From the NY POST

Us Weekly's Bonnie Fuller has figured out a new way to get more efficient and save some money - fire the efficiency expert.

Efficiency and systems analyst Jodi Green has left the magazine, said one insider: "Nobody ever knew what she was supposed to be doing."

Perhaps the efficiency expert found that hiring an efficiency expert was an inefficient use of Wenner's money?

Not so, insists executive editor Janice Min. "She was a hired gun, and her period of consultancy is ending" [today]."

The move comes along with yet another high-level defection. Us Managing Editor Mark Einsele - one of a group promoted as "Bonnie's Posse" - was the latest to join the conga line out of the joint, quitting as managing editor after several months on the job.

"Success is exhausting," said Min. "It takes a lot less energy to fail."

Einsele's departure comes only days after assistant managing editor Tara Cox quit along with three other staffers: staff writer Benjamin Nugent, TV editor Tom Conroy and copy editor Marissa Carroll.

Morale was sagging early this week as well, because the late-closing Us Weekly had staffers toiling into the wee hours on Tuesday - while the employees from fellow Wenner mags Rolling Stone and Men's Journal whooped it up at the company holiday party Monday night.

(And we always thought the main point of a company holiday party was to boost morale.)

Apparently the grousing from the overworked Us Weekly staff reached the ears of owner Jann Wenner. On Tuesday, he issued an apology to the Us Weekly team, saying that Monday had been the only day that '80s rocker Peter Wolf, former lead singer of the J. Geils Band, was available to play. (No Rolling Stone party is complete, it seems, without an aging warbler).

In the memo to Us staffers obtained by Media Ink, Wenner wrote: "We missed you last night at the Wenner Media fun-but-modest holiday party. I wanted you to know that due to the last minute decision to have a party and the availability of Peter Wolf to perform on Monday night only, we essentially had no choice but to have it coinciding with the US close".