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]

The rumor is floated by Post gossip Liz Smith:

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

Wintour takes her complaints public:

[Front Row]

There's no evidence that the order came from Conde Nast bigwigs, who are generally relaxed about inter-title criticism; and Gladwell wrote us in an email that he hadn't asked for the post's removal. "No idea what you're talking about I'm afraid," said Gladwell. "Bercovici wrote about me?" But the embattled Lipman, unpopular among her own staff, depends on the goodwill of Newhouse. The most plausible explanation for the deletion: Lipman pre-emptively ordered the removal of the post to save Gladwell, the New Yorker and Conde Nast, from embarrassment. How collegial! Except, by deleting an item which would otherwise have been unremarked, Portfolio's succeeded only in drawing the attention of Slate's eagle-eyed Jack Shafer, and various blogs like this one. And the original post still remains, like a rebuke, in Google's cache of the Portfolio site. Here's the original article and, below, the page as it now appears.

Morale has always been low here, but it's never been
lower, and the downcline (to quote our Treasury
secretary) is steepening.

The only reason there's been no mass exodus is because
the pay is good, nobody else is hiring, and the
economy is at the abyss.

Many magazines develop into factions. At Portfolio,
the factions are quite lopsided. It's every last
person at the magazine versus Joanne Lipman, Amy
Stevens, and Kyle Pope. (With new managing editor
Jacob Lewis, who came over from The New Yorker,
bewildered and privately neutral, but loyal to Joanne
because that's his job.)

There's nothing new about Joanne's infuriations.
What's troublesome is that Conde Nast allows them go
on and on and on. The only thing predictable about
Joanne Lipman is that nobody has a frigging clue what
she wants. She orders up one thing and condemns the
editors for delivering it. She can't explain her story
judgment, and no one knows whether that's because she
has none, or because her mind is so internally
confused that even she doesn't know what she is
thinking from day to day or hour to hour.

Worst of all: outside of finance and advertising, she
knows squat about business, and maybe finance and
advertising too. The result is a mess of a magazine.
What's it supposed to be? If the readers don't know,
and the advertisers don't know, it's because the staff
doesn't know, and if Joanne knows she's not doing a
very good job of explaining it.

It's all too bad because Portfolio could have been so
good. "The Vanity Fair of business magazines" is an
idea that sounded great to most of us who joined up
here. But the opportunity is being pissed away.

Joanne gave a speech a week or so ago in which she
revealed that after she left her first meeting with Si
Newhouse, before she was hired, she was so happy she
could have been hit by a truck. This was interpreted
here as a plea to Si not to throw her in front of that
truck now. (Her kids must have been pleased to hear
that she regards a lunch with Si as the highlight of
her life.)

People tell me that calls for Joanne's head will
ensure her continued tenure, because Si will dig in
his heels.

But Si, you're a smart business person. She's wrecking
your magazine. Talk to the staff, they'll tell you.
You need to do something about it, before it's too
late for everybody.

• "The elderly S.I. Newhouse once tried to heave a manual typewriter at me in a fit of anger. Unable to move it very far, he followed up with a glass ashtry." -Truculent
• "I worked for a managing editor known for his drunken incomprehensible rages, which I had never seen. My second day at the newspaper I came in to find a young woman, a job applicant, waiting for this ME, who was as usual late. When he staggered in and found her, she smiled and introduced herself, and he said, "You cunts are all alike," and threw up on the floor. I didn't doubt the stories after that. This was the same ME who kept pictures of attractive women in his desk, and liked to show them off. One day my fellow reporter was in there talking and he pulled out a pretty blond and was clucking and kissing and making the usual comments about her, and my friend got out of there as fast as he could, because the blonde, of course, was his wife." -R.L.
• "My copy editor was a million year old WWII Navy vet with one leg and blurry arm tats. About my third week, I wrote that John Wayne was in a film, only, he wasn't. The editor called me up and said, at the top of his two-packs-of-Camels-a-day-seared lungs: 'If you fucking write Empire State Building, stick your fucking head out the window and MAKE SURE IT'S STILL THERE!'" -D.M.
• "Back in the somewhat-realish altweekly days (before New Times bought it all up) we did a piece on how easy it would be to buy crack in certain neighborhoods, timing each one (I think 12 minutes was the fastest for a nerdy-looking white kid). To prove that we had indeed secured real crack, we had to test it in the newsroom. This was also a newsroom where our editor, 6'3", 250-plus, would take us out and demand that we do multiple shots of Jim Beam with him, calling us "fucking pussies" if we started to slump after six or seven. We even had to figure out how to expense it. Accounting sent it back several times." -M.B.

Who did make it out to pay tribute to the Steve Florios at St. Ignatius? Anna Wintour, who showed up arm-in-arm with SI Newhouse: David Remnick, who said a few words, some of them kind and Graydon Carter which means for a brief time on Monday, you could actually walk into the Waverly Inn and get a seat. [NYO]

Their street can be thought of as the Further Lane of Bellport. On it, every house is beautiful and large, by local standards—which is to say, each house is smaller and more dignified than those built to the standards that guide the East Hampton egotists nearly 50 miles further east.

Eric Shawn, the Fox News correspondent and UN-hater, lives across the street. Not too far away lives Lucy Danziger, the editor of Self. And while William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, lives in a massive white clapboard affair on the beach, the Newhouses live a little inland. (In our next installment, we'll be visiting some of those neighbors!) The Newhouses make up for their lack of coastline with their mega-lot.

On one lot sits the house, flanked by magnolias and Japanese maples. There is a little garden, chicken-wired off. On another lot is Victoria Newhouse's studio. On the third sits the guest house.

The erection of the copper-clad studio was as large a scandal as Bellport has seen in recent years. The town's conservative architecture review board were wary of the gleam and the modern design. Victoria is an architecture critic and historian. And by now, the copper has faded into a rich autumnal brown and the angular architecture melds nicely with the late-summer foliage.

At the front bar is a mixture of beautiful young women and somewhat less beautiful and less young men who are accompanying them. "Rich, Rich," one man who looked like a dumpy George Lucas called to his friend at the bar, "Sauvignon blanc!"

Few people were alone—except at the very end of the bar, a very tall and forlorn-looking Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor and momentary presidential contender, sat drinking a glass of white wine. A man at the bar, surrounded by skinny and cute girls, laughed and said, "Ha, it's just like the five-year-itch!"

At the tables, a bit after 9 p.m., the shining lights of Manhattan's social mantle began to stand out. In one corner by the window, Anne McNally (of Vanity Fair fashion fame) sat with New Yorker writer Michael Specter and beautiful model-actress-painter Anh Duong. McNally clutched a white alligator print Prada bag; Specter sported his trademark weirdly-folding spectacles. The waiter was pushing the "famous macaroni and cheese."

Across from the McNally fourtop, Spike Carter, Graydon's kid, and a couple of his teenaged-looking friends sported the ruddiness of white kids who had been drinking. One of the girls in that party wore an oversize gray Batman t-shirt, another an Adidas jumpsuit. Spike himself sported a scruffy beard and was by far the least well-dressed man in the room.

There is a coveted horseshoe-shaped banquette, located, oddly enough, near the bathroom in the front room. This is where Graydon usually sits when he's there. Last night that space was occupied by Graydon's dear friend Ron Perelman. Next to him sat Penny Marshall and a couple of young girls. Ron and Graydon are as close as Penny Marshall and Ron's ex Ellen Barkin; those two were in a 1985 off-Broadway production of Eden Court.

By 11:30, the crowd had thinned considerably. The average weight dropped as the literary types went to bed and the model types came to "dinner." Outside the black town cars gave way to white limos. Through the slatted blinds of a neighboring townhouse, a leery resident peered out at the scene with suspicion. Her crow-footed eyes glittered with hostility. The diplomat jumped on his motorcycle and sped away down Bank Street.

Portfolio's executives are playing up their differences. For example, in a converted 11th-floor conference room, a place [publisher David] Carey likes to call his "idea lab," black leather couches from Design Within Reach are accessorized with throw pillows. On one side of each pillow is the gray pinstripe often used in Portfolio's branding; on the other, fuchsia satin is meant to signify luxury and includes a corner strip of the magazine's logo. "[Advertisers] come here, admire the pillows, and by the time they get back to the office, there's one waiting for them," said Carey proudly.

Open For Business... [WWD]
In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine [NYT]
Conde Nast's Portfolio's Deep Pockets [ABC]
Magazine Wars [NYP]

• The Chandler family, former owners of the Los Angeles Times, are unhappy with the way Tribune is selling itself off. [NYT]
  
• It's the Family Issue of the Observer, and if you think we're going to delve too deeply into it, you grossly overestimate our commitment to this feature. Anyway, there's something about the Sulzbergers and Newhouses and something else about the Rubenstein flack clan. [NYO]
  
• Jeff Immelt is proud of NBC. Really! Why are you laughing? [NYP]
  
• Liz Smith has three fewer days a week to prattle on about Ann Richards and whatever current starlets she's obsessed with. [Radar]
  
• Couple more defections to that Allbritton online thing. [NYT]
  
• Bonnie Fuller on the hot seat. [NYP]
  

• Jon Friedman: "To surpass Fortune, Portfolio must be, above all, SURPRISING." What the fuck, Jon Friedman? Seriously, how does this guy get paid for this shit? Nice use of caps for emphasis, though. It shows he's SERIOUS. [Marketwatch]
  
• If there's a hell below, we're all gonna go, but the English are going first. [Guardian]
  
• Subpar oral-sex provider Dave Zinczenko has the most commented-upon blog in Yahoo! history! You hear that, you bitches at Radar? [NYP]
  
• Correction of the Day: "Because of an editing error, an obituary on Sunday about Sid Raymond, a comic actor, rendered one of his jokes incorrectly. It was about a son who sends a prostitute to his widowed father, still a self-proclaimed ladies' man in his 90s. The prostitute tells the father that she is his birthday present and promises to give him 'super sex' (not that she promises to give him whatever he'd like.) The father replies, 'I'll take the soup.'" [NYT]
  
• Corrections of the Year. [Regret the Error]
  
• In case you care, David Schlesinger is the new EIC at Reuters. There's no link yet, but if you're really curious, e-mail us and we'll forward on the press release.
  

We're absolutely sure he's talking about his respective lengths of tenure and not making a joke about Cond emperor Si Newhouse's diminutive stature. He's merely suggesting that Si is Krishna, the great destroyer.

There is a nice dig at Radar, though.

James Truman Leaves MacBain, Hasn't Heard From Si, and Will Stay in New York [NYM]

Earlier: Breaking: James Truman Resigns (N.B.: This Is a New Item)

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

[Image: Flickr]

Earlier: Conde Nast Without End, Amen

There has been a succession of CEOs since time immemorial.

Charles Townsend's Cooler, Calmer Conde Nast [Ad Age]

Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:19:48 -0400
From: Beleagured Conde Minion

Remember when si newhouse was caught eating the edamame with his hands straight out of the salad bar at conde nast caf ? Well I just witnessed him do it again, this time with the cherry tomatoes. Thank GOD I served myself some BEFORE he dug his hands in. ugh!

Oh, S.I. — haven't we already talked to you about being so grabby at the salad bar? No wonder the joint got such an iffy score from the health department — that's minus 10 points for exposure to old man germs.

Earlier: Conde Cafeteria: Nasty
On the Bright Side, Maybe You'll Catch Some of S.I.'s Special 'Power Dust'

The origin of Fairchild's whole no-more-gifts-to-fashion-editors-as-this-is-a-journalism-church-state-thing was good 'ole Si Newhouse.

Now that we're more officially conde nast and that we're moving to new offices uptown in about a week, and that we'll eventually get new food services, which includes the very same steamed salmon 4 Times Square gets, we also have new email addresses: YourName@condenast.com

HOWEVER, editors at the trades, namely WWD, will remain on the Fairchild.com domain.

Why is this significant?

W mag et al. will now follow conde policy with regards to gifts, meaning there is no policy, meaning thank you Anna.

WWD will continue to follow Fairchild policy, as in thank you Si.

And a very merry Christmas to us all.

On the one hand we admit we're a touch skeptical that Christmas-gift policies vary depending solely on email domain. On the other hand, man, that sucks for you guys, WWD.

The Fairchild policy memo is after the jump.

Subject: From Ed Nardoza- Ethics Policy Regarding Gifts
Importance: High
To: Fairchild Editors and Publishers
From: Ed Nardoza and Eileen Cross
CC: Mary Berner and Patrick McCarthy
Re: Ethics Policy Regarding Gifts

As many of you may remember, last year at this time we sent out a letter to clients and contacts throughout our various industries alerting them to Fairchild's ethical policy regarding gifts. We're doing the same mailing again this year and would like to get your updated lists of companies and/or people who should be contacted. We'll need an updated contact name, company name and updated mailing address (don't forget zip codes). Please forward the information no later than Wednesday Nov. 9 to Tara Bonet-Black, who will handle the mass mailing.

Thank you,
Ed Nardoza
Eileen Cross

Although, really, until one of them decides they want to give us some free money, we suppose we ought to just hate them all.

The Forbes 400 [Forbes]

You know how each magazine has to walk Si Newhouse through their "book" every month? (And how he's famous for the most feeble, general criticisms that lead to frantic editors hitting "undo" — i.e., "There's a lot of red in here. Too much red"?) Anyway, it came time for Cookie — Fairchild's shopping-for-yuppie-parents mag, which is launching in the fall — to present. On the cover is a sweet, white, perfectly scrumptious (imagine the casting rigors) baby under a Russian fur hat (probably real fur). Si looks at the whole issue and his response is: "I think that baby's too fat."

We nominate this as the all-purpose mantra that says everything there is to say about the fancy-baby aesthetic, the shopping-mag gestalt, and general Fairchild/Condeness, all in six words.

You think that's too harsh? Yeah, well, we think your baby's too fat.

Fairchild First [Fairchild Publicaitons]

Words of wisdom from Mr. Weil:
· On the advantages of being filthy rich: "If someone from some shitty little town in Connecticut is pissing you off" you can say, "Fuck you, I?m from New York and my family can buy your family."
· On pre-nuptial agreements: "If this little ungrateful bitch has the nerve to [balk at a pre-nup], she?s just a gold-digger and not worth it anyway."
· On what he would do if he lost his fortune: "I think it would be like losing a parent or a sibling."

The also charming A&P heiress Julie Hartford, when asked what she would do with $1 million in cash, responds, "I?d give it all away to the homeless—ha, ha, just kidding!"
Heir's ugly side on camera [Page Six]
Sundance coverage [Yahoo]

Background on Fuller for the uninitiated:
Some speculate that her exile from the Conde Nast empire was precipitated by Vogue Editrix [ed. note—not a word. Why do people keep using it?] Editor Anna Wintour. When Catherine Zeta-Jones refused to do a cover story for Glamour, Fuller put a two-year old picture of Zeta-Jones on the cover anyway to beat Vogue to the punch. Infuriating Si Newhouse by making overtures to Harper's Bazaar probably didn't help either.

But as we all know, Fuller got her revenge when Jann Wenner recruited her to save the ailing Us Weekly. Fuller sexed it up, and even took a little swipe at Wintour with a cheesy photo montage titled, "It's All About Anna!"—which she distributed at fashion shows.

"Queen B" [Toronto Life via Buzzmachine]

   The first media party since I arrived in New York, the Slate event at which Jacob Weisberg was unveiled as the online magazine's new editor. I have to gush.
   Sure, the crowd were bitchy. A New York Sun reporter was overheard dishing the dirt on the embryonic newspaper to Kurt Andersen, formerly of Inside, who will of course keep the information entirely to himself. And it was all inside baseball. What did Ned Desmond's new title at Business 2.0 really mean? As if anyone really cares. Everybody hates Wired's Chris Anderson except for James Truman and Si Newhouse. Not true, actually. Most people who know Anderson think he's a smart and charming guy.
   But, dammit, New York media people are witty, and that isn't a word I've used in a while. Even the speeches - by Weisberg and Michael Kinsley, his predecessor - were entertaining. Kinsley, who said the change in editors was what Microsoft called a reorg, told a couple of good Redmond jokes. My walker for the evening, recently transplanted from San Francisco, said she was exhausted. Too many smart people, and the obligation to make intelligent conversation.
· Slate's new editor based in New York [Seattle Times]

1. Are you as shallow as you appear?
Gawker is dedicated exclusively to frivolity and excess. I do, on occasion, stare into the existential abyss, ponder the nuances and shudders, and produce what some might refer to as "serious thoughts." You will never see these on Gawker.

In truth, I aim to be much more shallow, and am very demanding of myself in this respect. Every morning I look in the mirror and ask myself, "Am I vapid enough?" "How can I learn to make people care less about others, and more about me?" And most importantly, "Can I really bring myself to wear an outfit that just screams 'middle-class tax bracket?'" Sometimes I find myself not really caring which book Nicky Hilton's reading or whether she's remembering to color inside the lines, and I feel momentarily guilty. Happily, a Xanax, a martini, and a couple of lines of moderate-quality coke seem an effective remedy.

As I recently informed my publisher, I plan to learn how to be even more shallow very soon by infiltrating the Conde Nast cafeteria and conducting covert research. From a recent email to a neutral third party: "Conde double-agents have been teaching me the proper technique for effectively grinding a Manolo into the neck of an unwitting editorial assistant so that I can appropriately camouflage myself among the Vogue editors. I have spent the week spitting on poor people and scoffing at public transportation in preparation. In the course of the last month, I have also successfully expensed some $1.4 million to Si Newhouse. (No one seemed to notice. But I guess that's not terribly unusual.)"

2. Admit it: you're just a bunch of social climbers.
We're just a bunch of social climbers.

3. What do you say to those who describe you as "solipsistic assholes"? (Not that this has actually happened.)
We are, in fact, assholes, but I'd say we're no more solipsistic than the type of people who refer to us as "solipsistic assholes."

4. Why are you so down on San Francisco?
Because San Franciscans send us the most interesting hate mail. It's almost like they don't even realize we're joking!

5. What can a bunch of people from Alabama (Elizabeth), Minnesota (Jason) and the UK/Hungary (Nick) know about New York?
I think it's actually easier to write about Manhattan if you're an outsider. The absurdities, in particular, are much more apparent. The darker Manhattan-centric themes—class warfare as recreational sport; pathological status obsession; and the complete, total, and wholly unapologetic embrace of decadence—are much more fascinating to us. [Ed. note—We can spend entire minutes thinking about them.] The ironies of life in Manhattan hit you with all the subtlety of a two-ton sledgehammer to the back of the head. You find yourself inexplicably reveling in them and obsessively writing about them.

If we had a recommended reading list, it would include Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter's Spy Magazine circa 1988, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, possibly a little Bret Easton Ellis, Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and more recently, Tina Brown's New York column. None of these people are from New York either.

But enough with the sincerity. It's making me twitch. Next question?

6. Don't you spellcheck anything?
We have what's called "collective spellcheck." It involves you, the reader, emailing me and saying, "hey, you spelled that wrong." (Editor's a bit of a misnomer. I write everything and edit nothing.)

Publications with "budgets" apparently have "copyeditors" that serve the same purpose. We were forced very early on to choose between the "copyeditor" and the "vacation bungalow in St. Bart's," and, well, you see our dilemma.

7. What's in it for you?
For Gawker in general: Invitations to better parties (to borrow from Brooklyn fashion entrepreneur Ken Courtney) and one day soon, a positive net income figure.

For me: flattering fan mail, entertaining hate mail, a part-time paycheck, an outlet for mischievous impulses, and Conde Nast-wide peals of laughter (or a resounding "fuck you") if I ever send a resume or query letter to Vogue.

Publisher Nick Denton explains his complex motives for starting Gawker: "Ehm...I thought it'd be a fun thing to do."

8. What's the business model?
Mostly ad sales, right now. Gawker's extremely cheap to run, because on the technical side, expenses are nominal, and on the Editorial side, you have me, and...well, me. And I'm not full-time. (If you click on Gawker during business hours and it hasn't updated in an hour or two, it's probably because I'm out hustling for freelance assignments from the two or three publications we don't routinely and compulsively mock.)

We briefly considered acquiring AOL, but how stupid would that be?

9. Hell or San Francisco?
Hell. Obviously.

10. No one wants to hear about Tina Brown/Page Six/Craig's List, you idiots!
Yes, they do. For every email we idiots get that says "No more Tina! No more Page Six!", we're getting much more feedback indicating that people like it. If it were, in fact, true that no one wanted to hear about it, we'd probably take it off the site. (Reader abuse is never intentionally part of the program.)

On some larger existential level, we, too, find it mildly disturbing that people are actually interested in Paris Hilton's reading habits. But apparently they are. This is the culture in which we live...oooh, let's not think about it too much.

11. How come I've never heard of you?
Gawker's only been in existence since Mid-December of 2002. Prior to Gawker, I was working in finance and Nick was a technology entrepreneur. (Truth be told, Nick's still a technology entrepreneur *cough* media investor.)

Thus the wide-eyed enthusiasm for this strange new celebrity/media culture.

I, for example, had no idea who Bonnie Fuller was four months ago. Paris Hilton was but a hotel in France! (I'm still a bit confused, but it's only partially because I don't know what I'm doing.)

If it makes you feel any better, we've probably never heard of you either.