanity. [...] Yet, you need that animalistic part of yourself. I think of it almost like your sex drive.”

A few minutes later, fellow news editor Brian Braiker announced he would be leaving for the same post at the US office of the Guardian.

Mr. Koppelman and Mr. Braiker make four editorial departures since Adweek's ambitious and combative editor in chief Michael Wolff was ousted last month. Managing editor Hillary Frey left for Yahoo, and reporter Dylan Byers left for Politico. Mr. Wolff was succeeded by executive editor Jim Cooper.

Executive editor Jim Cooper will oversee day to day operations of Adweek.

“We are grateful for Michael’s contribution to Adweek,” said Jimmy Finkelstein, Prometheus chairman. “His vision and guidance were essential during our monumental transformation.”

Business Insider said the 50,000 average for the first half of 2011 means the weekly is "turning around." Before she started it was around 39,000, and ad pages have doubled compared to this issue last year, they pointed out.

Adweek, on the other hand, consults a second (albeit anonymous) industry source, who claims lower newsstand figures than those Newsweek provided to the Audit Bureau of circulation, and points out that some of the most talked about covers--Princess Diana at 50, the Nafissatou Diallo exclusive--have also been double issues, meaning they should have sold significantly more than the 50,000 average.

The New York Post

"Separately, [Adweek parent company] Prometheus bosses have been apologetic about some of the public stances taken by the outspoken Wolff in his columns on the media business," the article notes.

The Post doesn't go into any more detail about the "stances," but they don't need to. Since taking over Adweek, Mr. Wolff has really just expounded on one--that Post parent company News Corp. is rotten to the Murdoch nuclear family core.

The Post's doesn't mention that Mr. Wolff wrote an unauthorized, aggressive Rupert Murdoch biography—The Man Who Owns The News—instead choosing to identify him as "a former Vanity Fair contributing editor."

The Post did not return request for comment and Mr. Wolff, reportedly also on vacation (Why does anyone even bother reporting in August?), tweeted this:

By way of disclosure—or something—there's a quote from an April interview with Observer editor Elizabeth Spiers in the Post piece too.

Says Adweek:

[D]espite the rave reviews she gets from tech luminaries, Sterne has very little experience in management, and even less in public policy, which might raise reasonable questions about whether or not she's the most qualified person to direct New York City's digital development, a job that comes with a reported $115,000 salary.

Little experience in management! Less in public policy! Surely this 27-year-old has no place in the field of technocratic wonkery!

And yet, when we examine the announcement of Ms. Sterne's appointment, we learn that Mayor Bloomberg created the job "with the goal of improving communication with residents and businesses by enhancing government transparency and working closely with digital media." Using digital media to respond to constituents and engage businesses is not public policy in the traditional sense, but that's why this is a new job. As for management, it's hard to imagine Sterne commanding a team of ground troops to manage the city's Twitter feed and website.

As for the hay to be made over a high-profile city official clearing six figures, let's just say it's scant.

The putative zinger of the Adweek piece is perhaps the most puzzling:

But Sterne's skills as a self-promoter may be stronger than her skills in social media and digital communications.

Has anyone else noticed that self-promotional skills and social media and digital media skills overlap to the point of being the same thing? Someone tell Alex Blagg the jig is up; Adweek's onto him.

Rachel Sterne may or may not prove successful at the daunting task of harnessing social media to make the city more efficient and business-friendly. But it's unlikely that she'll fail because she's young, or because she lacks middle-management experience, or because she hasn't negotiated the finer points of enacting legislation. This job is about thinking creatively about social media technology. And Ms. Sterne has generated enough online buzz to make her a reasonable candidate for a position for which the main qualification is generating online buzz.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Mr. Wolff, who is known for getting into small battles, will no doubt bring a scrappier sensibility to the group of trade publications that includes Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek. Mr. Wolff will suspend his Vanity Fair column, but continue writing longer stories for the magazine.

The news isn't a complete surprise after Jeff Bercovici reported in August that Mr. Wolff had been spotted several times taking the elevator up to e5's offices.

In his post about Mr. Wolff's new job, Mr. Arango wrote that Mr. Wolff's "most visible feud these days is with Rupert Murdoch." He also wrote that Mr. Wolff spoke with Keith Kelly at Mr. Murdoch's New York Post about his new job last week, but no story ever ran.

Earlier this year, Mr. Beckman installed Janice Min at The Hollywood Reporter. Mr. Beckman and Ms. Min announced in September that the trade will be relaunching as a weekly with emphasis on its web presence. That is to say that anything is possible with the Adweek Group.

The announcement of this strategy is expected to happen in New York tomorrow to a sold out crowd of Mad Men (and women) at Ad Week's IAB Mixx Conference. 

Instead of paying to place a sponsored message, companies or individuals will bid to have their name surfaced as a "recommended follow". It would be demographically targeted, like advertising, to reach rock fans or travel lovers.

Right now it's pretty expensive to advertise on Twitter; $100,000 is the minimum buy-in to purchase a sponsored spot in the trending column. Putting follow suggestions up for sale may allow Twitter to target consumers with more detail, opening that rich vein of local ad dollars.

A black market in paying for followers still exists, but it's getting hard to make any money. Once upon a time users were paying as much as $.25 a head for Twitter followers. These days, with robot followers and chinese Twitter sweatshops, the price has sunk to around a penny a person.

Behold, Oscar-nominated actor and recent New Yorker profile subject Alec Baldwin's face on toilet paper. (This comes via TVTattle.)

Someone should probably send a case of this stuff to the staff of the New York Post's Page Six' and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, each of whom has elevated hating the outspoken Mr. Baldwin to a life mission.

"Today, Adweek is focused not on the antiquated idea of a weekly-only model, but on the minute-by-minute schedule that our audience desires," said Sabrina Crow, vice president of the marketing group at Nielsen Media, Adweek's parent company.

Nielsen has been downsizing all year, whether with its employees, its real estate, or its publications.