In her cover story, Grigoriadis trots over the familiar ground of Facebook's revolting users: Julius Harper, the fellow who started a group to protest the site's information-grabbing revision to its terms of service; those outraged by its redesign; and her anonymous New York friends, who exposed themselves to personal trauma through oversharing. (One tried to hit on a former crush, only to discover, courtesy of his freshly exposed Facebook profile, that he was married.)

That's the biggest weakness of Grigoriadis's piece: In attempting to understand Facebook, she never really leaves her circle of friends. But isn't that what the site does to all of us? By charting our messy circles of acquaintances into a clean "social graph," it makes our social lives anodyne and safe. Grigoriadis wonders what will happen when we all get sick of Facebook. Shouldn't we be more worried about what happens if we don't?

Apparently not entirely on top of his clients' current affairs as he should be, Sheen's publicist Stan Rosenfield issued a statement to the NY Post letting them know that "this is an old, old, old story. But, if you're looking for a really good story, I heard that Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe are getting a divorce." As the RS story alleges, Sheen had been using Nici's services up until last year. So either Rosenfield has absolutely no idea what the article claims, or thinks the usage of "old" three times will make last year seem just as long ago as 1954. In addition to adding a few more gossip pages into his Google Reader, Rosenfield might want to consider how prophecies he once made to the American Journalism Review have come to fruition: "Freedom of the press doesn't mean you have to be vitriolic...but [the press], in their rush to be super-competitive, gave the control to us. Any power, eventually we're going to lose it."

[Photo credit: Splash]

• SHEEN STAYED HOT FOR HOOKERS [NY Post]

That's the thing about "personal branding": it might just be a new version of what used to be called "having a distinct voice." The problem comes when people (not Doree, by the way) who don't yet have distinct voices, or maybe never will have them, are forced or force themselves to develop some kind of bloggy webby "platform."

"On Oct. 13, Columbia Journalism School held a day-long workshop called 'Building A Personal Website and Your Online Brand'; the attendees were all 'working journalists.'" Doree wrote. Also, "Today, even Times reporters who are hardly household names are encouraged to set up pages on nytimes.com with a list of their Web site 'picks,' so we can get to know them better."

And per Doree, the epitome of this trend is the woman Vanessa Grigoriadis described as "the most famous young journalist in New York" in New York magazine last week. That would be Julia Allison. Julia is quoted as saying, "I looked around, and I saw that the people who were getting assignments and getting paid really nicely for it were names. They were brands ...Ultimately, you're replaceable if you're not a brand."

So it's not just that "voice" is branding. Some folks really are incredibly brand-conscious.

But while the old conventional wisdom was that this kind of behavior was "blatantly ambitious" and therefore distasteful, "Today, being 'blatantly ambitious' has different overtones; we live in an era in which we've convinced ourselves that nearly any behavior is okay, as long as we're up front about it."

Maybe we're not just talking about the rules of journalism here, but the new rules of being any kind of public person with any kind of internet presence. Where's that line between person and persona, between honesty and intentional self-branding?

There are not one but two items on Radar today about Johnson, one about the Grig slur and another pointing to Johnson's seeming favor-trading with Joe Francis, who he may have witnessed getting up to his rapey old tricks at Johnson's bachelor party.

Days before Johnson's April 8, 2006, nuptials to Sessa von Richthofen, Johnson and crew were crashed out in the living room of Francis's $25 million, 13-bedroom estate in Punta Mita, Mexico, nursing hangovers when the porn auteur came home and disappeared into a bedroom with a young woman. Eyewitnesses say later that morning the young woman burst out of Francis's boudoir, groggy, crying, and yelling, "That motherfucker raped me!" She staggered off saying her boyfriend in Oklahoma was a lawyer who would "sue the fuck out of" Francis.

Johnson and fellow revelers were left dumbstruck. But Francis—who has been accused of procuring underage prostitutes, promoting sexual performances from children, drug trafficking, racketeering, and rape—was quick to calm their nerves. "Guys, relax," he told Johnson and others, according to witnesses. "We're in Mexico."

Previously: Dispatch From The Gossip Wars

My Fat Fiance [Women's Health] [Photo: Edon Gottlieb]

Tina gets assigned a proper historian in the New York Times Book Review, and comes off just fine, slightly less so between the lines. Vanessa Grigoriadis flashes her sharpest teeth at Tina in New York magazine but keeps whirling by.

Tina died when Diana died, suggests Vanessa, though of unrelated accidents. "There's very few places where anybody can actually have an intelligent conversation today," says Tina. This lament again. Blogging is bad for writing, says Tina; Tina is unemployed, notes Vanessa. Tina claims to not have any plans, which is totally not true. She's no Arianna Huffington, suggests Vanessa. But clearly Tina Brown is planning something right now.

By the time Adam Moss came to the podium for the fifth time last night to accept the National Magazine Award for Profile Writing for Vanessa Grigoriadis's piece on fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, some in the audience were muttering that a simple "thank you" would do nicely. But, just as he had for the previous four New York magazine wins, Mr. Moss had a speech ready. "You are never going to give us one again!" he said, and the audience tittered. Perhaps they would, and perhaps they wouldn't!

The award for Profile Writing came after the award for General Excellence in the 250,000 to 500,000 circulation category, in which Mr. Moss beat out a motley assortment of other publications, including demon-child mag Cookie. "Last year I got away with not naming any colleagues personally," he said, reminding the audience that his magazine also went home with awards last year. This year, there was also New York's Magazine Section award for its Strategist section; the award for Design, presented by one of the magazine's founders, Milton Glaser; and the award for Interactive Feature, for the Nymag.com's Fashion Week blog-thing.

Mr. Moss's ultimate boss, the canny money manager Bruce Wasserstein, was also in the audience, and one observer sitting near him reported that he did not so much as crack a smile during the entire ceremony.

It was not lost on anyone in the audience that Mr. Moss had totally beat out David Remnick's New Yorker, which had been nominated for a healthy nine awards but came home with absolutely zero. Still, a certain sense of decorum is to be expected. And thus, when Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek who is about to start a new job at NBC, quipped on stage that "Adam Moss is the new David Remnick," there was a collective gasp from the audience. Did he really say that? And perhaps more important: Could it be true?

Graydon Carter was decidedly not the new David Remnick. Not with that anecdote about Christopher Hitchens and waxing that he told on stage! Certainly, the words "the back, the crack, the sac" have never been uttered on stage at the National Magazine Awards. However! These are the new National Magazine Awards, held at night for only the second year, at the sleek Jazz at Lincoln Center. Black tie, except Mr. Carter, who wore his trademark double-breasted blue blazer (you know the one, with the gold buttons) and a pair of cerulean blue velvet pants. This is the National Magazine Awards of celebrity guests and presenters, like Kevin Bacon! Scottish singer KT Tunstall opening, but not with the song that was played in The Devil Wears Prada (though no one was sure whether Anna Wintour was actually in attendance). Carrie Fisher! Ann Curry! And videotaped segments by Ellen DeGeneres and America Ferrera!

For as long as anyone could remember, the ceremony had been a lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria, and editors could return to their desks slightly tipsy in the late afternoon. But those days are over! Now individual tickets cost $465, tux rental for the more junior set not included. The editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, had bought two tickets, one for himself and one for his managing editor, Radhika Jones—a wise investment, since Mr. Gourevitch's magazine won its first-ever award, for Photojournalism. "I'm going to use it to defend our office," Mr. Gourevitch said afterwards, indicating the Ellie's pointy metal legs. "Tonight, I'm going to go home and let my kid look at it, and hope that no one gets hurt. It's like a throwing star!"

The editor and publisher of McSweeney's, who was there alone (no Dave! No Vendela! No Heidi!), wondered how he was going to get his award, for fiction writing, home to the West Coast. "I don't like to check luggage," he said.

The director John Waters said that he gets 160 magazines a month. His favorite, he said, is the Capital Punishment Newsletter, a magazine that had not been nominated for an award. If he were to start a magazine, he said it would be called Drip, as his last name is Waters, and it would be about "all the worst places to be famous. You know, the embarrassing side of celebrity." —Doree

National Magazine Awards Photo Gallery

National Magazine Awards Winners and Finalists [ASME]

On several occasions, we almost got involved. Aside from her being with my best friend, I sensed, even then, that it was not a good idea to be on the descriptive end of her running commentary (from Judith, I know things about the intimate behavior of other men—when they cried, how they begged, where they like to insert sharp objects—that may have altered my fundamental view of humanity). Years later, she told The Washington Post that I was gay, that I had a thing for her college boyfriend. I got off easy.

Update: We knew the whole "I knew her when she was just Judy" thing sounded familiar. A sharp-eyed tipster reminds us that Michael has tilled this barren patch before, in New York. Sigh.

The Trouble With Judith Regan [VF]

Earlier: Vanessa Grigoriadis's Sliding Doors Moment

Five months later he had a second chance. Both attended the weeklong Burning Man art festival, which draws more than 30,000 people to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. [He] was sleeping in a geodesic tent, pitched near the site where [she] was staying in an RV with five other people.

You hate them already, right? Wait, it gets better!

It wasn't long before they ran into each other. "There was this immediate visceral feeling that we really liked each other," she said. Together they explored the festival, a mix of counterculture philosophy, art, music and pyrotechnics.

What happened next?

"There's a gigantic man that's three stories tall made of wood, and on Saturday night the man is burned."

Ah, that's where the name comes from! Thanks! Anyway, congratulations to Craig Maldonado and Vanessa Grigoriadis. We can't wait for New York's "Love on the playa" cover story.

Vanessa Grigoriadis and Craig Maldonado [NYT]

I don't drink very much, and I encourage people I'm around to not do so either.

Without an alcohol problem, you can only go so far in this town.

LAist Interview: Vanessa Grigoriadis [LAist]