Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Graydon Carter Saves the Neighborhood | Midtown is really, really happening these days, have you heard? At least that's what the owners of restaurants that recently opened in—yes, you guessed it—Midtown are saying! And you can give all the credit to Monkey Bar co-owner and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter since he "arguably foresaw and guaranteed the reinvigoration of the longtime social wasteland between 30th and 60th streets." Now he just has to find a way to reinvigorate that other project he spends time working on every so often! [NYO]

Former supermodel Stephanie Seymour and newsprint mogul Peter Brant are in the middle of a very messy divorce at the moment. Neither side has spoken out about their imploded marriage, since Seymour and Brant signed an agreement barring them from discussing the feud publicly. But presumably Brant and Seymour's lawyers didn't address the subject of sexy photos, which explains why the December issue of Vanity Fair features a collection of half-nude photos of the 41-year-old ex-model by Mario Testino. (Brant will get a spread of his own in the January issue, we imagine.) More

• The job cuts at Condé Nast continue. (Apparently laying off everyone at once would have just been too easy.) Yesterday it lowered the boom at Vanity Fair and GQ, although VF editor Graydon Carter managed to shield his eyes from carnage since he'd jetted off on vacation earlier that morning. [NYP, WWD]
• News Corp. appears to be the front-runner to buy the Travel Channel. [NYT]
• NBC has picked up Community, Parks and Recreation, and Mercy for the full season. It's also signed Adam Carolla and Don Cheadle to each do a show.
• Last night's premiere of The Jeff Dunham Show set a new record for Comedy Central, which, if you've seen Dunham, is a sad statement indeed. [Wrap]
• Silliest rumor of the day: Politico reported this morning that friends were urging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to run for president in 2012. But that's not going to happen, of course, so a few hours later Politico posted Ailes' denial.
• The first official portrait of the Obamas was taken by Annie Leibovitz. [VF]
• A few early predictions for Best Picture, if you're interested. [LAT]

• Charlie Gibson is retiring as anchor of ABC's World News Tonight at the end of the year; he'll be replaced by Diane Sawyer, who is stepping down as anchor of Good Morning America to take the job. And now Brian Williams will soon be the only man anchoring a nightly network newscast. [NYP]
• The 66th installment of the Venice Film Festival kicked off today. [THR]
• Thanks to the success of Royal Pains and Burn Notice, USA has scored the highest summer ratings in the history of cable television. [B&C]
• Current TV's Laura Ling and Euna Lee have broken their silence and are now describing some of what happened when they were captured in North Korea. Not all it, though. You'll have to buy their book to read the rest. [LAT]
• Is Jared Kushner looking to unload the Observer? That's the rumor. [Gawker] More

Vanity Fair's "New Establishment" list, an "annual ranking of the top 100 Information Age powers," appears on the web this time around, not in the actual magazine as in previous years. [Update: An abbreviated version appears in the October issue; the full list is online.] And while there are a few surprises to be had—Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who's been reviled in the press in recent weeks, takes the top spot—it once again gives Vanity Fair editor /part-time restaurateur Graydon Carter an opportunity to do what he does so well: insure that his close, personal friends get their moment in the sun!More

How many star photographers who regularly shoot for Vanity Fair now find themselves in the middle of financial scandal? Two! There's Annie Leibovitz, of course, who was sued last month over a $24 million loan. Then there's François-Marie Banier, the photographer responsible for Vanity Fair's July 2009 cover featuring Johnny Depp, who goes on trial next month in France for allegedly exploiting Liliane Bettencourt, the 86-year-old heiress to the L'Oréal cosmetics fortune, who has handed Banier some $1.3 billion in cash, stock, and art in recent years. Naturally, these things usually come in threes. Watch your step, Patrick Demarchelier!

• Vanity Fair's rather dubious "International Best-Dressed List" is now online. Take a few minutes to browse through the slideshow to see the obvious picks, close personal friends of Graydon Carter, Condé Nast employees, precious Vanity Fair advertisers, as well as a few exciting new entrants such as Michael Bloomberg, who, as you can see above, always dresses to impress. [VF]More

• Funny People debuted at No. 1 at the box office this weekend, although it was still the worst opening for an Adam Sandler movie in five years. [Reuters]
• Mort Zuckerman is selling shares of his real estate company to pump $50 million into the Daily News to pay for new printing presses. [WSJ]
• Lou Dobbs has become a PR nightmare for CNN. Presumably the fact that Media Matters is airing an anti-Dobbs commercial won't help matters. [AP, HP]
• Is the peace pact between Olbermann and O'Reilly a sham? [TDB]
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board of directors. [BN]More

Socialitopoly | "The Manhattan social scene is dead in the summer," which explains why Vanity Fair has introduced its very own board game called Socialitopoly. "Hunker down in your Park Avenue pad, grab your sterling-silver Maybach roadster, Christian Louboutin shoe, or Panama hat," the site advises. Guess this means if you were hoping to play along with a "Little Graydon" piece, you're on your own. [Vanity Fair]

• Janice Min isn't renewing her contract as editor-in-chief of Jann Wenner's Us Weekly. Her No. 2, Michael Steele, will become acting editor in chief. [NYT]
• Condé Nast announced yesterday that it had retained the management consulting firm McKinsey to "develop new perspectives." They sure have their work cut out for them. Condé revealed today that its monthly mags witnessed a 37 percent drop in advertising in September. [Gawker, AdAge, NYO]
• More pain at Condé may be on the way: "Significant cost cuts, including more layoffs and the closing of more magazines" are coming, says Keith Kelly. [NYP]
• Yet more Condé news: The company is closing down Men.Style.com so it can focus on the soon-to-be relaunched websites of GQ and Details. [AdAge]
• The Boston Globe's largest union voted yesterday to approve the new contract that had been proposed by the New York Times Co. [NYT, E&P]
• This can't be a good sign about the state of affairs at CNN: Time Warner Cable is moving it from channel 10 to 78 and replacing it with FX. [MCN]More

• The Sci Fi Channel is now called Syfy. It's pronounced the same way, except it's less science fiction-y, which is why it was changed to begin with. [THR]
• Justin Timberlake has tapped lit agent David Vigliano to sell publishers on the notion that Timberlake is just the person to write a book about golf. [NYO]
• After a heated, two-year battle, big record labels and online radio stations have finally agreed on new royalty rates for streaming music online. [NYT]
• Who says embattled media companies are doing their best to spend money more wisely? The soundstage for Jay Leno's new primetime show will be "specially fitted to accommodate his passion: expensive cars." [THR]
• "Online predators" have hit Twitter. Paging Dateline's Chris Hansen! [LAT]
• A new study finds that kids are spending more time online. Surprise! [AP]
• Equally shocking: Breaking the Jackson story has boosted TMZ's traffic. [AP] More

Most magazine editors spend their days discussing story ideas with writers and editors, reviewing copy, and deciding what pieces will appear in upcoming issues. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter? He does that, too, but the part-time restaurateur also carves out a chunk of time every day to tend to the "daily process of populating the dining room" at Monkey Bar, a "choreography" he performs in conjunction with an associate editor at the magazine. (So, yes, while Condé Nast is currently laying off staffers, it's also pays one to manage the seating chart for Carter's little side project.) So how does Carter go about performing this pleasureless ("I'm like the guy with the sandbags") and clearly unhealthy task, one that's especially challenging since so many people want a reservation, the restaurant has been reduced to only accepting table requests by email? More

The Forecast From Vanity Fair | So it's rather warm outside today. But it's also been a very rainy month: It rained 15 out of the first 20 days of June, in fact. What gives? Instead of taking the easy path and checking in with, say, weatherman Sam Champion on Twitter, Vanity Fair did one better and called up a MIT-trained physicist who analyzed climate change patterns for the Clinton administration. Impressive! We can't say we understood his explanation for why it's been the way it's been. But this we did understand one thing he said quite clearly: "It's going to get a lot worse." So, yes, you'll be carrying suntan lotion and earmuffs with you pretty soon. [VF]

• 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]

Vanity Fair's John Heilpern invited Eliot Spitzer out to lunch recently. Given VF's apparently recession-proof budget, the Spitz could have proposed feasting on a giant platter of caviar at the Four Seasons. Did he? No, he did not:

At his request, we dined at a hot-dog stand by Central Park, a short stroll from his office in Midtown Manhattan.
"You like it regular or special?" the vendor asked automatically.
"Just a little mustard, thank you," Mr. Spitzer replied.
The bill for two came to eight dollars. "It's a new era!" he declared amusingly.

Lunch in the Park with Eliot [Vanity Fair]