According to a handy press release we just got from the well-heeled folks at Conde Nast, the March issue of Vogue Espa ol is setting a record as the biggest issue of Vogue ever published in the world, coming in at 1,006 pages. Oh, how the rainforests weep...
Buck up, little camper. It's not that Remnick didn't appreciate that brilliant pitch for your breakthrough piece; we're sure he loved it. He just can't get word to you. Or at least that's what you can keep telling yourself, thanks to a forwarded memo we received from several tipsters within Conde Nast:
Multiple sources within 4 Times Square report that Kim France, the editor-in-chief of Lucky, the Conde Nast shopping magazine, just triumphantly announced that Hearst is closing Shop Etc., the rival mag company's rival shopping magazine. "She's ecstatic," says one tipster.
• Fighting back against Fox News, whose ratings dwarf CNN's, Jon Klein savors small victories. Which makes sense, because there ain't been a whole lot of big ones. [NYT]
• Conde Nast is running out of ad inventory. [WWD]
• Nick Kristof manages the delicate trick of making Jack Shafer feel a little bit bad for Bill O'Reilly. [Slate]
• Icahn and Wasserstein's TW plans don't don't help thing. [NYT]
We found ourselves a bit out of our element the other day, belatedly flipping through the February Vogue for reasons including, but by no means limited to, boredom, self-loathing, diet inspiration, social aspiration, Barrymore-boob fascination and the need to smell like a perfume counter. Within moments, however, we realized something was amiss. The magazine reliably had all the usual Vogue-ish elements: impossibly thin models and socialites, first-person accounts of living as a piece of Eurotrash, the typical, unafforadble luxury. So why did this Vogue feel so, well, off?
Late on Friday, Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow announced that they were ending their engagement. The Tour de France champion and Grammy-winning musician didn't give any reasons for their breakup, but we're guessing it had something to do with her age (43) and his balls (only one).
If you can swallow your pride just long enough to peruse the Fashion Spot message boards ("where the fashion industry meets online," of course), you can learn some interesting things. For instance:
• WHAT Conde Nast publisher, recently moved to a new title and alienating his ad-sales staff by consistently lusting after "sexy" advertisers, spends much of his time traveling to Italy? His underlings have taken to joking he must have a secret second family there.
• Time Warner's Q4 performances beat analysts' expectations and sent the stock price up 4 percent. Which I sentence we thought we might never write again. [NYT]
• San Francisco alt-weekly Tim Redmond editor really, really hates Craig Newmark. As all other newspaper people should too, really. [SFBG]
• Teen Vogue's Gina Sanders named Conde Nast's Publisher of the Year, which means she'll get something like a free European vacation. We really need to be moving to the publishing side. [WWD]
An email arrived moments ago reporting a swarm of Secret Service types at the 42nd Street entrance to the Conde Nast Building. No one we know who works for CNP will be getting to work for at least a few more hours, so we can provide you with no further information. Perhaps you can provide some to us? If you've got any idea why the Secret Service is massing for an attack on magazinedom — is Laura stopping by for fashion tips from Anna? W getting Graydon to broker a movie deal in which the hero actually catches the bad guy? Condi need Jeffrey Goldberg to finally explain how Hamas got so popular? — please let us know.
• The Onion Diet: Move to New York, eat sushi, slim down. [NYT]
• Sez Dumenco: Magazines will soon start to die, too, and Anna Wintour will lose her Town Car, and it's all Lucky's fault. Of course, he says it with words like "transactionality." [Ad Age]
• WSJ discovers people. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer says newspapers better give him what he wants, or else they're just gonna wither and die. [Slate]
• Joel Stein, says Jon Friedman, is just like Oprah Winfrey. But, you know, poorer and whiter and Jewier. [MW]
• Journo types who drink tab: David Edelstein, Steve Brill, David Bradley, and Danny Goldberg. Now you know. [New Yorker]
• Layoffs at Blender. [WWD (second item)]
• Journalism needs to more money and time from owners, more facts, more international coverage, and more tough questions, says Dan Rather. Also, it would very much like a pony for its birthday. [LAT]
• If CW — the WB-UPN amalgam — works, a CNN-CBS News merger could finally happen. [Mediaweek]
• New anchors ain't helping World News Tonight's ratings. [WSJ]
• Details publisher Chris Mitchell was trying to get out, but Conde kept pulling him back in. [WWD]
• Cathie Black, feminist, and Bill Buckley, conservative, get MPA lifetime-achievement awards. [Ad Age]
• Whither poor, UPN-less Channel 9? [NYT]
Once, long ago, magazines had their own, separate identities. Typically, this included their own, separate editorial and business staffs, and even often their own real estate. When Si Newhouse bought The New Yorker, for example, he promised that he wouldn't integrate the magazine into Conde Nast, today its business operations are unified with the rest of the company, and the its staff toils in 4 Times Square.
Oh dear. We're now terribly concerned the glorious reign of Conde Nast might be coming to an end. And the NYPD would be to blame. What gives, you ask? Just this: You know how the high end balances on the three-legged stool of expense-account lunches, Marlboro Lights, and Town Cars? Well, one of those legs is looking worrisomely wobbly. Reports a nervous Nasty:
• Did Oprah know Frey was full of shit, and when did she know it? Likely before he was on her show, it now seems. [NYT]
• Channel Thirteen honcho to be new PBS chief. Tote bags for everyone! [NYT]
• 156K become paying members of TimesSelect in its first four months; Dowd starts mining list for potential dates. [E&P]
• Tired of tracking just Newhouses and Wassersteins and assorted Sulzbergers? It seems Florios are now invading 4 Times Square, too. [WWD]
Spotted in Times Square this morning:
One of the great journalistic perks in New York is a Conde Nast expense account. Lunches, dinners, trips, cars, trinkets: It's all on Si.
It seemed not like such a big deal back in September, when the announcement came that all the various Newhouse mag companies — Conde, Fairchild, Golf Digest — would become one big company under the Conde Nast umbrella, with each of the various old companies now a division of CNP.
