Anup Bagaria, CEO of the company that publishes the magazine, sent out a memo yesterday saying the family trust is keeping it.

"Given the speculation on the future of New York Media, I'd like to make clear that there will be no change in ownership...The company will continue to be controlled by a Wasserstein family trust"

So! Assuming that's not some incredibly shady PR tactic to throw off the press, the important thing now is to urge Wasserstein's two most journalism-inclined kids, Pamela and Ben to brashly stride into a management role, issuing bold orders and making wholesale changes in their quest to become the new King and Queen of New York Media. Young would-be media barons are the type of thing that...give us material. Try it, Wassersteins!

Schreffler brought Gatecrasher—once Page Six's competition—back to the paper with Sean Evans (also canned) after legendary NYDN gossip Ben Widdicombe left it for dead (or Star, which he left after five or so months). Sarah Polansky (who went from the National Enquirer to Page Six, where she was fired for being exposed by Radar as a "swag hag") filled in for Evans. I guess Polansky is the only person left over there? We also hear Chris Rovzar at NY Mag's Daily Intel was offered the job, but (predictably) turned it down, possibly because if he were to quit New York Magazine, Manhattan's Gossip Girl-watching population would have to be tear-gassed and read the riot act.

So: it looks like nobody's running gossip or getting decent scoops at the Daily News but the once a week Boris and Natasha-esque sideshow of Rush and Molloy — and they haven't been at the top of their game, lately — so maybe they'll try to bring Ben back again? He was awesome and he's currently doing AOL's Stylelist but I sincerely doubt that Daily News has the cash to compete with whatever he's getting at AOL. That said, the NYDN's gossip pages are just rehashing national items, and there're sleazier places to go for that dirt, so really, they might want to invest in some talent before they become the Knicks of New York's two-team gossip leagues.

Update: Maybe there's absolutely no way the NYDN can compete for Ben Widdicombe. We just heard that Widdicombe's working with TMZ as their executive editor. He hasn't let his New York apartment go, yet, and "needs the money." He's on a six-week trial with them. Well, if it's scratch you're after, Harvey Levin's got plenty to throw around. There're worse places to sell out, I suppose. Another tipster reports that Harvey Levin's been looking since last fall to fill that position, so it's a long time coming. He's met with plenty of people, but it's been difficult to fill the position because of Harvey's temperament.

2nd Update: Sheffler writes in and asks us when will we will be "updating/terminating your piece from the web" because, as it turns out, she wasn't shitcanned, but is leaving the Daily News to go to Bonnie Fuller's Hollywood Life thing. Enjoy your press-releasey goodness:

"I'm ecstatic to join Bonnie Fuller and the team at HollywoodLife.com as the West Coast Bureau Chief. I look forward to bringing my experience in celebrity news and lifestyle editorial to what will be a fabulous online destination for all women," says Schreffler, West Coast Bureau Chief, HollywoodLife.com.

In her new position, Schreffler will work closely with Fuller and Will Lee, executive editor, on editorial strategy, content development and overall direction of the site. HollywoodLife.com, which focuses on celebrity, style and lifestyle news, will re-launch in November 2009 with a new design and editorial focus, targeting style-minded women, ages 18-35...

...Where it will terminate their faces via awesome Bonnie Fuller'd website wonderfulness with little to no discretion. May I suggest a theme song? This is what the future of celebrity gossip looks like:

Yesterday it seemed logical to assume that the Wasserstein family trust that owns New York would want to sell it off after dad's death. After all, money-losing media vanity ownership is usually the exclusive preserve of the mature rich, not their progeny.

But! Today it was revealed that Wasserstein's death means a $188 million payout from Lazard. "Two of Mr. Wasserstein's eldest children, Pamela and Ben, are expected to play a pivotal role overseeing the trust," the WSJ reports. Coincidentally, those are the same two Wasserstein children with backgrounds in journalism—Ben, the NYO noted yesterday, even worked as a New York editor.

Ad Age says the family would probably want "a minimum of $75 million to $100 million" for the magazine—but that they're just as likely to keep it, at least for the foreseeable future. And writing at Newser, former New York editor Caroline Miller rhapsodizes about the greatness of rich guys willing to pour money into good, money-losing magazines, and beseeches Ben Wasserstein to step up and take over his dad's role.

Considering the debacle that young Jared Kushners' ownership of the Observer has been, it's odd that media types would fall over themselves once again to support a young, rich, and (all due respect to Ben) ignorant owner to take over one of the city's most prestigious media properties with nothing but ambition on his side. But as Miller points out, even that is usually preferable to owners who are very concerned with making a profit. The main quality a media mogul needs today: the willingness to lose money.

New York is controlled by a Wasserstein family trust, and nobody knows what the trust will decide to do now that Wasserstein's gone. Which is not to say it's too early to speculate. The Observer points out that at least two of Wasserstein's kids are former or current journalists, and wonders whether they might have an interest in taking over for dad.

But New York is not a moneymaking enterprise. It was one thing for the hyper-ambitious Wasserstein to snatch control of the mag for himself, beating out a consortium of similar bidders, Including Mort Zuckerman, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Wolff, and Harvey Weinstein. It's quite another thing for his family to decide to continue pouring money into the publication. Keith Kelly today floats a few possible buyers for New York. Let's handicap them!

Mort Zuckerman, mogul and NY Daily News Owner: 3-1. Zuckerman has a big enough ego that he surely must covet New York, which is quite a step of respectability above the Daily News. He owned US News & World Report—now a shell of its former self—and New York could satisfy his glossy magazine jones again. Plus, he's not seriously broke.
Harvey Weinstein, Weinstein Co.: 6-1. Weinstein might want to own New York more than anyone. But his financial struggles at his main business make branching out into a money-losing magazine not the smartest move.
Jason Binn, Niche Media CEO: 8-1. Could be deadly to New York's inherent classiness (of a sort). Let's hope not.
Nick Denton, Gawker overlord: 50-1. You never know with this guy!

Perhaps a more realistic guess: Some sort of coalition of financiers and insiders from Wasserstein's personal empire, who'd have both the money and the knowledge to take over with little disruption. Personally, we're pulling for Wasserstein's kids to keep it in the family, though. This city (and this blog) needs all the sprightly young media moguls it can get.

The story just broke, and the cause of death is unconfirmed thus far. But Wasserstein's health has been a subject of speculation for years; he shed a significant amount of weight a few years ago, sparking rumors of ill health then.

Wasserstein built a career as a consummate dealmaker. But his last piece of work in the media was a deal he didn't make; he withdrew from the bidding on BusinessWeek last month, after considering trying to land the magazine for his portfolio.

Born to a wealthy family in Brooklyn, Wasserstein came out of Harvard and became one of the premier M&A men on Wall Street. He advised on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of deals over the course of more than 20 years. He formed his own investment bank, sold it off for more than $1 billion, and then joined Lazard, where he continued his work.

He divorced his wife last year, and early this year married a much younger woman, who now finds herself a widow.

The effect of Wasserstein's death on New York and on his financial business are still unknown; but the fallout will surely be felt. Soon.

UPDATE: Daily Intel has this statement from the bosses at New York magazine:

New York Media editor-in-chief Adam Moss and publisher Larry Burstein released the following statement: "We're shocked and saddened by the loss of Bruce Wasserstein. We extend our deepest sympathy to his family and friends and share in their grief."

This has to be Serena Torrey:

"We think of it as a reenactment of what's been reported, and not original reporting," a spokeswoman for the magazine told us. "We draw from a variety of sources, but Page Six is the preeminent gossip column, and the place where most of these celebrities play, so it's no surprise that many of these items are drawn from Page Six. We love Page Six."

Note that the item doesn't mention the NYM flack by name. The Post has never had a problem doing it before, but maybe Page Six just doesn't have the space for it. Or they don't want to give her the attention. But! Allow us to "reenact" this underminey, multi-layered quote for you, translated for the general public. The best part is: no thought went into that email or phone conversation! These people work like machines:

We think of it as a reenactment of what's been reported,

You guys, it's a fucking drawing.

and not original reporting.

You did all the work! Truly. We couldn't do what Page Six does. You know: celebrity gossip, right?

We draw from a variety of sources

Even though we heard about Page Six "exclusives" around town long before they were in print, obvi. We just didn't get around to them. Also, we won't attribute plenty of other people, so you're not alone.

But Page Six is the preeminent gossip column,

You guys are famous, and old! Mostly old.

and the place where most of these celebrities play,

And your rapport with 42 West, PMK/HBH, and every other publicist in town is formidable. You really know how to get those flacks dialing/handing you "tips"!.

so it's no surprise that many of these items are drawn from Page Six.

so it's no surprise that many of these items are drawn from Page Six.

We love Page Six.

We still won't attribute you. Thanks for the good material, scumsuckers. Eat shit and die. But no, really: we love Page Six.

Credit where credit's due: publicists are wordsmiths in their own right.

The 53-year-old Krishna had come here, to Woodside, Queens, to visit her daughter Anu, whom she hadn't seen since Anu moved to the States twelve years ago.

"Anu" is the nanny for New York food critic Adam Platt. That's how. Haha. Michael Idov, who wrote the story (which is worth reading!) offers us this explanation for leaving out that fact:

Thing is, it doesn't create a conflict of interest. It would just jar the reader out of the story for no reason. Plus, I usually get all leads directly from my butler, Firs.

Similarly, we only learn about Manhattan via our rich uncle, Nick Denton.

1. Poetic musing.
2. Material from watching Dave's show.
3. Material from a profile of Letterman that Kaplan wrote 28 years ago.
4. Analysis, which is just something—hopefully persuasive—the writer makes up.

That's it! If you're not as good a writer as Peter Kaplan, though, your writearound may suck.
[Pic: Flickr]

The reviews are starting to come in and evidence is contradictory. On the positive side, Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly gives it a B and says it's, "cinematically dazzling, to be sure, 
 enhanced by an meticulously chosen retro soundtrack." In New York David Edelstein gushes.

Even more than his other genre mash-ups, this is a switchback journey through Tarantino's twisted inner landscape, where cinema and history, misogyny and feminism, sadism and romanticism collide and split and re-bond in bizarre new hybrids. The movie is an ungainly pastiche, yet on some wacked-out Jungian level it's all of a piece.

Oh, but his fellow Gothamite David Denby couldn't disagree more, and rails against it.

Like all the director's work after Jackie Brown, the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness-it's too shallow to be called nihilism-undermines even the best scenes.

Even the trades are split. Variety comes out in favor:

By turns surprising, nutty, windy, audacious and a bit caught up in its own cleverness, the picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavor that's new for the director.

And The Hollywood Reporter against:

Otherwise the film lacks not only tension but those juicy sequences where actors deliver lines loaded with subtext and characters drip menace with icy wit. Tarantino never finds a way to introduce his vivid sense of pulp fiction within the context of a war movie. He is not kidding B movies as he was with Grindhouse nor riffing on cinema as with Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill films.

The only people who can come to a consensus are the British where both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph hated it.

Damn, now it looks like we're going to have to save Harvey Weinstein from bankruptcy and pay our $12.50 to try to figure out for ourselves whether or not it's good. God, critics are even worse than Nazis.

Spencer Morgan digs into the fairy tale romance of Tinsley and Topper, a romance that began as prep school teenagers with an aggressive make-out session in the fluffy white New Jersey snow, managed to survive years of Topper's drunken floosy-nailing and Tinsley's relentless social climbing, but effectively ended when a pair of men's dress shoes went undelivered in Palm Beach this past April.

As Morgan tells it, Topper was in Florida for the wedding of one of his longtime moneyed bros. Tinsley, the little trollop, was supposed to join him later at the rehearsal dinner and bring shoes for him to wear. That's where the trouble started.

But before the rehearsal dinner, Tinsley texted Topper to say she couldn't come. Mr. Mortimer was devastated.

"The guy was emotionally bottomed-out," said a lifelong friend who was at the wedding. He had to borrow shoes. He kept luring people away from the party, off to side rooms and corridors at the Jupiter Island Club, to ask their opinion on the situation. People he hardly knew. "I guess at one point he called Tinsley and he got the weird European delayed-ring sound-so he knew she was with this other guy. Then up on the altar he was gazing off into who the hell knows where. It was ridiculous."

Tinsley had run off to get boned by a German aristocrat/prince named Casimir Wittgenstein-Sayn, news Topper shared with some of the couple's friends.

Topper e-mailed his friends to explain: "I know I have involved you guys in our problems and that was wrong. Tinsley is at fault of course but Casi [sic] never gave her a chance to breathe even when I asked him to give us space. He was manipulative and overbearing. I love my wife and we are going to do what we can to salvage this marriage."

Apparently, the Europeans play dirty in the game of love and don't give a shit about proper American aristocratic etiquette, which seems to hold that the other party to an affair is supposed to stand down when the cuckold issues an "I say good man, could you please refrain from sexing with my wife for a while" request, something Tinsley's mother seems downright horrified over.

"Casimir is a handsome, charming, urbane, and glib man. Topper asked him to step aside and give him (Topper) a chance to reclaim his marriage. Though he told Topper he would do this, he has NOT. I believe that Tinsley is confused, and she needs time by herself to sort things out."

But despite it all, Morgan says that an exceedingly distressed Topper isn't ready to give up on putting the pieces back together again.

He's become a full-time smoker. He's lost weight. He wakes up at precisely 3:25 every morning and plays over and over the reality show his life became. Still, he hasn't entirely abandoned the idea that she'll come back. "I love my wife" is all he'll tell me.

Perhaps a duel is in order here?

Finally, I should note that reading Morgan's piece is much more fun when you read the quotes in a voice similar to that of the aristocratic characters at the table during the dining room scene in Titanic. You should go over and give it a try.

Steve Fishman's profile of Rattner, for which the Quadrangle Group founder did not submit to an interview, is a fairly astringent psychological assessment of the New York Times reporter-turned-banker as a calculating overachiever whose desire for power is frustrated by the fact that he's a cold, distant, and has no real friends. Which is pretty much what we'd imagine of anyone who once dated Judith Miller. But while Fishman's takedown seems devastating, it basically lets Rattner off the hook for his involvement in a scheme to pay off consultant Hank Morris to drive New York pension fund business to Quadrangle, portraying the deal as poor form rather than illegal. Rattner is credited with a masterful capacity to snow reporters, owing to his having been one himself. Whether he applied those powers to New York or not, he certainly got what he wanted: The first major profile since his sudden and still-unexplained resignation waits until the very end to get into the stuff about how Rattner paid a middleman and granted a movie deal to the deputy comptroller's brother-in-law in order to get his hands on pension money, and downplays the significance of the charges.

More interesting to Fishman (and still interesting to us), is the stuff about how everyone thinks Rattner is an arrogant prick. "In some weird way," a colleague told Fishman, "he kind of knows that once you get to know him, you won't like him, and I don't think he cares. Which is really useful if you want to get ahead."

Why wouldn't you like someone who decided, when he was a reporter at the Times, that he deserved the status, power, and money that had been acquired by the idiots he covered?

"It begins to get on you after a while that [as a journalist] you are writing about people who have more power than you, more influence and more money, and are not any more capable," [Rattner's wife] told The Washington Monthly. "Why in God's name are you trailing them around the world and writing about them when you are smart enough to make the money and have influence commensurate with theirs?"

Sounds like a great guy. Rattner has apparently struggled all his life with the fact that he's a dick, and even undertook the help of a professional to help people like him more.

At Quadrangle, colleagues had confronted him about his manner. He was distant and haughty and they didn't like it. So Rattner hired an executive coach, Art Gingold, and worked with him for a couple of years until he left for Washington. It was essentially a likability course. "He took to the feedback as diligently as anybody I've coached," says Gingold, who declined to discuss personal details. "He studied, almost memorized it. He really took it to heart." Gingold helped Rattner change his behavior, and gave him pointers. Now Rattner walked down to people's offices. In meetings, where he'd been business-only, he now opened with, "Good morning, how was your weekend?" He took junior people to lunch. "It sounds simple and obvious, but wasn't [to him]," says Gingold.

The whole, "How was your weekend?" trick opened doors for Rattner, and he eventually landed his dream gig: Helping America (after enriching himself to the tune of up to $600 million) by working for the government on Barack Obama's auto-bailout team. But even better than the job was the fact that, finally, he might make some real friends! It was like moving to a new high school:

While upending the car industry, Rattner tried out his new personality skills. This was a fresh start with people who didn't yet have a view of him, he told a friend, and he fought his tendency to be cool and remote. He was proud of himself; the guys really seemed to respect and to like him.

So even if he had to resign under a cloud and might even end up under indictment, at least Rattner got some personal validation out of the deal. Which is better than the investors in Quadrangle got: The most damaging tidbit in the story is the fact that for all his wealth, his publicity, his friendship with Arthur Sulzberger, and his reputation for extraordinary competence, Rattner's fund does no better than municipal bonds:

Quadrangle's annual statement from 2008, a copy of which was obtained by New York, shows that after eight years, investors in the first $1 billion fund had just about got back their initial investment. There was still considerable "unrealized value," as the illiquid assets are called, and if you add that in, the returns beat a poorly performing stock market over that time, though they still wouldn't have outperformed a municipal bond. "We've had lots of investments that have disappointed," says Damon Mezzacappa, a former vice-chairman at Lazard and an investor. "Quadrangle was okay, not great."

Now, anyone who's paying a lick of attention knows that the tech-savvy Obama administration is one of most skilled in the art of communication than any presidency from any era in U.S. history. We all know about the president's love for his Blackberry, his captivating skills as an orator, the White House's Flickr, Twitter and YouTube accounts, the Obama campaign's use of the web to raise ungodly amounts of money to vaporize well-established opponents, galvanize volunteers and disseminate it's message, but is all of that really working for them right now? Jennifer Senior seems to think so.

With the exception of George W. Bush, all of Obama's predecessors had a limited number of news outlets in which to make their cases, limited space in which to do it, and a time-bound moment to make their mark-if voters didn't catch their press conferences or read the morning paper, they were pretty much out of luck. Now, as all of us are aware, the web provides infinite space for both its own native forms (blogs, news aggregators, original YouTube posts) and old media (newspapers, TV clips), making it possible for us to watch a speech or read a story whenever we want, unconstrained by space and time. The resulting landscape is vast, diffuse, and multiplatform. And Obama is a multiplatform natural: He's done books and audiobooks; he commands audiences on both YouTube and from the podium; he BlackBerrys; he makes a nice photo. He recognizes that, in the same way a blog can't survive on just one post a day, a presidency can no longer survive on one message per day or one press conference per year. Instead, you have to turn on a fire hose.

The above paragraph sums up the tone of the entire piece pretty well. The whole thing basically reads like another big piece of rhetorical fellatio from the Obama-loving press, the type of stuff that right-wing talking heads will use as evidence that the press is in bed with the current president. As for the doubters, those who say that the president is cheapening himself and his message through media over-saturation, Senior says this:

The president has taken a fair amount of heat for this full-saturation approach. Friends and critics alike have complained it cheapens his words, erodes his mystique, and, worst of all, smacks of desperation. "You don't have to be on television every minute of every day," cracked Bill Maher recently. "You're the president, not a rerun of Law & Order." Yet it's also clear that the public has a near-insatiable appetite for Obama-related content, from the trivial to the serious. Dreams From My Father is now in its 156th week on the New York Times' best-seller list. Bill Burton, a White House deputy press secretary, tells me that he fields almost as many phone calls from the celebrity press as from the Washington Post, as if the president were George Clooney.

That's it, pretty much the entirety of the other side of this story—the president's book is still a bestseller and the tabloid press is ringing the White House phone, thus everything is dandy and Barack Obama is the smartest president ever!

At one point in the article, Senior praises Obama for having a 58% approval rating at the time of publication, a rating that is mediocre at best historically. Further, his numbers have dropped even more in past couple of days, with the latest Gallup poll putting his approval rating at 55%, putting him in tenth place among other presidents since the inception of approval ranking polls in the 1940s. His present ratings are lower than those of Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, two men who were not re-elected to second terms, at the same point in their presidencies.

And of course, there is the administration's continued failure to produce anything resembling a coherent message regarding health care reform. Despite facing an opposition that hasn't produced anything resembling an alternative, preferring instead to use tired scare tactics to derail any reform legislation, the president's poll numbers on health care continue to circle the drain.

The vaunted Obama message machine, the one so glowingly profiled in this week's New York Magazine, is failing miserably right now, despite the fact that the economy seems to be rebounding. There's really no two ways about it.

The Message is the Message [New York]

Stung by the recent populist uprising against their firm, Goldman Sachs relented to allowing a dreaded journalist, New York's Joe Hagan, inside of their hallowed halls and access to one of their top executives, Goldman chief-of-staff John Rogers. In his massive piece Hagan rehashes much of what took place in recent years that has led the firm to this point, but perhaps the most interesting aspect of the piece were the last two pages focusing on how the bad publicity is affecting the firm and the attitude those inside of Goldman's cultish bubble have towards their firm's tarnished reputation.

Historically, Goldman has been able to translate its reputation into financial leverage. "It's the difference between charging 3 percent on a deal and 4 percent on a deal," says a person who has dealt with the firm. Over time, that difference has added up to the edge Goldman has over its rivals. It also helped the firm attract the best talent-the "chosen ones," as one former staffer put it, who thought of Goldman as a higher calling and had an eye toward a future Treasury post.

Now that the firm is viewed as a virtual rogue state with interests contrary to the greater good, Goldman might attract a different breed of recruit-less Robert Rubin, more Gordon Gekko. Or fewer recruits in general: A human-resources executive at Goldman Sachs, Edith Cooper, says she counted about 20 percent fewer people at recent on-campus recruitment seminars. A Wharton graduate who interned at Goldman Sachs says many fellow finance majors are looking elsewhere. "Before, it had this aura: finance, Goldman," he says. "[Now] it seems to be a little less the case."

Even in Washington, a town populated by tainted whores, Goldman Sachs is currently the one tainted whore nobody wants to get caught in bed with.

Out of political necessity, all of Washington appears to be turning a cold shoulder toward Goldman. A senior Obama-administration official close to Tim Geithner declares that "Goldman has left the building." Onetime Goldman lobbyist and now Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson has taken a public beating for his connection to the firm. And John Thornton, a former president at Goldman Sachs, was passed over as ambassador to China because his relationship to the firm "concerned" the Obama administration, says a person familiar with the situation. "It used to be if you were a senior Goldman person and you were considered for a position, you'd have an advantage," this person says. "Now it's clearly a disadvantage."

So how are the executives at Goldman taking all of this? Well, as long as the fat bonus checks keeps coming, they really don't give a shit.

In the end, Goldman's reputation is a luxury they may well be able to do without. Robert Rubin has been privately critical of how the firm has handled the threats to its prestige, and Rogers recently addressed the firm's reputation in seminars with Goldman staff. But a person who frequently talks to senior executives at Goldman sums up the company's attitude this way: "If we can push the envelope without D.C. punishing us, we don't care about our Main Street reputation." (CEO Lloyd) Blankfein in particular is said to be dismissive of the firm's critics. According to a person close to him, the CEO believes Goldman's internal problems will disappear once compensation comes back. In other words, money will solve everything.

And the world spins madly on.

Is Goldman Sachs Evil? Or Just Too Good? [New York]

Anyone who's walked around Williamsburg lately can see the painful signs of a busted bubble. New developments sit virtually vacant. New building constructions have stopped cold with the landscape of the area littered with semi-constructed buildings. We already knew things were bad, but we had no idea that things were this bad.

With sales across Brooklyn down a staggering 57 percent from a year ago, Williamsburg, with its high density of new construction, has taken on an ominous disposition. Walk down virtually any block and you'll come across an amenity-laden building that sits nearly empty: relics of a moment in history that seems, increasingly, like a fever dream.

Most unsettling are the cases of the developers who seem to have vanished, leaving behind so many vacant lots and half-completed buildings-eighteen, to be precise, more than can be found in all of the Bronx-that large swaths of the neighborhood have come to resemble a city after an air raid.

All over the city, overleveraged developers have seen their projects stymied by the recession, but the highly speculative nature of what's happened in Williamsburg stands out as exceptionally dramatic and misguided-New York's version of the collapsing exurban "boomburgs" in Florida and Arizona.

Oh but wait—This is only the beginning!

Part of what makes the present situation so dire is that it is still in the early stages of unfolding. There are already about 400 new apartments on the market in Williamsburg, and additional condos are completing construction every month. According to a study (Real estate broker David) Maundrell released last month, 2,818 new apartments will have hit the market by the end of this year, with another 2,766 projected by the end of 2010. On top of this, Fannie Mae, the country's most dominant home-mortgage lender, recently implemented a policy requiring that buildings be 70 percent in contract before guaranteeing mortgages, thus delaying the moment when a developer can stop covering the taxes and common charges on a finished project.

The writer of New York's massive piece, David Amsden, took some time to visit a few of the new developments in the neighborhood.

I made my way to a building called Warehouse 11, on the corner of Roebling and North 11th Streets. Marketed by David Maundrell, the building has 120 total units (plus the requisite yoga center, playroom, parking garage, 24-hour concierge, gym, and communal sundeck). While the model apartment seemed an appealing enough place to live, there was something generally off about the building as a whole: Despite having been on the market since early 2008, only 30 percent of the units were in contract, and it was clear that construction wasn't complete. The list prices, too, were significantly higher than comparable products, as if the developer had not been informed about the current state of the economy. A few weeks later, I noticed the front doors of the lobby had been padlocked shut. The process of foreclosure had begun.

Looking at the bright side, we suppose all of these vacant new developments will lead to some awesome squatting opportunities for the hipster looking to enhance his or her hardcore street cred. We look forward to having our tips line flooded with ridiculous Williamsburg hipster squatting stories for years to come!

The Billyburg Bust [New York]
Pic via Look At This Fucking Hipster

So what magazine would be so desperate for any sort of good news that they'd blitz out a press statement bragging about their lead editor being ranked at the top of his class by a two day old website? Newsweek!

Yesterday we received an email from one of Newsweek's flacks with a subject line that read, "Newsweek's Meacham, most powerful Magazine Editor." Copied into the body of the email was the post by Mediaite's Colby Hall announcing Meacham as the most powerful magazine editor.

Yeah.

After receiving this yesterday afternoon I walked around scratching my head a bit, alternately saddened and angered by the email, but mostly angered. I was angered that a magazine I've enjoyed for a number of years had stooped to such a ridiculous level to try and bring attention to itself. I was angered over the fact that there are people out there who actually give a damn about their ranking on some retarded "Power Grid." So I walked around a bit and thought all of this over and decided that I was going to post something about it on Gawker tonight, only to come home and discover that New York's Will Leitch had beaten me to the punch and written something on the subject at Deadspin that pretty much perfectly captured exactly what I was thinking. Calling Mediaite a "handy reminder of just why everyone hates the media," Leitch wrote:

From my experience, 27 percent of the people who work in media (and I'm using the Mediaite definition of media, which is pretty much "anyone who gets paid for typing, talking or figuring out how to fire people who type or talk") are journalists in the truest sense, out to enlighten the public for common good, altruistic believers in the fourth estate and its power to invoke change. The other 73 percent are pretending to be that 27 percent and really just trying to promote their own personal brand. In the past, this has always been an inside joke, something for media folk to snicker about in private. Mediaite breaks with the pretense and just states what everyone already knew: This is really what it's all about. It's not about informing the public. It's not about being good at your job. It's about being known, and being recognized. Mediaite doesn't damn this, not at all, not nearly as much as they should: They just point it out ... and then they prove it. They're excellent at that.

By far, the most entertaining and popular section of Mediaite is their Power Grid, which ranks reporters, columnists, editors, anchors, executives and talk show hosts by their "buzz" ranking, or some such meaningless word tossed out in a dead conference room somewhere.

But wait, you ask: Isn't the media dying? Yes! It totally is! This is the last gasp. It would make more sense to have a Plumberite, or a Morticianite, or a Forecloserite, you know, professions that are actually growing and have a concrete future. (They make more money than most media people too, and are generally more attractive.) But plumbers and morticians aren't self-indulgent assholes! They don't assume that just because they care about what they're doing, everyone else does. They'd never start a site like that. That's our job.

Yes. Absolutely perfect. The only thing I'd add to this is that the obsession of some over Mediaite's "Power Grid" pretty much confirms something I've long suspected—That of all the narcissism-laden social circles existing in New York City, and I've dipped my toe in most of them, there is none more densely populated with self-important a-holes than the New York media circle. Period. It's actually not even a close race, as the New York media social circle far outdistances all others in terms of pure, unadulterated love of self.

Finally, I feel compelled to add, lest someone accuse me of feeling bitter over my Mediaite ranking or something, that I have no idea if I appear anywhere on any Mediaite "Power Grid" list, though I'm sure someone would have pointed it out to me by now if I did. With that said, is it possible for me to just opt out of any future rankings? I know and like some of the people working at Mediaite, but I don't want any part of this. The whole thing just gives me indigestion when I think about it.

The Real Reason You Should Hate the Media [Deadspin]
pic via

Hathaway, coming off a much-deserved Oscar nomination for her performance in Rachel Getting Married, is starring in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night opening this week at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. As a result, Hathaway was featured in a piece in Sunday's New York Times and is subject of this week's New York magazine cover feature.

About her gender-bending role in the play, Hathaway sounded, well, terrified in the Times piece.

"I have a double learning curve, not only because it's my first time with Shakespeare but because this is my first major theatrical production," Ms. Hathaway said. "So just staving off a nervous breakdown has been the main thing for me."

"A lot of people in the cast come up to me at the end of the week and ask how I'm feeling, and I kind of vomit emotions, and they say, ‘Oh, good, that's exactly where you should be,' " she said. "And I remember the first time a bug flew into my face at rehearsal, I turned to Dan and asked, for my own edification, ‘If a bug flies into our face, are we allowed to react or just be stoic?' He just said, ‘Use your discretion.' "

Ms. Hathaway still seemed a bit surprised and thrilled to be in the cast.

"Yeah," Ms. Hathaway said, "I think I live in constant fear of being revealed to be a fraud because I'm with not only exquisite experience, but actors who have so much stage experience. And people who have experience in the park, which is a whole different kind of expertise."

"I had a very naïve, really arrogant adolescent idea that I could do Shakespeare because I did one monologue in an acting class when I was 18," she said. "One thing that dawned on me early in this process: We were sitting around and sharing our knowledge of Shakespeare and some trivia, and I just realized that the study of Shakespeare is cumulative, and I felt really lucky to be getting my first crack at it at such a young age."

In the New York piece, Hathaway noted how she's long yearned to spread her dramatic wings by tackling stage roles and secretly harbors a desire to become a full-blown stage diva.

She likes the long rehearsals, she likes slipping off to the uptown Shake Shack with cast and crew. It's a bit of being the actress she imagined she'd be when, as a child in New Jersey, she decided to take after her mother, who acts in regional theater and has done so forever. "I hounded [Public Theater director] Oskar Eustis for years," she says. After Rachel, "I think it became more of a priority for him to get me onstage." Hathaway stirs her coffee. "I do hope that doesn't sound obnoxious."

Talk of other projects swirls around her, but she's coy about it. "I don't mean to be, but sometimes things don't work out in the end, and then people think it's because you hate someone, and I don't hate anyone!"

It has, however, been confirmed that she'll be playing Judy Garland on Broadway, and that seems about right.

"This is so embarrassing, but one of the waitresses just walked by with a glass of white wine and I almost reached out and grabbed it. It would be lovely to have a bit of release, but no. I have to go to rehearsal. I don't want to be the girl who shows up tipsy. But wouldn't it be fun? Wouldn't it be fun someday to be a grande dame who can get away with anything?"

We think she'll do just fine and we look forward to seeing her perform in the play. Now, who wants $50 to go out and wait in line for a ticket for us, because we don't have time for that crap.

The Three Sisters of Twelfth Night [New York Times]
Her Enchanted Evenings [New York]

That's a question we've been asking ourselves a lot over the last few days. We love Letterman. We also love Conan. We've never really been forced to confront this sort of dilemma previously. In the past the question of who to watch at 11:35 was a no-brainer—-Johnny Carson was the only show in town during his era, and Letterman was always matched up against Leno, his comedic antithesis in just about every way, so usually we watched Letterman on CBS at 11:35 and then switched over NBC to catch Conan at 12:37. It was all so fantastically fine.

But now there's this new thing and we don't know quite what to do. This is like that time Hulk Hogan squared off against Andre The Giant for the WWF title when we were kids—-We didn't know who the hell to pull for!

We can, however, take solace in knowing that we aren't the only ones confused by all this. New York has a feature in their new issue by Sam Anderson addressing the same subject.

Now we have to adjust to a new binary: Letterman versus Conan. (Leno will take his show to prime time, where he enters into a new binary with a bunch of sausage-grinder franchises like Law & Order and CSI.) On the surface, Letterman-Conan is infinitely less dramatic than Letterman-Leno; the intensities have all dropped out of the equation. They are not peers-when Letterman started his first late-night show, O'Brien was at Harvard studying Faulkner and writing Lettermanesque humor for the Lampoon. There's no obvious bad blood-Letterman was an early Conan supporter, and, just as Letterman once paid tribute to the retiring Carson ("Thanks for my career"), Conan spent much of his recent Late Night farewell speech gushing over Dave ("David Letterman invented this Late Night show … He set the bar absurdly high for everybody in my generation who does this"). Their stylistic differences will create very few rifts between friends and neighbors. Conan speaks fluently in the late-night language Letterman invented: cerebral non sequiturs; field trips in search of real-world absurdities; forays through the bowels of the studio to interrupt other shows. Both hosts morph into clingy nerds when faced with beautiful actresses. (Conan once screamed like a linebacker and threw his chair after Rebecca Romijn kissed him.) Conan is in many ways a mini-Letterman: tall, lanky, red-haired, stunty, smart. If Letterman-Leno felt like a decades-long slow-motion death match, Letterman-Conan threatens to be its opposite: sweet, cute, possibly even boring.

The most tantalizing possible outcome of the Letterman-Conan binary is that it will force Letterman, at this late stage in the game, to get better. To stand out against the background of Jay, Dave just had to be Dave. To compete with a younger, hungrier version of himself, he might have to do more than that, for the first time in years. The similarities might turn out to be a blessing: Their stunts will cross-pollinate, their jokes will play against each other. To differentiate themselves, they may even have to launch an arms race of total absurdity.

We'd like to just state here and now that we have no issue whatsoever in "an arms race of total absurdity." In fact, we encourage it. Please fellas, indulge us. And as for who to watch, we suppose that we can just DVR one or both shows and watch one at 11:35 and the other at 12:37, because we usually have to be kinda stoned to get into Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Fallon's show just, you know, fucking sucks.

Letterman vs. Mini-Letterman [New York]

Hello everyone,
We have a new intern starting today:
My name is Theo Spielberg. I am a Los Angeles native but (clearly) I love
New York City. I am a rising senior at Yale University, studying comparative
literature. Since as long as I can remember, my main interest has been music
- playing it, watching it be played, writing about it, thinking about it
etc. In high school I discovered a similar passion for writing, and have
been pursuing creative and journalistic writing ever since. I look forward
to spending an awesome summer here at New York Magazine.
You can reach him at [TOP SECRET CONTACT METHOD]

He starts today! Research on the infallible internet reveals that Theo is the adopted son of Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, and he has six brothers and sisters. Hopefully he will find Manhattan to be more "band-centric" than shitty New Haven, where the music scene sucks. We've emailed Theo to find out more about his internship, and we'll let you know what we hear. Do you know any other celebrity kids doing media internships? Email us immediately.
Non-celebrity students are also free to apply for New York internships!

UPDATE: NY Mag spokesperson extraordinario Serena Torrey responded to our email to Theo, because "Company policy prevents interns from responding to external press inquiries." She says he's an editorial intern and referred us to the job description on their site, which indicates that right this moment, Theo may be engaged in "database production, fact-checking, research, reporting, and writing," for $7.15 per hour. Which is more than Donald Trump's making from the media, hey-o!

[Pic via]

In that a new sense of community has sprung up from the faintly green ashes of the economy's grand collapse, that people are starting to look at the slate as clean rather than completely wiped out. Who better to turn this erratic, schizophrenic eye on the city it both loves and loathes than New York magazine, which runs a big old honking cover story about New York City Without Money this week. Because that magazine never really traffics in actual New Yorkers who don't have any money, and never did, they mean like, should you switch condos?

Heh, kidding. Sort of. They don't only talk about real estate and baby bjorns. They also crow about how people are volunteering again!

Right now, in New York, volunteerism is booming. Compared with the first quarter of last year, Citymeals-on-Wheels, which delivers food to the elderly, has seen a 32 percent increase in its volunteers; God's Love We Deliver, which distributes meals to those suffering from hunger or illness, has seen a 20 percent increase. New York Cares, which places people in charities around the city, trained twice as many people in February and March of 2009 as it did those same months the year before.

A new sense of community and work-together-itiveness is blooming all along these cracked sidewalks. So forget the doom and gloom and violence that some had heralded. We've already moved past Hoovervilles and hobo shankings. We're at the New Deal! The cradle is rocking! Hell, even that old, creeping-in doom and gloom is maybe kind of appealing, in a friendly, throwbacky way, isn't it? James Wolcott certainly seems to think so. He writes in his paean to New York's Drop Dead Era:

The municipal-finance crisis of New York in the 70s resulted in meat-cleaver budget cuts and payroll cutbacks and infrastructural rot-a near-death experience that produced an exodus to the suburbs and beyond, a loss of almost 10 percent of the population over the course of the decade. It was hell on the tax base but, for those who migrated to New York and secured a foxhole while the city bled out, terminal conditions weren't all bad. There were upsides to a downward spiral. Having fewer people clogging the scenery aired out the city nicely, opening corner pockets of private and public space where all sorts of termite creativity could take place, and did. It was a more egalitarian city than it subsequently became with the rise of the super-rich, the crime and crumminess more evenly dispersed. Real estate was affordable, even for artistes and aspiring deadbeats.

For our part, we're still stuck on the real estate, giddily rubbing our hands together because we think that maybe, just maybe, we can now afford to move back to Manhattan, leaving Brooklyn and its babies and long subway waits to the birds. Oh, and we held the door open for someone the other day. So.