Before the crowd rushed in, I caught up with Bravolebrity Lori Zaslow in the ladies room (What can I say? I go where the news takes me ) who just wrapped her first season of Love Broker. Lori, who was with her business partner Jenn Zucher, tells me the show brought plenty of new clients looking for their soul mates and some great new business opportunities, including her new ‘love oil’ called Gravitate which is sold at Exhale Spa and a few select boutiques around town. “The show was a great experience and some great new things came our way as a result of the exposure,” Lori told me. She’ll be Katie Couric‘s guest on her new talk show on October 5. Will there be a season two of Love Broker? As they
say, stay tuned.

Diane Clehane and Andy Amill

I was joined today by publishing powerhouse Andrew Amill, vice president of Weight Watchers Media Group. As a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I’ve always found the plan works when you work it, and I love the weekly meetings which always have such an empowering, fun vibe. While their campaign with Jennifer Hudson (one of the greatest transformations ever!) has been a resounding success, Andy tells me that despite all the snipping in the tabloids about the company’s newest spokeswoman Jessica Simpson (who was Katie Couric‘s guest on her show’s premiere) is also doing great on the plan. Her first commercial touting her shedding her post-baby weight just hit the airwaves and her big ‘reveal’ will come in December. She’ll also be the cover girl for WeightWatchers Magazine‘s January/February issue. ”Both Jennifer and Jessica resonate with our members,” says Andy. Charles Barkley, who is the face and (newly slimmed down) body for the men’s program has given the company’s a “100 percent bump” on the men’s site.

Andy tells me weightwatchers.com is the fastest growing part of the company (6.2 million monthly uniques and 250 million page views) as the powers that be add more and more interactive features that keep members plugged into the program whereever they go. Later this year, a bar code scanner for smart phones will be introduced that will allow users to scan the UPC code of any supermarket food item and immediately get its point value. The perfect antidote to temptation, no doubt. “The technology the company has created that allows members to stay connected and motivated is outstanding,” says Andy.  continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But beyond that there are some interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout — she once volunteered on a Native American reservation, for example — that make the piece worth reading.

Click through to read the article, or purchase the newest issue of Vogue at a newsstand near you.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First, Arianna Huffington is accused of using a courtesan’s techniques. Then Elizabeth Spiers‘s appointment as editor of the Observer is compared to a bad marriage. And this week … Tina Brown.

To that we might also add, though she’s not an editor, New York’s Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, who has had a couple of Adweek pieces calling her top position surprising considering a lack of substantive accomplishments.

In comments under Rovzar’s question, someone (from Adweek?) pointed to a nice piece they had on Jane Pratt and one on Pilar Guzman, but Rovzar rightly pointed out that those were Q&As, not analyses.

Of course, we don’t know if Michael Wolff, Adweek‘s editor, has a problem with the ladies. Maybe Rovzar’s theory is a stretch. But we’re hard-pressed to find any explanation why it came out with yet another story on how Tina Brown is tough to work for.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

On Friday, we stopped by City Winery to check out TEDxEast, the first independently organized TED event in New York.

The focus of the afternoon event was “Developing World Ideas,” and it featured presentations by a number of speakers including Suzy Welch, Dr. Naif Al Mutawa, John Wood and GroundReport.com’s Rachel Sterne, as well as TED Conference videos like Emmanuel Jal‘s moving story of a child soldier from the TED Global 2009 conference earlier this year and performances of song and dance. In between we sipped wine and mingled with the 250 attendees.

The event sold out, and with hundreds of applicants eager for a ticket, some were turned away, co-organizer Julianne Wurm told FishbowlNY. Overall, the event was a success, with 3,500 unique viewers clicking in to its livestream. “The feedback from participants has been very positive and since it is all about their experience it would seem to have been successful,” Wurm said.

But if you missed it, never fear. Wurm, a writer and professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said she and co-organizer Edward Rashba are hoping to do another TEDxEast event in the future, if their schedules allow.

“We are hoping to do future events but this is a lot of work in addition to our regular lives,” she said. “We are going to savor the completion of this and are considering something in April but that is still to be determined.”

John Wood

More pictures after the jump

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Rome Hartman, Rachel Sterne, Michael Meyers and Scott Karp on the UGCX stage

This morning we visited mediabistro.com’s user-generated content focused conference, UGCX, to listen in on a conversation about how social media is changing the face of the newsroom.

The morning panel, moderated by “BBC World News America” executive producer Rome Hartman, featured Ground Report editor-in-chief Rachel Sterne, NowPublic co-founder Michael Meyers and Publish2 co-founder Scott Karp and conversation ranged from water-skiing squirrels to Fox News.

Sterne and Meyers talked about how user-generated journalism and informational content can change the face of reporting news, using their own models as examples of that. Both Ground Report and NowPublic use a Wikipedia type model that allows citizen journalists to publish their own work. Meyers also oversees Examiner.com, which hires expert “examiners” to write about specific topics. Karp’s company helps traditional media organizations curate social media from the Web in real time, helping reporters gather news.

The result of these new sites and tools is that “regular people, like us, or anybody, have more power to contribute to the news process,” Sterne said.

Karp pointed out another upside: traditional media organizations can quickly update or correct stories. Where once a newspaper would publish once a day, sometimes with incomplete information, now they can constantly update stories, folding information from social media into reporting done the old fashioned way. This is more important than ever, he said, since “people are following in real time.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Everything’s better when Tammy Haddad is involved, but the BBC’s Rome Hartman very much held his own in today’s opening panel about the “New Tools of the Trade’ — namely Twitter. Hartman is not a fan of Twitter. Haddad is not a fan of Twitter not making money. Also weighing in were online luminaries Rick Klein, Rachel Sterne, Jim Long, and Michael Meyers. At the end of the session, Haddad presented Hartman with a parting gift (above).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.