Kate Upton has landed her first Vogue cover. The model appears on the November cover of Vogue Italia, wearing something that looks extremely uncomfortable. But hey, that’s fashion! We think.

Upton has now appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, GQ, CR Fashion Book and Cosmopolitan.

When The Source first launched back in the 80s, it set itself apart from other fan magazines by digging deeper into hip-hop culture. Today, the mag stays true to that, albeit with a broader audience. The freelancer-friendly pub has wider demographics and covers much more of the industry now that YouTube stars are turning rap hits into country covers. And, lucky for you, 60 percent of its content is written by freelancers.

Source veteran Kim Osorio has rejoined the pub as EIC and is committed to working with new and up-and-coming writers. In fact, she estimates that as much as 10-15 percent of the content each month comes from first-time freelancers. “It helps to have fresh ideas coming from people who aren’t in the day-to-day grind of hip-hop,” she said.

For more info, read How To Pitch: The Source. [subscription required]

The Audit Bureau of Circulation has released its report for the six month period ending in September, and the numbers looked good for The New York Times. According to the report, the Times’ circulation jumped by 40 percent, thanks to digital subscribers.

The Times’ digital readers — which includes online and those who read on tablets — now total at 896,352, good for the top spot among the 25 dailies the ABC measures. Overall, subscriptions for the daily edition of the Times went from 1,150,589 one year ago, to 1,613,865.

Despite that bump in numbers, the Times is still number three overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, which have a circulation of 2,293,798 and 1,713,833, respectively.

Hurricane Sandy hit the city hard, and along with flooding and devastation, several media companies saw their sites go down. All Gawker Media sites, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed were down at some point as Sandy made its way across land.

The source of the outage is flooding at Datagram, which houses the servers used by all the sites that went out. “Gawker sites down after power cut off at Datagram, our data center down on Whitehall St. Backup power didn’t kick in fast enough,” tweeted Nick Denton.

The Huffington Post was down, but is now publishing posts on an extremely stripped down version of the site. “Due to power outages caused by Superstorm Sandy, our own website is experiencing technical difficulties,” reads a post on the site.

BuzzFeed is up now, but isn’t being updated. According to their Twitter account, they’re updating content via other platforms, such as Tumblr.

UPDATE:
BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post are both back up.

Note: Newseum is closed due to Hurricane Sandy, so for now we only have smaller images of the front pages. We’ll update when we can get larger pictures.

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TVNewser: Evening newscasts are going for the long haul tonight. Wonder what they’re going to talk about?

FishbowlDC: Hurricane Sandy coming through your hood? Track it for HuffPo! No they won’t pay you, dummy.

TVSpy: The storm is no match for the power of Gangnam Style.

Jimmy Kimmel was planning a triumphant return to Brooklyn, commemorating the Nets debut in the borough later this week. However, Sandy happened, resulting in the cancellation of the first Jimmy Kimmel Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music tonight.

As late as yesterday, a Kimmel spokesperson said the show would go on, even though there are no buses and subways.

“We are hopeful to be back on the air tomorrow night with Howard Stern, Tracy Morgan, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.”

Brooklynite Kimmel, 44, grew up in the Mill Basin section of the borough.

FishbowlNY also has a special “Back to Brooklyn” series being delayed until Thursday, the night that the Nets officially unwrap their regular season schedule in Brooklyn.

The deal is done! WFAN makes its debut as a FM simulcast of 660 AM Friday morning at 12:01.

Mike Francesa told listeners today that WFAN programming will duplicate on 101.9 FM, the frequency is currently owned by Merlin Media with its Alternative Rocker WRXP.

As we reported earlier this month, CBS Radio is acquiring the Merlin slot for $75 million. At the time, operations manager Mark Chernoff told FishbowlNY that the WFAN simulcast, which will use the call letters WFAN-FM, is until further notice. He said the next step for CBS Radio is to formally purchase the station.

Darhil Crooks, the creative director for The Atlantic, is just getting started. The November issue is the first to feature Crooks’ designs, but he told FishbowlNY that he has big plans for the title as he makes his imprint felt.

Crooks is highly respected in the magazine design world. During his time at Esquire the magazine received a nomination from the Society of Publication Designers for 2007 Magazine of the Year, and his revamp of Ebony — the first in its history — had readers excited about the brand. Now with The Atlantic, Crooks said it is time to up the ante.

“My main goal [for the magazine] is to step our game up visually by improving the way we present the ideas in the magazine and creating a more reader-friendly experience,” explained Crooks, via email. “I want The Atlantic to be bolder and riskier.”

Crooks has begun to change the Atlantic by altering its “features” presentation. He felt that the magazine placed too much emphasis on a template, and thus tended to downplay the significance of the issue’s longer pieces.

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O: The Oprah Magazine and More may target a similar demo, but no other pub can compare directly with Real Simple‘s content. With over 2 million readers, articles cater to women from their 20s to their 60s. “We cast a pretty wide net in terms of the areas that we cover, so each one of our beats could theoretically compete with a different magazine,” said deputy editor Noelle Howey, “and we also try to pitch as much of our content as possible to as broad a range of readers as possible.”

Therefore, your best bet is to make sure your pitch has an element of universality, while keeping in mind the pub’s editorial direction. “‘Real Simple’ is the defining characteristic of the magazine,” explained Howey. “We are a service magazine presenting solutions, and the idea is to take complicated concepts and simplify them for the reader.”

For more info, read How To Pitch: Real Simple. [subscription required]