Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Condé Nast is now swinging into damage control mode: It's retained Michael Sheehan, a "crisis manager and media coach" who's faced some steep PR challenges in the past having worked with President Clinton and AIG. [NYP]
• So is Oprah moving to cable? The discussions continue, reportedly. [AdAge]
• Kyle Pope doesn't seem to have been Jared Kushner's first choice to serve as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer. Times star business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin turned Kushner down twice over the past year. [NYM]
• More than 100 people were laid off at Lifetime and A&E today. [Variety]
• Philip Gourevitch is stepping down as editor of The Paris Review. [NYO]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes discusses the future of the media biz. [TDB]
• MTV did not rebuild the Berlin Wall for U2, in case you were worried. [UPI]

• Time Inc. is "not for sale," says Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes. [DF]
• Meanwhile, Time Inc., Condé Nast, and Hearst are looking to team up and create a "Hulu for magazines." Another winning idea, clearly. [FT, ATD]
• Miramax is fast approaching non-existence. Disney, Miramax's parent, is cutting 50 jobs at the company, leaving it with just 20 employees. [NYT]
• The pros and cons to a marriage between Comcast and NBC. [AdAge]
• The Washington Post and Bloomberg are launching a joint news service. [AP]
• TV Guide dismissed several execs yesterday, including its publisher. [NYP]
• Former Warner Bros. and Yahoo! chief Terry Semel was interested in buying the Nets, but he couldn't compete with Russian mogul Mikhail Prokhorov. [P6]
• Will the David Letterman drama ultimately hurt the show's ratings or send skittish advertisers running for the exits? That's unlikely, say observers. [THR]
• The cover of Sarah Palin's forthcoming (and already best-selling) memoir, Going Rogue, has been revealed. Try to contain your excitement. [AP]

• It's not just TLC that is happy about the Jon & Kate nonsense. Putting them on the cover of Us six times in a row has been a "windfall" for Janice Min. [NYP]
• Get ready to pay for People.com: Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes says the company may begin charging for access to online magazine content. [AP]
• With book sales plunging and attendance down at BookExpo America, the mood in the publishing industry is kinda gloomy at the moment. [NYT]
• Keith Olbermann is in hot water again. The waterboarding video on his show last week was staged, it turns out, and MSNBC was made aware of that fact before the show, but they went ahead with it anyway. [Gawker]More

As expected, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced this morning that it plans to spin off AOL, a move that puts the final nail in the coffin of one of the most disastrous mergers in history. But if the mechanics of the deal strike you a little too complicated, The Times Bits blog has outlined it in easy-to-understand celebrity tabloid terms:More

Michelle Obama was the main attraction at Time magazine's sixth annual 100 "most influential" ceremony at Lincoln Center last night. She was joined by a predictably massive group of A-listers, including Oprah, Harvey Weinstein, Mort Zuckerman, Steve Schwarzman, Jeff Bewkes, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Carine Roitfeld, Gayle King, Stella McCartney, Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy, Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler, Jay Leno, Lorne Michaels, Jimmy Fallon and Nancy Juvonen, Charlie Rose, David Lauren and Lauren Bush, Ann Coulter, Suze Orman, Arianna Huffington, Kate Betts, Andy Serwer, Paul Krugman, Vivi Nevo and Ziyi Zhang, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews ... More

Dick Parsons stepped down as Time Warner's chairman at the end of 2008, and handed over the reigns as the company's CEO to Jeff Bewkes a year before that. That isn't stopping Time Warner from sprucing up his office, though! The company disclosed it plans to spend $776,000 this year to make heading into the office every couple of months a more pleasant experience for Parsons, and the company will also pay to provide him with a secretary. Considering Parsons is now the chairman of Citigroup, presumably he'll also be getting a fancy new office at 399 Park Avenue just as soon as Citi CEO Vikram Pandit is finished with his $10 million renovation of the second-floor "executive suite." And yet despite two new spaces, he still won't have access to a Zen garden! (At least not one that Citigroup or Time Warner will be paying for.) But he can always make one himself if really wants to.

• The LA Times ran an ad designed to look like an actual news story on the front page of the paper today. Much criticism has followed, obvs. [ATD, E&P]
• The NYT is asking its reporters to come up with cost-cutting ideas. [NYO]
• A Chicago-based Good Morning America staffer was given the boot after he tried to put his nose job on his corporate credit card. [P6]
• The acquisition of the Wall Street Journal was a giant misstep for News Corp., but Fox News is making Rupert Murdoch some money. [Reuters]
• Cablevision's Jim Dolan earned a $12.5 million pay package last year. [AP]
• Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes raked in $19.9 million in 2008. [MC]
• The 15 top moneymakers on primetime television. [Forbes]
• Barely-living Blackbook is now refusing to pay some freelancers. [Jossip]

• Ben Silverman and NBC have come to terms on a new contract. [B&C]
• Jeff Bewkes is taking over as Time Warner's chairman. [Bloomberg]
• As expected, Newsweek is trimming both staff and circulation. [WSJ]
• Do his 8 Golden Globe nods mean Harvey Weinstein is on the rebound? [THR]
• CBS Interactive is restructuring and making major cuts. [PaidContent]
• Hugh Jackman will be hosting the Oscars next February. [THR] 

Good news if you're an employee of the Trump Organization! Your exceptionally kind-hearted boss, Donald J. Trump, is giving you an hour off from work next Tuesday so you can go and vote. (Just one hour, though, so don't go making excuses about how your polling station is Brooklyn.) He isn't the only one. If you happen to work for one of the 2,372 companies owned by Time Warner, consider this video by Jeff Bewkes as official notice that you're permitted to skip out of the Time Warner building to perform your civic duty. Not registered? Not a US citizen? See you across the street in Central Park!

Just who are the city's biggest media titans supporting this November? Below, details on the campaign contributions of Jeff Bewkes, Dick Parsons, Barry Diller, Jann Wenner, Bob Wright, Mel Karmazin, Robert F.X. Sillerman, Ben Silverman, and a handful of others.

• Did Goldman Sachs have a hand in the downfall of Bear Stearns? London-based traders at the firm are now under investigation for spreading negative rumors [WSJ]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes has stepped up talks with Yahoo and Microsoft over merging or selling AOL to one of the companies. [Reuters] 
  
• The SEC took dramatic steps to curb the short selling of major financial stocks. [Reuters]
• Lehman's former CFO, Erin Callan, is moving to Credit Suisse where she'll head up the global hedge fund business. [Forbes]
• Congressional opposition may complicate the government's plan to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [NYT]
• Asking rents for Manhattan office space are climbing despite the tanking economy. [NYT]

It won't be quite as cheery as usual at Herb Allen's annual media mogul retreat, which kicks off today in Sun Valley. This time last year, the credit crisis was but a blip on the radar. Oh, how things have changed over the past twelve months. Without the billions on hand to close big deals, the economic downturn has made life pretty depressing for the master-of-the-universe set. But gather they will— the tennis and hiking must go on, damnit—and aside from the handful of players who were dropped from the invite list on account of their declining influence, all the media big shots are expected. Among those who will be cruising in on their company-owned jets: Rupert Murdoch (along with son Lachlan), Warren Buffett, Viacom chief Philippe Dauman, Les Moonves, Howard Stringer, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Jeff Bewkes and Dick Parsons of Time Warner, NBC's Jeff Zucker, Universal's Ron Meyer, Paramount chief Brad Grey, and Disney's Bob Iger. More