Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Arianna's Best Birthday Ever | How has Arianna Huffington been spending her 59th birthday? She started the day in Greece before making her way to Croatia, reportedly aboard the Rising Sun, the 454-foot, $250 million yacht that is co-owned by billionaires David Geffen and Larry Ellison. [Gawker]

• Rumor has it Richard Branson may be interested in buying Playboy. [ChiTrib]
• Two Boston Globe unions have agreed to concessions with the NYT Co. [E&P]
• Why did the Times pick Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to invest in the paper instead of David Geffen? It seems publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was "worried about Geffen's ambition to take over the company." [AllThingsD]
• Mayor Bloomberg plans to introduce legislation in Albany to extend the city's popular—but broke—film/TV tax credit program. [THR]
• Tom McGeveran has been named interim editor of the New York Observer. He'll take over for Peter Kaplan, whose last day will be this Friday. [NYO]More

Reports surfaced recently that media mogul David Geffen had expressed an interest in buying a piece of the New York Times. As the story goes, Geffen had offered to buy Harbinger Capital Partners' 20 percent stake in the paper; but Harbinger, the hedge fund operated by Phil Falcone, had rejected the overture because it had been hoping for a higher price. Much was made of Geffen's attempt to snag a piece of the esteemed paper, what his true intentions were, and whether the DreamWorks co-founder had been hoping to shape the paper's coverage of Washington and Hollywood. It doesn't matter much now, since the deal doesn't appear to be moving ahead. In the meantime, though, let's all be thankful that Falcone's wife, Lisa, hasn't been making any efforts to influence the Times's fashion coverage. Click on the photo above to see Lisa at the NYCB spring gala the other night in all her glittery glory.

• Monthly mags continue to suffer: Ad pages have dropped by 23 percent on average, although the situation is particularly dire at Condé Nast. [NYP]
• Maureen Dowd landed in a bit of hot water after it was revealed she'd "borrowed" from blogger Josh Marshall for her op-ed column yesterday. She's since offered a (dubious) explanation and apology. [E&P, HP, Politico]
• Television networks start selling ads for the fall season today as part of upfront week, although the economy is putting a damper on things. [NYT]
• Despite few successes and many failures, NBC golden boy Ben Silverman still has a job. For how much longer, though, is anybody's guess. [NYT]
• Angels & Demons was No. 1 at the box office with a $48 million haul. [WSJ]
• If you can't find Newsweek on newsstands, that may be because the magazine has totally redesigned itself. [Newsweek, WaPo, HuffPo] More

• The New York Times is now thinking of charging consumers for access to its web site, although doing so would be "tricky," says Bill Keller. Indeed. [NYT]
• There are some signs of further trouble at Forbes. [NYP]
• Martha Stewart is going to see if she can charge for online videos. [WWD]
• Advertisers are looking to channel recession-related outrage. [NYT]
• NBC has renewed Last Call with Carson Daly. Unfortunately. [THR]
• Did David Geffen really consider taking a stake in the Times? [NYP]
• Jay Leno's last guest on The Tonight Show: Conan O'Brien. [NYDN]
• Suze Orman is having her "moment," in case you weren't aware. [NYT]
• Is the Jon & Kate drama good news or bad news for TLC? [TDB]
• Brian Williams is still a Jersey boy, or so it would seem. [The Awl]

• Veteran theater producer Rocco Landesman has been nominated to be the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. [NYT]
• Why did David Geffen try to buy a stake in the New York Times? It wasn't because he thought he'd make money, that's for certain. [Newsweek]
• After taking some heat over a $75,000 speaking fee he received last week, the Times's Tom Friedman says he now plans to return the money. [LAT]
• Sarah Palin's book deal with HarperCollins is a go. How much money was involved isn't clear but the memoir will be out in 2010, which just so happens when she'll be running for reelection in Alaska. [LAT, AP]
• Bad news, hooker fans: Craigslist is dropping its erotic services section. [WP]More

• Jim Dolan's Cablevision says that Newsday is not for sale, which is good since there isn't a company on the planet that wants to buy it. [E&P]
• David Geffen made an offer to acquire the stake in the New York Times Co. controlled by Phil Falcone's Harbinger fund; Harbinger passed. [Fortune]
• The mood isn't too upbeat at the Cannes Film Festival, unsurprisingly. [THR]
• 60 Minutes' segment on Anna Wintour should air this Sunday. [Gawker]
• As of the publishing biz didn't have enough to worry about, "web pirates" are now posting copies of books on the Internet. [NYT]
• Anderson Cooper's ratings have been on the decline all year. [LAT]
• OK! appears to be dissolving into chaos. [ASSME, Gawker] More

• Bank of America sold off a $7.3 billion stake in China Construction Bank as it seeks to raise cash. Good news: only $26.6 billion to go! [DB]
• Andrew Cuomo is expected to announce that Hank Morris has pleaded guilty in the pension fund probe and will be cooperating with the investigation. [WSJ]
• Citigroup has lent out the same amount it's taken from Washington ($45 billion), a sign that Vikram may have a heart, after all. [AP, Dealbreaker]
• AIG's Ed Liddy will defend his company's rep in front of a Congressional panel  today. At the very least, he can report the busted insurance giant is $1.2 billion richer now that it's sold off its Tokyo headquarters. [WSJ, DB]More

Happy Birthday | Ivana Trump turns 60 today. Anderson Cooper's mother, heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, is 85. Cindy Crawford is 43. Sidney Poitier turns 82. Coach president Reed Krakoff is 45. Grace Hightower De Niro is turning 56. Knicks guard Stephon Marbury is 32. Patty Hearst is turning 55. Architect Deborah Berke is turning 55. Charles Barkley is 46. Senator Mitch McConnell is turning 67. Actress Lauren Ambrose is 31. And poor Rihanna turns 21 today. Weekend birthdays after the jump!More

♦  Campbell Brown is reportedly pregnant. [TVNewser]
♦  Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown aren't in competition. They're best friends! [NYT]
♦  The Robb Report is on the market. The price? "Upwards of $100 million." [Folio]
♦  NBC has exiled the struggling Lipstick Jungle to Friday nights. [Variety]
♦  CNN's new (and appallingly unfunny) political humor show starring D.L. Hughley debuted this past weekend. [NYT] More

♦  In his new book, Alec Baldwin goes off on TMZ's Harvey Levin, and says that the fallout from his infamously leaked voicemail made him want to commit suicide. [R&M]
♦  Barbra Streisand sang four songs at an Obama fundraiser last night. Attendees included Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. [Fox News]
♦  Anne Hathaway acted like a bit of a diva at an event in Toronto. She also smokes, which her publicist doesn't want you to know. [OK!, R&M]
♦  Sarah Palin's "secretive circle of stylists" dressed her in a $2,500 Valentino jacket for her big speech at the Republican convention. [P6]
♦  Bad news: Hugh Hefner says all three of the Girls Next Door are getting spinoffs. [E!]
♦  Even worse news: Heidi Montag and her sister Holly are "developing a top-secret project" together. [LAT]
More

• Carl Icahn isn't having such a hot year. Shares of Icahn Enterprises are down 50 percent this year "as investors have backed away from their initial enthusiasm for the activist investor." [NYP] 
• Waste Management has upped its bid for rival Republic Services to $6.73 billion. [WSJ]
• SocGen has closed its arbitrage trading group. [Bloomberg]
• Fortress is handing its star trader, Adam Levinson, a $300 million stock grant to keep him at the firm. [WSJ]
• UPS is in talks to acquire a European rival, TNT, for as much as $15 billion. [Reuters]
• Steven Spielberg and David Geffen may announce a plan to set up a new studio as soon as this week. [Reuters]
• More on UBS's announcement on Friday that it will buy back nearly $20 billion in auction-rate securities from investors. [Dealbook]
• Wall Street's new " increasingly ambitious beat cop," Andrew Cuomo. [WSJ]

Simon Doonan may have a brilliant eye for design, fabulous taste in decor, and a wicked sense of humor, but blind items don't seem to be his forte. In this week's Observer—and in between talk of his noble battle with toe fungus—Doonan recounts a special invite he and partner Jonathan Adler received during a recent trip to Capri:

Out of the blue, my Jonny and I received an unexpected invitation to dine with the velvet mafia aboard an extremely long yacht. Whose yacht? I refuse to name names. As you know, I am a very private person who would never divulge the details of his personal life. Just kidding! The truth is I don't want to annoy the velvet mafia. If they got annoyed, they might break my kneecaps, and then I could no longer skip. However, I will tell you this: To skip from one end of this particular boat to the other would take at least 20 minutes.