Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

The Demi Moore Challenge | It didn't very long for people to notice that the photo of Demi Moore on the cover of the December issue of W had been photoshopped. Half of her hip was missing! The magazine didn't even try to deny that the photo had been retouched. (A W spokesperson said the mag "did not do anything unusual or out of the ordinary," but since fixing up a cover photo is standard stuff, that didn't mean very much.) More

• Nell Scovell, a writer on Dave Letterman's show in the late '80s, has stepped forward to detail the show's "hostile, sexually charged atmosphere." [VF]
• Layoffs: Yesterday's cuts at Forbes claimed 30-40 people; reality TV-focused Teen Vogue laid off half a dozen staffers today; the cuts continue this week at W; and a big round of cuts could go down at Time Inc. sometime next week.
• Sarah Palin's memoir, which comes out next month, had already earned her $1.25 million even before she stepped down as Alaska's governor. [AP]
• Michael Jackson's This Is It debuts in theaters tonight. [NYDN]
• How's Jay Leno's new show doing more than a month in? Not so good. [NYT]More

• Christian Lacroix saved? Possibly! Although Lacroix is keeping mum, a bidder for the struggling fashion house may have emerged. [WWD, Reuters]
• More depressing news about the state of the retail: Manhattan's vacancy rate is 6.5% and rising. [NYT]
• Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen are on the list of the 31 new inductees into the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Like, congrats! [FWD, Cut]
• Hermès reports sales were up 12% during the second quarter. If you've continued to shop there despite the downturn, don't pat yourself on the back. Credit the strong sales of Kelly purses in Asia. [BN]
• It's bad news all around for fashion magazines this September. Ad pages in W are down 53% from last year; Allure has witnessed a 52% drop-off; Vogue is down 37%; and Elle has experienced a 21% decline. [AdAge]
• Rumor has it reality TV star/train wreck Susan Boyle is posing for a Harper's Bazaar photo shoot. The good news? She won't be on the cover. [DM]

♦  The Condé Nast memo concerning budget cuts seems to have failed to make its way to W. Last week Kate Moss arrived in NYC to do a shoot, only to discover it had been canceled and no one had bothered to tell her before she left. So, after stopping to smoke a cigarette outside JFK, she hopped back on another first class flight home, at the cost of $12,000 to the magazine. [Mirror]
♦  The latest casualties of the recession: Holly Dunlap, whose shoe line is no more, Fred Leighton jewelry, which might be going into liquidation, and even, maybe, expensive fashion shows. [NYP, WWD, WWD]
♦  Fashionistas in Moscow are coping with the plunge in the market the way any good Russian would: They're drinking lots of vodka. [stylefile] More