Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• The Wall Street Journal has the Times in its sights. The paper is hiring a dozen reporters to cover local news and will launch a NYC edition next year. [NYT]
• As expected, a big round of layoffs at Time Inc. is underway. [Gawker, NYT]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein may be looking to buy back the Miramax name from Disney now that it's being disbanded. That's the rumor anyway. [Wrap]
• Bloomberg plans to make BusinessWeek "bigger, glossier, and more international." Oh, and it may start charging for access to the BW site. [MW]
• The Oscars will have two hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. [LAT]More

Happy Birthday | Andre Leon Talley, Vogue's inimitable editor-at-large, turns 60 today. Actor Tim Robbins is turning 51. John Mayer is 32. Angela Lansbury is 84. Sports commentator Tim McCarver turns 68. JetBlue founder David Neeleman is turning 50. David Zucker, the man who directed Airplane! and The Naked Gun, is 62. Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller is 45. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is turning 47. Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead turns 62. Mega-art collector Donald Jonas is 80. And Suzanne Somers turns 63 today. Below: A list of people celebrating their birthdays this weekend.More

The Weinsteins Part Ways With aSmallWorld | Struggling movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob are selling off their controlling stake in the struggling social network aSmallWorld, according to the LA Times. (The buyer is Patrick Liotard-Vogt, an heir to the family that founded Nestle.) Clearly the site and Weinstein boys have both seen better days, and with the Weinstein Co. now focused on getting out from under a mountain of debt, presumably even a hundred-dollar bill for a site that hasn't been relevant in half a decade is better than nothing. But the saddest footnote to the story? In the three years that Harv owned part of the social networking site, he never found time to set up a profile, it seems:More

• More on the financial difficulty facing Harvey and Bob Weinstein: The studio has blown through $1.2 billion to date and now needs to come up with another $50 million. Or magically produce a string of hits at the box office. [WSJ, LAT]
• Despite rumors to the contrary, Condé Nast may shut down several of its magazines as part of its latest—and steepest—round of budget cuts. [WWD]
• Ebony magazine is struggling and now hunting for a buyer. [Newsweek]
• NBC is "under assault from all sides," opines Jon Friedman. [Marketwatch]
• A series of cast changes are planned for the various Law & Orders. [THR]
• Is the new TV season really buzzy, or it just the Twitter effect? [NYT]
• Warner Music will be putting its music videos back on YouTube. [AdAge]
• Holly Madison of E!'s Girls Next Door is getting her own reality show. And socialite Tinsley Mortimer's CW show is moving ahead. [NYDN, THR]
• Jerry Seinfeld's new reality show is casting neurotic couples in Brooklyn. [DI]
• Jenna Bush's new Today show gig is pretty cushy, apparently. [Page2Live]

• Harvey and Bob Weinstein are breathing a sigh of relief today. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds did better than expected at the box office this weekend, raking in $37.6 million in sales. Not that one good weekend will be enough to lift the studio out of the financial mess it is in. [NYT, THR, WSJ]
• Related: In what may be a first for a movie opening, Inglourious Basterds seems to have benefited by a "crest of tweeting goodwill." [THR]
• Some 48 years after it was first published, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now No. 1 on the New York Times' best-seller list. [NYT]
• Has the Glenn Beck brouhaha made advertisers skittish about buying commercial time during political shows in general? [AdAge, Politico]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer is launching a new paper called The Commercial Observer. It's about commercial real estate, naturally. [NYT]
• Magazine newsstand sales continue to suffer, not surprisingly. [AdAge]More

• Last night's long-delayed premiere of the sixth season of Project Runway—on Lifetime, not Bravo—earned the show its highest ratings ever. [NYT, THR]
• Breathe easy: Anna Wintour's travel itinerary for the fall fashion shows in  London, Paris and Milan will not be affected by the recent round of budget cuts at Condé Nast. She'll be staying at the Ritz in Paris, as usual. [NYP]
• The cuts have claimed Condé's supply of coffee stirrers, however. [P6]
• Another member of the Sulzberger clan is joining the New York Times. [NYO]
• News Corp. has been meeting with newspaper publishers to discuss forming some sort of "consortium" to charge people for access to news online. [LAT]
• News Corp. is also in talks to sell its Dow Jones stock market index. [NYT]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein have a lot riding on the success of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. How is the movie expected to perform at the box office this weekend? Not too bad, per early estimates. [THR]More

An Ominous Sign For the Weinsteins | Reader's Digest reported yesterday that it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection any day now. The firm that Reader's Digest retained back in June to try and restructure the company's debt so it could prevent a bankruptcy filing? Miller Buckfire, the same financial advisory firm now counseling Harvey and Bob Weinstein on how to prevent their media company from going under. [Forbes]

• Another media company falls: Reader's Digest Association, the publisher of Reader's Digest (duh) and a handful of other titles (like Every Day with Rachael Ray), says it will file for bankruptcy protection shortly. [Reuters]
• As you may have heard, things haven't been too well for Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob. So what will happen if they don't turn the mini-studio around? "I'll be... making cheap hamburgers, or selling trailers, or refrigerators, or something," says (a refreshingly honest) Harvey. [NYT] 
• Fashion mags are looking a bit thin this fall, in case you haven't heard. [WSJ]
• Don't expect the feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann to dissipate: Ratings for both have been up since the war of words began anew. [LAT]
• Comedian Steve Harvey is joining Good Morning America. In related news, comedian Mo Rocca is hosting a web-based show for CBS News. [ABC, NYT]
• District 9 was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. [ABC News] More

Masochist Wanted | Who said jobs in the entertainment business are scarce these days? Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein's slightly less volatile brother, is hiring a new assistant. And it sounds like a total blast: "This is a 24/7 job; you will be the only assistant to this executive. You must be available on nights and weekends, and expect to spend long hours in the office." [Gawker]

• Kevin Wendle, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded CNET and iFILM, among other companies, has lowered the price of his apartment at 812 Fifth Avenue for the second time since listing it for $14.85 million in January. The 17th-floor apartment, which Wendle purchased for $6.4 million in 2006, is now listed for $9.95 million with Corcoran's Deborah Grubman and Carol Cohen. [Cityfile, Curbed, Corcoran]
• Steve Wynn is about to put his apartment at 817 Fifth Avenue back on the market for $25 million, six years after he failed to sell it for $15 million. The 3,900-square-foot spread, which suffered water damage a few years back, now comes with onyx floors and a leather-lined private elevator vestibule. [NYO]
• Two weeks after it was reported that he was "quietly" shopping his Beresford apartment, Bob Weinstein's 6,500-square-foot duplex has officially hit the market. The six-bedroom apartment with grand stairway, paneled library, two terraces, and three fireplaces is listed with Brown Harris Stevens broker Ileen Schoenfeld for $29.75 million. [NYO, BHS, previously]More

• Bob Weinstein and his wife Annie Clayton are reportedly looking for a buyer for their five-bedroom apartment at the Beresford. The 6,500-square-foot duplex is "quietly" being offered for "around $34 million" by Brown Harris Stevens broker Ileen Schoenfeld. No need to worry about the couple being homeless if they manage to unload the apartment: In addition to a townhouse on West 70th Street, which they picked up for in May for $15 million, the Weinsteins also own a one-bedroom on West 67th Street and a condo at Astor Place. [NYO]
• Retired hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt has sold his two-bedroom apartment at the Museum Tower. He and wife Judy won't be moving, however: The Steinhardts split their time between an apartment at 1158 Fifth Avenue and a massive estate in Bedford. [Cityfile]
• Charles Martin Jr., the CEO of Vanguard Health Systems, has picked up a pied-à-terre. The Nashville-based exec purchased a four-bedroom duplex at 155 West 15th Street for $6.675 from Blackstone senior managing director Neil Simpkins and his wife Miyoung Lee. [Cityfile]More

• Is Harvey and Bob Weinstein's film company headed for bankruptcy? That remains unclear, although the Weinstein Co's decision to hire Miller Buckfire to restructure its finances isn't a good sign, that's for sure. [NYT]
• Members of the Boston Newspaper Guild are voting today whether to accept the package of pay cuts proposed by the New York Times Co. [PC]
• Stephen Colbert is broadcasting from Iraq this week. In addition to an interview with the president, Colbert will get a military-style makeover. [NYT]
• Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by a North Korean court late last night. The Obama administration has vowed to keep up its lobbying effort. And in the meantime, employees at Current TV—where both women work—continue to keep quiet about the matter, per instructions from network management. [NYT, AP, NYT]More

Trouble For the Weinsteins? | This can't be good news for Harvey and Bob: "The Weinstein Company, the studio behind Academy-Award winning film "The Reader," has hired financial adviser Miller Buckfire & Co., LLC to explore possible restructuring or refinancing, according to people familiar with the situation." [WSJ]

The situation at the Weinstein Co. is getting pretty dire: Poor Bob Weinstein was forced to fly home from Cannes on a commercial plane. In coach, no less. To make matters worse, he was seated at the rear of the plane, "leaving the mogul to stew in the back of the cabin while the minutes to his next plane ticked by, instead of in the front of the line, where he's more accustomed to stand." The gentle, generous demeanor he shares with his brother is unchanged, though. As he left the plane, a woman asked him to help her reach her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment. Weinstein's response: "That'll be ten bucks." Too bad he was kidding! Ever little bit helps when you've blown through $1.2 billion and you still haven't managed to come up with a winner at the box office. [The Wrap]

• NBC chief Jeff Zucker's former duplex at 239 Central Park West (left), which he sold to Marti Meyerson and her husband Jamie Hooper in 2006 for $15.7 million, is back on the market. The 11th and 12th floor apartment is now listed for $17.5 million. Meyerson is the daughter of Morton Meyerson, Ross Perot's onetime business partner and the former chairman and CEO of Perot Systems. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Bob Weinstein and his wife Annie Clayton have paid $15 million for a four-story, 6,580-square-foot townhouse at 39 West 70th Street. [Real Deal]
• Big time art collectors Donald and Shelley Rubin, who made fortune with the MultiPlan health care network, have put their townhouse at 122 East 70th Street on the market with Kathy Sloane for $20.2 million. [NYO, BHS]More