The September issue of W magazine features actress and Lance Armstrong lover Kate Hudson glaring purposefully down her nose at the camera. "The look is a definite departure for her!" writes W's flack, enthusiastically. The look's not a departure for the magazine industry, though; it's strikingly similar to this 1994 Harper's Bazaar cover. There simply must be new ways of looking at the camera, people. Click to enlarge. [via J'Adore Joey]

Tina Brown has worked in the US for more than two decades, since taking the helm of Vanity Fair in 1984; and she's now attempting to reinvent herself for the internet. But Lady Evans, as the 55-year-old former magazine editor is also entitled to call herself, remains at heart a Brit of an earlier generation, pickled in ink and arch wit. Her forthcoming news site, backed by old patron Barry Diller of IAC, is to be dubbed The Daily Beast, after the shameless tabloid of Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop. The Digg kiddies will be so confused.

Yes, that is X-Files star David Duchovny to your left, in a rather unfortunate pose for Playgirl in 1991. Gigglesugar rounded up some the recently-defunct confused porn magazine's most famous covers. After the jump: Richard Gere, Burt Reynolds, and the scariest Playgirl cover of all time. (SFW)

Classy fashion rag Harper's Bazaar ran a photo spread of insane model and television personality Tyra Banks dressed as possible first lady Michelle Obama. Why? Because... Tyra's black... and a lady? Sure! Daily Intel suggests that maybe the real Michelle Obama turned them down, but we're willing to give Bazaar's editors the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was their stupid, stupid plan from the very beginning. They released a little video from the shoot, and Tyra says some nonsense and a Bazaar editor says some nonsense and then they all go to White Castle, because they are all higher than you've ever been in your life. Video below!

"The Vanity Fair editor, who already co-owns the Waverly Inn, has bought the lease of East 54th Street's famed Monkey Bar from the Glazier Group with two partners, hotelier Jeff Klein and London- based restaurateur Jeremy King." [Post]

Anonymous sources can usually put some faith in the journalistic principle, that the anonymity of a source is a sacred thing, to be protected even at the risk of jail. But they should have less faith in a reporter's competence. Last week, a New York Times reporter withheld the name of a critic of the Chinese government but gave him away accidentally by mentioning the restaurant he owned. And there's an equally moronic slip in this week's cover story on plastic surgery in New York magazine.

Are you excited that Vanity Fair and American Express' glamorous "Campaign New York" launches in a mere 40 days? The "dazzling two-week series of events," as far as we can tell, offers the following dazzling events: a discount hotel room, a book signing at Barneys, and a "cocktail and shopping night" during which you can swill booze and go spend money on Madison Avenue. That's it. Any AmEx card holder attempting to enter the Waverly Inn at any time during the course of the dazzling two-week series of events will be laughed off the premises by Graydon Carter himself, who disapproves of riff-raff. [Campaign NY via Jossip]

Freelancer-helping website Mediabistro announces confused porn mag Playgirl is closing, while their How to Pitch Playgirl advertisement runs next to it. Freelancers: you'll have to send your "Erotic Encounters" elsewhere.

Eagle-eyed commenter Raincoaster noticed something funny about the picture we posted last night of Bee Shaffer: The daughter of Vogue editor Anna Wintour was wearing an Oscar De La Renta dress last seen in July on the back of actress Jennifer Lopez. But it was barely on her back. As pointed out with varying degrees of cruelty on lolebrity and D-Listed, one photo showed how famously-voluptuous Lopez didn't quite fit the dress, so it had to be held onto her body with some sort of rope or scrunchy or something. Now Shaffer is prancing back into New York with that same dress elegantly draped over her wispy, fashion-friendly frame. COINCIDENCE?

Harper's Bazaar's much-discussed photo spread of Tyra Banks as Michelle Obama is finally online, and my but is it ambitious. Also, cringey: Model-industry booster Banks is depicted behind the desk in a (poor) imitation Oval Office, in a strapless gown at a formal state dinner and even, as pictured, laughing at a newspaper story about fat white bitters with President Barry Hussein, presumably after making elitist love in Harvard sweatshirts. Wasn't it just yesterday that it was politicians acting like fools in hopes of stealing some celebrity buzz, rather than the other way around? Presidential candidates were appearing on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and even professional wrestling matches to promote themselves. Barack Obama always seemed the most aloof in this process, and now it's clear why: He has as much to offer the celebrity-industrial complex as it offers him. [Harper's Bazaar via Wonkette]

At the risk of overdoing our coverage of monsters and hellspawn, we present this lovely picture of Anna Wintour and her daughter Bee Shaffer, snapped by a Columbia acquaintance of Shaffer at a recent party. The outdoor dinner featured lamb chops (not overdone!) and seems to have been convened at least partly to fête young Bee, presumably upon her return from a semester in London. Despite the mean things sometimes said about her mother, Shaffer herself retains much of the glow from her regal fashion lineage, thanks to outfits like the one she wore to the Costume Institute Gala this year and generally positive reports in her wake at internships at New York, Teen Vogue and so forth. Since we last checked in with her in 2006, Shaffer seems to have stopped writing her column for the UK's Telegraph and ceased contributing to the Columbia Spectator and its magazine. But she may have picked up a boyfriend! Check out the party picture after the jump.

How is the Wall Street Journal's new glossy magazine, WSJ.—helmed by yoga mogul Tina Gaudoin—bridging the gap between the paper's dreary workaday reporters and the unbridled glamor that is a glossy magazine? By having some Journal reporters and editors pose as extras in a photo shoot for the mag, "clutching cameras and clamoring around glamorous figures." Living the dream! [WWD]

The Mainstream Media is really hoping that the presidential election will be the ticket to higher TV ratings and more newspaper sales because, man, they could really use the help. But the results so far aren't too encouraging. Instead of an explosion of people rushing home after work to catch Brian Williams' reasoned analysis of election strategy, it turns out that those people are rushing to upstart internet sites, argumentative cable news programs, and trashy magazines for their campaign coverage. Which just goes to show that-barring a nip slip-not even Barack Obama's hallowed visage can save media platforms that are on their way down. Ratings for cable shows like Hardball and Countdown have "risen sharply" during the campaign. The Politico's website is blowing up, with more readers than "more than all but 13 American newspapers." Political ads are more popular on YouTube than political news broadcasts. Us Weekly saw a bigger bump with its Obama cover than actual political magazines did. And the nightly news broadcasts just keep sadly puttering along:

Lad mags are ruining the nation's boys and men! announced Britain's conservative education spokesman, Michael Gove. "Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available... We should ask those who make profits out of revelling in, or encouraging, selfish irresponsibility among young men what they think they're doing. The relationship between these titles and their readers is a relationship in which the rest of us have an interest." Naughty mags are such an easy scapegoat—if only blaming Nuts was the solution. And how about those men that pepper you with unwanted phone calls, months after we very specifically asked them to stop? (For example.) Can that be blamed on lad mags, too? Hopefully! [Guardian]

Esquire seems very earnestly convinced that their flashing e-Ink cover this October will revolutionize the print industry with awesome shifting pixels. There are only a few things holding back the revolutionary technology: it's thick as hell, it's not entirely flexible, the color on the e-paper is so bad that the magazine had to overlay a tinted sheet of plastic on the cover, and the magazine has to be delivered on refrigerated trucks. After these minor glitches are worked out, here comes the future! And while magazine readers might not like it, at least the new Esquire will be tailor-made for tech nerds:

Playgirl, as previously reported, is indeed folding. It'll go to a web-only operation. [Fishbowl]

Hawk-faced elderly man James Brady, the name-dropping veteran of 600 media outlets who has now eased into his retirement job as Forbes' "media columnist" (ha), is primarily skilled at being befuddled about the point of things (though he hasn't lost his name-dropping talent). So faced with an early copy of former crackhead-turned Times columnist David Carr's (well-reviewed) new book-which is not, as Brady hoped, a volume of media name-dropping-Brady panics in print like the senile Uncle Junior in The Sopranos: shoot the bad man and run hide in the closet! See, Brady really wanted this book to be a recitation by Carr of media inside-baseball stuff. "What a glorious read that would be, and what a column or two I could get out of it," he writes. But no-it's full of drug shit!

We hear that People is feverishly closing its upcoming issue tonight, so that the magazine can be on newsstands by Monday with its $10-15 million worth of Brangelina baby pictures. The spread, we hear, will be in the neighborhood of 30 pages. Babylicious!

The rumors are that Playgirl, that naked-man publication started in the 70s, will fold. We never actually read it, but always kind of liked the idea that it was around. It was ostensibly for girls, but maybe that was the heteronormative title—because come on, the gays have been (barely) keeping that thing afloat for years. [Mag Death Pool; Fishbowl]

You thought that the search for new pictures of the mysterious world-famous street artist Banksy had come to an end? It has not! Our earlier shot at digging up photos of the maybe-identified but still unseen artist turned out to (probably) not be him. But! A tipster has sent us a lovely present: three still shots of Banksy in action, taken from a UK documentary filmed in 2000, when he was less obsessive about hiding his identity. We also have two photos of Banksy that were featured in an article in the UK's Squall magazine (now defunct) back in 2000. And for the finale: two art prints that are reportedly drawings of Banksy in profile, dressed as the Queen of England. None are full-on face shots; but this is probably the first time all these rarely-seen images have been collected in one place. Click through to explore. Stills from the 2000 UK documentary Boom or Bust, by filmmaker Si Mitchell: