Media People

Everyone knows that Anna Wintour loves fashion, but few realize that she loves politics, too. Or maybe she just likes drinking fancy cocktails with powerful people. Either way. Wintour has certainly made a habit of it, whatever it is. She’s raised money for Barack Obama multiple times, and on Monday, the dashing diva hosted a fundraiser for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

WWD reports that the event was two hours long and featured a speech and a question and answer session with Gillibrand. Others in attendance included Andrew Rosen, Diane von Furstenberg, Michael Kors, Francisco Costa and Malcolm Carfrae.

No word on who won the game of Twister that got the night rolling, but we’ll let you know if were hear anything.

Tina Brown said something, so FishbowlNY is obligated to make sure everyone in New York knows about it. Brown told “Nightline” that Newsweek/The Daily Beast most certainly did not lose $30 million last year, but offered little to be excited about for the immediate future.

“We are certainly not losing that amount, but we aren’t making money yet and we won’t make money for another couple of years, but we will as long as we can build the brand back up again,” said Brown. Yikes. Brown then added that the brand building process is at about 40 percent. “It seems to me that we have stopped Newsweek from failing and we are now on our way back up,” she explained.

There, that’s slightly more optimistic. Here’s hoping everyone is cool with losing a lot more money until that final 60 percent comes around.

Nina Munk, a published author and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor since 2001, just bought a six story, absolutely gorgeous townhouse, which was designed by the same guy that did St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The New York Observer reports that the house (located at 25 Stuyvesant Street for any creepy people who want to visit) sold to Munk and her husband, artist Peter Soriano, for $3.7 million.

With the purchase, the couple get four fireplaces, a spiral staircase, a library, five bedrooms and a walled garden. Also, the envy of plenty of other New Yorkers.

Although the entertainment and gossip site Young, Black and Fabulous is reeling in 15 million hits a month, it had its humble start as a simple site on Blogger.

Back in 2005, Natasha Eubanks noticed major online outlets weren’t discussing African-American celebrities, so the former law student decided to take matters into her own hands and launch her own site.

“I didn’t make a penny off of anything because I didn’t have any readers. I didn’t see any money until two years, and I only saw a few dollars even then,” the blogstress said in mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do?. ”But I saw [Google AdSense], and I think that kind of sparked it in me. I was like, wait a minute. There’s an ad platform? What does that mean? You can make money just by writing what you think? That’s insanity.”

For more on how The YBF became the go-t0 source for Black Hollywood gossip, and Eubank’s personal advice for aspiring bloggers, read the full interview here.

Time Inc. is undergoing some changes. Laura Lang, Time’s CEO, calls them “Lifestyle moves,” but who knows what the people departing the company think about that phrase.

According to WWD, Steve Sachs, Time Inc.’s Executive Vice President, Consumer Marketing and Sales, and Stephanie George, the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, are both leaving in June.

Additionally, Bain & Company has been hired by Lang to analyze trends and help formulate an overall strategy. Yes, that probably means there are more changes to come.

Rupert Murdoch turns 81-years-old on Sunday. If you’re lucky enough to be in attendance at his birthday party, FishbowlNY has collected five items that Murdoch will definitely not want to talk about. Please avoid these at all costs. You can thank us later.

Five Items Rupert Murdoch Will Not Talk About at His Birthday Bash:

1. Twitter
2. Hacking (coughing, “WarGames” references, etc.)
3. Phones
4. Chase Carey’s mustache
5. Why James Murdoch isn’t there

NBC News correspondent Jamie Gangel recently interviewed Gawker’s Nick Denton for Rock Center.

Gangel presented Denton with words most often used to describe Gawker to find out whether he agrees or not.

Here’s part of that exchange:

Snarky
Yeah

Sexual
Yeah

Nude photos of private parts
If it’s interesting

Read more

Here is how powerful Bill Simmons and ESPN is: He did a podcast with President Barack Obama. Allow us to be giddy school children for a moment and say, “How cool is that???” Okay, now that we’ve settled down, here are a few of our favorite quotes from Obama:

On Jeremy Lin:

I knew about Jeremy before you did, or everybody else did, because Arne Duncan, my Secretary of Education, was captain of the Harvard team. And so way back when, Arne and I were playing and he said, I’m telling you, we’ve got this terrific guard named Jeremy Lin at Harvard. And then one of my best friends, his son is a freshman at Harvard, and so when he went for a recruiting trip he saw Lin in action. So I’ve been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.

Read more

Kate Bolick set the blogosphere on fire with her popular Atlantic article, “All The Single Ladies.” But it wasn’t just the behemoth nine-page, 12,000-plus-word piece that made headlines. The cover was also a rarity, an occurrence that only took place a handful of times in the magazine’s 154-year history.

“It wasn’t in the original plan at all. I hadn’t finished writing the piece yet when my editor called to say, ‘Now, they’re thinking about putting you on the cover.’ That blew my mind,” she shared in mediabistro.com’s  Hey, How’d You Do That?.

“My understanding on the reason they wanted to illustrate the piece with me is because it was in my voice,  [and the photos] further personalized the material” she said. “I love The Atlantic, but I had been feeling critical of how it has handled so-called ‘female topics.’ Would they have done this if the article had been written by a man? If a woman is writing about being unmarried, the first thing the reader thinks is, ‘How much of this has to do with what she looks like?’ I did have that critique of [my being on the cover], even though it was of myself.”

Read the full interview to find out how Bolick scored a book and TV deal for the article.

It’s been a crazy year for Janice Min. Since the powerhouse editor jetted off to the West Coast to take over The Hollywood Reporter, the 81-year-old publication has pulled in more than 55 billion media impressions and received more Web traffic than its three biggest competitors combined.

At first glance, it seems Min is settling in nicely with her big move to Los Angeles. But the publishing vet says there are some big differences of the media scene in both coasts that made the transition rough.

“It’s weird,” the editorial director told us. “New York is so media-centric. People find people in the media fascinating.” But L.A., said Min, isn’t down for fawning over big-name editors when there are Hollywood heavyweights stealing the limelight. “There’s no media hangout in L.A.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, Janice Min, Editorial Director of The Hollywood Reporter?