Presumably eager to reach what WSJ.'s publisher has described as the "top top consumer," the magazine's editors planned a debut splash: Kate Moss on the cover in an exclusive article about her supposed emergence as a business juggernaut. The entire staff knew of the plan and spoke freely about it, we are told, which may be how Anna Wintour stole the story out from under the nascent publication. August's Vogue, you may have heard, features Kate Moss on the cover beside the headline, "How the Supermodel Rose from Bad Girl to Business Tycoon." Whoops.

That sad incident hardly alleviated staff skepticism toward another major piece, a profile of PETA's Ingrid Newkirk. Set aside the question of what's left to say about Newkirk. Then set aside that the assigned freelancer turned in copy deemed disastrous and unsalvageable. There's still this: The story in the newsroom is that the freelancer has convinced Newkirk not to cooperate with the assigned staff writer. Ugh.

Journal managing editor Thomson is surely familiar with the Financial Times' successful How To Spend it section — he was a longtime veteran of the British newspaper, and in fact is remaking the Journal in FT's image across the board. But it takes some hubris to try and recreate How To Spend It via WSJ., a project Thomson has not only kept alive but put his own stamp on. There are only so many ultra-wealthy readers to go around, and one wonders how many are still not locked up by either T, the U.S. edition of How To Spend It or the many niche magazines detailed in the Observer story.

It will be an especially tricky challenge if Thomson continues to insist on quintessentially British coverage. It does not escape WSJ. staffers that the PETA story reflects a very British fascination with animal rights — a topic of interest to wealthy Americans, sure, but not to the same extent as on the other side of the Atlantic. One is reminded of the front-page story on Ireland's European Union vote a few weekends ago.

If it doesn't sound too Yank to their Commonwealth ears, perhaps Murdoch and Thomson might consider the bold step of re-re-forming WSJ. as something experimental, unproven and at least nominally unique, rather than as a pastiche of T, the FT and whatever other proven examples they've reflexively reached for.

Or, failing that, at least come up with a truly "exclusive" cover!

• On her new album, Britney Spears allegedly has a song called "ATM" where she sings, "Hey Mama, I know it’s my cash you seek." After being hospitalized in January and February, Spears stabilized her life and won increased visitation with her two sons, only to have her handlers push her back into various work endeavors. Point being, the song is probably more than mere celebrity whining, and I will actually purchase it on iTunes! (JUST LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE, etc.) [Mirror]
• Vogue's Anna Wintour is having another step-grandkid. But she can't enjoy this news because her intern, Sean Avery, is totally flirting with another fashion mag editrix! That's emotional cheating right there!
• Kathryn Walker is happy to talk about why she's hasn't been talking about her novel being partially based on ex-husband James Taylor. [Times]
• According to his friends, Alex Rodriguez's ex-wife is a dragon lady who hates his hispanic side, made him stop eating Spanish food and controlled his mind with her master's degree in psychology. Totally plausible. [P6]
• Singer Lance Bass is hooking up with personal trainer Sebastian Leal even though Brazil-born Leal has a wife of nine years. Sounds like a total citizenship marriage, though, so meh, whatever. [P6]
• Giorgio Armani, 74, invited Prince Caspian from Chronicles of Narnia — Ben Barnes, 26 — for a ride on his yacht. Don't eat the Turkish Delight! [R&M]
• Under pressure from doctors, Amy Winehouse has given away eight of her cats. Now she has to relinquish the final six, which are her favorites. Apparently they give her breathing problems. And I'm sure she doesn't give them breathing problems, since feline lungs are totally brilliant at filtering crack smoke. [Showbiz Spy]
• Sean Connery faces accusations he "stopped giving his son money to force him to make his own way in life." Wait, you can be accused of that? Like it's a bad thing? And people will write about it? [UPI]

[WSJ]

The trouble started, we hear, when Wintour found out that star fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier had some work in the latest issue of Interview. Demarchelier is closely associated with Vogue, and has shot numerous covers for domestic and international issues of the magazine.

Further, we hear that Demarchelier may be on an extremely lucrative exclusive contract with Vogue. So Wintour "flipped her shit" at the thought of him working for a semi-competitor. She got so upset that eventually she had to go and have a mob-like "Sit down" meeting with Glenn O'Brien, who oversees Interview for Brant Publications and is not a fan of celebrities.

The outcome of that meeting is unclear. But everyone involved better hope that Wintour cools off. Her reaction to Demarchelier's perceived betrayal was to call around to Vogue's top photographers—including Brad Pitt chronicler Steven Klein—and urge (order?) them not to shoot any photos for Interview. We hear that this isn't the first time she's gotten angry like this; she tried to tell photographers not to work for Tina Brown's ill-fated Talk magazine when it launched, too.

The upshot of her earlier attempt to keep all the good photographers for herself? They all got to jack up their own prices, which may have played a role in Demarchelier getting such a lucrative contract from Vogue in the first place.

Such a cut-throat fashion photography world. Or so we hear! If you have anything to add, email us.

MisterHippity's new line beats the original, "Oh Dear, One of the Models Dropped Her Lunch."

The rumor is floated by Post gossip Liz Smith:

Anna's speech to her staff receives a mixed reaction:

Wintour takes her complaints public:

[Front Row]

• Sad Anne Hathaway had been shopping for homes with her scummy Italian boyfriend Rafaello Follieri right before the movie starlet finally realized she had to dump the loser. She told InStyle, for next month's issue: "If we get a house as opposed to an apartment, the first two floors will be a bit more traditional for him to be able to receive people, and the top two floors will be whatever I want." [P6]
• Socialite Tinsley Mortimer's Gossip Girl cameo was in an all-white party scene. Apparently "it was like a virginal reference not a reference to Puffy." [Observer]
• Like Sean Avery, tennis star Anna Kournikova would like to work for Anna Wintour at Vogue. Unlike Avery, she made the mistake of putting the editrix at number FIVE on her list of the 10 people she'd most like to work for, post-tennis. [P6]
• The corporate infighting over Madonna's $120 million Live Nation has already begun. Looks like there may be layoffs. [Post]
• Rapper DMX may lose a townhouse because he didn't promote a line of "urban doggie wear" as promised. The dog-gear company hooked up with DMX after hearing his gravelly voice in public service announcements he made about pets. It turns out DMX was ordered to make those ads after being found guilty of cruelty to his own 14 pit bulls. [Post]
• Heather Locklear checked into rehab for athlete's foot or something. Seriously, though: For "psychological treatment." Everyone is pulling this "rehab-but-not-for-drugs" stunt now. What does rehab even MEAN any more? [OK!]
• Stable for several months now, Britney Spears finally gets to have her kids over for sleepovers again. [TMZ]

"Let me just say, it's not the most fun thing in the world to have breakfast a million times with [communications director] Howard Wolfson," she said. "The man is the most charmless human being on the planet, and I'm sitting there sucking up to him."

...She said she was told, "We already have the women's vote in the bag," and that Wolfson said, '"We thought we were going to be in a bigger dogfight. We don't need you anymore.' This was right before Iowa. What an idiot!"

Oh, snap! Who doesn't need who now, Howard Wolfson? Or, I mean, who wouldn't be not needing who, if he was still in the "dogfight," because he hadn't yet lost the race, or what... Whatever: SNAP!

Reed is pitching a book, which unfortunately is not about the idiots surrounding Hillary Clinton. More on that!

[WWD]

(Photo via WowOWow.com)

Though both women were plucked by S.I. Newhouse from similar backgrounds in the UK to run magazines in his Condé Nast empire—or maybe precisely because they occupied such similar niches in American publishing—their relationship was always testy. Tina Brown saw Wintour's hiring as a deliberate slight by the Condé Nast boss, according to friends. "He knows Anna's father and my father are mortal enemies! He knows!" she was quoted as saying.

Even though they were sufficiently chummy to lunch together with Diana on the princess' jaunts through New York, the rivalry was never far from the surface. Wintour had set up the lunch; but Tina Brown worked the private conversation into her obituary of the princess after she died in a Paris car crash. And, later, Brown ran a malicious profile on Wintour's then boyfriend, womanizing entrepreneur Shelby Bryan. "He asks nineteen-year-old girls and forty-five-year-olds at parties in Southampton if they want to fuck him," said one socialite.

There's a consolation: Wintour still has a job atop a glossy and profitable magazine and the power of patronage that comes with that; Tina Brown depends on the charity of gay mogul Barry Diller, who is funding her latest project, a "news aggregator" in a medium that she's never understood. The C.B.E. won't help her.

• Denis Leary's wife, Ann, has for years been secretly not cool with the comedian having dining, hanging out with and getting diet and exercise makeovers from his knockout friend Elizabeth Hurley, so she sadly channeled her frustrations into a thinly-veiled "novel." Something tells me Denis, in a similar situation, would have just cussed and yelled about it for an hour or so until the situation somehow resolved itself. Not that there's anything wrong with different "communication styles." [R&M]
• Another source agrees with actor Rupert Everett that Madonna's husband Guy Richie is homophobic. "At their wedding, [Madonna's gay brother] Chris made a joke about Guy being gay. That set the tone for their relationship." [R&M]
• Naomi Campbell had considerable trouble staying upright outside a nightclub at 3 am, but her spokesman said she was just "pretending to fall." The best headline, of course, is from the Sun: "Stupormodel." They are so getting a cell-phone beating.
• John Mayer is hanging out at Jennifer Aniston's house, and the couple are finding his annoying need for control dovetails nicely with her neediness.
• Fashion bigwigs Calvin Klein, Andre Leon Talley and Anna Wintour are hosting a big fundraiser for Barack Obama, while Barabara Streisand is now offering to do basically whatever the Democratic presidential candidate wants.
• But can we really trust all these creative New York types to choose our next president? According to the totally objective Post, this one showbiz Obama supporter, comedian Robert Klein, was talking to an innocent conservative and tried to bludgeon him into voting for Obama because Obama's "a Harvard guy." The McCain supporter calmly tried to explain how Obama is a closet Marxist, but Klein got all shrill and liberal on him, because he's a tone-deaf elitist, Obama supporters suck so much The End.

So my friend and I had tickets to the SATC premiere tonight. We left work early and booked it over there. When we got there, there was a line spanning from 50th and 6th to 50th and 5th around to 51st between 5th and 6th. We realized there probably wasn't much of a chance everyone would fit but it was Radio City sooo lots of seats. Some photographers took pics of the line and once that was done they told EVERYONE to go home. Not one ticket holder entered the theater. There were probably a couple of thousand people all decked out having travels from who knows where to get there holding their tickets and told to leave. There was a near riot of Louboutin clicking girls to the security windows in the front. I had gotten the tickets recently so I wasn't as emotionally invested but I thought it was really wrong. Some were in near tears waving their tickets and yelling into their cells. There were some people who had been there for hours and had missed work. They told us later that they didn't open the mezzanine so basically the tickets were for show. Just mean - all for a PR shots...

• Oh, hey, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg might stop snapping at people long enough to play a thinly-veiled, self-mocking George W. Bush in a Broadway play. [P6]
• Anna Wintour didn't like going to South Beach for a Karl Lagerfeld show because it made her sweaty, displeased and "miserable." Sort of like Carine Roitfeld.
• Rapper MIA is only allowed to remain in the U.S. for a few more weeks, so she's considering marrying Kanye West. It's either that or Montreal. [Oh No They Didn't]
• Nicole Kidman said ex-husband Tom Cruise has turned their kids against her. They didn't even visit on Mother's Day. [Showbiz Spy]
• Wesley Snipes enjoyed his remaining freedom at a party in East Hampton. [Rush & Molloy]
• If you snub Harvard's request for your official archives, the university will get ahold of your unofficial sexytime archives. Norman Mailer's estate learned this the hard way. [P6]
• Jennifer Aniston secretly hooked up with John Mayer three months ago. See? It's totally normal for her to be this affectionate. So she's NOT BEING CLINGY, DAMMIT. [P6]
• Naomi Campbell has to return to the Heathrow police station in London to learn whether she will be formally charged with assaulting a police officer. As though slowly going bald wasn't punishment enough.
• One reason you shouldn't attack paparazzi, even if you're insane, basketcase singer Amy Winehouse: They will then publish awful, awful pictures of your "ravaged... heavily scabbed" skin.

MattGaymon's new line beat the original, Anna Wintour Should Really Get Those Checked Out.

The Times said Holmes was "looking perfect," but Fabsugar, even while catching the Superman reference in the outfit, wrote, "hot mess... just too reminiscent of '80s prom."

Here's comedian Sarah Silverman, "wearing a polka-dot teacup skirt from Dolce & Gabbana, paired with filthy black-and-white fingerless knit gloves, which she described as 'flair from my backpack that I bought at one of those mall stores for $9... The woman from Dolce & Gabbana said, "Please don’t wear those." I did.'"

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch (background, left) with wife Wendi. Australia's The Age: "Love the colours and the fabric... it's the shape that worries me. It's a bit ''tip me over, pour me out."

Designer Marc Jacobs leaving with Sofia Coppola, because if he'd taken a boy it would have just ended in a big pissy fight over three-ways. No one dared to say anything mean about their outfits.

USA Today (ever the fashion source): "Dolce & Gabbana decked out Scarlett Johansson, who made news on Monday when she announced that she and actor Ryan Reynolds were engaged. Although she wasn't flaunting her engagement ring as she walked the carpet holding hands with her designer hosts, it was probably one of the most-talked-about accessories of the evening."

If you put Blair and Serena together, you get Tinsley Mortimer. Tinsley's hair is always set and she always looks perfect, but she takes risks. We also incorporate Arden Wohl's downtown doyenne look—headbands, floral dresses, and chunky shoes.

As for the Gossip boys, socialite Derek Blasberg was the paradigm with his bow ties, classic squares, and sneakers. We were worried whether Middle America would get it, but then we saw a teenage boy—a fan hoping to catch a glimpse of the cast—waiting outside The Palace Hotel for hours wearing Chuck's signature J. Press scarf, so clearly people relate.

JULIA REED [Newsweek writer]: And the books! Nowadays magazine editors are famous people. Think of The Devil Wears Prada. If you take on a job like Anna’s, you know well what goes with it.

JOAN JULIET BUCK [Vogue writer]: It’s the relationship with assistants. If you think that the assistant may turn on you, how embarrassed would you be about asking her to change your gynecologist appointment?

JUDITH MARTIN [Miss Manners]: Well, it’s a huge argument for separating your business life from your personal life. Your personal assistant — so-called personal — should not be doing things in your private life and therefore she wouldn’t be privy, or he wouldn’t be privy to it. I think one of the greatest invasions of privacy now is the idea that people have that your colleagues are automatically your friends. And you have to celebrate with them and party with them and chat with them and exchange information with them...


I remember when I was head copy girl at The Washington Post. I had a fierce boss who was a genius, but very fierce. We were all scared to death of her. But she never once asked us to do anything in connection with her personal life. And so we knew nothing about it, except what we would giggle and guess. None of us could have turned on her in that way, even if we’d wanted to.

(The WowOWow story was posted today but was dated January 28, which is possibly when the conversation occurred for later transcribing to the Web.)

[WowOWow]

Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair: Carter's clashes with Weinstein were detailed in Ken Auletta's 2002 profile of the movie mogul in the New Yorker, for which Carter supplied some unflattering quotes. But the two made up: Weinstein and his Miramax Books advanced $1 million for a hardcover history of Carter's Spy Magazine, published in 2006 (the party photo at left, featuring Weinstein and Carter, was taken at a launch event for the book). When Weinstein wed fashion designer Georgina Chapman, Carter attended. The rehearsal dinner was held at Carter's restaurant, Waverly Inn.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.: Not only did he attend Weinstein's December wedding with wife Wendi Deng, but his four-year old daughter served as flower girl, according to Murdoch's Fox News.

Anna Wintour, Vogue: Met with Weinstein and his then-girlfriend Chapman about possible Vogue coverage of Chapman's fashion line. The gossip, as relayed by Page Six, was that Weinstein insinuated he could provide celebrities for cover shots in exchange for Vogue coverage of Chapman's fashion line. The line appeared several times in the magazine, and a Vogue rep confirmed to Page Six that a meeting occurred and that Wintour provided advice to Weinstein's aspiring fashionista, but said no deal was struck. Wintour also attended Weinstein's wedding.

Mort Zuckerman, Daily News, US News: Joined with Weinstein and others to bid on New York magazine in 2003. Also in the syndicate were financiers Jeffrey Epstein and Nelson Peltz, among others. Zuckerman also attended Weinstein's wedding.

For a fuller sense of Weinstein's connections, check out copious coverage of the guest list at his December wedding, which in addition to Murdoch, Wintour and Zuckerman drew network chiefs Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.

The mogul also makes his power felt further down the media food chain, where he can wow reporters with Hollywood glitz. David Carr said in the opening of a 2001 New York profile of Weinstein that the celebrities surrounding the mogul made Carr feel like "I'm in — kind of, temporarily, a member of the downtown tribe of Miramax."

At Fortune, Tim Arango opened a June 2007 Weinstein profile by recreating his trip with the mogul down the French Riviera in the back of "a midnight-blue Peugot." The pair drove past movie fans in Cannes, France, apparently on their way to a movie screening.

Arango went on to detail less glamorous — and less flattering — anecdotes, starting with how Weinstein's investors had just stepped up their oversight of his new company and were worried about management misfires. Weinstein's media influence, whatever he imagines it to be, has its limits.

Veteran Leibovitz, the go-to photographer at Conde Nast titles such as Vanity Fair and Vogue, has still not acknowledged her inspiration. (Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici, in an inspired journalistic move, actually thinks to put in a call.) But Leibowitz is known for borrowing iconic imagery from old movies.

Let's assume the Vogue cover was indeed an homage to the xenophobic wartime poster. There's nothing so reprehensible about that: it's a photographic commentary on the ancestral American fear of black men, an interesting and provocative idea.

But here's the real question. Had the magazine knowingly intended to begin a debate about racial imagery, it would have at least devoted some text to the issue, and demonstrated awareness of the controversy it was inviting. Instead, Vogue seems to have been caught unawares. Did Annie Leibovitz gloss over her cover concept in order to get it past the generally conservative Vogue editors? If so, they're going to blame her for the mess in which the Conde Nast magazine finds itself.

These magazines are just playing into the stereotype of black people opening their mouths all wide. And so soon after after Bill O'Reilly taught us that "there wasn't any kind of craziness" at all at a Harlem soul food spot.

Of course, an open mouth pose is not a trick to eliminate a double chin. It can only mean one thing: sex. Scary and dangerous black people sex. As Emil Wilbekin, editor of Giant, which often features black women with open mouths on its cover, says, "that raises my eyebrow as to how African-Americans are portrayed on mainstream magazine covers. You would not show Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johansson screaming."

Indeed, white actresses Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johansson would never be shot with their mouths open in a sexual way. Never, never.

Maybe these covers are chosen, subconsciously, because of their vague resemblance to classically racist imagery. And that's totally f'ed. But also totally f'ed: smart people wasting their time with Vogue.

Bulik... defended the offer as it was presented in the magazine, noting that the designers had written that a doctor had also told them to get in shape. She said she was surprised by the controversy, given that Anna Wintour, in her editor’s letter, had challenged designers to use healthier looking models.

"I saw more of an emphasis on healthy eating and healthy fitness than an order, 'You’ve got to lose weight,'" Dr. Bulik said.

See? Big-hearted Anna Wintour really was just concerned. About healthy newstan... er, about health! Ya, that's it.

Times: A Bad Reaction to a Diet

• Actor Robert Downey Jr. is about to be in blackface in a movie, but it's totally OK because it's so meta: Downey will not wear blackface to pretend to be black; he will wear blackface to pretend to be a white actor pretending to be black. Totally different. [Film School Rejects via Digg]
• Singer Britney Spears' father Jamie will continue to run most of her life through the end of July, meaning her insanity will continue a steady decline that has so far mirrored falls in the dollar and stock market. Coincidence? [AP]
• As predicted by everyone in the entire world, model and famed assistant-beater Naomi Campbell flipped out when she found out news of her gynecological surgery in Brazil leaked: "Naomi was in an absolute fury that word had gotten out... The female nurse who brought her breakfast one day left the room in tears after Naomi cursed her out.” [ShowbizSpy quoting National Enquirer]
• Here's a picture of actress Angelina Jolie at an airport looking busty and otherwise pregnant. [Sun]
• Page Six has banished Patrick Swayze's rep to its Liars' Corner for saying a hospital admission earlier this month was for a "gastrointenstinal procedure" when in fact the star had pancreatic cancer. [P6]
• Movie star couple Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon are in your darkened movie theater, fucking around with their BlackBerrys. Who's a cute couple now? [P6]
• Now that he's all fit and a war hero and everything, Prince Harry's girlfriend takes him back. [Sun]
• Anna Wintour has been hanging out with basketball star and Ralph Lauren fan LeBron James before she puts him on the cover of Vogue. [P6]
• Maybe he really will, finally, lose the Neverland Ranch: singer Michael Jackson said to be looting his home before it is seized. [Showbiz Spy]
• Former rich kid Brandon Davis now asking for free drinks in bars. [P6]

TedSez's new line beats the original, Anna Wintour's New Host Vessel Arrives.

The veteran magazine editor didn't say anything remarkable: career girls shouldn't just have to wear navy pantsuits; and an interest in fashion does not make one shallow, apparently. It's more the fact that she spoke at all: "she was quite nervous, always looking to her daughter for support," wrote one unauthorized blogger. So the fearsome editor, model for Meryl Streep's heartless fashion witch in The Devil Wears Prada, is human after all.

So why do it? Here's a theory: Wintour, who's originally British, never went to Oxford, indeed any other university; she began in fashion journalism after dropping out of high school at the age of 16. More than four decades later, she's the most influential person in the fashion industry, no matter what controversialists may pretend; but maybe London-born Wintour still has a small, very British chip on her shoulder. The legendary editor told the audience: "You're Oxford students, amazing." Awww.

[Photograph from The View From Here.]

10. Tony Kornheiser: But only a bit, because god, what media personality hasn't tried to get a rise out of bloggers? Even