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My Night At The Oscars

On Friday night, Feb. 20, in Los Angeles, Mark, a friendly expert in the art of mixology, tore up a few more bits of oregano at Cecconi’s, a sprawling Italian bistro that sits atop the hallowed Melrose Avenue dirt that was home to longtime industry staple Morton’s. The restaurant, which is owned by the folks Read More

January Groans: Mags’ Lean Month Gets Downright Gaunt

Over the next week or two, the January issues of monthly magazines will start hitting newsstands—or perhaps “lightly floating onto newstands like little snowflakes” would be a better way of putting it.

“A lot of people are really, really down in the dumps about what January looks like,” said Jay Lauf, the publisher of Read More

Happy Tina Fey Day!

What else do you call a day when the comedic actress and writer is seemingly everywhere all at once?

First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those Read More

Graydon Carter, George Plimpton’s Understudy

The New York Times has posted a preview of the Book Review's lead review from this week: Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.'s George Plimpton oral biography, George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Read More

Vanity Fair Returns to the Red Zone

Even though the election and economic crisis have pushed the Iraq war off the front—or even the first dozen—pages of newspapers, the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair features an article by Seth Mnookin in which he reports on life inside The New York Times' Baghdad bureau. The story is not yet online, but Read More

Also! Graydon Nabs Mr. Blackhawk Down

One more addition to Graydon Carter's stable: longtime Atlantic writer and Blackhawk Down author Mark Bowden is dropping his exclusive contract with The Atlantic and signing a two-story-a-year contract with Vanity Fair.

In a landscape where there are no available media jobs, and there's virtually no mobility in the market, Mr. Bowden appears Read More

Brad Pitt Wants Better Investigative Journalism

An up-and-coming writer named Brad Pitt has a piece on Vanity Fair's Web site in which he nominates Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to the magazine's "Hall of Fame." (Not, it should be noted, to the magazine's Best-Dressed List: International Hall of Fame.)

Mr. Pitt offers this bit of Read More

Is It Just Us?

Maybe the heat's just getting to us, but is there something odd about the logo for Vanity Fair's VF Agenda Web site, where readers (presumably of all persuasions) can get "the inside story" on everything the magazine cares about.
OK, fine, keep moving.

Cartoonists Agree: John McCain Old; Wife Fond of Pills; Constitution Very Flammable

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Power & Politics blog posted a satire of The New Yorker's now legendary Barry Blitt cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-honoring terrorists. In VF's version, drawn by illustrator Tim Bower, John and Cindy McCain are portrayed as their own worst caricatures: The presumptive Read More

Brothers in Arms

"It's really easy to get killed in Iraq," says Phillip Robertson, a freelancer who covered the war for Salon and wrote the introduction to the book Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq.

"They want to kill you. All you have to do is give them a chance and somebody Read More

Graydon on Bill’s Blowup: ‘Saddening … Characteristic’
On the afternoon of June 2, Wolf Blitzer was talking to Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum about his 9,647-word piece about Bill Clinton.
“Some people who work for him now say that he seems to be angry all the time, angry when he gets up in the morning and angry Read More

Vanity Fair Has The Last Laugh

What do you do if your magazine was embroiled in a possibly manufactured controversy over its allegedly sexualized photos of a minor? If you're Vanity Fair, you make fun of the whole thing, of course.

VF Daily has posted a sneak peek of the magazine's July issue featuring Angelina Jolie's impressive décolletage below Read More

A Look Back: Miley Cyrus Joins Lohan, Hilton, Wolfowitz in Denouncing Mean Magazine

As you may have already read, Miley Cyrus is totally embarrassed by the semi-topless (back view) photos printed of her in this month's Vanity Fair. In a statement put out by her publicist, Ms. Cyrus, age 15, said, "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing Read More

Magazine Nabobs Resolve in 2008 to Kick Bad Habits: Waverly Inn, Post

Each New Year brings with it the obligatory slate of resolutions. And like some college-level sociological experiment, each New Year also brings with it a slate of stories about what famous people have resolved to either quit—smoking, say—or begin—usually something kind of boring, like marathon training or French classes. True to form, WWD recently called Read More

Dina Lohan Speaks: Back to Reality!

Lindsay Lohan’s mother, Dina, was partying Tuesday night at the Tropicana Zone in Times Square. “I’m doing a reality show; if you asked me two years ago, I’d be like, ‘You guys are smoking crack! I’m not doing this!’ But now I realize that I have no choice. I have to fix it for my Read More