—G+J to slim portfolio, trim expenses: German publishing house Grunder +Jahr is going to pare its portfolio of over 280 magazines and newspapers, and cut company expenses by 20 percent in the coming year. Reuters says publications that don’t “stand a chance of surviving the global financial crisis” will be cut within the next few weeks. The reduction in expenses will come from cutbacks in travel, employee expenses and events.

—Emmis Communications’ staff and salary cuts: The Indianapolis-based media giant has cut four percent of the staff of Emmis Radio—or just over 30 full and part-time employees, per RadioInk. Employees that avoided the cuts won’t go unscathed, however, as anyone with a salary over $50,000 will see it cut by three percent.

—Rumor mills churning: Nikke Finke and Sharon Waxman say that big layoffs are coming to MTV and Sony, respectively. Finke’s sources say that MTV will be announcing “a lot” of staff cuts tomorrow—in the hopes of the news flying under the radar because of Election Day coverage. (Staci adds: Our sources say not tomorrow.) Meanwhile, Waxman’s insiders say that some of the “most severe” cutbacks Sony (NYSE: SNE) has experienced are coming, as per an e-mail from CEO Howard Stringer. We’ll try to find out more on both.

—Seattle Times cuts staff 10 percent: Falling circ and rising costs are the reasons the Seattle Times to shed about 10 percent of its workforce through a combination of layoffs and buyouts, the paper itself reports. The daily will lose about 130 to 150 posts companywide.