Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Happy Birthday | Designer Tom Ford turns 48 today. Disgraced media columnist Michael Wolff is turning 56. Gary Cohn, the No. 2 man at embattled Goldman Sachs, is 49. Bob Kerrey, the embattled president of the New School, is 66. Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan is turning 40. Actress Sarah Chalke is 33. Grey's Anatomy star Chandra Wilson turns 40. The R&B singer Mario turns 23. Imprisoned telecom CEO Bernie Ebbers is 68. The rapper Mase is turning 31. Olympic ski champ Jonny Moseley is 34. Former MTV VJ Downtown Julie Brown is turning 50. And Pee-wee Herman celebrates his 57th birthday today.

• 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

WWD has a long piece today on Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist who has had a rough few months ever since we first reported that he was carrying on an affair with a former Vanity Fair intern named Victoria Floethe. If you've been wondering what Wolff has been doing since he disgraced himself so fully (or you're interested in seeing a photo of where he's currently living), you should enjoy. More

• It's been two years since Ben Silverman became co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. And what a two years it's been, huh? [LAT]
• The largest union at the Boston Globe will vote on a new contract on July 20, even though it's yet to iron out a deal with the New York Times Co. [BG]
• Reader's Digest's plan to remain relevant: It's going to become even more conservative and old-fashioned, and embrace religion and stuff. [NYT]
• How are some newspaper reporters dealing with unemployment? They're turning to careers as go-kart racers. Just as you suspected. [Fortune]More

• 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

Another Mishap For Michael | Is there a plot to deny Michael Wolff airtime on CNBC? For the second time in the last month, a technical glitch ended up interrupting one of his appearances, although we can't imagine viewers minded the fact that his image disappeared behind a blue screen for a minute or so while he droned on about Jon & Kate Plus 8, a show he explains at the outset he's never even seen before. (That's his shoulder sticking out on the right side of the photo.) The video is here; skip ahead to the 2:45 mark to see Wolff's magical disappearing act in action. [CNBC, previously]

• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington headquarters is contaminated with asbestos! [NYO]
• Tricky Dylan Ratigan isn't joining ABC after all. He's going to MSNBC. [Gawker]
• Michael Wolff may hate the New York Times, but if it weren't for the Times, he'd  probably have nothing to rant about on his unknown website. [HP]
• Amazon unveiled its fancy, new Kindle reader today. [NYT, E&P]More

• New York Times union members approved a five percent pay cut last night, which takes effect today. Meanwhile, the NYT will resume negotiations with the Boston Globe's largest union at 5pm this afternoon. [NYP, E&P]
• The Onion is killing off its LA and San Francisco print editions. [Gawker, MP]
• How desperate has NBC become? Execs have announced that Jay Leno "is not afraid to experiment with live commercials and with sponsorships." [AdAge]
• Better news for NBC: It scored big with its coverage of the Derby. [NYP]
• Ad spending in the fourth quarter fell 9.2% from a year earlier. [WSJ]
• Writers gathered last night to say goodbye to the Times' City section. [NYO] More

Did you know that Michael Wolff's unknown, third-rate website is "the fastest growing news site in the country"? Did you know it's putting the New York Times out of business? We sure didn't, and while we have our doubts about the continued survival of the Times, too, we're pretty sure the last thing Arthur Sulzberger Jr. worries about before he goes to sleep at night is the fifth failed media company that Michael Wolff has started over the past two decades. But it is nice to hear him talk about his company's unique ability to take an "incredibly long, incredibly gassy" Times story that's 1,200 words and reduce it to 65-120 words without losing "a thing." Perhaps next Wolff could kindly take his gassy 3,300-word columns for Vanity Fair and reduce them, too? Considering that amid all the gassiness, Wolff rarely has a point to make, a five or ten-word sentence should suffice. A clip from Wolff's appearance on CNBC on Friday night after the jump. More

We're not sure why CNBC would have picked Michael Wolff, of all people, to come on to talk about how disgraced CEOs and celebrities can go about restoring their damaged reputations—and it's also a mystery why Wolff would have accepted such an ironic invite—but maybe he was just hoping to pick up a tip or two from the other guests on the panel? Unfortunately for Wolff, just as he got done explaining why a Lindsay Lohan reality show would be a huge rating success—you think?—some sort of technical glitch occurred and kind of ruined Michael's moment. Oh, well. We'll just have to look forward to next week when Wolff appears on camera to talk about what qualities to look for when you're hiring an intern.

Michael Wolff called us about 374 times last week, insisting that he needed to speak with us about our story last month that revealed Wolff has been carrying on an affair with a former Vanity Fair intern and self-described "femme fatale" named Victoria Floethe. We didn't bother talking to Wolff, mainly because although he says he plans to write about his "downfall" in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, we hear editor-in-chief Graydon Carter would really rather Wolff indulge in his silly conspiracy theories elsewhere. In the meantime, though, we've put his tedious calls to good use with a Michael Wolff ringtone! You can listen to it above. Or you can download the MP3 version for your phone here. Sure, it's a huge step down from some of the other personalities we've turned into ringtones thus far (Anna! Andre! Padma! Isaac!) But we did do a Bernie Madoff ringtone a couple of months back, so Michael is in good company.

It was just over a month ago that Cityfile first reported that Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff was having an extra-marital affair with a young woman named Victoria Floethe. Wolff wasn't in a very good mood that day, and insisted there was absolutely no truth to the tale, adding that we'd be hearing from his lawyer for spreading such filth. We never did hear from that lawyer, and Wolff subsequently confirmed our scoop to Page Six. More

• It seems Michael Wolff is finally coming clean about intern-turned-girlfriend Victoria Floethe: The author and Vanity Fair contributor brought her to a tasting at Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar last week and now admits he and his wife Alison Anthoine are planning to divorce. [P6]
• This will probably come as a huge surprise given his upstanding reputation, but it's rumored Bernie Madoff hasn't been faithful to his wife all these years, and may have cheated on her on a couple of occasions. [R&M]
• A "friend" of Joe Biden's daughter Ashley has been trying to sell a tape of her allegedly snorting cocaine for $250,000. [NYDN]
• Madonna appeared in a Malawian court today to discuss her adoption of a four-year-old girl, but a judge put off a decision until Friday. [AP, NYP]More

Finally, we have an all-encompassing, shrink-wrapped theory of Gladwellian cogency to account for everything malignant in our society, including the financial meltdown, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.com, Olivia Palermo's nasty attitude toward Whitney Port, the disaster wrought by Bernie Madoff, the unrepentance of aging philanderers, and Alex Rodriguez's photo spread in this month's Details (left). It's all because of narcissism! More

The Case Against Michael Wolff | Michael Wolff is a lousy husband and, as we learned today, a lousy son-in-law, too. If you'd like to take a look at the lawsuit filed against Wolff and his wife by 85-year-old Edith Anthoine—she claims the pair tried to force her out of her apartment—we posted a copy of it below. Earlier we listed one way Condé Nast could save a few bucks as it embarks on another round of budget cuts. Here's one more: terminate Michael Wolff's contract with Vanity Fair. We're no lawyers or anything, but we have a feeling that sleeping with an intern constitutes just cause. More