Brown.

Is it happening again?

The bad time went by many names: the meltdown ... the shakeout ... the reckoning ... the death of print... or sometimes, simply, “trying to freelance.”

Old-timers can still remember it—how, amid the frozen winter of 2008, the corridors of once unshakable media empires ran red with ink as the insertion orders dried up and crumbled into dust. Aeron chairs grew wet with tears. Editors were cashiered, contract writers flung overboard like chum. Soon you could see them all over Midtown: the sleek black Town Cars sitting idle on cinder blocks, rusting in the bleak unforgiving sun.

It was terrifying. The death knell—a merciless, unrelenting Twitter feed titled “The Media Is Dying”—sounded on a daily basis, sometimes hourly. Staffers watched in fear as the ghouls of HR, fingernails dabbed in scarlet, inched ever closer.

No publication was spared. The New York Times cut 100 newsroom jobs. Time Inc., cut 600 and then, unsated, came back for more. At Condé, 180 souls were lost. Issues bleached on newsstands as replacements failed to arrive. Gone were Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride, Radar, Vibe, Portfolio, Blender, Home, Country Home, Metropolitan Home, O at Home, Cottage Living, Southern Accents, Hallmark, Best Life, Golf for Women, Travel + Leisure Golf, Domino, Teen, Cosmo Girl, Playgirl, Quick & Simple, Men’s Vogue, PC Magazine.

Poof.

Graydon Carter was reduced to waiting in line in the Condé cafeteria—Frank Gehry’s suddenly funereal Windex wonderland—an industry titan contemplating garlic-free stir-fry and make-your-own salads, trapezoidal tray in hand. Flower deliveries stopped cold. The devil could barely afford Prada.

Christmas parties were summarily canceled, dancing on graves having been deemed unseemly and expensive. Throughout the industry, a sobering sadness fell. Gone even were the days of schadenfreude; survivor’s guilt was all that remained. There was talk, endless talk, about the future of the industry and how to adapt to the changing world. There were lessons to learn.

But then, ad sales bounced back. Companies started hiring again. Mr. Carter opened Monkey Bar. Things may not have been as lavish as they’d been in the glory days, but they were better. Better was the operative word—it made it possible to forget. A collective amnesia settled in. The storm was over, and the sunshine was so very pleasant. Yes, media is a shaky industry, people would ruefully acknowledge. The future is digital, that much was obvious. iPad apps became de rigueur, but the investment was halfhearted. Websites were relaunched, then re-relaunched, then more or less ignored.

Things are fine now, people said. Let’s focus on the next deadline.

The reprieve has been sweet, but will it last? Lately there have been some uneasy rumblings, a disturbance in the Force, small but unmistakable indications that the past is catching up with us. The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s bold foray into the tablet future, laid off 50 a few months back. Condé Nast just let 60 staffers go after announcing that all its magazines needed to slash 5 percent from next year’s budget. Most had already had to cut 10 percent over the summer. Hearst is reorganizing the shelter titles, but it’s hard to take shelter anywhere when there are cracks in the foundation.

“We’ve gone through a period of treading water, but now it’s crunch time, and there will be lots more of these,” said Paul Armstrong, who writes the “The Media Is Dying” Twitter feed. Although Mr. Armstrong continued tweeting through the good times, his dispatches were mostly about innovation and other happy things. Now he is once again the angel of death.

Last week, Tina Brown announced that Newsweek would cease printing a physical magazine in December. The cracks are getting harder and harder to ignore.

“We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it,” Ms. Brown wrote in a Daily Beast post. Transitioning ... Sounds painless, doesn’t it? Like shedding one’s corporeal vessel and just floating up to the clouds ...

“We remain committed to Newsweek and to the journalism that it represents,” she continued, reassuringly. “This decision is not about the quality of the brand or the journalism—that is as powerful as ever. It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution.”

But had anybody really learned anything in the intervening years? Newsweek and the Daily Beast merged in 2010—a marriage of convenience that was never very convenient at all.

Newsweek struggled during the two years under Ms. Brown. There were misfires like September’s “Muslim Rage” cover, the “First Gay President” cover and the “crazy eyes Bachman cover,” and fan fiction imagining Princess Diana alive at 50. Just last week, a six-page cover article asserted that heaven is indeed real. The strategy might have gotten the magazine some publicity—indeed, mocking the Newsweek cover became something of a media sport—but it didn’t sell enough copies of a magazine that relied almost entirely on subscriptions. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast began to suffer, becoming just another good-enough aggregator that spent an awful lot of time covering the royal family. “Read This, Skip That” was the Beast’s motto. Over time, we began to skip it all.

Try as Ms. Brown did to put an upbeat spin on the news that there would be no more Newsweek, she could not avoid the unavoidable fact that there wasn’t room or money for all her employees in the exciting digital future.

“Regrettably we anticipate staff reductions and the streamlining of our editorial and business operations both here in the U.S. and internationally,” she wrote.

Now, once again, there is fear and paranoia and silence.

Hold onto your K-Cups; it’s probably just beginning.

“We are certainly going to see more of this,” said Reed Phillips, managing partner and co-founder of DeSilva & Phillips, a media banking firm. “It’s a product of the downturn and the transition to digital. But most publications will transition in a more gradual way.”

The hope, of course, is that magazines will figure out how to bring in revenues with digital before they have to kill print. But sources working on the digital side at various media companies privately express doubt that there is really a substantial commitment to apps and websites, despite the easy enthusiasm.

“Magazines can ‘survive’ by going all-digital, but, like Newsweek,will find that they can only justify a small staff, given far reduced revenues,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst. “It’s a downward spiral.”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and iPad apps don’t monetize themselves.

“Time is running out faster on the print products than magazine publishers anticipated, and their tablet products, readers and advertisers aren’t yet ready to replace that print,” Mr. Doctor added. Thanks, Doc.

Newsweek Global may well work. It probably won’t. But either way, the magazine industry should take note. Unless the Mayans were right about 2012, there probably isn’t much time.

The New York Times Company will get a cool $100 million in net profit for their interests in Indeed.com, the job search site, reports Reuters. Japanese executive search firm, Recruit Co Ltd., will acquire the website.

This comes after yesterday’s announcement that The New York Times Company had finalized the sale of About.com to Barry Diller’s IAC for $300 million in cash. That adds up to a nice bit of change.Of course, The New York Times Company bought The About Group for slightly more than $400 million dollars back in 2005. But to look on the bright side - now the Times Company has some money to play around with.

“’In a news release, the company said it planned to use the after-tax proceeds, about $290 million, for what it described as ‘general corporate purposes,’ which means it could be used for anything,” Christine Haugheny pointed out yesterday in the Times'' MediaDecoder Blog.

Anything?

The New York Times said that they have decided to sell off the investments and assets in order to focus on the newspaper and website.

Of course, if you are a New York Times union member in the middle of contract negotiations... well, that's a whole other story.

XXL Goes XL: Multiple sources familiar with the situation told The Observer that hip-hop magazine XXL is cutting back to "XL" (figuratively, but also, kind of literally). No, it won't be changing its name, but the 15-year-old magazine will be trimming down its publication schedule from nine to to six issues a year. It's another tough blow to music media in recent weeks, coming on the heels of the recent BuzzMedia acquisition of Spin (and subsequent layoffs that hit 11 of that magazine's 36 staffers). Along with the reduction in yearly newsstand appearances, XXL also experienced cutbacks on the editorial side, having hedged two staffers from the magazine recently.

XXL’s publisher Dennis Page indeed confirmed the newsstand cutback to six issues, as well as the staff cuts, but went on to explain that there would be no further layoffs there: "We're pretty much set for quite a while, but it is a rough environment. There's a big move to digital," but, he added, "we're still very much a newsstand publisher. We're still the number one selling music magazine (single copy) on the newsstand," which is accurate via an end-of-year 2011 audit (their first-half 2012 newsstand numbers are still under audit). So: If that is the case, why the cuts to the staff and regularity of the magazine, then? In Page's words: "It's just the economy, and all the related factors."

Barry Diller's Bid To Buy About.com, Dot Com: Reuters's Peter Lauria and Jennifer Saba are reporting that IAC chief Barry Diller is reaching into the war chest to compete with Answers.com for the purchase of About.com to the tune of $300M, three hundred million dollars, or $300,000,000.oo. Let that sink in for a moment. Also, this: "There are still interested buyers who feel that the $280 million price is low and can be easily matched." Shameless domain squatters everywhere are inspired. [Reuters]

Pat Kiernan's Revenge Narrative Begins ... Now: That spot that NY1’s Pat Kiernan was supposed to occupy next to Kelly Ripa as the new co-host of Live, With Kelly? It's going to former New York Giant Michael Strahan. Which: Huh? And that's how the world works, we guess. The beloved Kiernan will get his Big Time shot soon enough. Or turn into Bane. Hopefully the former. [TMZ]  

TINAWEEK! How serious is Tina Brown? And how serious of a question is that as anything but rhetorical? Tom McGeveran goes in: "Tina Brown is dressing up [Niall] Ferguson's failure as a provocation and conversation-starter." There's plenty more real talk where that came from. [Capital New York]

Primetime Gets Jimmy'd: So how did Jimmy Kimmel get his 11:30 spot that "Nightline" previously occupied? Simple: He wanted it. TV Newser hears he demanded it in his contract. [TV Newser]

Jay Gets Primetime'd: Speaking of network late-night—something so traditionally blasé and watered-down in its current state that we generally try to avoid that kind of thing altogether here—Jay Leno created the first compelling moment on his show in recent memory by laying into NBC's parent company, Comcast. It's actually a fairly decent joke. [Media Decoder]

Brûlé Torch Needed: If you, like the rest of the world, are convinced that the reader Monocle magazine aspires to cater to doesn't exist in any other iteration besides editor Tyler Brûlé, and that most people just buy it to appear ostensibly worldly, this back-and-forth between Andrew Goldman of the New York Times Magazine and Brûlé ...

I don’t know anyone like the people in Monocle, your current magazine, wearing exquisite clothes and traveling to exciting places constantly. 

"Maybe you’re not meeting them because they’re all in London on their way to a boat in the South of France to sail to Croatia. They’re out there, trust me."

... will do nothing to convince you otherwise. Just because this guy was shot in the hand does not mean you should trust him. You know who else got shot up and wanted you to trust him? Exactly. [NYT Magazine]

"Everyone Has His Asking Price." Finally, if you'll allow a moment of the self-referential stripe, this writer was on Russia Today last night discussing Mark Ames and Yasha Levine's S.H.A.M.E. Project, and their ethics hunting expedition for NPR’s “Planet Money”host Adam Davidson. 

Brief background: Ames and Levine found that the sponsor of “Planet Money,’ Ally Bank, had lobbied against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau prior to its creation, which Elizabeth Warren acts as a special adviser to. Davidson once famously and erratically conducted a notoriously hostile interview with Warren in the lead-up to the Bureau's creation, leading Ames and Levine to cite Ally's sponsorship of “Planet Money” as an insidious conflict of interest.

As it turns out, Ally Bank sponsored the hour of Russia Today that we were on last night, which, beginning at 6:03, we helpfully tried to point out ...

... all of which goes to say that (A) Why did we blink so much? And (B) everything is tied together, and all money and media share some figurative protoplasmic goo in one way or another, and everything will one day just evaporate. It also yielded one of the most odd and wonderful disclosures CNBC will ever publish—ever—courtesy John Carney, with who this writer is (full disclosure) part of a terrible media conspiracy of linking back to one another that has yet to find a sponsor as moneyed as Ally Bank. [NetNet/CNBC]

— — —

That's more than enough for today. Tips, disclosures, funny fortune cookies, Formsping.Me questions for Elizabeth Spiers and anything else, just send it right this way.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Hello Nast-e, How You Been? In the "great" tradition of The Devil Wears Prada, Erik Maza reports on yet another bit of roman à clef that has emerged from the former innards of Conde Nast. Okay, so: Karl Taro Greenfeld's forthcoming (and very hyped!)  Triburbia isn't exactly mass-market paperback fodder, but there is a bit about a Conde Nast magazine that "didn’t survive very long in the digital age." The context provided and Maza's guesswork lead him (and us) to believe it's based on one Joanne Lipman of long-deceased Portfolio where Greenfield once worked. Portfolio famously blew a bunch of cash and its failure was like a really highbrow and way more expensive version of any one of Radar's three failures with far less drug use and more Michael Lewis and Felix Salmon. Also, Jeff Bercovici will probably never work at Conde Nast again for the wonderful media reporting he did (on Conde Nast; attaboy!) when he was there. Anyway, Maza hysterically called up Joanne Lipman who didn't comment on the book because she hasn't read it, but more importantly, we now know that Lipman is writing a book about her childhood music teacher instead of a Conde Nast tell-all. [Memo Pad / WWD]

Ghostface Dillah! IAC chairman Barry Diller was on the company's earnings call today when Peter Kafka heard him talking crazy-talk: A print-less Newsweek? Never! But: Not entirely unlikely! [All Things D] 

Nahoo: Welcome back to the media headlines for a day, Jamie Mottram, who previously oversaw Yahoo's whole blog experiment thing, who is now going to USA Today's Sports Media Group. Onward and lateral-ward! [Fishbowl NY]

On The Upside, You Get Marion Berry As Your Mayor: Have you thought about leaving New York City for higher ground lately? Tired of the Gotham grind? Well, D.C. news/gossip/scuttlebutt sheet The Hill has released their 50 Most Beautiful People list for this year, and it's as good a argument against it as anything else, especially if you've vaguely considered moving to D.C. (and let's face it: if you in fact have vaguely considered moving there, you deserve whatever fate awaits you). Also, tawdry mid-summer feature experts that we are, could you pick a worse way to shamelessly paginate, as a deterrent to reading through the entire thing? In D.C., no, because everyone there buys into things like this, as opposed to only a fraction of bored New Yorkers when we do them. [The Hill]

Someone Only She Knows: Remember what Maureen Dowd was like when she was an entirely respectable and hard-nosed reporter, before she pioneered the art of the hard-sell headline (long before The Internet—and TimesSelect—was ever a thing)? Of course you don't, because none of us were alive and if we were we didn't know who Maureen Dowd was yet because she was still an entirely respectable and hard-nosed reporter. Well, now you can relive those glory days. The Awl has a feature on it. [The Awl]

Outliars: Did Malcom Gladwell cause the recession? No, but it's fun to imagine him doing so because he once lectured at Lehman Brothers. Also: Wouldn't he just love  that? In even asking the question, Andrew Sullivan gives Malcolm Gladwell way, way, way too much credit today, while Felix Salmon gives him way too much space to defend himself of this accusation. All of which goes without saying: We all know Jim Cramer caused the recession, anyway. [Andrew Sullivan, Felix Salmon]

And The Pulitzer for Pattinson Service Goes To: The most groundbreaking thing happening in journalism today has to do with Kristen Stewart cheating on Robert Pattinson. This is like Watergate (for our angsty teenage cousin). It's literally inescapable on any social media platform right now. Congratulations, US Weekly, you've officially pushed VICE out of the "obligatory esoteric ASME nomination" position for next year's awards. [US Weekly]

Please remember to send your tips, legal threats, pencil sketches of funny dog breeds, and pro-bono accounting advice right here.

Happy Wednesday.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Well...

April 2010: Newsweek is on the verge of a big web re-launch, which they've invested heavily in. Staffers at Newsweek are excited for a new digital look, but they're wondering why they're hearing rumors they're being moved out of their snazzy new West Village offices they just moved into, which is weird, right?

May 2010: It is indeed weird, as they find out. Newsweek is put up for sale by The Washington Post Company, which has owned it since 1961. Donald Graham of The Washington Post Company says the magazine "might be a better fit elsewhere." Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham begins a (noble, but tragic and doomed) quest/publicity tour to find the money to buy it himself. The sales book for the company leaks and, surprise surprise, one of the cost-cutting ideas involves reducing the staff. Newsweek will move two more times between now and end of this timeline.

Early October 2010: Sidney Harman emerges as the buyer of Newsweek after other suitors who aren't Jon Meacham—including Politico and Reuters—didn't pony up for the magazine. People marvel at the fact/irony that a 91 year-old man is investing in a national print weekly which (despite some very fine journalism) many Americans are only familiar with as that magazine they read at the dentist's office. The asking price? One American Dollar ($1.00), plus Newsweek's swelling debt.

October 2010, Two Seconds Later: Newsweek's then-editor-in-chief Jon Meacham resigns.

Late October 2010: Harman is profiled by New York Magazine. He admits that he struggles to remember the word "dinosaur." It's reported elsewhere that Harman's privately saying he can float $40M to the venture and give it three years to succeed. The search for a replacement editor starts at Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria and goes outward from there, far and wide, even at one point netting former Observer editor Peter Kaplan. Newsweek moves offices again.

November 5th, 2010: Free of Newsweek, The Washington Post Company celebrates a 21 percent quarter-to-quarter rise in online publishing profits.

November 2010: The new Sidney Harman-owned Newsweek merges with Barry Diller's IAC-owned The Daily Beast after around a month of formal talks, which at one point completely broke down. An ostensibly reluctant Tina Brown is anointed the editor-in-chief of both properties, and put in charge of her first magazine since Talk, which had the best magazine launch party ever, so this is going to go smoothly. Nobody is quite sure how it's going to work but people at The Daily Beast are very excited that they're going to be printed in dead trees and ink. The very few staffers left at Newsweek who were there before the sale was announced—meaning they've either survived layoffs or haven't yet found jobs elsewhere—are utterly terrified and, in most instances, praying for a buyout option. Others, like those at the website, would like to keep their website, and launch a Tumblr confusingly called Save Newsweek Dot Com. Those staffers are later poached by Tumblr. The Observer's media reporter at the time (a former Newsweek staffer) then writes: "Oh my God. This is really going to happen." He is later poached by Newsweek/The Daily Beast.

March 2011: The first issue of the Tina Brown-edited Newsweek emerges with Hillary Clinton on the cover, under cover lines about her "war" on the glass ceiling, which nobody should take to mean as anything other than another issue of Newsweek. Ms. Brown "pens" a memorable Internal Memo, "obtained" by the Observer. The second issue has a piece by Bret Easton Ellis, concerning the matter of Charlie Sheen. By now, Andrew Sullivan has been poached by Tina Brown for Newsweek/The Daily Beast. The nu-Newsweek has arrived.

April 13, 2011: Sidney Harman, who remained an active part of Newsweek/The Daily Beast's operations, dies at 92. He is survived by his wife, Jane Harman, a U.S. Democratic Congresswoman. In a New York Times article headlined "Harman Family to Keep Its Stake in Newsweek," Sidney Harman's lawyer explains:

“The Harman family is totally committed to Newsweek and its future,” he said. “They will continue to be active and supportive as Sidney would have wished and in Sidney’s memory.”

The manager of the Harman family's investment in Newsweek/The Daily Beast isn't yet clear. Harman's 29 year-old son is floated as a possibility, but Daniel Harman, who is in business school at the time, probably knows better than to get into media at his first strike in the world as a businessman.

May 2011: Jane Harman is now managing the Harman Family's interest in Newsweek. Tina Brown is profiled by the The New York Times Magazine, and we learn that Harman had taken to calling Brown "my beauty" and that Brown's complete control over Newsweek—which at this point has seen magazine sales go up, but ad sales go down—was hard-won.

July 2011: Newsweek.com ceases to exist.

September 2011: Jon Meacham is now a contributing editor at Newsweek's sworn enemy, Time.

October 31, 2011: AdWeek's Lucia Moses has a spooky piece about nu-Newsweek detailing the fact that Newsweek has a ways to go, and that becoming profitable by 2013—the timeframe Barry Diller originally gave the venture—won't be easy:

If that task takes years and Newsweek can’t find a way to regain the relevance weekly newsmagazines have lost since the explosion of news on the Internet, then Diller and Jane Harman, Sidney Harman’s widow, could reach the point where they finally decide to cut bait.

July 24, 2012: One year, three months, and eleven days was the amount of time it took from the Harman family to go from "totally committed" to the partnership with IAC and Barry Diller that oversaw Newsweek to only holding a minority stake in it. "The Harman trust has indicated it does not intend to make further capital contributions to the venture," it is explained, as the Harmans confirmed to Reuters' Peter Lauria—a former Daily Beast writer working for a company which, if you'll remember, was once interested in buying Newsweek—that their stake in the magazine/website has been diluted to a "minimum level of ownership." The Harman family refutes a rumor that the decision was based on the content of the magazine under Tina by explaining the decision as "purely financial."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The field house will occupy this site (The New York Times)

Brooklyn bikers received a treat to the tune of $40 million dollars!

Joshua Rechnitz, a cyclist and the grandson of New York philanthropists, pledged a $40 million dollar gift to the city to build a field house in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, The New York Times reported.

The field house is set to be massive project (15,000 square feet!) with an indoor, inclined cycling track with up to 2,500 seats and a 22,000-square-foot infield for sports like basketball, tennis, volleyball and gymnastics.

The project isn't entirely funded—it remains tens of millions of dollars away–but the donation stands as a huge strep in the right direction and the largest donation to any New York City park or recreational facility. The gift is double that of the previous $20 million donation, given last year to the High Line Park by Barry Diller and designer wife Diane von Furstenberg, The Times noted.

"I am thrilled at the magnitude and generosity of this gift, which would invigorate the park in the winter months and provide much-needed active recreation space for youth all over the borough on a year-round basis," Regina Myer, the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, told The Times.

Alas, nothing in life is free, and the park will charge for use of the field house. But Mr. Rechnitz has agreed to cover any shortages in operating revenue for the first ten years.

Time to gear up, Brooklyn! We just hope that noted bicycle-hater Woody Allen doesn't catch wind of this scheme.

mewing@observer.com

No more Nobu.

Hurricane Irene is ruining everything! Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller were all set to host a party for the premiere of Tanner Hall, a new film starring the soon-to-be-Dragon-Tattooed Rooney Mara and written by the designer's daughter, Tatiana von Furstenberg. There was to be a screening, followed by dinner at Nobu, and a party at Capri, that Southampton hotel made up to be a super-spiffy motel or something. We were excited!

Alas, it was not to be. The weather is moving in and it looks like everything this weekend will be, um, a wash.

At least we got a nice correspondence from the hosts.

Dear Mr. Nate Freeman,

Unfortunately, due to the predicted hurricane, we have all agreed to cancel the TANNER HALL screening and dinner in Southampton this Saturday.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience and are equally disappointed not to be able to show you this wonderful film.

Diane and Barry

And to think, by tomorrow night we could have been hunkered down in a hotel room, slamming whiskey with Jay McInerney as the world washed away. Another time, perhaps.

Two tables down, Anthony Weiner had a very long lunch with another gentleman. The possible mayoral candidate drank iced tea and wore a pale gray suit with a blue shirt and no tie. Mr. Weiner greeted people as they filtered out, including Bill Rudin, who stopped for a few minutes at the politician's table.

We also had a senator from Washington State here on Monday. Her name is Maria Cantwell, and she must be a Democrat because she was here with Leo Hindery and he doesn't give money to Republicans.

Bethenny Frankel was supposed to come on Monday morning to celebrate her one-year anniversary on camera for her show Bethenny Ever After. (Remember when she got married here and peed in my wine bucket? I do.) But at the last minute, they had to fly to the West Coast. Maybe they are making a Bethenny movie!

Last week Ralph Lauren came in. He likes meat, so he usually orders a hamburger. While he was waiting for Barry Diller to arrive last Wednesday, Joel Klein said hello to fellow diners including Donald Marron and Pete Peterson, who was eating with Phoenix House founder Mitch Rosenthal. It was quite the literary week, with Simon and Schuster magnate Michael Korda lunching with Mary Higgins Clark, and Tuesday, Lynn Nesbit brought Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist!

The prince has been coming every day. On Monday, he arrived in a brown coat with mink trim and was so unhappy sitting alone that he left in the middle of his meal. On Tuesday, he had learned his lesson, so he brought a friend, a Lebanese gentleman.

I'm very happy that finally everyone is back from spring break, and it's getting to be the time of year that people start going out again. Even though it's freezing outside, we have our cherry blossoms up and our spring menu is in full swing. Last week a group of six young women came in for lunch and squeezed in at one table. They were celebrating a birthday and drank Dom Pérignon Rosé Champagne. I served them an enormous cotton candy, and they took it to go in a giant white plastic bag. Can you imagine!? Then they invited me to join them to drink Cristal in their white limousine outside.

Until hours before last night’s lavish amfAR Gala at Cipriani Wall Street, the glam and star-studded Fashion Week kickoff that happens just hours before the models and their gawkers descend upon Lincoln Center, it was unclear whether or not Diane von Furstenberg, the night's honoree, would make her appearance.

The reason? The queen of the wrap dress was still recovering from a broken nose she suffered in late January.

Luckily, she found a way to not let a slight blemish hamper her night – she brought with her a large heart-shaped fan.

“I’m hiding myself because I had a ski accident!” von Furstenberg told The Observer, peeking her eyes above one crest of the makeshift mask.

We told her she looked great, and she smiled.

“I’m very proud, and very humbled by them,” she said, referring to the President Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Taylor, who were also honored. (Ms. Taylor couldn’t make it, but Elton John, who presented the award, noted that she’s “here in spirit.”)

IAC chair Barry Diller presented the award to von Furstenberg later that evening, ignoring any of the rumors of marital tension that have dogged them over the course of their relationship.

“We’ve been together for ten years,” he said proudly. “My little earth mother wife.”

A couple at our table muffled their laughter.

Diller also took it upon himself to describe the skiing accident in Aspen.

“Her face had blown up like Quasimodo!” he said. “’Oh no,’ she said. ‘The cheekbones! My best feature!”

Then, after Diane von Furstenberg ascended to the podium under Cipriani’s cascading marble columns, beneath endless buttresses that run to the impossibly high ceiling, she acknowledged the applause and slowly set the fan down from her face.

“I brought this to hide,” she said. “But I think I’ll ignore it.”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Barry Diller learned this the hard way! Lucky for him Katie Couric happened to be strolling by and possesses a hitherto unknown ability to move heavy objects. As she's an adherent of the "Pics or it didn't happen" rule, Couric had someone take a Twitpic and relay news of her heroism to her 133,000 followers.

The snow drifts may have made this morning's commute a bit more unbearable, but it seems this simple picture of a smiling millionaire and a smiling billionaire has brightened this city's spirit. Let's take a look at the comments!

You are so much fun Katie - always with a smile on your face!

Go Katie!! That mas is sweet; I used to park next to it everyday.

I tell people all the time...Katie is a real person..Bravo!

And then, at the end, someone inspires some serious jealousy.

Wow! I'm glad I live in fla!

Real talk.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes