What would one think that the Conde Nasties get from the company for the holidays? Something fashionable, no doubt. Something with that certain je ne sais quoi that says, "I work for an exclusive, wealthy magazine company." Something ... not like the bag pictured above. Yes, it's Lambertson Truex, but really, unless you're a total label whore there's no reason to go toting this around. Even if it does say inside, "Conde Nast for Lambertson Truex Holiday 2006 limited edition." Wonder how soon they'll end up on eBay? Or is that a fireable offense?

• The Chandler family, former owners of the Los Angeles Times, are unhappy with the way Tribune is selling itself off. [NYT]
  

We're picturing a meeting of Conde Nast web executives going something like this: "Hey, so there's this cool new technology called email direct marketing, where you email a shitload of people and some of them respond and go to your website!" And then someone else says, "Yeah, and there's another thing you can do with the Internet, which is buy these cool pop-up ads that people can't shut down, and they count as links to our sites!" Or something like that.

Every year, Cond Nast chairman Si Newhouse repairs to Vienna for the month of December, only to drop a bombshell in the new year. In 2003, it was the retirement of CEO Steve Florio; in 2004, the departure of editorial director James Truman; and, last year, the exit of Mary Berner, CEO of the Fairchild division.

• Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger set to retire at the end of next year. [NYP]
  

Not content with simply hiring away pretty much everyone working in business media today, Port olio, Conde Nast's orthcoming (eventually) business mag has snapped up novelist/Moby pal/New York gadabout Deborah "Deb" Schoeneman as a contributing editor. Deb wouldn't comment, but we've got this one on pretty good authority. We've no idea how the magazine is going to are, but i their subscription numbers are anything like their sta ing numbers, it should be smooth sailing.

It's that time of year again: Bleary-eyed Conde Nast editors turn out for the annual Christmas luncheon, and, middle-school style, determine their status by their closeness to (or distance from) Chairman Si. Conde Kremlinologist Keith Kelly gives you the scoop, but here are a couple of highlights:

• We think it's kind of tacky to mock a Parkinson's patient for writing a doddering, fogeyish column about the Internet. So we'll let Wonkette do it. Anyway, our guess as to the mystery journalist is Kaus. [Slate]
  

Today, the erstwhile Daily Intel points us to a marked-for-deletion Wikipedia entry for one 'Jamie Isaac Conde,' whose great-grandfather Conde Nast started that whole magazine empire we seem to recall hearing about somewhere. Apparently, though, Jamie — like his namesake company — hasn't had an entirely scandal-free existence. Though he's trying (maybe — Wikipedia, people) to launch a career as a screenwriter, like most other inhabitants of his Californian zip code, he also has had a brush with violence, as evidenced by his interview in Gunstories, a book about teens and their experiences with guns! (What?)

• Donatella Versace wrote Allure: Confessions of a Beauty Editor? Funny, she doesn't look like a beauty editor. [R&M]
  

If you haven't been able to wrangle an invitation to the new Hearst cafeteria from your friend at Popular Mechanics yet, have no fear. New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt paid a visit to the shiny new Hearst cafeteria recently, and seemed unimpressed with the "chewy skirt steak" from the Hearst ranch in California, though he allowed that the fried chicken was "not entirely horrible." Still, we're more inclined to hit up one of the editors at Vanity Fair online for our corporate dining needs. Conde may not have sushi every day, but at least it doesn't have what a Hearstie told Platt was a "slight fishy taste."

As TechCrunch reported and Reddit announced this morning, Condé Nast bought social bookmarking site Reddit. I talked to Wired Digital general manager Kourosh Karimkhany, who will directly oversee Reddit as a Wired property.

TechCrunch reports that Conde Nast has snapped up Reddit, the social newsworking site that graced our pages with cute little robot animated ads a few weeks back. The Bostonian quartet who make up Reddit will be relocated to San Francisco, merging with the ickle kiddies at Wired Digital. No details on how much cash changed hands, but the back-chatter says that the whole deal went down due to the Reddit crew's success in setting up gossip news aggregator Lipstick.com for Conde Nast. The Lipstick formula attracted so much traffic so quickly — by Conde Nast standards anyway — that the Nasties decided they needed more of that Reddit magic. The Reddit site will remain as its own entity, with its aggremagational powers recruited to serve other Conde Nast sites as well.

There's an interesting moment in this Daily Intelligencer interview with James Truman concerning his former employers. Truman, who resigned from LTB media yesterday to cast his bread upon the waters of the media industry, is asked to compare his most recent employment to his time at Cond Nast, and replies: "How does Ecclesiastes compare with the Bhagavad Gita? One, it's shorter ..."

You think it's over? It's only over when Andrew Krucoff (and his swarm of parasitical pro bono attorneys) say it's over. To recap, friendly Gawker ghost Krucoff won an eBay auction for lunch with Architectural Digest's Katherine Scully. The auction was arranged to benefit a charity called Alpha Workshops, which trains people with HIV in the "decorative arts." However, after winning the auction and paying up, Krucoff was notified by Paypal — days later — that the lunch was no longer available, and his money was refunded. No further explanation has been forthcoming. But given the suspicion that the auction might have been scotched due to Krucoff's tempestuous history with AD owner Conde Nast, the man is in no mood to take a form rejection lying down. Instead, there is hushed, urgent, accusatory whispering about restraint of trade, legal recourse, and loss of work — in other words, can we polish up a teapot for this tempest? The faceless folk at eBay assure that "appropriate action" has been taken after the auction cancellation, and Alpha Workshops appears to have dropped out of the eBay auction business. Let's hope that if the charity wouldn't take Krucoff's money, they at least took Conde Nast's to kill the deal.

We were very much looking forward to friend-of-the-family Andrew Krucoff's lunch with Architectural Digest's Katherine Scully. The occasion was duly won, bought, and paid for via charity auction, but as the man himself reports, manifest shenanigans rule the day:

So that auction for lunch in the Conde Nast cafeteria which Conde Nast refugee Andrew Krucoff tried to highjack? Turns out the little guy actually won! We're sure the good folks at Conde will honor the commitment: It is, after all, for charity. Can you imagine? Jessica Coen and Krucoff in the Conde building at the same time? All we need is Gawker founding editor and blogging legend Elizabeth Spiers in attendance and the seventh seal will well and truly be open.

Remember yesterday's post about the eBay auction to have lunch with an Architectural Digest editor in the Conde Nast cafeteria? Well, as of this afternoon, the bidding was at a healthy $204.25. And the high bidder? Someone named Krupiter. Hmmm... why does that name sound familiar? Ah, yes, step forward Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff, the former Conde Nast freelancer whom the company escorted from the premises and requested, Oscar Madison style, to never return. Can one fired Conde Nast worker receive a shot at redemption and get back into the building? We're guessing Si's gonna bump up the bid to whatever the necessary figure is, but it should be fun while it lasts.

A tipster directs us to the following (yes, yes, it's for charity, we're terrible for making fun, etc.) opportunity on eBay:

British Glamour editor Jo Elvin was shocked — shocked! — to learn that for an upcoming piece about women who had lost their husbands in Iraq or Afghanistan, a freelancer named Victoria Lambert sent an email to members of Military Families Against the War looking for "photogenic" case studies. The email read: