Today’s gratuitous laddie-magazine post: MediaPost’s Michael Shields observes, “Esquire may have grabbed hold of some serious prestige after taking home four “Ellies” at last month’s National Magazine Awards, but ‘laddie-mags’ Maxim and FHM continue to prove that what men really want are semi-naked photos of ex-actresses from Baywatch and the WB, along with lots of bawdy humor and shorter, graphics-heavy editorial.”

Survivors: Yesterday, the SF Chronicle ran a long story regarding how the magazines Business 2.0 and Wired survived the dot.com bust and now are beginning to show signs of bouncing back. (Spoiler: They are owned by savvy rich companies who know that gut-wrenching recessions are great for killing the competition.) If the story had revealed how much money the magazines’ owners sunk into them between 2001-2003, it may have provided some real insight. Otherwise, it’s merely a lot of copy pointing out the obvious.