Newhouse confirms to us that she was laid off today, as first reported in a tweet from Britten Leigh Heft. Newhouse writes she's one of two people she's aware of being let go from the sales/promotion side of the magazine. The decision, she said, was based on seniority: "The two newest people in our department were let go."

That sounds like admirably fair treatment for the wife of Jesse Newhouse, whose father is a Newhouse newspaper executive, whose grandfather was an early partner in building the Advance Publications empire that owns Self parent Condé Nast and who is the son of a cousin of Advance CEO Si Newhouse Jr.

When Newhouse was hired, it arched our eyebrows along with, we were told at the time, those of some people within Self. Condé had already been through several rounds of layoffs when Newhouse was hired. Her discharge could stand as proof that nepotism is a weak force, at best, in the Newhouse empire. Newhouse did come into the promtoions job after running her own events and promotion company, after all. But it could also be a sign of how desperate the company's magazines are to cut costs.

After all, today also brings word of still more cutbacks in a seemingly never-ending stream for Condé Nast: a tipster tells us Vanity Fair is laying off six people from the business side, including one ad director, two sales positions and three people from creative services, including one "very senior level" person. We called a Condé Nast spokeswoman for comment and are waiting to hear back.

Newhouse, meanwhile, isn't eyeing an immediate return to the family business. She writes:

For the moment, I feel it's best to return to running my own company, 007 Events, which I haven't allowed to lapse. Should there be an opening at some time in the future at Condé Nast where my experience in event planning and promotions would be valuable again, I would definitely consider returning. It was a great experience to work with such a dedicated and hardworking group.

A dignified exit, then. Newhouse-ian, even.

Joe Pompeo reports that Tar is "on hold," or maybe just dead. After only two issues! What is the magazine business coming to when concerted celebunepotism can't bring in the big buck$$$??

Alexandra Kerry (daughter of John) and John Mailer (son of Norman) were recruited as staff editors, as was Zoe Wolff, former features director at Domino.

They even had crap in there from Matthew Barney and Damien Hirst and Julian Schnabel and Ryan McGinley and Kate Moss! Perhaps the trouble was that people saw this mag and wondered, "Why does this themeless mish-mash of buzzy names exist, seriously?" Oh, wait: "'tar' is an anagram of art, the distillation of organic matter, sticky stuff we pave roads and secure roots with—a foundation."

They had a coherent philosophy. The problem here was you, the public. Thanks a lot. Alexandra Kerry just wanted to change the world.

While certainly many of the Kennedy clan are in no position to keep the dream alive, there are quite a few who could, if given the chance, maintain the imaginary castle. We've picked out six finalists, all of whom have pros and cons. Who, oh who, has the chops, scandal, ambition and all-around gumption to take Teddy's place at the top of the sprawling dynasty?

Arianna Huffington crowed after the 2008 presidential election that her website is "more participatory" than publications that practice journalism "the old way." But she's a favor-trading traditionalist when it comes to distributing money: Even the best contributing bloggers are unpaid, while paying gigs tend to go to VIPs.

Some have earned their status. Others were born into it.

Which isn't to say the well born are necessarily unqualified for their jobs: HuffPo is notoriously hard to work for, with famously high turnover; couple this with the site's national expansion and it's easy to see why HuffPo is hungry for young talent. But aren't there, like, some laid off journalists out there, with actual experience?

Here are some of the well-connected VIP spawn Arianna's taken on:

Ethan Axelrod

Ethan Axelrod is the son of Barack Obama's longtime adviser David Axelrod. The 22-year-old has written and edited for his student newspaper at Colorado College, according to the Washington Post, and apparently has no other professional journalism experience. He will edit HuffPo's Denver edition.

Mediaite quotes insiders saying he's modest about his killer genes:

"He's a very nice, unassuming guy," one staffer told Mediaite. "He's smart, obviously – he comes from good stock."

Funny that the Post's Howard Kurtz didn't mention his newspaper's own family connection to the HuffPo (see next).

(Photo via Axelrod's Facebook profile)

Nicholas Graham

Nicholas Graham is part of the same Graham family that owns the Washington Post. Formerly an Associate News Editor at HuffPo, Graham appears to have recently become Associate Video Editor. One insider tells us his predecessor, Patrick Waldo, was well liked inside of the company but was recently pushed out. (Pic via NCAA YouTube)

Elyssa Spitzer

It's hard to begrudge Elyssa Spitzer her HuffPo internship for at least two reasons. One, as the daughter of disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, she's been through a lot of family trauma in the past year and a half. Two, we're not even sure if her internship is paid. (Pic via Cityfile)

Liz Hanks

In 2007 and 2008, Liz Hanks worked as Associate Living Editor at HuffPo. We've heard actor Tom Hanks' daughter had two other jobs, as a news and blog editor, and that Arianna Huffington eagerly publicized her name and presence after she joined the staff (to a degree some on staff found unseemly).

We imagine working in the living section was scary: It was home to a wide array of true believers from Arianna Huffington's culty religious group, the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness. Hanks' supervisor, Anya Strzemien, was, according to insiders, forced by Huffington to attend a seminar run by a group closely tied to MSIA.Despite the hubub around her, Hanks seems to have been generally well regarded within HuffPo for keeping a level head.

Matthew Palevsky

Matthew Palevsky is Arianna Huffington's godson. His father Max was a billionaire computer entrepreneur. Palevsky was in January appointed to oversee HuffPo's OffTheBus citizen journalism initiative. He hardly seemed qualified:

The effort was a crown jewel, breaking two major scoops during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was previously headed by big guns: a Howard Dean and John Kerry organizer who formed a Web volunteering institute at Harvard Law, and a Nation editor and longtime magazine writer who teaches journalism at USC. They were of no relation to Huffington; one was later hired by Pro Publica.

Katherine Zaleski

Katherine Zaleski's father is said to be close friends with Ken Lerer, Huffington Post's co-founder. Further, we're told she has her own apartment in the El Dorado luxury co-op at 300 Central Park West; her dad is said to live in a separate penthouse of his own and Lerer a few floors down.

For four years, Zaleski controlled the coveted front page of the Huffington Post — as much as anyone besides Arianna does — but later moved into a special projects role. She took over the New York section after Dan Collins abruptly quit (Huffington later claimed he was always supposed to leave the job just after launch, but that's not what she told us just before launch).

Gates granted an interview to his daughter Elizabeth in the Daily Beast (which—between contributors Meghan McCain and Luke Parker Bowles—is rapidly becoming the outlet of choice for the blood kin of the contemporary aristocracy).

His take on his own tour through the criminal justice system is tempered by his role as an educator, which makes him laudably reasonable about something that justifiably pissed him of royally. While some observers—well, OK, this observer—were quick to accuse the white Harvard employee who called the cops after seeing Gates and his driver trying to enter his home of racism, Gates disagrees:

We depend on the police-I'm glad that this lady called 911. I hope right now if someone is breaking into my house she's calling 911 and the police will come! I just don't want to be arrested for being black at home! I think this was a bit of an extreme reaction.

And he doesn't even accuse the cop who hauled him off to jail of being a racist so much as an angry and vindictive man who looked viewed the incident through a racial lens:

If I had been white this incident never would have happened. He would have asked at the door, "Excuse me, are you okay? Because there are two black men around here try'na rob you [laughter] and I think he also violated the rules by not giving his name and badge number, and I think he would have given that to one of my white colleagues or one of my white neighbors. So race definitely played a role. Whether he's an individual racist? I don't know-I don't know him. But I think he stereotyped me.

And since Harvard academics already narrate their lives to themselves as an ongoing PBS documentary, Gates figures he might as well turn his arrest into a real one. He told the Root, of which he is the founder:

As a college professor, I want to make this a teaching experience. I am going to devote my considerable resources, intellectual and otherwise, to making sure this doesn't happen again. I'm thinking about making a documentary film about racial profiling, and I'm in talks with PBS about that.

He similarly told the Boston Globe:

If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling … That's what I do for a living.

One weird thing: Gates repeatedly disputed the allegation in the police report that he was behaving in a "loud and tumultuous" manner, claiming that a respiratory infection he'd contracted on a visit to China prevented him from yelling. He told the Root that the claim was "a joke...because I have a severe bronchial infection...for which I was treated and have a doctor's report from the Peninsula hotel in Beijing," and made the same claim to the Globe. We're not sure, but this photograph looks a lot like a very angry man yelling at a bunch of cops.

Last October, a Page Six item blew the lid off of a well-regarded quasi-secret in the People offices: Bryan Alexander, the West Coast deputy bureau chief, was placed on leave while his bosses tried to figure out what to do with Alexander, who was taking nepotism to new heights at a magazine that has strict policies in place against it.

Alexander was accused of promoting and favor-assigning items to both his brother Regan, and to one Mary Margaret Acoymo, a staffer promoted via the London bureau of People in 2006 by the mag's West Coast chief Elizabeth Leonard. She was given the promotion on Alexander's recommendation. Alexander and Acoymo then started publicly dating, which pissed off more than a few People staffers, who were severely annoyed with the fact that the girl an editor was dating got promoted over them. Even if Alexander was doing it on the merits of both his brother and his girlfriend's talents, it sure as hell didn't look that way.

Nevermind that the now-deceased Jossip chimed in with a lowblow tipster item suggesting Alexander swung both ways; two months later, in another round of People layoffs, Alexander was gone. His company found the most convenient way to get rid of him without having to address the embarrassing issues boiling to the weekly's surface.

So why - or rather, how, exactly - has Alexander resurfaced at Time Inc's flagship publication? Once you're done at that company, you're done. They're not the kind to believe in second acts. Alexander's received a string of bylines beginning Friday, all related to Michael Jackson. Three theories:

1. Time can't find anybody more reliable for this kind of thing than Alexander, a name they can trust (so long as he keeps out of the office).

2. Time's HR people don't know or forgot about the incident. Unlikely, but the distance between what Time does and what People does is pretty wide. Then again, paying freelancers might not require going through HR, so maybe he made it under the radar.

3. Alexander's about to file suit against the company and would rather just write for them instead. Least likely, but a possibility nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Alexander's squeeze Acoymo remained at People, though her last contribution to the website was in February, it appears. Jossip suggested this was "because it's more fiscally responsible to keep a junior staffer employed than entertain the possibility of a sexual harassment lawsuit." Can't really argue with that, and a lawsuit, however successful, is the kind of thing that could blackball one from a career of magazine writing.

Update: The reason Acoymo hasn't had any recent bylines at People is that she doesn't work there any more. She left in March to be a news editor at Radaronline.com.

The lesson, unemployed magazine writers? If you're slick enough, you can pretty much recover from anything. Personnel problems at magazines are as disposable as the products they produce, apparently. Oh, and also: you're not getting hired because employers are going with the same old shit that probably got them into the sad state they're in now. And with the methods Alexander worked in pretty wide practice as is, you're never going to. As always, it's who you know, and how much they care about getting busted.

Dating People Set Off A Buzz [Page Six]
The Final Round for People's Bryan Alexander [Jossip]

We can't tell if this is some attempt at a wink-wink "Modest Proposal"-type deal, or just the rantings of a communist, but the Huffington Post apparently thinks that Stephen Gyllenhaal's poorly constructed thoughts, like Jim Carrey's views on vaccines, are worthy of our attention because he fathered two very pretty people (he's like a reverse Meghan McCain). Gyllenhaal wants Madoff freed. Why?

It's just not fair. He's a scapegoat, a distraction on the world's financial stage where the real sleight-of-hand-Ponzi-magic goes on unabated. Two trillion dollars — give me a break — you think this is the end of it? It's only the tip of the real looming Ponzi-scheme-iceberg which Bernie only mirrored on a tiny scale and that we're gonna sooner or later titanically hit.

Gyllenhaal describes himself as a poet. He is not! Here's some more metaphor mash-up craziness:

But nobody in Washington is prepared to point out the Emperor's nakedness because they're all pretty much in each other's pockets (not a pretty thought when you consider they're all naked as well) and appropriately terrified that once the imaginary silk and satin confidence game is shown up for what it is there'll be hell to pay and I suspect hell, being what it is, ain't gonna be taken in by no Ponzi scheme.

What? How can people be in one anothers' pockets? Would one person be in one pocket, which would then be inside another person's pocket? While they are naked! While we're at it—how do you titanically hit something?

Gyllenhaal's bio says he is "unqualified to write for this blog except that, as a citizen of the US —hell, as a citizen of the planet— he has as much right to speak his mind as the next person." Having a right is not the same thing as a qualification, Stephen!

Stephanie Newhouse is set to join Condé's Self magazine in a managerial role Monday, we hear.

How did she go from hawking her services on a modeling website to snagging a magazine management gig the middle of a media depression?

It would appear it helped that the wannabe flack married correctly. In 2007, as Stephanie Bond, she wed Jesse Newhouse, son of Mark Newhouse, a newspaper executive in the family publishing empire and cousin to Si Newhouse Jr. Mark's father was Norman Newhouse, Si Newhouse Sr.'s brother and partner in building Advance Publications.

All this makes Stephanie Newhouse, let's see, cousin-once-removed-in-law to Condé Chairman Si Newhouse Jr. — the wife of his cousin's son.

It also makes her very fortunate. She's been hired despite major cutbacks in the family business. Condé Nast effectively ended Men's Vogue last October, laid off 15 employees from Portfolio.com soon thereafter, is said to be in the midst cutting around 20 ad sellers, let go an untold number of workers at Wired.com and Ars Technica this past week and just fired a bunch of receptionists.

Stephanie Newhouse managed to get hired even in the wake of those cuts and amid an ongoing effort to slash costs 10 percent companywide. This sort of nepotism is to be expected. Her husband's grandfather Norman graduate from college into a job at a newspaper owned by his brother Si, more than a decade his senior. As an editor during the Great Depression, he had to manage through a major advertising drought, just as Stephanie Newhouse is about to do (reportedly).

That can be uncomfortable. Watching more senior, less-connected coworkers lose their jobs could stir empathy and remorse even in a high-society fixture like Stephanie Newhouse. But Uncle Si seems to have arranged things so it won't come to that: Self is getting through the downturn better than any other Condé Nast title, earning its publisher a company prize for 2008 performance.

Self no doubt owes its success to being written by and for upper-crust women of privilege; women who have managed to ride out the global economic meltdown better than most other consumers.

Women, that is, like Stephanie Newhouse.

(Pics: Park Avenue Peerage (top), Patrick McMullan via New York Social Diary (bottom))

When commenter Aaron Altman on Wednesday read the paper's story about senate-hopeful Kennedy's tour of upstate New York, it started with this provocative sentence:

In a carefully controlled strategy reminiscent of the vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, aides to Caroline Kennedy interrupted her on Wednesday and whisked her away when she was asked what her qualifications are to be a United States senator.

That's a revealing introduction. And accurate: Even Kennedy's allies think her tight press strategy is misguided, as shown in the attached clip above.

But by the time the story appeared in Thursday's paper, any comparison to former vice presidential nominee Palin, and all mentions of "control," were gone. The new, much more polite beginning read as follows:

The first day of Caroline Kennedy’s tour through upstate New York on Wednesday was meant to be a low-key, decorous excursion, mindful of the skepticism surrounding her bid to be appointed the state’s next United States senator. Fat chance.

Gone, too, was an account of how, when asked by reporters about her qualifications, Kennedy allowed herself to be whisked away by an aide, into a black SUV, saying only, "Hopefully I can come back and answer all those questions."

The reader never learns about about Kennedy's evasion. Instead, he is fed this quote, crafted after Kennedy had some time to think:

“I just hope everybody understands that it is not a campaign but that I have a lifelong devotion to public service... I’ve written books on the Constitution and the importance of individual participation. And I’ve raised my family. I think I really could help bring change to Washington.”

The Times should cover Kennedy's ducking of questions because it's the right thing to do. She has little track record, and appears unqualified for the office she's seeking, making her public behavior all the more important.

But if that's not reason enough, the newspaper should consider appearances. Sanitizing, in public, a story about your publisher's close "friend" will lead some people to believe the paper is suppressing even more information in private. Whether the decision was made by the original reporters or someone higher up, it was a bad call.

Reports the Sun:

"MTV bosses have slammed the 19-year-old after collaborating with her on a new documentary in which she attempts to edit a magazine.

A senior executive was forced to heavily-edit the one-off programme after running the content by the production company’s co-founder - Bob Geldof... Heather Jones, MTV’s UK managing director for content and creativity, said no amount of editing could portray Peaches in a positive light."

Geldof's a bit like Helen of Troy: when she was, like, sixteen, Brit heroin-rocker Pete Doherty said that due to her pinching his ass before going on stage, he performed rather poorly at the Live 8 concert. With that in mind, who knows how much havoc she'll wreak in media. She must be fired before it's too late.

• Alexis Stewart is a slightly rude oversharer, and seems to find her own antics delightful. "Rarely are there guests; after Alexis’s spat with 'He’s Just Not That Into You' author Greg Behrendt—she hassled him for avoiding eye contact—the Sirius talent department [attached to her radio show] stopped sending people. ('I didn’t know he had a lazy eye!' Alexis swears.)"
• Martha Stewart does not always find Alexis' antics so delightful. "Martha listens to 'Whatever' [the radio show] when she’s in the car if the topic of conversation is something that she feels comfortable listening to with her male driver. A discussion of the phenomenon of 'middlesmertz'—'when a woman ovulates and her panties get all goopy,' Alexis explains—precipitated a hasty channel change."
• Alexis hates Candace Bushnell, the Observer columnist who inspired Sex And The City. "My media training was when I was 22 and some C-U-N-T named Candace Bushnell came to interview me about my mother... I learned very quickly."
• Martha Stewart got the idea for "Whatever, Martha!" from the cable show Mystery Science Theater 3000, which she watches in her jammies.
• Neither Stewart parent spent enough time with the kids, so Alexis hates to be touched. "I can’t deal with it... Hugging is not my shtick.”
• Martha Stewart holds a grudge against Andy Rooney. "Martha stays put as her daughter tells the story of Rooney’s 1993 visit to the Martha show, and how he took a patronizing tone with her mother. 'After we did the segment, my mother comes in and says, "Do you hate Andy Rooney like I hate Andy Rooney?" Alexis says."

In other words, it's the same basic premise as Postcards From Yo Momma — making fun of your mom in an ostensibly lighthearted way — but with the budget of a media mogul's daughter. And mom actually gets some benefit, in this case, in the form of some younger demos for her media company.

[New York]

A sample:

"In the last three months, three things have brought the two candidates together: one, my late father's funeral mass; two, Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum about faith and God; three, 9/11....For me, that was the lede. Two senators from different parties with completely different backgrounds said that there was a missed opportunity for America after 9/11. From a tragic event, we as a nation could have risen to a new high, could have had a civic reawakening, but we did not. So whether or not you support John McCain or Barack Obama, all Americans should be comforted that the next president will echo the words of John F. Kennedy, spoken many decades ago, 'We can do better.'"

To me, that sounded like he was leading with his father's funeral mass, but then, I'm not the seasoned journalist here. You'd have thought he would've had to do at least one summer as an NBC intern before boarding the nepotism express, just for the sake of appearance. I don't really blame the kid, after all. Who among us would refuse? But NBC just looks ridiculous. No offense, but what did this kid ever do besides be born to a certain father and then have that certain father die? And just because your father did something well (or at least did that thing) doesn't mean you are going to be able to do it. Even more pathetic is how the other anchors, especially Matt Lauer, fawn over the kid. He's a communications grad Matt, not the Panchen Lama. Journalism is not genetic.

[Luke Russert's blog]

And with her senior year about to begin, an internship of some sort seems highly likely in the near future. Perhaps she could help her mom make better choices about covers.

(Photos via Josie Duffy)

Last year, you'll recall, it was Lynn Dolnick's son Ben who was the recipient of a helpful Times notice — one he wrote himself, in the form of an op-ed piece. The scandal made Gawker, and was then picked up in Page Six, but the Times shrugged off the incident, setting aside its normally delicate ethical sensitivities.

How could there be a conflict of interest, the Times asked the Post, if "members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family have no more or no less opportunity to appear in the pages of the Times" than anyone else? In other words, Times editors are such ethical superheroes that there doesn't need to be so much as a disclosure when they handle a book from a member of the clan that writes their paychecks.

Later, Ben Dolnick's agent was quoted in a friendly Washington Post feature saying that it was not a challenge or big deal to get his op-ed published, as though that wasn't precisely the point.

In either Ben or Edward Dolnick's case, disclosure would at least have let readers discount the paper's praise as they saw fit. Such was the case when Times vice president Alyse Myers received both a glowing review and room for her own magazine essay this past May in connection with the publication of her book about her mean mom — and even with the disclosure, we heard, Times staffers were still in an uproar.

Readers aren't the only ones with reason to feel cheated by the way the Times has handled Ed Dolnick's latest book. A tipster — who from the sounds of things has a dog in this fight — puts forward the name of a competing author as another aggrieved party:

...a serious, competing book [is] coming out in four weeks from
Harcourt. "The Man Who Made Vermeers" by Jonathan Lopez is based on
years of archival research conducted in Dutch and English, as well as
interviews with descendants of Van Meegeren's accomplices. (Dolnick
neither speaks nor reads Dutch.) Parts of "The Man Who Made Vermeers"
have already appeared as major articles in the London-based Apollo
Magazine and as a cover story in De Groene Amsterdammer, the oldest
continuously-published news magazine in the Netherlands. The book has
already been praised as "remarkable" by major museum curators. But
it's absent from the New York Times.

The Times has had advance readers' copies of "The Man Who Made
Vermeers" for months.

...By placing Dolnick's title in so many
outlets – Sunday Book Review, daily paper, blog – it has
effectively blocked the competition from being covered in any of them,
the general topic having been so recently treated.

Unlike his son Ben, Ed Dolnick is an established writer. He is former chief science reporter at the Boston Globe and author of at least three other books. His work on van Meegeren might do just fine without all this notice in the Times, and perhaps he would have recieved some — maybe even all — of it without being part of the extended Times family. Which is precisely why the newspaper should handle his book more transparently. Keeping his extensive connections in the dark makes them look all the more sinister.

There's one person apart from shareholder John Malone who stands to lose when IAC is broken up: Alex von Furstenberg, adopted son of the internet conglomerate's boss, Barry Diller. The shaved-headed socialite, Diane von Furstenberg's son by her first gay husband, will still inherit a large part of his adoring stepfather's fortune. But after IAC is divided into five, Alex von Furstenberg may have trouble securing the front-row seats at Lakers games that are such a mark of social status in Los Angeles, where von Furstenberg has lived since 2005. He's been relying on Diller's office to cadge tickets to the bastketball games from Ticketmaster, the online ticketing service which IAC is spinning off. The IAC boss will remain chairman of Ticketmaster after the split, but one peons still hopes Diller and his relatives will no longer be able to use the service as a personal favor bank.

I am an employee at Ticketmaster and there is one major reason that we are counting the days until we are spun off from Barry Diller's IAC. Alex von Furstenberg. Barry Diller's stepson demands front row seats to every Laker Game in LA. His request trumphs all other Laker ticket requests from our President, CEO, celebrities, or valuable clients. His sense of entitlement is far worse than people we like to give tix to like Jack Nicholson, and he hasn't even done anything to earn it! What makes it worse is when other Ticketmaster employees look at the court seats we give him (from their nosebleed seats), they are empty because he misses the game! He is the biggest spoilt brat on the West Coast.