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Culture Roundup: Baby Agent Edition

Vanity Fair examines the risks inherent in taking on a "baby agent"--that is, one in the early twenties. They're better, though, than "in utero agents" in their teens; those little jerks just roll your eyes when you try to get them to do anything! Scott Rudin has won the so-called "EGOT," a Read More

‘Vanity Fair’ Hollywood Issue Cover Drops, With Some Risky Bets on Starlets’ Prospects

Since 1995, Vanity Fair has released an annual gatefold cover spotlighting hot new stars (with occasional breaks for covers featuring "legends" or Barack Obama). This is a risky game: the 1995 cover featured Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Julianne Moore, while the 2000 cover included Wes Bentley and Read More

UPDATE: Conde Nast Getting Nast-y with 1 World Trade Center, Commits to More Space

Conde Nast has reportedly agreed to take on an additional 133,000 square feet of office space at 1 World Trade Center, adding to the 1.05 million it has already committed to at the yet-to-be-completed skyscraper, the New York Post reported.

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Your New Favorite Media Twitter: Vanity Fair‘s Fashion Editor

Here's a fun one to close the week out with: We recently discovered the unequivocal joy that is Vanity Fair's fashion market director, Michael Carl, on Twitter. He is, in a word, fantastic. This is also the most public insight into the inner-workings of Conde Nast since the world has been without Conde Elevator. Read More

Considering the Unexpected Departures

So Kim Jong Il, Christopher Hitchens and former Czech president Václav Havel walk up to Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates of Heaven …

If you’ve been lost in the static of radio silence this past week, you must be thinking, “What a witty opener for that Upper West Side Christmas party!” Unfortunately, the humor is coarsened by the fact that the North Korean supreme leader, outspoken British-turned-American intellectual and Eastern European politician moonlighting as everything under the literary sun all passed away this weekend. We can’t help but imagine Mr. Hitchens being amused by the inevitable comparisons that one could draw between him and the company he’ll be keeping in the newsworthy obits this week: The pages of which will be filled with terms like “revolutionary,” “tyrannical,” “egomaniacal” and “possibly insane.” (And that’s just for Mr. Hitchens!) It’s dark humor, of course, but did the Vanity Fair contributing editor know any other kind? Read More

‘Least Influential’ List Draws GQ‘s Enemies Out of the Woodwork

GQ's "25 Least Influential People Alive" list, written by Deadspin's Drew Magary, is at the top of our "Most Controversial Lists of the Day" list. Tim Pawlenty was number one the list, deemed an "aggressively forgettable" "six-foot-tall paperweight" whose campaign money "might as well have been burned in front of a group of orphans." Read More

2011 Editor’s Darlings: Mila Kunis, Lady Gaga, and Johnny Depp

GQ's annual man of the year issue is a split run, with covers featuring veteran man of the year Jay-Z, newcomer Michael Fassbender, bromantic Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, and Mila Kunis.

It's a quick return to GQ for Ms. Kunis, who shared its cover with a venti iced coffee in April. Read More

Vanity Fair Nabs New York Design Director Chris Dixon

Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter has poached Chris Dixon, New York magazine's design director, according to an internal memo sent out today.

Longtime VF design director David Harris is reducing his role at the magazine.

Mag Culture points out that Mr. Dixon has held is own at New York since graduating from the Luke Hayman school of magazine design. Hugo Lindgren, formerly of New York, tweeted his congrats.

Full memo below. Read More

$2 a Word? Chump Change! With Byliner and Atavist, Hungry Freelance Writers Seek Out Alternatives To Magazine Work

When the journalist David Dobbs first had the idea of writing an article about his mother’s love affair with a flight surgeon during World War II, he initially went the traditional route: he pitched the story to several magazines. Mr. Dobbs, who has written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired and National Geographic, usually writes about science, so the piece was a bit of a departure. The magazines he approached turned him down. He suspected at the time that the scale of the story was one problem—it was a complicated tale, hard to fit in a magazine, even at 6,000 or 8,000 words. Dedicated to his story despite the rejections, Mr. Dobbs started talking to Evan Ratliff, editor and co-founder of the online startup The Atavist, a self-described “boutique publishing house” that produces non-fiction articles for e-readers and smart phones. Read More

Despite Diminished Digital Staff, Vanity Fair Relaunch A Soft Success

Vanity Fair's website relaunched this week, with a spiffy new design that promotes the VF Daily content and reorganizes the top navigation by medium (video, photo, magazine) as opposed to topic (Hollywood, Business, Politics). The relaunch required updating the magazine's CMS to Adobe CQ5. The top spot at Vanity Fair's digital team has been empty since Read More

Reflections on Selling a Warhol Portrait of Yourself, With Bob Colacello

Last fall, Vanity Fair writer Bob Colacello decided to sell a portrait that Andy Warhol made of him in 1980, when Mr. Colacello was working for Interview, and decided to take along a Vanity Fair camera crew to document the experience. The video was just released and, boy, is it good! The painting was Read More

The Fictional Magazine Power List

2003: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Kate Hudson plays a beautiful reporter for a lightly fictionalized Cosmopolitan called Composure. 2004: 13 Going on 30: Jennifer Garner plays a beautiful editor at a lightly fictionized, let's say Elle, called Poise. 2006: The Devil Wears Prada: Meryl Streep plays the imperious editor of a Read More

Bonfire of the Vanities: High Times smokes Vanity Fair

Last weekend was a bad time to be Rupert Murdoch. Not only did he shutter British tabloid News of the World after the phone hacking scandal reached epic proportions, but The Wall Street Journal’s champion softball team lost a highly anticipated game...to a bunch of stoners. Read More

Lindsay Lohan’s Italian Vanity Fair Shoot: Blonde Bombshell Brings the Bunga-Bunga

We read with extreme interest the Page Six news that Lindsay Lohan was to be on the cover of the September issue of Vanity Fair--though the item, which posited the specific photographer for Vogue's upcoming Kate Moss cover (Mario Testino), only informed us that the VF photoshoot was taken during Ms. Lohan's house arrest Read More

Stone Fox! Vanity Fair Anoints Living Girl as Cover Star, But Heed the Tale of Mol

For the first time since January 2008, the cover of Vanity Fair this month features an individual working actress under the age of 30. Hello, Emma Stone! (We're still kind of figuring out which one you are!) One wonders if something's gotten in the water at Vanity Fair--the magazine's typical nostalgia for dead celebrities (last Read More