Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• More trouble at Condé Nast: Ad pages at Vogue are down 31 percent this year and Vanity Fair experienced a 52 percent drop in May alone. The silver lining: Graydon Carter's lavish expense account remains unaffected. [NYP]
• The Sun really may be returning after all. As a website, that is. Seth Lipsky says "there's a business plan for the site in the formative stages." [Politico]
• This certainly isn't a good sign: It seems NBC is exploring the possibility of leasing out part of its headquarters in Washington D.C. [NYO]
• More desperate: NBC will air another season of Celebrity Apprentice. [THR]
• The Portfolio names/logos that never were (and more on its closing). [NYO]
• Al Roker will co-host a Weather Channel show called Wake Up With Al from 6 to 7 a.m. Because waking up with Al is what you've always dreamed of. [NYT]
• Oprah Winfrey's Twitter usage is way down. So much for that! [AdAge] More

Sun Website Officially Dead | More than a month after the New York Sun went bust, the final vestige of the neocon paper seems to have come to an end: The NYSun.com website has been down since yesterday. Guess you'll have to go elsewhere to get your stale news from mid-September!

The Ghost of the Sun | The Sun folded over a month ago, but the paper's vending machines remain. At least they were kind enough to stamp an "E" on the front to remind people it's empty.

The Sun has set, but its memory shines on sidewalks [Urbanite]

Your Piece of the Sun | If you're still mourning the passing of the New York Sun, here's your chance to indulge in a bit of nostalgia: a (very tragic) denim Sun jacket is up for auction on Ebay for $9.99. [Ebay]

Losing Money, New York Sun Is to Shut Down After 6 Years [NYT]
Ideal of the Scoop [NY Sun]

One More Sunrise for the Sun | The Sun will publish its last paper tomorrow, says a rep. [Gawker, FBNY]

♦  Will Project Runway move to Lifetime from Bravo? NBC won the first legal battle against PR producer Harvey Weinstein on Friday, which means it's not entirely clear where the show will end up. [NYT]
♦  The Sun may publish an issue tomorrow after all. [Portfolio]
♦  Tina Fey to the rescue: Saturday Night Live has seen a major boost in ratings so far this season. [THR]
♦  Vanity Fair on the face-off between Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett. [VF]
♦  An Indian version of GQ debuts this month. [Guardian]
♦  Howard Kurtz says unseen clips of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin are on the way; CBS says it has released everything it's got. [HuffPo]
♦  The Times looks back at the drunken career of the Post's Steve Dunleavy, who's retiring after 41 years in the business. [NYT]
♦  The Wall Street Journal has launched a mail-order wine club. Really. [NYT]

Sun Sets on Sun | If you pass a newsstand today, you may want to pick up a copy of the Sun. Just as a souvenir. After failing to find new investors willing to put up the $1 million a month required to keep the paper alive, today's issue is expected to be the last. [Gawker, NYP]

♦  John McCain canceled his appearance on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman tonight; Keith Olbermann will fill in instead. [HuffPo]
♦  The best (and worst) fall TV show ads. [THR]
♦  The end of the Sun is drawing near; the last paper may be published on Monday. [Gawker]
♦  NBC's Nightly News gained viewers in 2007-08; ABC and CBS both experienced declines. [TV Decoder]
♦  Did Harper's Bazaar photoshop its October cover featuring Kirsten Dunst? [WWD]
♦  Oprah Winfrey will lend her voice to the upcoming Disney flick The Princess and the Frog. [THR]
♦  Ad spending declined by 1.6% in the first half of 2008. [AdAge]
♦  Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho is coming to Broadway. [Variety]
♦  Meet the oldest working reporter in the country. [E&P]

Sun Deathwatch | The Sun is scheduled to close down by the end of the week if it doesn't raise additional capital. So how is Seth Lipsky, the paper's president and editor, doing in his efforts to bring in additional backers? "I haven't raised all that I need, but I've raised a lot," he tells the Times today. [NYT]

♦  The Emmy Awards will take place on Sunday evening; AMC's Mad Men is the "overwhelming favorite" to win for best drama series. [Reuters]
♦  What's happening with the New York Sun, which said it will shut down on September 29th without additional funding? It's a "very fluid situation," according to Ira Stoll. [Portfolio]
♦  Tina Fey's SNL imitation of Sarah Palin earned NBC its most-watched web clip in history. [THR]
♦  According to a new research study, Survivor is the most addictive show on TV. [NYP]
♦  MSNBC is expanding to India and Indonesia, among other places. [THR]
♦  The founders of Dreamworks have sealed their pact India's Reliance, a deal that will provide them with $1.2 billion to set up a new film company. [WSJ]More

The Sun's Many Friends | The Sun may fold at the end of the month if it doesn't raise additional capital. But the paper has plenty of people who are voicing support! Among those recruited to give the neo-con paper a positive blurb today: Michael Bloomberg, Edward Egan, Glenn Lowry, Paul LeClerc, Herbert Pardes, Randi Weingarten, William Thompson, Betsy Gotbaum, Scott Stringer,Christine Quinn, and Robert Morgenthau. Now if just each of those people got one friend to pay for a subscription, they'd be in business. [NYSun]

Last night, word emerged that The Sun, the right-leaning daily founded by Ira Stoll and Seth Lipsky in 2002, may end up shutting down at the end of the month if the company doesn't find additional investors willing to step in. The Sun has had financial problems since day one and it never made much headway in the circulation department. This time, though, it looks like it could be the end of the line: The paper even posted an account of its problems on its website. (Perhaps in the hope that another super-conservative, Jewish billionaire will turn up with his checkbook.) So why are the Sun's current backers—including Bruce Kovner, Tom Tisch, and Michael Steinhardt, left—giving up? They've got plenty of other stuff to worry about, that's why. More

• Steve Feinberg's investments in Chrysler and GMAC haven't gone as expected and now his Cerberus Capital is on the defensive. [NYT]
• As the rumors about Lehman's fate continue to swirl, the Journal talks to Bart McDade, the firm's No. 2, who sheds some light on what he's doing to turn the bank around. [WSJ, DBook]
• BlackRock is raising $3 billion to pick up assets that other banks want to get rid of. [NYP]
• Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group says its investors are happy. Presumably not the pension fund that had committed $1.7 billion to the firm's new fund but will now only put in $250 million. [WSJ]
• Andrew Cuomo may offer a fresh round of subpoenas to Bank of America execs this week. [DBook]
• Merrill Lynch's talks to sell bad loans to an Asian investment firm are breaking down over price. [Bloomberg]
• The Sun has announced it will need new capital by Oct. 1 to stay in business. [NYT]

• Barack Obama, who had a secret sit-down with Roger Ailes three months ago, will appear on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday night. [WaPo, The Caucus]
• WSJ, the glossy luxury mag brought to you by the Wall Street Journal, was unveiled to the press this morning. [BusinessWeek]
• New York Sun interns have to wear suits to the office. And no jeans on weekends, please! [Gawker]
• The Observer chats with Ben Goldhirsh, the guy behind the do-good mag called GOOD. [NYO]
• Lara Logan talks about her time in Iraq but not so much about her messy personal life. [Men's Vogue]
• Is Time Out New York having financial issues? [Gawker]