"Reported" by Keith Kelly in today's NY Post:

S.I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Advance Publications, which includes Conde Nast, Fairchild, Parade and newspaper and cable-television holdings, was spotted in the Random House Inc. headquarters Friday.

That prompted some wags to wonder if the Newhouse family, which sold the Random House publishing group to Bertelsmann for an estimated $1.2 billion in 1998, was interested in buying back the book publisher.

But no such luck.

"No, we're not buying it back. Si and [Si's wife] Victoria were invited over by [Random House worldwide CEO] Peter Olson to get a tour of the new Random House headquarters now that it is completed," a spokeswoman for Newhouse said. "Si and Victoria are both great fans of architecture."

A Random House insider said, "I guess if they were trying to buy it back, they wouldn't have been paraded around the building."

Si did get a new book from Olson, "Conspiracy of Fools" by Kurt Eichenwald, due out next month.