"Manhattan is an ever-evolving island, especially when it comes to real estate," e-mailed Ms. Dannenberg, who will serve as the new publication's CEO and publisher. "In the days of Henry James, the social set lived in what is now known as Greenwich Village and from there they moved to Edith Wharton's Chelsea and onward to the Upper East Side.  [But] we are no longer defined by where we live. We are not an Upper East Side magazine, but a magazine for the affluent household, not defined by neighborhood or by age but by mutual interests and similar demographics. What Manhattan needs is a magazine written and styled for the affluent, stylish, intelligent and savvy man or woman who can and does only exist in New York."

The new publication will cover social events, luxury style and New York personalities. "We will be at every movie premiere, black tie charity benefit, hot night club opening and in the front row of every fashion show from Alexander Wang to Oscar de la Renta to tell who said what to who, and why they said it," said Mr. Davis, via email. "News breaks by the tweet in Manhattan, so expect updates on the digital horizon as well as print. We are fascinated with what's next, whether it be a hotel (we already have the insider scoop on The Standard's new East Village location), to a handbag, to the girl of the second that has the style world swooning. We will keep you talking and guessing all year, and all night long."

"The three of us are thrilled to be given the opportunity to create and entirely unique and unexpected magazine," added Ms. Burns, via email.

Ms. Dannenberg, Mr. Davis and Ms. Burns are all Manhattan natives and Ms. Dannenberg pointed out that they're all ostensibly part of the demographic they're also targeting. "Peter Davis is a Buckley boy, has over 15,000 Facebook followers, and has written for every prestigious magazine on the planet," said Ms. Dannenberg. "He is always the most popular man at the party. Cricket Burns is herself a Sacred Heart girl with two Sacred Heart girls of her own. She has worked at Harper's Baazar, Seventeen, Quest, Luxury Finder.com. and AVENUE magazine."

Ms. Dannenberg spent over 23 years at AVENUE with breaks in-between to work as Publisher at start-ups Manhattan File,and Luxury Finder.com and in-between, she was Publisher at Quest.

"I'm excited to work with a team that has already demonstrated success," Mr. Kushner said, "And I look forward to seeing what I know will be a creative, smart and stylish publication."

Mr. Vola and his fiancé, Jennifer Lee, a real estate broker in Manhattan, didn’t sleep that night. At 7:15 that morning, they drank Red Bulls and excitedly drove the hour and a half from Sayville to the Hamptons to look at how their little magazine was doing. They hoped to see someone picking it up. Maybe even reading it.

When Mr. Vola and Ms. Lee arrived in East Hampton, all the magazines were gone. It was the same situation in Bridgehampton and Southampton. Mr. Vola, a large, bald, friendly-faced man who grew up in East New York, reading about high society in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, was thrilled.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow, we got really well received!’” he said. “Everyone must really like it!”

Then one of his writers, Tony Vargas, stopped by the Southampton Inn—the hotel’s new restaurant, OSO, was reviewed in the issue—and was told that someone had come in and picked up the stacks of Hamptonite. Mr. Vola started hearing the same thing from store clerks in East Hampton.

“You see where you dropped your magazine there?” one told him. “Well, who’s there now?” The stack of magazines contained the June issue of Social Life, with Rolling Stone scion Alexandra Richards on the cover. Mr. Vola’s distributor, Keith Husain, who works for Green Heart Trucking, told The Observer that he had noticed a “dark blue or black van” with an older gentleman at the wheel following him around while he was dropping off the magazines, but hadn’t thought anything of it.

Clearly, Mr. Vola had no idea what he was getting into.

THE FREE SOCIETY MAGAZINES THAT YOU'LL find in wire baskets outside Book Hampton in Southampton or Tiffany and Co. on Main Street in East Hampton—Social Life, Hamptons, Hampton Sheet, the recently defunct Hamptons Style (published by Dan’s Papers) and even Mr. Vola’s Hamptonite—are like the jostling little cousins of Town and Country and W. They all look pretty identical, with gushy profiles and page after page of flattering party photos. They also reflect the very thing that society likes to impose on itself: a certain caste system. Which is perhaps why so many of these magazines have managed to co-exist: If you increase the number of party pictures, more people can get into them. And the only people who find that objectionable are the ones who remember when getting attention was a more elusive thing.

“They’re kind of like yearbooks for the summer,” said socialite Minnie Mortimer (sister of Topper; sister-in-law of Tinsley). “You flip through and you’re like, ‘Remember that?’ And then you see everybody who was there.”

“It’s the first thing people look for when they come to town,” said Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the editor of Niche Media’s Hamptons and its city counterpart, Gotham. “They’re looking for their friends, they’re looking for themselves.”

“Every Hamptons publication during the summer is very important because that’s what everyone is reading,” said Lizzie Grubman, the publicist (whose SUV-powered brush with infamy eight years ago isn’t likely something you’d read about in any of these publications).

But what, exactly, is everyone reading? 

On a recent Thursday, the society chronicler David Patrick Columbia sat down at his corner table and ordered a beet soup and two cobs of buttered corn at Swifty’s on the Upper East Side. The waitress brought over his usual iced tea without asking. “I got my eyes done,” an elderly lady in a pastel green suit and straw hat was telling her lunch companion at the table nearby. “Twice!” Mr. Columbia nodded hello to her.

Mr. Columbia moved to New York in the early ’90s. He took a job writing a column called New York Social Diary (now his Web site) for Quest magazine; then edited Avenue, its competitor; and in 2001 returned to Quest and Q, Quest’s quarterly fashion offshoot, with the honorary title of editor in chief. (Elizabeth Meigher, the daughter of publisher Chris Meigher, technically runs the daily operations at Q, and Georgina Schaeffer is executive editor at Quest.)

The formula for a society magazine, according to Mr. Columbia, has always been rather simple: a social column and a generous dose of party pictures at the front and a couple of profiles in the back. Quest and Avenue, Mr. Columbia asserts, are the authentic society magazines because they are put together by members of the world they cover.

“The Meighers, for example, are part of the New York and Palm Beach society,” said Mr. Columbia, who himself grew up middle-class in Massachusetts. “Elizabeth and Georgina grew up in New York and went to private schools here. All their friends belong to this world.

“With the great bubble of prosperity, you had all these aspirants to that world,” Mr. Columbia continued. “But since they are not part of it, they’ve actually created their own world—a satellite world which they call society, which it absolutely is not. They’re trying to create a hierarchy based on publicity, which is something that follows hierarchy—it doesn’t precede it.”

And he is not optimistic about the aspirants’ chances.

“They’ll be wiped out,” said Mr. Columbia. He was sinking his teeth into the buttered corn. “They’re almost all going to go.”

WHEN THE OBSERVER FIRST REACHED Justin Mitchell, the publisher of Social Life, to ask about the case of the disappearing Hamptonites, he said the fledgling magazine came out and folded. (“Of course he’d tell you that,” Mr. Vola said later.)

Social Life’s editor is a thin, pouty-lipped young woman named Devorah Rose, who has had guest spots on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York and NYC Prep.

“The whole sabotage rumor is hilarious,” Ms. Rose said. “Because literally we were so busy planning a dinner, hand-holding our talent and hosting an event that there is no time to sabotage anyone else!”

The day Mr. Vola found his magazines stolen, Ms. Rose and Mr. Mitchell were indeed preparing to host a soirée, at Solé East in Montauk. The magazine maintains two estates in the Hamptons: one in Watermill, where the parties take place; the other in Southampton, where they put up the advertisers that come to the parties.

“It’s completely fabricated—a total lie,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Vola’s story. He suggested the incident might’ve been concocted to get attention from Page Six, where it was duly reported the week after.

“It was like Olivia Palermo versus Tinsley,” Ms. Rose chimed in. “They were trying to Olivia Palermo us!”

Yet John Wegorzewski, a press representative for the Southampton Inn, confirmed that a few hours after Mr. Vola’s magazines were dropped off, the hotel’s employees noticed them missing, replaced by copies of Social Life. He added that a colleague later reported copies of Hamptonite found in Sag Harbor and Southampton dumpsters.

Whoever is responsible for this malfeasance, it’s just the latest twist in a larger narrative of competition that has long existed among society magazines. 

Joan Jedell, a former commercial photography agent, has been snapping pictures of celebrities, billionaires and their wives in the Hamptons for almost 12 years for her magazine, Hampton Sheet.

“I am a survivor!” Ms. Jedell told The Observer. “There are so many copycats. I was the first person who started the whole thing with the party photos, and then Jason Binn bought Hamptons magazine and now he believes he took over.”

One time, Ms. Jedell ran into Mr. Binn on the steps of a store in East Hampton.

“He always kisses me hello,” said Ms. Jedell. “But then he slipped my magazine into his as if to say, you should dissolve into mine.” (Mr. Binn didn’t recall doing this.)

Still, she holds Mr. Binn in higher esteem than the most recent arrivistes. “Social Life doesn’t interest me,” Ms. Jedell said, “because it’s like, ‘Who are these people?’”

Another new magazine, she thought, just smelled bad. “Like maybe it was mosquito poison.”

Ms. Greeven Cuomo, sister-in-law of Andrew, detached herself from the fray, but did remark: “The problem with the other ones is there is no regularity. Is it every month? Every other week? It’s very confusing.”

She told an anecdote about the actress Drew Barrymore getting shot for the cover of Gotham, then requesting to be on the cover of Hamptons instead.

“I said, ‘Ha! O.K.!’” Ms. Greeven Cuomo said.

According to Ms. Grubman, who admitted she is a “dear friend” of Mr. Binn’s, the taxonomy of these magazines goes like this: Avenue, Quest and Q feature an older society set and the many charity balls they attend; Hamptons and Gotham are more celebrity-oriented but still devote a fair amount of pictures to society; Hampton Sheet is mostly party photos; Social Life is younger and covers a sector of society that is more aspirational; and Hamptonite, well, it’s not clear yet.

One of Ms. Grubman’s clients is the model Jessica Hart, who was on the cover of Social Life’s June issue.  She did not suggest Ms. Hart as a feature to Mr. Binn.

“It depends on what level of celebrity they’re at,” said Ms. Grubman of her pitch process.

ON A RECENT SUNDAY, Minnie Mortimer was at a dinner in Montauk to celebrate the fall collection of her clothing line. Kelly Bensimon, an editor at large for Gotham and Hamptons, was also present.

Ms. Mortimer proclaimed the two society magazines her favorite. “Cristina grew up here so she really knows everybody and not just like studied them and knows who they are,” she said. “She’s friends with so many people that she really understands the vibe and the feeling of being out here.”

Indeed, Ms. Cuomo is not just an editor—she’s also a subject, this month on the cover of Avenue, her ostensible competitor, which lists socialite Debbie Bancroft and Lacey Tisch-Sidney as contributing writers. Socialites Barbara Bancroft and Gillian Hearst Simonds are contributors to Q. Social Life has publicist Kristian Laliberte listed as an editor, but then ranks his social status inside. Hamptonite’s cover girl, Ms. De Lesseps, is a contributing writer. And—perhaps taking their cue from Vanity Fair—Ms. Cuomo’s Hamptons has Christie Brinkley and Katie Lee Joel; Gotham Damon Dash and Judith Giuliani.

“When Pamela [Gross, Avenue’s editor] asked me to be on the cover, I asked her, ‘Don’t you see this as competition?’” Ms. Cuomo recalled. “And she said, ‘No, we only cover society. You cover affluence.’”

What does that mean, exactly?

“Affluence is someone with money and the means,” Ms. Cuomo replied. “Society is a very exclusive, elite group of individuals who do or do not have the means and carry the weight of tradition and family rooted in the community.”

There are, of course, advantages to having a magazine that is written by the very people it covers. Earlier this year, when Tinsley and Topper Mortimer were rumored to be splitting up, every New York publication immediately requested a Tinsley profile. The only magazine that got it was Avenue.

“Tinsley Mortimer is a very good idea,” said Mr. Columbia. “She’s a good-looking girl in a classic sense—she’s the blue-eyed, blond white girl. And now, she’s been around long enough that they also assign personality to her about her marriage and her husband.” 

Of course, in this economic climate, even magazines shot through with blue blood are experiencing red ink.

Advertising for Mr. Binn’s magazines is down more than 30 percent, and there were recently layoffs at Niche Media.

As for Mr. Vola: The fate of Hamptonite’s second issue, scheduled to come out Labor Day weekend, is still uncertain; he’d like to find a private investor but doesn’t know where to look.

“I try not to think about it,” said Mr. Vola, who is still working as a plumber. “I’m not going to give up. I put everything I have into it. I’m hoping that by next summer it can turn a profit. But for right now, I just hope it pays for itself, because I am not a bottomless pit.”

ialeksander@observer.com, jkoblin@observer.com