Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Laura Bush either received $1.5 million for her memoir or $3.5-5 million, depending on who you believe. Either way, it's a lot less than Hillary Clinton's $8 million advance for Living History. [NYP, WSJ]
• Chris Matthews is not running for Senate, according to his brother. [P'ticker]
• A new buyer has emerged for TV Guide. The movie studio Lionsgate is picking up the cable network and website for $255 million. [AP]
• Senior Village Voice staffers are taking 10-15 percent pay cuts. [DW]
• Another reason kids can't find Iraq on a map: Foreign-related news coverage by the three major networks fell to a record low during 2008. [IPS]
• Those ads on the front-page of the Times run $75K on weekdays. [NYP]
• Ogilvy & Mather is cutting 10 percent of its staff today. [AdAge]
• CBS's Lara Logan gave birth to a son. [FBDC]

• Channels like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon will no longer be available to Time Warner Cable customers beginning at midnight, unless Viacom and Time Warner settle a dispute over fees. [Bloomberg]
• The Village Voice has laid off Nat Hentoff and Lynn Yaeger. [NYT]
• Ratings for MTV's The City and Bromance were disappointing. [THR]
• Pepsi is parting ways with its longtime pitchman David Beckham. [AdAge]
• Hustler publisher Larry Flynt is feuding with his nephews over their plans to launch an adult media company of their own. [NYP]
• Nick Denton's Gawker Media has sold off a site and is selling another. [NYT]
• It's not all bad news these days for journalists, clearly. [THR]

Human Meets Dog | "Anyone who picked up the Village Voice this morning and turned to Lynn Yaeger's cover story on page 14 was met with a stomach-churning surprise that may have ruined their already unpleasant subway commute to work—a vivid, closeup pile of human excrement belonging to the artist Andres Serrano," writes Joe Pompeo in the Observer. Maybe this was just the Voice's way of being ironic, since no one actually reads the paper any more unless they're using it to clean up after their dog? [NYO]

• Whoops! The "anonymous" magazine editor who was quoted in this week's New York cover story about plastic surgery? Meet Elle's Carol Smith. [Portfolio]
• Greg Zuckerman, the WSJ reporter who landed the first interview with John Paulson back in January, has landed a six-figure book deal with Doubleday. [NYP]
• More on John Edwards' alleged love child, the story that some media outlets apparently don't want you to see. [Gawker]
• Not only is Dr. Dre releasing a new album, he's got a line of vodka and cognac in the works, too. [Reuters]
• Tommy Hilfiger is producing a special for Bravo, which will "representative of Tommy's unique view of America," whatever that means. [AdAge]
• The Village Voice is launching four new blogs. [MB]
• The mood at the goodbye party for former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman: festive with a "slight undertow of regret." [NYM]

Tony Ortega is editor-in-chief of the Village Voice. He's also the man who accidentally came across a big pile of Harvey Weinstein's trash on the street in Tribeca, papers he kindly shared with readers this week. Of course, this was the same week that a recording of a private conversation between Weinstein and uber-producer Joe Roth was publicly leaked and one in which Page Six revealed that a former employee of Weinstein's is planning to publish tell-all book about the movie mogul. But there's no connection whatsoever—at least if you buy Ortega's account of how he came across the documents. More

Is someone is out to get Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob? Yesterday Gawker posted an "exclusive" conversation between Weinstein and Joe Roth; today Page Six reveals it got the same tape and that a former Miramax employee "is writing an 'explosive' book about their management of Miramax, based on files and tapes compiled over a period of 15 years." The author of the book is anonymous, but Page Six misses what may be the clearest sign that whoever is behind the spectacle isn't playing with a full deck: "Many of the files and tapes we are working from were given to us by the late Stuart Meltzer, who worked directly for Bob as his assistant before he was killed in the World Trade Center attack in 2001. Stuart was extremely paranoid and saved and recorded everything." Except Stuart wasn't employed by Miramax. He was a 32-year-old energy broker at Cantor Fitzgerald when he died on Sept. 11. So that raises a big flag.More

• David Sedaris's new book has been reclassified as non-fiction. Even though it's not entirely true. [Observer]
• A strike at the Village Voice? [NY Press] 
• Mariann Florio, the widow of former Condé Nast chief Steve Florio, is supposedly feuding with the media giant over payouts following her husband's death last year. [Page Six]
  
• A judge has dismissed Jared Paul Stern's defamation lawsuit against the Daily News, billionaire Ron Burkle, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton. Fortunately, there's always Luxist.com to pay the bills. [AP]
• The Atlantic's sad attempt to drum up sales with a cover of Britney? It didn't work. [Folio]
• All is not well at BusinessWeek. [Gawker] 
• Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici is now raising new ethical questions about the Post. [Portfolio]
  
• Analysts are pushing GE to consider selling off NBC Universal. [NYP]