Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Is New York magazine up for sale now that Bruce Wasserstein has died?  There's no reason to assume so, but that isn't stopping people from tossing around the names of some very unlikely "contenders." [NYP, AdAge, DF]
• Related: David Carr of the Times details how Wasserstein benefited the magazine; Daniel Gross of Slate focuses on his commitment to journalism; and New York's editors offer up their own heartfelt tribute to the mag's late owner.
• The cuts at Condé continue: Golf World felt the pain today. [Gawker]
• SNL has cut a deal with Anheuser-Busch to stick beer ads into the show. "Maybe if we drink enough the show will actually seem funny." [LAT] More

• Just when you think members of the Jackson family can't possibly stoop any lower comes confirmation they've agreed to do a reality TV show for A&E. It's going to be "genuine," says the show's producer. Clearly. [THR]
• Because the public has been clamoring for 24/7 access to fake wrestling matches, the WWF is now hoping to start up its own cable network. [NYP]
• More on what went down when Vogue editor Anna Wintour sat down to chat with David Letterman on his show last night. [WWD]
• Sony unveiled its electronic reading gizmo/Kindle competitor today. [NYT]
• The Observer's Jason Horowitz is leaving for the Washington Post. [NYO]
• A homeless woman has scored a four-month internship at Elle. Just wait until Elle "employee" Olivia Palermo gets her hands on her on the next season of The City. Homelessness, we presume, will never have looked so good. [Gawker]More

Many people have criticized The Huffington Post for not paying its writers. But Ken Lerer, who co-founded the site with Arianna Huffington and remains the company's chairman, sure has one heck of a generous streak. Last week, we noticed that Joey Bartolomeo, a senior writer at People and frequent TV talking head, had purchased an apartment on the Upper East Side. What was strange was that Bartolomeo didn't buy the $1.025 million co-op on her own. Lerer's name appeared on the property documents as well. And it turns out that Joey isn't the first member of the Bartolomeo family to have benefited from Lerer's largesse. Bartolomeo's older sister, Stephanie Bartolomeo, picked up a $1.25 million co-op on the Upper West Side back in March. And once again, Lerer co-signed for the apartment. More

• David Letterman's ratings have gone up thanks to his very public spat with Sarah Palin. So don't be the least bit surprised if it continues. [NYT]
• Ann Moore signed a new contract with Time Inc. that will keep her around through 2012; John Squires, meanwhile, has a new gig at the company. [NYP]
• Newsweek is cutting out an issue this summer. You can guess why. [WSJ]
• Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's latest project? That would be something called "Martha University," which sounds horrifying, frankly. [PC]
• Michael Gross's new book isn't available at the New York Public Library and chances are Annette de la Renta had something to do with it. [NYO]
• Negotiations continue between the Boston Globe and union reps. "People briefed on the talks say a deal is close." Don't hold your breath. [NYT] 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]

• Mark Bowden's 11,000-word profile of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. for the May issue of Vanity Fair is now online. And it ain't pretty. [VF]
• In other Times news, the paper is scrapping its "City" section and has shut down the International Herald Tribune website. [NYO, E&P]
• For the first time, CNN will finish March behind MSNBC and Fox News. [AP]
• He's only been on the air two months, but Glenn Beck's "conservative populist anger" has already put him right behind Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. [NYT]
• Adweek, MediaWeek and Brandweek may be folded together. [NYP]
• News Corp. is hiring ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller to lead its digital division. [WSJ]
• The Huffington Post is launching an investigative journalism site. [AP]
• MTV is bringing back music videos! Sort of. [NYT]

"Real Housewife" Alex McCord lost her job at Victoria's Secret a few weeks ago, a development that insures that construction of her Brooklyn townhouse won't be complete until 2017 or so. Unfortunately, her new gig won't help pay for the granite in her kitchen or French lessons for her son, since blogging for the Huffington Post doesn't come with a salary of any sort. But it does give her a platform to share her deepest feelings! McCord says that fear "has been a big, shadowy monster creeping up behind" her recently, especially as she hears about more and more people joining her in unemployment-land. But there are positive aspects to not having a job: "It feels great to actually make a date with someone you really want to see," she says, as if there are people in the city who are actually taking time out of their day to make such "dates." Clearly, though, she can't remain unemployed forever given her husband's modest salary managing a budget hotel, so she's currently on the hunt for new sources of income:More

• Reed Business has cut staff across its numerous publications. [NYT, THR, FB]
• Carlos Slim Helu's loan to The New York Times Co. is "an ominous move" by a "capitalist with loyalties to a foreign state," says the Seattle Times. [E&P]
• Pastor Rick Warren is launching a magazine. [WSJ]
• More on Conde Nast's new web strategy. [NYP]
• Meet the Huffington Post's new cast of celebrity bloggers. [Jossip]
• The Senate has voted to delay the transition to digital TV until June 12. [BN]

Arianna Snags Carl | Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown are locked in a bitter battle to line up high-profile contributors for their respective websites/blog networks, but it looks like Arianna will emerge as this week's winner: She's convinced cranky billionaire Carl Icahn to not only blog on his own site, but also post the same pieces on the Huffington Post. Now you can not read Icahn's boring missives on two sites instead of one!

• Scribner won the non-race to publish Laura Bush's memoir. [AP]
• The Times is now selling ads on the front page of the paper. [NYT]
• Movie ticket sales totaled $9.6 bil. in 2008, down 1 percent from '07. [NYT]
• Is HuffPo worth $200 million? Not so much, says Simon Dumenco. [AdAge]
• Publishing companies are cutting perks, in case you haven't heard. [NYT]
• Howard Kurtz profiles Liz Claman, who left CNBC for Fox. [WaPo]
• Michael Phelps will now be pitching Mazdas in China. [Bloomberg]
• Marley & Me was No. 1 at the box office for a second week. [THR]

♦  Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦  The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦  Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦  Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR] 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

Tina Brown launched The Daily Beast last Monday, a fact you're undoubtedly aware of by now thanks to Tina's unrivaled talent for drumming up media attention. The Barry Diller-backed site is a news aggregator—or as Brown prefers to describe it, a site that "sifts, sorts and curates" the web—a concept that isn't all that original considering there are half a dozen sites that do precisely the same thing, most notably Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post, which was widely described as Tina's primary competitor last week. But it isn't Huffington who is most concerned with Brown's arrival on the new media scene. That distinction goes to Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair contributing editor and author who founded the buzz-less aggregation site called Newser.com a year ago. More

♦  Some 66 million tuned in to Tuesday's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, up from 55 million for the first debate on Sept. 26th. [NYT]
♦  A recap of Michelle Obama's appearances on the Daily Show and Larry King last night. [NYT]
♦  Barack Obama's campaign purchased a half-hour of airtime from CBS for a primetime special on October 29th. [THR]
♦  CBS's Dean Reynolds isn't happy about how the Obama campaign treats the media; fellow reporters take Reynolds to task. [CBS, Radar]
♦  Arianna Huffington: Not such a nice boss! [Gawker]
♦  Haute Living: Not such a fun place to work! [Jossip]

Will Kelly Ripa's Real Navel Please Reveal Itself? | Which one of these is Kelly Ripa's real belly-button? Don't know? Don't care? Thankfully we have the Huffington Post to investigate whether the editors at Shape magazine have been playing fast and loose with Ripa's navel. Now she just needs to stand up tomorrow and lift up her shirt and we'll know for sure. [Huffpo]