According to a celebrity magazine insider we've been in touch with, Time Inc. paid Beatie $300,000 for People's rights to the exclusive baby pics.

No word on whether he's giving the money to charity, but doesn't Beatie kind of deserve to keep it? Bidding on Angelina Jolie's baby pictures approached $20 million, and even D-listers Nicole Richie and Jamie-Lynn Spears managed to net reported seven-figure deals for photos of their offspring. And not one of those people went to the trouble of changing her gender, retaining her reproductive organs or waddling around as the world's only pregnant man!

In fact, one wonders if Beatie couldn't have gotten a better deal. Sad! But only by the (also sad) metric of fameball skills. Beatie still looks like a very happy Dad, which is rumored to be worth quite a lot in and of itself (pish!).

Right now, Wintour's Vouge has an overpaid hockey player as an intern, which was probably meant to be a publicity stunt, but mostly confused people. The cover girls are consistently bland, overexposed actresses (who have often graced the cover several times before) instead of fashion models. Plus, the aggressive airbrushing is almost an insult to readers' intelligence.

American Vogue's last bid for attention was its somewhat infamous Lebron James cover from April, in which the basketball player grabbed model Gisele in a King Kong moment. (Annie Liebowitz shot it.) People found this more offensive that not, however, so that sort of backfired. (The cover wasn't that interesting to begin with, and it was the worst-selling April issue since 2001. April is the month of their annual "Shape" issue, in which they pay lip service to different body types and usually get a sales boost in return.) The following cover, an over-airbrushed Gweneth Paltrow, didn't do much better.

Meanwhile, the French edition of Vogue (edited by Carine Roitfeld) is still kicking ass creatively! (Of course, it's a much smaller operation.) You remember the November 2007 issue, which featured model Carolyn Murphy with New York eccentric Andre J, bearded and in a dress. The brand-new August issue features a fashion spread of an anti-fur protest, with a fur-clad attitudinal model flipping protesters the middle finger. That's the kind of spunk we like to see!

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!

“We’ve turned down Shaq for wearing sneakers,” says a Las Vegas PR director. “Then Diddy shows up the other night with a guard who’s wearing shorts and sneakers. Diddy was hosting an event, and he wouldn’t enter without his guy. So we had to let him in, but it’s obnoxious.”

Especially when Karl Lagerfeld's guards all wear Dior.

“Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore—they’ll come with no one.” By contrast, in her latest malfunction, Janet Jackson drew glares when her guards accompanied her inside the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute gala in May. “Even the Beckhams leave their guys outside that event!”

[W]

We had our own presidential campaign cover in the works, which explored a different facet of the Politics of Fear, but we shelved it when The New Yorker’s became the “It Girl” of the blogosphere. Now, however, in a selfless act of solidarity with our downstairs neighbors here at the Condé Nast building, we’d like to share it with you. Confidentially, of course.

It's like the football frat decided to post the collective GPA of the computer frat all over campus. OK, I more or less stole that image from Marc Ambinder, who points out that VF 'toonist Tom Bower stole his from the Daily News's Bill Bramhall.

[Vanity Fair]

[via Razor Apple]

• Cleese, 68, is in the midst of a divorce from his third wife.
• They met at a "power breakfast" in New York.
• Smiley: "We had this natural connection and became firm friends."
• Cleese: "I never thought I would be interested in somebody in marketing but she is so acute."
• Cleese took her on a European "divorcey-moon" tour arranged by his friend. Sounds sort of rebound-ey.
• Read between the lines: Smiley: "we are still getting to know each other... it is a very close, very warm friendship."
• Read between the lines: Cleese's friend on a dinner in Zurich: "I don’t think they’d had a major consummation before that, if I may put it that way."
• Cleese: "I am not sure when we’ll be seeing each other again."

In case anyone missed her point about the nature of her relationship with Cleese, Smiley updated her Facebook thusly:

The Sunday Times coverage never called Smiley a "friend," so one presumes the clarification is hers.

Oh, Veronica. At least rent Holy Grail before you put John on permanent "just friends" status.

[Mail]

(Photo via Daily Mail)

With a boss like Si Newhouse, it seems doubtful that Lipman should get too comfortable. She does have a couple of things going for her: Her credentials (Ivy League, WSJ) are strong, which Newhouse respects; and the fact that she is a woman who has worked her way up. One only has to look at the histories of Vogue editor Anna Wintour and former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown to see that Newhouse has never backed down from supporting women in top editorial posts even when others questioned his decision. In those cases, his commitment paid off. With Lipman, the payoff is far less assured.

And here's what she should really think about: the newest rumor is that Conde Nast execs have now started to whisper about supposed distinctions between a "launch editor" and an actual, long-term editor. Lipman oversaw Portfolio's launch, and garnered herself a lot of critics in the process. Creating a situation in which "launch editor" was considered a job in itself—and not an automatic qualification as editor-in-chief for years to come—could conceivably be a way to gently ease Lipman out in favor of someone more popular and experienced. Thanks for the help with the launch, we'll handle the rest now, Joanne!

Would Si Newhouse buy into such a plan? It's impossible to know! He is loath to be pressured into decisions, which could actually work in Lipman's favor. Everyone will have to wait for the quiet boss in the raggedy clothes to make up his mind.

[NYT]

According to a tipster, Elle publisher Carol Smith signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Anne Klein to have Garcia—then an Elle staffer—do in-store appearance and promotions on behalf of the fashion brand. But Garcia refused to wear Anne Klein clothes at the appearances, because she believed it would be a "conflict of interest." This put the huge endorsement deal in jeopardy, we hear, and everyone from Elle's editor-in-chief to former Hachette boss Jack Kliger was putting pressure on Garcia to give in and wear the damn clothes to keep the customer happy.

But Garcia was stubborn! By the time her final mandatory appearance for Anne Klein rolled around, says the source, the publisher actually drove to Garcia's home and waited for her to make sure she wore an appropriately Klein-ish outfit. The entire ordeal was so outlandish that the whole staff was gossiping about it. Shortly after the endorsement deal wrapped up, Nina Garcia was fired—after Elle had made its money. Or so we hear.

In an odd way, we respect her crazily firm editorial commitment to picking her own clothes NO MATTER WHAT.

• She is not her parents: "I get it, I really do, but at the same time it's creepy."
• She is not her parents: "If you're a big Nirvana fan, a big Hole fan, then I understand why you would want to get to know me, but I'm not my parents."
• Career interests: "She's thought about photography and/or journalism."
• Also: She is not her parents! "People need to wait until I've done something valid with my life."

So, basically, a fairly typical 15-year-old, except she already has Rolling Stone on her resume, and has already been savaged in Page Six. But given that her mom is Courtney Love? Something tells me she's not sweating it.

[Page Six, People]

The true goal was never “fame” at all. I wanted two things: 1) editors to publish my work, 2) people to read my work. I wanted to be like Nora Ephron - able to exist creatively with an audience and relative financial freedom...

I did over two dozen print interviews and 350 television segments in the last year - and probably over 500 in the last two years. I taught my brain to think in soundbites, in PR nothing-speak, to project authority on subjects I have no real knowledge about [emphasis so added]. It’s a game … but I’m a bit tired of playing it. Now I need to unlearn much of that.

All of this left me little time to actually do what it was that I set out to do in the first place - which is to communicate, to explore, to wonder, to interview fascinating individuals about their own discoveries - and yes, write.

...I suppose that if I get lost along the way back to my roots as a writer, I can always head up a marketing firm...

You hear that, everyone? Julia Allison is tired of "playing the game" of self-promotion and being famous for nothing!

And we know this is so because she posted it to the website her company started to broadcast online her life as the star of a new Bravo reality show.

[Non Society]

(Excerpted; read the full story here):

On Saturday night, Leon Neyfakh of the New York Observer picked my friend Alec Niedenthal and I up in downtown Brooklyn. Alec is a 17-year-old literary whiz kid and friend of mine whom Leon had written about in the Observer after Alec wrote an incendiary letter to the New York Times. He'd come to New York to meet with a potential publisher.

We walked with Leon to another guy’s house. I'll call him Sebastian. Along the way we plucked up a couple of n+1 interns, underage Lolitas in slutty dresses. They were sucking lollipops and carrying six packs of Blue Moon. These girls seemed like they would fuck anyone for a byline, and the men were even worse, charming them with discussions about Gaddis’ The Recognitions or the glory of the em dash. Everything I had begun to suspect — that n+1 was a place where old guys who never got laid in high school finally have their pick of the fine young crop [YES, YOU ARE CORRECT. -Ed]—felt wholly true in those moments leading up to entering Sebastian's house. I felt suddenly hollowed.

Sebastian lives with his parents in a multi-million-dollar brownstone in Brooklyn... Everyone there went to Columbia or Harvard or Yale. They argued over grammar and syntax, the difference between a metaphor and a metonymy. Someone sparked a joint and everyone drank and simmered in their own self-congratulatory pseudo-intellectualism. For the first time in my life I felt intellectually inferior...

After that, we were off to a birthday party off the Smith Street F stop in Brooklyn. It was a party for Carla Blumenkranz, who wrote a story called "In Search of Gawker" for n+1 last winter. Emily Gould was there. Alec ditched me to continue sucking up to Leon, and Leon loved it because to him Alec is a protégé. They will feed off of each other and help each other succeed even though they don't actually care about one another. Eventually Keith Gessen showed up. He is short in person with messy hair. I hear him saying he will "try to take himself more seriously."

...It just was all so fucking fake. These people that I had admired my entire New York existence — they all disappointed me. I don't understand how people can exist in such a dishonest way and still call themselves writers. Isn't it the responsibility of a writer to be honest?

Young Jess has stumbled upon the first rule of PR: in order to become (semi-Internet) famous—throw a brick at some people (marginally) more famous than you! Anyway, we think the girl has potential. "I am getting out of New York for awhile," she writes, "...New York is not a place for serious people."

Does anybody have photos from the aforementioned parties? Please send; we will protect your identity.

Au Revoir, New York ‘Literary’ Scene! [Daily Intel]

Sacco: "Bungalow 8 London is more like the sophisticated European sister of New York."

Reviewer: "damn right! There are many worthwhile ways to spend your £350 in London - this isn't one of them. You've read the reviews - they are accurate. It is nothing like Bungalow 8 NYC which was so much fun a few years ago..."

Sacco: "And the downstairs opens at eleven o’clock, Tuesday through Saturday, and it’s much more of a clubby vibe than we have in New York."

Reviewer: "I'm a fair person....So I tried EVERY night in the week at Bungalow 8, and I'm talking weekend, early, midnight til late.... and it was a DISASTER....spent over £500 each night on champagne. Waste of money if you ask me."

Reviewer: "The place is very disappointing time after time. Specially compared to other clubs I have membership with. The music is cliche and dull. The members are like a bunch of estate agents, the place itself is like a corridor and the drinks are overpriced. A lot of hot air. I would rate the club lounge at Heathrow Airport higher than this place."

Etc.

[BlackBook, View London]

[WSJ]

• "It's been a tough hop for this caravan of sales crews, though. Winding their way down from California, they lost a few agents. Two were arrested in Albuquerque after they allegedly forced their way into the home of an elderly couple and beat them to death, raping the wife first. A few weeks later, another agent allegedly raped a woman in Claremont, California, so he got picked up, too."
• "In the eight months the Press investigated door-to-door magazine sales across the country, the industry has seen at least three murders, one rape, two attempted rapes, one stabbing, one attempted murder, one vehicle fatality and one attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl."
• Crystal Mathahy (pictured), a 17-year-old in Texas, got recruited to join a magazine crew. An older cousin signed a "permission slip" for her to participate, since her mom was illiterate. She didn't make enough money to eat, and tried to leave the crew, but couldn't afford a Greyhound ticket. Shortly after, the crew's van plunged 80 feet off the side of a mountain, crushing Mathahy to death.
• "[In] Houston in 2005, a sales agent raped a 17-year-old mentally retarded girl who answered the door of the apartment she shared with her mother. To gain her confidence, that agent acted as if he had a disability as well."

Apart from the individual tragedies, the real scandal the story lays out is the blind eye that big players in the magazine industry—including the MPAA, Conde Nast, and many other top-tier publishers—turn to the well-known excesses of the subscription business. That's to say nothing of the financial risks to consumers, like being subscribed to magazines against your will. The whole thing is worth a read.

[Houston Press]

Renault complained to the police because the magazine, Auto Plus, "published pictures and details of a new model not due to be launched for another three years." I call that a hell of a scoop. Three years in advance! Such things are criminal matters in France. By contrast, in the greatest country on earth (USA), leaks like this are routine, and it's the company's god damn problem to track down leakers. (Unless you're talking about Apple and the Think Secret blog). Renault says they were just getting a little assistance:

"It kills creativity, you may as well just give our models to the newspapers and our competitors. What's the point of doing any research?" a spokesman said.

"The idea is not to attack Auto Plus but to cut off the sources that feed it, to find the source inhouse."

Interesting interpretation. In that case, police should be raiding Renault and arresting its executives every time an consumer is tricked into buying one of their crappy cars. The idea is not to attack Renault, you see, but to cut off the money that feeds it.

USA, USA, USA.

[Reuters, Folio]

Bohemian Grove has been arguing amongst themselves for the last few years about a plan to cut down and harvest some of the trees in their forest, ostensibly to prevent forest fires. Member John Hooper resigned in 2004 because of the plan (even though he owns his own forest, which also harvests trees.) Hooper asked Vanity Fair's Shoumatoff (they are former Harvard classmates) to write about the tree-cutting for Vanity Fair, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The connection between Hooper and Shoumatoff pissed off the pro-harvesting club members. They sent a letter to VF editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, but Shoumatoff didn't quit the story. In fact, he told the club's PR flacks to talk and quit hiding information. (Spy magazine infiltrated Bohemian Grove in 1989, when Carter was editor there.) An excerpt from that article, written by Philip Weiss:

"At this point some hamadryads (tree spirits) and another priest or two appeared at the base of the main owl shrine, a 40-foot-tall, moss-covered statue of stone and steel at the south end of the lake, and sang songs about Care. They told of how a man's heart is divided between "reality" and "fantasy," how it is necessary to escape to another world of fellowship among men. Vaguely homosexual undertones suffused this spectacle, as they do much of ritualized life in the Grove. The main priest wore a pink-and-green satin costume, while a hamadryad appeared before a redwood in a gold spangled bodysuit dripping with rhinestones. They spoke of "fairy unguents" that would free men to pursue warm fellowship, and I was reminded of something Herman Wouk wrote about the Grove: 'Men can decently love each other; they always have, bur women never quite understand.'"

Anyway, Shoumatoff was captured in the woods by a plumber moonlighting as a security guard on the night of July 13th. Update! We hear that he got into the club briefly before being thrown out, contrary to the SF Chroncle reports that he was caught while sneaking in.

IBM is using 2L-like programs to indoctrinate far-flung employees in places like China and Brazil. A terrific way for IBM to give itself the same image employees associate with bad acid trips! And here's a good time:

In September, Xerox used Second Life to enable about 20 out-of-town employees to virtually attend its 2007 International Women's Conference in Rochester, N.Y. While some 570 people, mostly Xerox employees, attended the event live, a parallel track took place in Second Life. Virtual attendees watched streaming video of the conference and interacted through text chat.

My, if that doesn't sound like the single least fun corporate event that could possibly be inflicted upon an employee, I don't know what does. It's time for BusinessWeek—and their corporate dead-ender followers—to stand up and boldly say: this thing is stupid.

[BW]

OK!

Pros: OK! publisher Richard Desmond is said to be determined to land the photos—his magazine is out to corner the baby picture market, remember. Desmond is leading negotiations for the rights himself, and he knows that he has a better shot at recouping his costs, because he controls 17 international editions that could all run the photos.

Cons: It's bad for any one magazine to corner any market, no matter how frivolous. Plus, landing these Brangelina pics would be considered a victory for objectionable soulless former flack and OK! editor Rob Shuter.

People

Pros: They landed the pics of Shiloh, Brangelina's earlier spawn. Plus, People is a more prestigious title than OK!. Their PR value is higher, at least domestically.

Cons: May not be able to bid as high as Desmond will. And they have less ability to distribute internationally. Is the solution a combo deal, perhaps—People with domestic rights and OK! with international rights? Well, whatever's best for the children.

But seriously, OK! will win, we think. All the money's going to charity, so Brangelina will go for Desmond's higher price for their baby's souls.

V Magazine got veteran fashion photographer Mario Testino to convince Gisele to pose for these pictures, which she said "only Mario could make me take." Boy, let's hope so. What makes you think everyone wants to see your body, you tart?

[via Fashion Week Daily]

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

Rachel Sklar, who jumped on the story over at the Huffington Post, isn't buying it:

...it's got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama's campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who's tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who's tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here's your image.

Right, because if there's one source right-wing scaremongers love to cite, it's the New Yorker!

Jake Tapper of ABC News agrees with Sklar:

Knowing the liberal politics of the magazine, I believe the magazine's staff when they say the illustration is meant ironically, as a parody of the caricature some conservatives (and some supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.) are painting of the Obamas.

But it's still fairly incendiary, at least as these things go. I wonder what the reaction would be were it the Weekly Standard or the National Review putting such an illustration on their covers.

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal — no matter how superior they feel their intellect is — should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

So participants in important political discussions, especially those who have loud voices by dint of talent, power or medium of publication, should tailor their self-expression in such a way that it can't possibly be misappropriated by extremists! Gee, that sounds familiar.

Well, this is the part in the campaign where we find out who among Barack Obama and his supporters truly do want to set aside the melodramatic hysterics that have cropped up around political dialog in this country over the past seven years, and who is instead destined to join the extreme right in opposing a long and proud American tradition of brazen free speech and rough-and-tumble dialog that have all too often been set aside in recent years in the name of sensitivity — patriotic or otherwise.

Or maybe I'm just touchy because these anti-French-defamation people weren't happy with my own caricature of stereotypes over the weekend. Whatever, talk amongst yourselves!

[Huffington Post]

Michelle Obama went to high school with the Reverend's oldest child, Santita Jackson. So young Michelle was a "frequent" Jackson family house guest. In fact: "Michelle and Santita kind of babysat for Junior and Yusef and Jonathan [the third Jackson son] and oversaw the kids when the parents were gone," an old Jackson family advisor told TNR.

And it gets a little complicated here. Michelle is an old Jackson family friend. Junior has been campaigning for Obama—campaigning hard. But Yusef is BFF with supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who is BFF with Bill Clinton, so Yusef raised money for Hillary. Yusef also—with Burkle—owns Radar!

Now that Clinton's out of the race, all the Jacksons are ostensibly behind Obama. Though Jesse Sr is obviously a bit ambivalent.

BUT it's worth noting (Nick is gone today so we're putting on our Denton Caps as we throw this out there) that not only has Radar not, in any of its forms, covered this recent Jackson scandal, it's also been very kind to Michelle Obama (this is the sum total of their coverage of her "first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country" remark). Of course, we've been pretty kind to her too, because we think she's pretty awesome. But still! She didn't go to grammar school with the older sister of our secret owner! TRANSPARENCY!

First, Bol airs his objections to "the fact that mofos are walking around wearing purses and tight-ass pants showing off their nuts." Well let's be honest, who wants to see the nuts of others, unsolicited? Then he critiques this story in the Voice about a Brooklyn rap crew and its anti-tight clothes anthem:

Of course, with it being the gay-ass Village Voice, these guys are painted as virulent homophobes and failed no-talents trying to capitalize off a gimmick.

Well sure. His proposed savior of hip hop? This guy below, whose video is an ode to smashing tight-be-pantsed rap kids with bats. I find hipster hop as annoying as anyone, but this is really not the solution. Where's the love here, Bol? NO HOMO:

Radar's website has studiously ignored the day's hottest story—just as it sidestepped the juicy revelations about conman Raffaello Follieri's relationship with supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle, and the Hollywood rumors of an affair between actress Gina Gershon and former president Bill Clinton.

Burkle's involvement in the pop culture magazine has never been acknowledged, but he joined Yusef in a bid for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004—and Radar's unusual discretion in covering stories about the California tycoon and his buddy Bill pretty much confirm the creepy Burkle is in Yusef's consortium. "It's fair to say the restrictions that come with Radar's funding are getting more inconvenient," says a veteran of the magazine. Radar's Maer Roshan did not respond to a request for comment.

One shouldn't give too hard a time to Radar, however. It's not as if New York magazine made any mention of financier Bruce Wasserstein's marriage breakup earlier this week. Every publication has investors it can't afford to offend; it's just that Radar has had a lot of them, and it really can't afford to offend them.

Update: Maer Roshan did indeed respond, with a zinger!

Q. Hey, Maer — where's your Jesse Jackson "nuts" piece? (In the same place as all the Burkle coverage?) ;)

A. Actually, it's in the same place as our item on you going down on a go-go boy at Urge on Thursday night.. But while we're on the subject, have I missed Gawker's coverage of the Jezebel fiasco?

The Time piece is livelier that the Journal's, but guess what shows up in it: that's right, all the exact same facts! 4chan was started by a 15-year-old kid. It is dirty. Memes. LOLCats. Big audience, small money. Porny! Hard to sell ads! But "moot," the founder of the site, does have the right idea, PR-wise:

He wouldn't be above cashing out for the right price, which is $580 million, which is what Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. paid for MySpace in 2005. "I try to work Murdoch into any interview I give," he says. "Rupert Murdoch? moot@4chan.org."

My shirt right now is as wrinkly as Rupert Murdoch. Meme!

[WSJ, Time]