Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• It's Tuesday, which means fresh job cuts at Condé Nast have been revealed. In addition to the dozen Glamour staffers laid off yesterday, Style.com will cut Candy Pratts Price. And 200+ more layoffs could be ahead. [WWD, NYP, FWD]
• Maybe Condé Nast's fancy iPhone application, which was announced today, will stem the red ink? Maybe not. But it certainly can't hurt either. [AdAge]
• BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Steve Adler says he will step down once the sale of the magazine to Bloomberg LP is completed in about a month. [BW]
• Sarah Palin will be Oprah's guest on November 16 as the former governor embarks on her book tour. Many of her fans aren't happy, unsurprisingly. [CT]
• The search for a Good Morning America co-host continues at ABC News. The front-runner at the moment seems to be George Stephanopoulos. [LAT]
• Malcolm Gladwell says journalists shouldn't go to journalism school. [Time]
• Harvey Weinstein's book publishing company is giving up its independence. It will be combined with Perseus Books starting December 1. [WSJ] More

• Twitter is close to raising $100 million in new funding. And despite the fact it makes no money, the deal will value the company at $1 billion. [WSJ, CNN]
• A new survey finds that 86% of the public thinks the news media tries to influence public opinion. One reason to discount the data: Fox News came in as the country's most-trusted and least-trusted news source. And Bill O'Reilly ranked as "the most-trusted news anchor on cable TV." [THR, Poynter]
• MTV reports that it plans to go ahead with the drug-intervention reality series featuring DJ AM that was shot just before he died. [THR]
• Michael Moore's new documentary is off to a strong start, alas. [LAT]
• Tim Knight, Newsday's publisher, has handed in his resignation. [NYT]
• Corynne Steindler of "Page Six" is joining Bonnie Fuller's new website. [NYO]
• NBC Nightly News' audience is growing, believe it or not. [HP]
• Yahoo is spending $100 million to remind you it still exists. [BrandChannel]
• CBS has a brand new viewer today. Chief exec Les Moonves and CBS Early Show anchor Julie Chen had a son named Charlie this morning. [ET]

• Détente? The feuding between Fox News and MSNBC has grown so fierce that News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and GE's Jeff Immelt met up recently "to figure out how to defuse tensions between the two channels." [LAT]
• The Boston Globe reports that two groups of investors have submitted preliminary bids to buy the newspaper from the New York Times Co. [AP]
• Breathe easy: Oprah has not been harmed. The suspicious package outside Winfrey's Harpo Studios this morning turned out to be harmless. [AP]
• All that idiocy on Lou Dobbs' part over the past couple of weeks hasn't done much to boost his ratings on CNN. His numbers continue to fall. [NYO]
• Those McKinsey consultants are paying off! Editors at Condé Nast were told yesterday they'll no longer be reimbursed for newspapers. [Daily Intel]More

• Bad news for NBC Universal: second-quarter profits dropped by 41%. [MW]
• Good news for NBC News: Susan Boyle's first in-depth TV interview will take place with Meredith Vieira on the Today show next Wednesday. [NYT]
• Alpha Media, the company that owns Maxim (and used to own Blender and Stuff)—and which was sold to Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in 2007—has changed hands again: Steve Feinberg's Cerberus now runs the show. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Pamela Fiori may be leaving Town & Country. [P6]
• Bonnie Fuller is taking over Hollywood Life, the website controlled by Jay Penske, who owns Movieline and recently bought out Nikki Finke. [NYT]
• More Finke: Days after the LA Times ran an article on Hollywood's most powerful blogger comes pretty much the same piece in the NY Times. [NYT]
• All that bad press for CNBC a few months ago must have refocused the network on the things that matter, right? Nope. [Gawker, Zero Hedge]More

• ABC and NBC will face off on Thursday night with competing tributes to Farrah Fawcett, who died today. But you probably expected that, no? [NYT]
• David Letterman beat out Conan in the ratings last week, the first time the Late Show has dominated the weekly ratings since 2005. [THR]
• Rosie O'Donnell will debut a new show on Sirius XM this fall. [NYDN]
• Rumor has it Ben Silverman's tenure at NBC may be ending soon. [DHD]
• Fox News now averages the same number of viewers as CNN, MSNBC, and HLN combined. Cue an evil grin across Roger Ailes's face. [THR]
• Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's new book contains material he ripped from Wikipedia. But he's really, really sorry about it, okay? [NYP]More

• Three more people have come out of the woodwork to express an interest in acquiring the Boston Globe. Let the bidding war begin? [Reuters]
• Analog television meets its maker tonight. Tell your grandma. [NYT, AP]
• Facebook introduces vanity URLs at midnight! Just in case you have absolutely nothing better to do and/or you're not too busy tweeting. [ABC]
• The New York Times is cutting, combining a few of its blogs. [E&P]
• Yahoo's new CFO is known for his ruthless cost-cutting. Good news for the beleaguered Internet company, bad news for beleaguered employees. [PC]
• Jon and Kate have been on the cover of Us for seven straight weeks now. "Unless Britney Spears gets pregnant or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie break up, it appears the troubled couple won't be bumped anytime soon." [WWD] 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

• Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says he has no plans to take the New York Times Co. private, despite "brutal conditions" that threaten his paper's survival. [NYT]
• Meanwhile, Moody's has downgraded the NYT Co.'s credit rating. [E&P]
• A few theories on why Peter Kaplan departed Jared Kushner's Observer, and what's in store for Kaplan—and the paper—in the future. [WWD]
• Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta is the new CEO of MySpace. [WSJ]
• Is GE looking to sell NBC Universal to Time Warner? It's possible! [TDB]
• Ambushing the ambusher: Staking out the home of Jesse Watters, the Fox News producer who stalks liberals for Bill O'Reilly. [Gawker] More

• The New York Times Co.'s bank balance is running a bit low, but that hasn't detered the company from handing out lavish pay packages. The company's CEO, Janet Robinson, received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up from $4.14 million in 2007. [NYP, HP]
• Is Rachel Maddow losing her glow? March was the lowest-rated month so far for Maddow's MSNBC show since its debut last fall. [LAT]
• The Chicago Tribune plans to cut another 20 percent of its newsroom staff as it looks to reduce expenses amid continuing declines in advertising. [CB]
• Yahoo posted a 78 percent decline in quarterly profits and said it would eliminate about 675 more jobs, or 5% of its work force. [WSJ]
• Tonight is Len Berman's last night at WNBC. [NYDN]More

• More bad news for the magazine biz: Ad pages fell 26 percent during the first quarter, although you probably guessed that when you used last month's issue of any number of Condé Nast magazines to floss your teeth. [NYT]
• Steve Brill plans to save journalism! Or die trying, at least. [NYT]
• Sam Zell now says his acquisition of the parent company of the Chicago Tribune in 2007 was "a mistake." And a rather expensive one at that. [CT]
• Is NBC's long ratings slump over? Jeff Zucker sure is hoping so! [LAT]
• 20/20's Bob Brown has been dismissed after 30 years at the network. Insult to injury: He was told he could freelance for the network if he wants. [P6]More

♦ Congressional Democrats and the Bush administration are in the final stages of negotiating an auto bailout package. A vote in the House is expected as soon as Wednesday afternoon. [NYT]
♦ Bad news for GMAC: The auto and consumer lender failed to secure additional financial and will not be able to transition to a bank holding company. [CNNMoney]
♦ Yahoo! is expected to hand out 1,500 pink slips today. [CNN]
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♦  The Big Three automakers are putting finishing touches on new business plans to take to Congress this week, part of a last-ditch effort to secure a federal bailout. [WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT]
♦  Shoppers spent $41 billion over the four-day weekend, up 7.2 percent from the year before. That was better than expected, but retail experts are still pessimistic about the holiday season outlook. [CNNMoney, WSJ]
♦  Hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones has suspended withdrawals as he splits his $10 billion flagship fund into two. [FT]
♦  The bailout has already cost more than World War II, in case you're keeping count at home. [Clusterstock] More

♦  Time Inc. is slashing another 250 jobs. [NYP]
♦  CNN is spending a fortune on fancy-shmancy technology and new talent, but it's making a mint, too: The network is recording double-digit profit growth for the fifth straight year. [NYO]
♦  Dan Abrams is starting some sort of research firm/expert network/PR agency now that he's been replaced by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. His first client is Ron Perelman. [NYT]
♦  60 Minutes has been the most-watched program in the nation for the last two weeks, believe it or not. [NYT]More

♦  The U.S. consumer price index fell 1.0 percent in October compared to the previous month, the biggest drop in 61 years. [WSJ]
♦  Citigroup is liquidating another one of its hedge funds after it plunged 53 percent last month. Also: Citi's stock dropped to its lowest level in 13 years yesterday. [FT, NYP]
♦  Just because he spends his days taking aim at Wall Streeters doesn't mean Andrew Cuomo left any bigwig financiers off the guest list for his birthday party/fundraiser on Dec. 2. [NYP]
♦  The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler who pleaded poverty in front of Congress yesterday flew their private jets to get there. [ABC News]
♦  Most hedge funds are pulling back right now, but hedge fund king John Paulson actually celebrated on Monday night with a lavish dinner for more than 100 at the Metropolitan Club. [DB]
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♦  Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Citigroup should follow Goldman's lead and forgo bonuses for senior execs. [NYP]
♦  Embattled Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has announced he will step down as soon as the board finds a replacement. [NYT, WSJ]
♦  Mark Cuban's attorney on the insider trading charges leveled against his client: "The case has no merit, and is a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion." [WSJ]
♦  Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is unlikely to use the rest of the $700 billion bailout fund on any new initiatives, preferring to hand over the remaining pennies—and very big problems—to his successor in the Obama administration. [WSJ]
♦  Andrew Ross Sorkin on extending the bailout to GM: "Taxpayers shouldn't fork over a cent, at least until shareholders are wiped out, management is tossed out and the industry is completely reorganized." [NYT] More