We’re still recovering from last week’s A-list on steroids pep rally for the Giants (it was like shooting fish in a barrel — thanks, Harvey Weinstein!), but today it’s back to Michael’s for another heaping helping of the power lunch crowd. The scene was dominated by spin meisters of every stripe, social swans and money men. (Is the expense account for middle management making a comeback? Discuss.) Representing the celebrity squad was Star Jones who is always fun for a quick, dishy chat.

I was joined today by House Beautiful editor-in-chief Newell Turner, the magazine’s new food contributor Gabrielle Hamilton, who is the owner/chef of Prune, and publicist Michael McGraw. Newell, who usually eats at his desk, decided he may have to rethink his lunch plans when he spied so many Hearst colleagues sprinkled around the room. Indeed.

As a longtime reader of the magazine, I told Newell that its monthly features on the best paint colors for different types of spaces were indispensable to me when I took on the daunting task of painting the interior of our new home last year. Color, or more precisely, how to choose the best ones to enhance your living space, is one of the guiding principles of the magazine. The March ‘Green’ issue will offer a myriad of takes on how to live with the soothing shade. “Our deep-dive color issues always result in a lot of reader response,” Newell told me. He didn’t know what to expect when he devoted an entire issue to pink but was pleasantly surprised. “We had less complaints about it than when we did our ’Blue’ issue.”  In the April issue, readers will have the chance to pick “America’s Favorite Paint Color” from 10 options in a contest on HouseBeautiful.com. The results will be published in September.

Newell, who became top editor in 2010, decided to focus more on American designers, because “American decorating has come into its own despite the economy.” Readers seem to agree. Last year’s June and July-August issues had the highest newsstand sales since November 2002.

Newell recently brought Gabrielle on board as House Beautiful’s food contributor because, he says, “I liked her sensibility and her appreciation for good, simple food.” For her part, Gabrielle, a self-taught cook, has never fallen victim to precious, of-the-moment trends in foods. The voted Best Chef  in New York City in 2010 by the James Beard foundation, Gabrielle attributes her successful run at Prune, which she opened in 1999, to “luck” but then said, “I work very, very hard.” Somehow, she’s found time to write pieces for The New Yorker and The New York Times among many other outlets and had her book,  Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef  (Great title!) land on the Times bestseller list. “People have become obsessed with food — how it looks, how it’s prepared. Look at all the shows there are now on food preparation. I wanted to include it in the magazine in a fresh, new way,” says Newell. “Gabrielle is the perfect person to do that.”

These days, Newell is also working to develop more digital content for the mag’s website and enhanced digital edition available on iTunes. He added videos featuring the magazine’s staff in October. When developing content for that platform, he told me he guards against anything looking “too polished” because “looking a bit rougher” online lends an air of authenticity. Interestingly enough, he also revealed there is only a 7 percent crossover between House Beautiful’s print reader (the target demo is women in their 40s and 50s) and the digital reader who is younger and hipper. (Don’t shoot me; I’m just the messenger). “It’s the same content but a different voice. The digital tone is younger and a bit more irreverent.”

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. The ladies who lunched: Debbie Bancroft, Anne Hearst, Patty Smythe and Laurie Waters

2. Investigation Discovery’s president and GM, Henry Schleiff, and Kerry Kennedy

3.  ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong, who stopped by our table to say hello to his old pal Newell Turner and deliver an unexpected little treat to me. This ‘little birdie’ says thanks!

4. Jacqui Safra (Jean Doumanian‘s husband, in case you didn’t know)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

Those corporate bean counters that put a crimp in expense accounts all over town must be loosening up a bit, because it was SRO today at Michael’s. A slew of magazine folks (See, print isn’t dead after all!), media mavens and the requisite flock of social swans were packed into the dining room. Jimmy Buffett showed up half way through lunch, and the place was so crowded I couldn’t even make out where he landed.

I had a dishy lunch today with MarketWatch columnist Jon Friedman. (Sorry, but most of the good stuff was off the record). Jon, who has toiled for USA Today, BusinessWeek, and Bloomberg, has been writing an online media column since 2005 that’s a must-read for the Michael’s crowd. These days he churns out an average of three columns a week. His recent piece on whether Brian Williams is the new Walter Cronkite generated plenty of buzz and sent HuffPost commenters into overdrive. Jon’s take: Williams is fascinating because, even after getting “the job of a lifetime,” he’s “the rarest case of success because he’s still ambitious.” We both agreed that Brian really came into his own once he loosened up a little off the set and let audiences in on his dry sense of humor and self-deprecating wit through appearances on The Tonight Show and SNL. “A classic!” says Jon.

Earlier this year, Jon launched a weekly online broadcast of Media Matters where he talks shop with media bigwigs. Hearst’s Cathie Black is scheduled for the June 21 broadcast. We’re tuning in.

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. The ‘Imber Gang’: Dr. Gerald Imber, Jerry Della Femina, Andy Bergman and Michael Kramer. (Jeff Greenfield was absent.) I stopped by their table to chat with the guys about the fun piece in the Times‘ Style section last week covering their legendary lunches in the dining room. “It was great,” said the good doctor, who emerged as the star of the piece with some nice plugs for his latest book, Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted. Give that publicist a raise!

2. Peter Brown

3. Nick Simuneck (Terry Allen Kramer‘s hubby, in case you didn’t know)

4. The New York Observer‘s Jared Kushner

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

Sometimes it’s the random celebrity sighting like recent visitors Michael Douglas and Glenn Close that gives Michael’s that jolt of adrenaline during our weekly Wednesday visits. And sometimes it’s the sheer power quotient of the dining room that gets our attention. As one regular told me: “I can always tell who is looking for money and who is writing the checks when I come here. It’s the best business scorecard around.”

Today I was joined by power publicist Catherine Saxton, who knows just about everybody but never spins and tells, and Richard Smullen, co-founder and CEO of Beezag and AdGenesis. We had a fascinating chat about the ‘wild west’ of Internet advertising and how absolutely maddening those unwanted pop-up ads are. When Richard launched Beezag last November with Laurent Alhadeff, they created a different kind of online advertising environment which they’ve cleverly coined as ‘Me-commerce.’ Richard explains beezag’s consumer-centric marketing concept this way: “It’s about relevancy and reward. Consumers watch entertaining branded content and video ads they love and get discounts they deserve because they’re thanked with special offers and incentives from advertisers.”

By matching brands to the consumers who want to hear about them, Richard reports that beezag delivers clients an average of 25 percent click-through rates. The members-only, opt-in multi-platform community has some pretty serious brainpower behind it. Richard tells me his ‘executive council’ of advisors includes Gerry Byrne, Wenda Millard, Michael Kassan and Bob Friedman. For someone who just landed in New York from South Africa in January of last year, Richard seems to have figured out pretty quickly how to make things happen in Manhattan. We’re impressed.

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Boy wonder Jared Kushner with his dad Charles, presiding over a table full of movers and shakers. The New York Observer owner must have had some big deal brewing, because he stepped outside several times to take a very important call. Or perhaps it was just the missus, Ivanka Trump, asking what to make for dinner.

2. My friend and PR maven extraordinaire Lisa Linden and former Bush administration advisor Charles Millard, celebrating the launch of Charles’ new venture specializing in pension funds and financial services, Cardinal Advisors.

3. Catherine Saxton, Richard Smullen and yours truly

4. LVMH’s David Anton

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

I love when the stars align just right on a Wednesday at Michael’s, and I get to chat with a star I’ve always admired. I hit the jackpot today when I spotted Glenn Close in the dining room. Just last week, I’d seen Glenn on Oprah Winfrey‘s Oscar special where she and Michael Douglas did their first joint television interview about Fatal Attraction. “It was great fun,” Glenn, who looked positively radiant, told me. “We’d never done that before and it brought it all back for us.”

I don’t think anyone who saw the iconic thriller (nominated for six Academy Awards, including a best actress nod for Glenn) could ever forget her portrayal of book editor Alex Forrest. While audiences pegged Glenn’s character as a home wrecker and bunny boiler, the actress, after doing tons of research for the part, saw her much differently. “I never thought of her as a villain,” she says. Instead, she viewed the character as an unstable woman driven to madness over an affair gone wrong. Audiences made it the second highest grossing film of 1987, and it became a cautionary tale for men everywhere who thought twice, at least for five minutes, about having that one night stand. “We had no idea we were going to be part of a social phenomenon,” says Glenn, who happened to be lunching with Stanley Jaffe, the film’s producer. “But it was right at the time when there was a lot of feminist anger, and we touched something that was right below the surface.” I’ll say.

I was joined today by Myrna Blyth, who after spending two decades as editor-in-chief of Ladies Home Journal and later launched MORE, is now at the helm of BettyConfidential.com. (Full disclosure: I write a parenting blog for the site). Since launching two years ago, the site, which was co-founded by Deborah Perry Piscione and Shaun Marsh, now ranks seventh in comScore’s top ten in the Beauty/Fashion/Style category and was recently nominated by MIN for editorial excellence for their Best of the Web Awards — competing with Conde Nast and The Daily Beast. “What’s great about being online is that you can talk to women about what they want to talk about when they want to talk about it,” says Myrna. While so many in print are bemoaning the decline of magazines, Myrna doesn’t have time for all the whining: “The web is great. You can’t go backwards and you can’t fight it, so you’ve got to get with it.”

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Today show co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb with Sunny Luciani. The gals ducked out early for their weekly Broadway outing.

2. Michael Fuchs and a blonde mystery gal

3. ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong and Paula Zahn

4. Jonathan Wald and The Financial Times‘ Chrystia Freeland. I told Jonathan that his Facebook posts on Sunday had reassured me that Cablevision and WABC-TV would, in fact, come to their senses and restore service so that their 3.1 million viewers could watch the Oscars. “It will be settled in time,” he predicted when things didn’t look good later that afternoon, and lo and behold, the show appeared 13 minutes into the telecast. Whew!

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

It’s a lo-cal edition of ‘Lunch’ today. After all, you can’t expect to indulge in a diet rich in celebs and boldface names every week. We’ve spoiled you, I know. (By the way, if you’re looking to chat with some big-time media mavens and news makers, don’t miss the first TVNewser Summit on March 10.) After settling in at the bar, I went searching for tasty tidbits and found some of the regulars ready to serve up some interesting morsels. Men’s Health honcho David Zinczenko, who was praised in Keith Kelly‘s column in today’s New York Post as “a winner” and “the face” of Rodale, returned to the dining room after a long absence. “I’ve been having a lot more lunches at my desk,” Dave told me. Fresh off a round of appearances for his latest Eat This, Not That blockbuster book, Dave was lunching with Michael Caruso, the former editor-in-chief of Men’s Journal now with OpenGate Capital, the equity fund that recently bought TV Guide. No one multitasks like Dave, who was thrilled to show me the April issues of Men’s Health and its increasingly successful sister, Women’s Health, which boasts its first-ever beauty ‘flip cover.’ Dave is thrilled with new-ish hire Michele Promaulayko as editor for Women’s Health and was singing her praises with what she’d done with her first issue. “She’s already a star,” says Dave.

As luck would have it, Michele was right across the room lunching with The Food Network’s Giada De Laurentiis so I went over and introduced myself. Michele told me she was “thrilled” to be with the title, and we chatted about the always interesting experience of interviewing and shooting celebs and dished over what makes for a great fashion story. I told her I loved the piece on dressing for work. It looked terrific and oh-so-chic. We both agreed service has its place, but the pictures have to dazzle. And in her premiere issue, they do. “Fashion cred is important,” Michele told me. You’ve got it.

At the bar, there was plenty of conversation among Michael McCarty and his staff about the design for the new label for the upcoming release of his 2005 Pinot Noir from The Malibu Vineyard Rambla Pacifico. It’s his first since replanting in 2000 (in case you were wondering). We cast our vote to stay with the classic but modern look of the 2004 label. Sommelier Seth Liebman tells me the talk also turned to wine yesterday when Jack Kliger, an avid collector, wanted to enjoy a glass of 1970 Les Forts de Latour and didn’t want the rest of the bottle of the impressive vintage to go to waste, so he graciously offered some to director Stephen Daldry. Cheers!

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Steve Rubenstein presiding over a table of movers and shakers including Marty Bandier

2. Peter Brown with another distinguished gent (Update: That distinguished gent was New York Daily News editor-in-chief and deputy publisher Martin Dunn)

3. ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong and Lisa Caputo

4. David Zinczenko and Michael Caruso

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

With the dog days of summer upon us, the usual suspects at Michael’s are soldiering on over their Cobb salads until it’s time to take off those last few weeks of the month to the Hamptons, Nantucket or some other sun-filled spot far from the madding crowd. In the meantime, the random celebrity sighting is keeping things interesting. Word of illusionist JB Benn‘s sleight of hand tricks that kept the crowd bedazzled last week must have gotten around the magician’s union because my spies told me that David Blaine walked in without a reservation yesterday and was bending quarters for everybody’s amusement. Just thought you’d like to know.

I was lunching today with publishing powerhouse turned Internet entrepreneur Joni Evans, whose five-month old site Wowowow.com is going great guns. Joni, who is wow’s CEO, launched the site with pals Liz Smith, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Lesley Stahl for “self-assured women who are a bit too old to care what everybody thinks.” This month, Joni kicked off “The Book Party” with Judith Martin (Miss Manners) reading a collection of the classics. “It’s been incredibly well-received,” she says, and plans are in the works to expand the vertical in all sorts of interesting ways. And that’s not all — Joni tells me in the not-so-distant future the site will introduce a new fashion maven into the mix to cover style and a health vertical ‘Medicine Ball.’ The site’s content is popping up on MSN.com, Fox.com and Yahoo’s Shine. For more dish about Joni and her newfound career, check out her interview with me for our “So What Do You Do?” series coming next month …

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Charlie Rose and an unidentifed young blonde gal

2. Peter Brown

3. Jonathan Tisch and John Sykes

4. Michael Fuchs and Peggy Siegal

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

— DIANE CLEHANE

Bill Clinton isn’t the only one who is getting a little testy about the endlessly long and increasingly tabloid-y battle for the democratic nomination. At today’s lunch, politics were on the menu as supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took sides over their Cobb Salads. Our unofficial dining room poll finds Obama holding a commanding lead. Producer Joan Gelman — between commuting from Canada where her show Triple Sensation is going great guns — has taken to handing out her very own campaign buttons. “I do one for every election,” she told us. Her latest creation got lots of attention at a party at Tina Brown‘s recently when ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong arrived wearing one. It boasts a picture of President George Bush and John McCain in an embrace and is emblazoned with the words — Four More Years. Here’s the punch line: There’s a question mark at the end of the phrase. Joan was handing them out today (thanks!) and people were gobbling them up like mad. A few tables down, the exchange at David Patrick Columbia ‘s regular perch between David (a Hillary booster — “I just don’t know why she is the subject of so much hate”), Charlie Scheips and Terry Allen Kramer (decidedly not a fan) rivaled the dust ups on Sunday morning on The McLaughlin Group. But it was all in good fun. Isn’t it always?

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. One big happy family: Michael’s wife Kim McCarty and kids Clancy and Chas with Martin von Haselberg and daughter Sophie. The families’ friendship goes back 30 years, says Michael. To wit: a painting of Martin (done by Kim) hangs in the reception area of the restaurant. There was plenty to celebrate all around: Clancy just graduated from NYU last week, Chas is starting his first year at Bard and Sophie is at Yale. Impressive! We were hoping that Martin’s wife — none other than Bette Midler — would join the party but, said Michael, she was rehearsing for her eagerly anticipated Las Vegas show (the family leaves for the desert tomorrow). Knock ‘em dead, Bette!

2. Peter Brown.

3. ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong and yours truly. The Mayor was the subject of a glowing New York Times piece last week which bore more than a passing resemblance to this column. But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, isn’t it?

4. Phil Smith and agent extraordinaire Ron Konecky.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The lineup card:

Table 1. Peter Brown and four guests, including a stunner of a blonde.

2. John Tisch.

3. Webby Award chairman Gerry Byrne in a Webby-ready casual suit, and Katherine Oliver.

4. Allen & Co. fortune heit Terry Kramer and Margo McNabb. Stilettos!

5. Bob Friedman and Stanley Jaffe.

6. Steve Cohen and CBS weather dude Dave Price, who wore sunglasses (hopefully prescription) for the majority of the meal and dropped a purple pen that was quickly returned by Michael’s staff. Sitting at the adjacent table? Al Roker, Price’s nemesis.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s the rundown on who was dining and dishing today:

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a group of unidentified handlers and executives. The NBA hall-of-famer cut a towering figure (he’s 7’2″ after all) as he made his way to his table stopping to shake Al Roker‘s hand en route. Sporting a Tonight Show bomber jacket and penny loafers, he arrived with a copy of his new book, On The Shoulders of Giants, due out at the end of this month from Simon & Schuster, tucked under his arm. The retired L.A. Laker, who has the reputation of being something of a gentle and generous giant himself, writes movingly of Harlem’s renaissance in the upcoming tome. Sounds interesting …

2. Gerry Byrne and guests.

3. MTV’s John Sykes, a hip looking dark-haired beauty and an unidentified gentleman.

4. Norman Pearlstine, and we’re told, Fairchild’s Ed Nardozza.

5. Stanley Jaffe.

6. Today‘s Al Roker, his producer Jackie Olensky and our good pal Today show flack Lauren Kapp. The glowing new mom of two-month-old Oliver Darcy Wraps managed to tear herself away from her bouncing baby boy for the afternoon to catch up with her pals. She showed Diane Clehane, today’s lunchtime chronicler, lots of adorable pics of her bundle of joy. (We’re so impressed you’re out and about already!) Lauren, still on maternity leave, is back at her Today perch on March 1.

7. Vogue‘s Andre Leon Talley and Manolo Blahnik’s main man, George Malkemus. ALT caused quite a stir yesterday at 55th & Fifth when he arrived with newly-minted superstar (and sure to be Oscar-nominated) Jennifer Hudson. We guessing Ms. Hudson is in line to get the full Vogue treatment in an upcoming issue now that she’s arrived on the A list due to her shattering performance in Dreamgirls. We’re also thinking that Andre will step in and style the plus-size glamour gal for the red carpet as he did for Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) at last year’s Oscars.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.