Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

If you haven't picked up something to wear for Halloween, Forbes has posted its annual collection of masks featuring "some of the year's most frightening faces." There's a little something for everyone. The Glenn Beck will work for if you're looking to frighten your liberal friends; then there's the one of Michael Moore, which will work nicely if you plan to hang out with a bunch of conservatives this weekend. Of course, if you actually work at Forbes and you just watched the company lay off as many as 100 employees this week, the most frightening man around right now is probably Steve Forbes himself, in which case you'll need this. You're welcome. [Forbes]

• Time Inc. is expected to announce plans to slash $100 million in costs next week; naturally, lots of layoffs will be involved in making that happen. [NYT]
• The Wall Street Journal is closing its Boston bureau. Also in Beantown: The Boston Globe's publisher has announced he's stepping down. [BW, NYT]
• The war between the White House and Fox News is over. For now. [DF]
• Esquire's latest bid for relevance: Its December issue will be tricked out with "an emerging technology called augmented reality." Sounds hot. [WSJ]
• Lou Dobbs says someone fired a shot at his New Jersey home/horse farm. He's yet to blame the population of Mexico. But just give it time. [CNN]More

• Tom McGeveran took over as editor of the Observer after Peter Kaplan made his exit this spring, but now he's headed out the door as well. [NYO]
• Layoffs: The cuts at Condé Nast continue though they should end soon; the layoffs at Forbes this week were deep ones: 1 in 4 editorial staffers were let go.
• Newsday's website erected a pay wall today. Good luck with that. [E&P]
• The Michael Jackson movie This Is It sold $2.2 million in tickets on its opening night, which is pretty good considering it was a Tuesday. [LAT, NYT]More

• Nell Scovell, a writer on Dave Letterman's show in the late '80s, has stepped forward to detail the show's "hostile, sexually charged atmosphere." [VF]
• Layoffs: Yesterday's cuts at Forbes claimed 30-40 people; reality TV-focused Teen Vogue laid off half a dozen staffers today; the cuts continue this week at W; and a big round of cuts could go down at Time Inc. sometime next week.
• Sarah Palin's memoir, which comes out next month, had already earned her $1.25 million even before she stepped down as Alaska's governor. [AP]
• Michael Jackson's This Is It debuts in theaters tonight. [NYDN]
• How's Jay Leno's new show doing more than a month in? Not so good. [NYT]More

• Bad news for CNN: The network now occupies fourth (and last) place in the cable news ratings. Not only did it fall behind Fox News and MSNBC in October, it also dropped below its sister network HLN as well. [DF, NYT]
• More bad news for newspapers: Sales were down 10 percent between April and September; the New York Times' weekday circulation has now fallen below 1 million for the first time in two decades. [AP, NYT, AdAge]
• As rumored, Forbes carried out a round of job cuts today. [NYT]
• Ricky Gervais will be the host of the 67th Annual Golden Globes. [LAT]
• If you love Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, you'll be pleased to hear that a third iteration, Top Chef: Just Desserts, will debut on Bravo next year. [THR]
• Rosie O'Donnell's new Sirius XM show debuts next week. Get excited! [USAT]
• Self editor Lucy Danzinger has no need for the Town Cars normally provided to Condé Nast editors. After she's finished running six miles in Central Park in the morning, Condé's bravest editor straps on a helmet and bikes to work! (Except when it's snowing or she has an important meeting, of course.) [NYT]

Another Bad Day For Magazines | The magazine bloodbath continues today. Condé Nast laid off staffers at Brides this morning, two days after shutting down Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. And rumor has it a big round of layoffs at Forbes is imminent. The good news? At least one former Condé employee got a free lunch today:More

Breaking: America's Rich Not Quite as Rich As They Used to Be | Forbes' annual list of the richest Americans, the Forbes 400, was released today. The bad news? It was a pretty rough year for the super-rich, not surprisingly, with the collective net worth of Forbes 400 members falling $300 billion over the past 12 months. The good news, at least for those poor people who have had to deal with the indignity of only being worth in the high nine figures: You don't need to be a billionaire to make the cut this year. A mere $950 million will suffice. [Forbes, NYDN]

Sheila Bair's Consolation Prize | Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, may not be worthy of coverage in the eyes of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. But maybe she can take some comfort from Forbes' new "100 Most Powerful Women" list. Bair comes in at No. 2, right behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who nabbed the top spot for the fourth straight year. [Forbes, NYDN]

The Most Bias-Free College Poll Ever | The best college in the country? That would be the U.S. Military Academy (otherwise known as West Point), believe it or not—at least according to Forbes, which just issued its list of "America's Best Colleges":More

• McGraw-Hill, which announced recently that it's looking to get rid of BusinessWeek, has now announced plans to get rid of 550 employees. [WSJ]
• Jim Spanfeller, the president and CEO of Forbes.com, either decided to leave the company or was forced out, depending on who you talk to. [DF, NYT]
• As expected, the new Harry Potter movie raked it in yesterday. [THR]
• Donald Trump's long-running libel lawsuit against author (and New York Times business editor) Timothy O'Brien has been dismissed by a judge. [NYP]More

• The Harry Potter frenzy kicked off last night when the latest installment debuted at midnight last night and raked in $22.2 million in the process. [THR]
• Jared Kushner's struggling Observer is still hunting for a new editor. [DF]
• Time Inc. has "assembled a high-level SWAT team" to revamp Fortune. [NYP]
• The most successful magazine at the moment? Fitness. Obviously! [Folio]
• Ukraine's Culture Ministry has banned Brüno because "it's immoral." [THR]
• A hacker accessed the computers of several Twitter employees, made off with a big bunch of documents, and is now leaking the info online. Technology! [TC]
• Is NBC's wacky, new terrorist-hunting reality show going to put war correspondents in danger's way? Guess we'll find out shortly, right? [NYO] More

• The curse of Gisele: Both Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar put supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the covers of their mags this year, and both have turned out to be their worst-selling issues thus far in 2009. [NYO]
• Can Forbes survive the downturn? The Forbes family thinks so. [NYT]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer has acquired Very Short List, the struggling email newsletter owned by Barry Diller's IAC. [Gawker, NYP]
• The Huffington Post has a new CEO, ex-Ziff-Davis CEO Eric Hippeau. [PC]
• BusinessWeek is the latest mag to test a paid online subscriptions. [MW]
• Barack Obama's half-brother landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster. [AP]
• The Hangover and Up were the top-grossing films this past weekend. [LAT]
• The Boston Globe is up for sale—and a handful of people appear to be interested—although just how much they'll pay is anybody's guess. [NYT]
• ABC's Lost is the most watched TV show on the Internet. [Variety]

• The newspaper industry may look to take a cue from the music business in its elusive hunt for new sources of revenue. Because, clearly, if there's one industry to gleam some wisdom from, that's the one. [MP, WSJ]
• The Justice Department is looking into whether tech giants like Yahoo! and Google violated antitrust laws in their recruiting efforts. [WaPo]
• NBC's two-part White House special scored big ratings. Conveniently, it also squeezed in plugs for every other show on the network. [HP, Newsday]
• Laura Ling and Euna Lee went on trial in North Korea today. [WaPo]
• Silvio Berlusconi is feuding with Rupert Murdoch. And so now Michael Wolff says he really likes Berlusconi. Business as usual, clearly. [Gawker, Reuters]
• Here's something really depressing to chew on: Glenn Beck is No. 81 on Forbes's "Celebrity 100" list and made $23 million last year. [Forbes] 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]

• All those layoffs at Forbes yesterday? They continue today, sadly. [NYP]
• Times executive editor Bill Keller has a few words for Marc Bowden, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece about Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Also? He thinks VF should really beef up its factchecking department. [Romenesko]
• The biggest media company in America? That would be Disney. [BN]
• Nine of the top 10 cable news programs belong to Fox News. [HP]
• The winners of the 2008 Peabody Awards were announced today. [AP]
• Wanda Sykes is getting her own talk show. [B&C]
• Video from Bill O'Reilly's chat with David Letterman last night. [MM]
• Guiding Light is done. The final episode airs Sept. 18. [THR]