Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter sounds positively exasperated that Toby Young is still stuck—gum-like—to his shoe. A decade after the British hack's disastrous six-month stint at the Conde Nast magazine, Young's account of epic failure to take New York by storm comes to screens later this week. "I can only compare it with a brief one-night stand that results in octuplets," says Carter, who is played by Jeff Bridges in the movie version of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People. But the Vanity Fair poo-bah ought to show more respect for noble failure. After all, Carter's own reputation was made by Spy, a magazine that won plaudits but lost money in all but one year of its existence. Disclosure: despite a history of mutual abuse, Gawker is co-hosting a party for Toby Young on Wednesday.

Valerie Frankel—who last week totally nailed Sarah Palin's "pretty girl syndrome"—has a new book out, Thin Is the New Happy, in which she describes the anorexic culture at erstwhile Condé Nast title Mademoiselle. At the magazine, she says: "Self-starvation was a competitive sport... of the dozen-odd women in the articles department, three-quarters of us had some kind of eating quirk or habit that any shrink alive would diagnose as borderline pathological." Obviously the staff at surviving titles like Glamour were better at working while delirious from hunger. [Page Six]

♦ Scarlett Johansson is a married woman: She tied the knot with actor Ryan Reynolds in a small ceremony outside of Vancouver on Saturday. [Us]
♦ Heather Locklear was arrested for driving under the influence of prescription drugs in Montecito, CA, on Saturday. [NYP]
♦ Heath Ledger's daughter Matilda will inherit his entire estate, which is estimated to be worth $20 million. [NYP]

Back story: I'm lurking around one of the low-rent haunts of the highbrow magazine elite Wednesday and come upon a friend of mine, Jess, who introduces me to Donavan Hohn, a brilliant writer whose recent piece on a Hong Kong toy fair had inspired me to write a handjobby post about how much I love 'Harper's.' Anyway, like pretty much all journalists under 40 who bother with the whole "crafting exquisite paragraphs" thing anymore, Hohn has cash flow issues. So Jess suggests — naively, I'm assuming — he get into the celebrity profile racket. Her friend Mark Kirby does it! He just wrote a profile of Megan Fox for 'GQ' that was really actually a rewarding effort! And I'm thinking, "Oh Jess, guys like Donovan Hohn are just not wired to hustle celebrity profile assignments. Not least because guys like Donovan Hohn probably didn't know who Megan Fox even was when he saw her at a comic book convention at which he was busy jotting down the philosophies of some enchanting small-time hucksterpreneur, and plus, everyone knows celebrity profiles are the lowest form of hackery." Well shit, was I so totally wrong. Jess had just tipped me off to the best celebrity profile in years. Seriously, you know how the celebrity profile is totally dead? This profile could do for the genre what…Megan Fox does for impotence or something!

"Forget Anna Wintour, famed editrix of Vogue," begins a story in Forbes today. Why, we'd love to but she runs the most profitable print publication in U.S. America! But not forever, Forbes warns, in a story about Vogue's sorry internet presence and uncertain future that makes a pretty good case for the notion that Wintour's influence at her boring fashion magazine is receding. Which is good for anyone who still gets Vogue, because the magazine reached a new level of inanity in its October issue, come look!

With his brother Donald, Si Newhouse controls Advance Publications, the publishing empire that owns Condé Nast, a long list of newspapers, and countless other media assets. It's a business he inherited from his father. And it's made him one of New York's richest men for decades now, with a net worth estimated by Forbes earlier this year at $8.5 billion. A reclusive figure, Newhouse rarely speaks with reporters or attends events, preferring his top editors (like Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, David Remnick) and executives (Chuck Townsend, Richard Beckman, David Carey) to talk to the media and soak up the limelight instead. But it's the low-key mogul, of course, who takes home the big checks, which he spends on art (his Picasso collection is reportedly enormous) and donating money to various philanthropic concerns. Which causes exactly?

Somewhere out there is a budding female public intellectual destined to marry an embarrassingly oversharey lifestyle magazine editor1 who dribbles out in monthly editor's letters the grotesquely bourgeois details of their life, providing endless gossip fodder to media workers frustrated in their own loveless (if not as literal!) marriages to the consumerism bankrolling their profession. Until then, however, we will have to be satisfied with the likes former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, whose wife shares their home life with the readers of the New York Times—and smartypants Jacob Weisberg. The Slate group editor sleeps on a horsehair mattress covered in "beautiful heavy linen" and sheets from a special shop in London, all of which we know because his wife, Domino editor-in-chief Deborah Needleman, told Fashion Week Daily in excruciating detail (click thumb for a closeup) about the marital bed. By the way, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell introduced the couple! (Hey Gladwell, anyone ever tell you you were a "connector"?)

"Fashion Rocks" is Conde Nast's big advertorial extravaganza pegged to Fashion Week, when the magazine company can sell extra ad space to all its fashion advertisers in a fluffy, profile-heavy special supplements. But we hear that the staff of the Conde-owned WWD is currently embroiled in a mini-revolt, after they were ordered to write the copy for the 48-page Fashion Rocks supplement that went out with yesterday's issue. There's no reason an editorial staff should ever be made to write advertorial copy. The most egregious line-crossing of all: a full-page interview in the supplement with Richard Beckman, Conde Nast's own head of marketing. Beckman, of course, would be the mastermind of the entire Fashion Rocks campaign, so what the hell is a fluff interview of him doing in a WWD-penned special supplement, posing as legit editorial copy? Staffers there are asking themselves the same thing. They feel that Mary Berner, who formerly led Fairchild and WWD before it was all absorbed into Conde Nast, would never have stood for such a thing. On MediaPost yesterday, Ari Rosenberg decried the whole ongoing degeneration of the advertising/ editorial line. "Today's media-buying demand for a 'big idea' required to earn a media commitment, combined with a softer and more competitive environment, all driven by a sales force that has no idea who Henry Luce is, have publishers doing things not done before," he wrote. Which leads to this:

Employee benefits are perking decidedly down all over medialand, as we found out last night Conde Nast sent out that memo limiting employees to five (5!) expensed lunches a month. So we were soothed to hear that the New York Times, whose ad sales have in the words of one analyst "fallen off a cliff" this year,* remains committed to the healing power of complimentary backrubs. Massages on the house in the two days leading up to September 11! But then we got the memo announcing said benefit. And it was sort of the opposite of a "happy ending"…They will be "tracking" No Shows! So Alberto Gonzales of you, New York Times!

Viacom's oppressively gridlike new cafeteria layout is matched against in-house lunchtime eateries at other Manhattan media corporations. [Jossip]

We are certainly probably not the first bloggers to point out that Anna Wintour is (until November anyway; yes, Scorpio, duh) the same age Grace Mirabella was when she got canned. Of course, Grace hadn't built herself an entire stable of Vogue-branded titles! Of course, said stable is looking a liiiitle bit sickly: Teen Vogue lost its role on The Hills, Men's Vogue just lost a managing editor to the Journal glossy, and Mothership Vogue is looking thin in the only possible bad sense of that term this September, with the month's ad pages down 7% from last year — following on the the heels of four consecutive months being beaten out for ad pages by ELLE. (And many consecutive months of progressively more creepily Photoshopped covers.) Even the latest Vogue India looks less luscious than just a few months ago, though I am pretty sure Anna is not to blame for that! Any information that might enhance our Wintour Kremlinology? Email me.

The magazine industry cares about the environment. They promise. For example, did you know that magazines can be recycled? Just put them right there in the recycling bins and feel the satisfaction! The industry is even running a campaign to urge you all to "Please Recycle This Magazine" after you read it (though I choose to recycle Entertainment Weekly before I read it). But are the biggest publishing companies themselves living up to these lofty recycling standards? One possibly soon-to-be-fired Conde Nast insider says hell no! Conde Nast Portfolio media blogger Jeff Bercovici says in a post about the green campaign:

At a party thrown by Wired in June, I teased Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen for eschewing the online publication's mid-1990s bravado in favor of his just-a-journalist aw-shucks routine. I fear the man has taken my jibes seriously, to his employer's peril. He is talking up Wired as a software developer, competing with Google, and thinking about the launch of a sports blog. Remember Adrenaline? Exactly. Neither does Hansen, or anyone else at Wired, the magazine which spawned the ill-fated sports website, which shuttered shortly after Wired Ventures' failed attempt to go public.Hansen shows that Wired is reprising all of its mistakes from the last bubble. "Our vision is to not just be a magazine publisher covering technology, but to be a developer of these things," he says. Of a photo-gallery tool for the website, he says: "We’re hoping to have something to show that will blow people’s minds." Has he been eating Wired founder Louis Rossetto's chocolate? If I sound like a grumpy old fellow who's seen this all before, it's because I have, first-hand. The sports venture isn't the only repetitive pattern I've spotted. In 1996, Wired bought Suck.com, giving the cultural-critique website enough of a budget to hire unskilled 24-year-olds as copy boys. In 2006, Wired bought Reddit, which lets anyone build their own version of Suck.com (except not as good, because none of Reddit's users are as funny as Joey Anuff, Carl Steadman, or Ana Marie Cox). What's different now? Oh, sure, we can talk about Internet adoption, broadband, open-source software. Whatever. What has really changed is that now, instead of public shareholders funding Wired's wild experiments, advertisers are willing to foot the bill. And that is perhaps the biggest reason for Hansen's newfound enthusiasm. He's looking forward to putting ads for sugary electrolyte drinks on his new sports blog. Which only makes us think of OK Soda.

• Is Eurotrash social networking site ASmallWorld.net running low on cash? It seems employees weren't paid on time last week. [Gawker]

A long Times profile yesterday of Conde Nast chairman Si Newhouse describes him as a shy, unassuming man who putters around the office quietly in an old sweatshirt. This can lead to a pleasant work environment, but also some surprises: "Despite the influence he wields, Mr. Newhouse so defers to his editors and dislikes confrontation that a number of them have said over the years that their first indication of trouble came when he fired them." Notably, the piece gives no indication at all that Conde Nast is nervous about the struggles of its $100 million business magazine, Portfolio. But does that mean its editor, Joanne Lipman, is really safe?

• Most amusing bits from the lengthy Times piece this past weekend on succession at Condé Nast: That overlord Si Newhouse still "personally hand-counts ad pages in his magazines and their competitors." And that he goes to work every day in "chinos and an old sweatshirt." [NYT]

Targeting Yahoo again, Microsoft may be abandoning its "Project Granola" plan to grow its online presence organically, but that doesn't mean ignoring food altogether. Microsoft's MSN and Hearst magazines will partner to create Delish.com, a food and recipe site to be released this fall. Just like Conde Nast's Epicurious, but 13 years later! [AdWeek]

Condé Nast confirmed tonight it will shutter Golf For Women magazine, seven years after buying the Golf Digest spinoff from Meredith Corp. Ad pages were off 7 percent through the July issue and there's been significant turnover on the business side. Meanwhile, also at Condé Nast, Men's Vogue is looking gaunt. Is the magazine brand spinoff an endangered species? After all, a variety of teen-themed brand extensions threw in the towel on the concept two years ago, including Teen People.

The Hollywood rumor about rivalry between two Condé Nast editors-passed along by former New York Times reporter, Sharon Waxman-sounds incredible. Why would Graydon Carter, the behemoth of Vanity Fair, bother to ice out his colleagues at Joanne Lipman's Portfolio?

Rumor from where The Rich hang out: Charles "Chuck" "Commodore" Townsend, the CEO of Conde Nast, has gotten engaged to Jill Roosa—she's been spotted with an engagement ring. It *looks* like Roosa has a picture of Townsend posing with her on her Facebook page, and there are multiple pictures of them together in their natural habitat, the New York Yacht Club. Anyone know any details about the happy couple? Email us.