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

The Huffington Post has an "exclusive" interview with Patrick Liotard-Vogt, the 25-year-old heir/spoiled brat from Switzerland who just bought the also-ran social network ASmallWorld from Harvey Weinstein. Curiously, the interview was conducted by Sabine Heller, who actually works for ASmallWorld, a fact she doesn't bother to mention. But that only makes it all the more amusing when Liotard-Vogt uses the discussion to mock the movie mogul who has fallen on hard times:

Heller: How did you and Harvey Weinstein first meet?

Liotard-Vogt: We met at the AMFAR benefit in Cannes last year. I walked up to him and said, "Hey, I want to buy your shares in ASMALLWORLD" to which he responded, "you need to show up with a lot of money, which I don't think you have." I laughed and said, "I think I have ten times more than you do."

Patrick Liotard-Vogt, New Kid On The Block [HuffPo]

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]

• Condé Nast editors and publishers may be forced to cut their budgets by as much as 25% now that the consultants reviewing operations are completing their tour of duty. Not surprisingly, "significant layoffs" are expected. [NYO]
• More trouble for Harvey: The Weinstein Co. says it plans to cut 35 additional positions at the film company over the next month or so. [THR]
• A new bidder for beleaguered BusinessWeek appears to have emerged in ex-BMG chief Strauss Zelnick and former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz. [BW]
• WSJ, the glossy owned by the Wall Street Journal, is expanding [WWD]
• The CW is planning a reality show about what it's like to be a Virgin flight attendant in search of "good times, great parties, adventure and love." [Wrap]
• Mark Consuelos (or Mr. Kelly Ripa) has been given the boot by Oprah. [NYP]
• The Observer is moving from the Flatiron district to a Jared Kushner-owned building in Midtown: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." [NYO]
• Eight out of ten Americans say they would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to bail out failing newspapers. You're shocked by that, we're sure. [E&P]

• So how did Jay Leno's new show do? He hit it out of the park ratings-wise, roping in an estimated 18 million viewers. The reviews were all pretty lousy, though, so don't be surprised if it's all downhill from here. [AdAge, LAT, THR]
• The sale of BusinessWeek: Bruce Wasserstein has dropped out as a potential acquirer of the struggling mag. And it's cutting 20% of its staff. [BW, NYT]
• ABC News has apologized to the White House for Nightline anchor Terry Moran's tweet about Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass." [LAT]
• Speaking of the White House, Barack Obama will be David Letterman's guest on Monday night; it's the first time a sitting president has done the show. [NYT]
• Oprah's season premiere scored big thanks to Whitney Houston. [Wrap]
• The House of Harvey has sustained another blow: Harvey Weinstein's 70 percent stake in the home-video distributor Genius Products, once worth as much as $400 million, is now pretty much worthless. [NYP]
• Speaking of the film mogul, The Weinstein Co. picked up the rights to A Single Man, designer Tom Ford's debut film, at the Toronto Film Festival. [THR] More

• Gisele Bundchen red-brick townhouse in the West Village is up for sale. The supermodel paid $5.8 million for 42 Barrow Street in 2005. (She bought the home under the name Casa Vida LLC; "Vida" also happens to be the name of her dog.)  Now it's been listed with Prudential Douglas Elliman's Raphael De Niro for $13.95 million. [NYO]
• Eve Weinstein, the ex-wife of producer Harvey Weinstein, has gone into contract to sell her sixth-floor apartment at 1133 Fifth. The four-bedroom spread, which first hit the market in December 2008 for $13.5 million, had been listed most recently for $11.9 million. [Cityfile, Sotheby's]More

• 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

Weinstein Under Pressure? | Is Harvey Weinstein looking to unload his stake in the failed social network ASmallWorld to raise some much-needed cash? Guest of a Guest received a tip to that effect today, and Gawker reports that a conversation did take place, but no deal was reached: "They were approached by an interested party and were willing to hear what they had to say." Needless to say, feel free to reach out to Harvey if you have any interest in taking over the long-since-faded site. [Gawker, GoaG]

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]

• More data about the Biggest Television Event Ever™: Some 31 million people tuned into the Jackson memorial on TV, and video sites report that they delivered more than 10 million live streams on Tuesday. [THR, VB]
• One TV person not pleased with all the Jackson coverage: Conan O'Brien, whose new Tonight Show has seen ratings drop as a result. [NYT]
• News Corp. has paid more than $1.6 million to settle court cases involving reporters in Britain who hacked into public figures' cell phones. [Guardian]
• Is Liberty Media going to bail out Harvey Weinstein? Let's hope so. [NYP]
• None of the major media companies appear keen on buying Twitter. [LAT]
• Comedy Central has ordered up a sitcom starring Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder, which will be produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. [B&C]
• The title of Michael Moore's new movie: Capitalism: A Love Story. [NYDN]

Harvey Weinstein, Stress Eater | A couple of months ago, Harvey Weinstein was showing off his slimmer physique, a look he achieved thanks to weight loss guru Dr. Louis Aronne, the author of the diet book, The Skinny. But judging by the pics that Dealbook posted this afternoon from the media mogulfest in Sun Valley, Harvey hasn't been making much time for the good doctor recently. Stress will do that to you, of course, especially when the economy is in the toilet and your peers keep alluding to "depleted cash reserves" and the like. Do note, though, that Disney chief Bob Iger looks as svelte as ever. Getting up at 4:30am every morning to work out isn't much fun, no. But it does keep you in size 30 Dockers. [NYT/Dealbook]