When Ms. Cyrus, wearing a black leather biker jacket over a flowing white dress, arrived at the Soho restaurant to celebrate Cosmopolitan’s March issue, even those who were on the list acted the part of fangirl, rushing to grab cellphone pictures of the issue’s cover girl as she sprinted through the crowd and into the waiting arms of new editrix Joanna Coles.

(It was a big week all around for Ms. Coles, as she starred in last Friday’s episode of CBS’s new reality show The Job, on which contestants vied for the “coveted” role of editorial assistant at Cosmo.)

The point of the party, which fell at the tail end of Fashion Week, was to celebrate the first issue that was completely under Ms. Coles’s command, and the night was all about reinvention—both for the 20-year-old pop star and the 127-year-old magazine—even if the event felt more like a hyped-up teenybopper dream than a typical magazine relaunch.

Music blared, the dance floors were lit up, cocktails and pickled radishes were passed, and images from Ms. Cyrus’s photo shoot were projected next to the lower-level dance floor. Expecting a media party, the few reporters who actually made the guest list—invites were in short supply—looked overwhelmed.

“The party stole a lot of thunder from Fashion Week because it was so different,” said Michael Clinton, Hearst’s marketing and publishing director.

Ms. Coles, who took over from former editor in chief Kate White last September, came from Marie Claire, the thinking woman’s lady mag, and she is widely expected to bring a touch of the serious to Cosmo’s breathless coverage of sex positions.

“Joanna has moved very fast,” Mr. Clinton told Off the Record, adding that the publication’s April issue will be another “blockbuster” and will feature a 40-page magazine-within-a-magazine guest edited by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. According to executive editor Joyce Chang, it will be Cosmo’s first-ever career supplement.

“I would ask you to re-engage with the magazine. Over the next year, I’ll be making changes,” Ms. Coles said at a luncheon she hosted back in November. “I’ll be hitting all of you up for ideas, your advice, your tips for younger readers.”

So what better venue for the artist formerly known as Hannah Montana to showcase her new, all-grown-up persona?

“She’s a career woman at the top of her game,” Ms. Chang told OTR. “She’s fun and fearless.”

Ms. Cyrus poses defiantly on the cover, wearing seemingly nothing but long and slightly punkish jewelry beneath a white suit. One coverline proclaims, “It’s Miley, B*tches ... I’ve never faked anything.” Inside, special bonus covers speak to the evolving image of the actress, who rose to fame on the Disney Channel. One alternate cover shows Ms. Cyrus, wearing a black suit-dress (also with nothing underneath) and a snarling expression, with the tagline: “I’m not a girlie girl.” The other shows the former child star playfully bent over, lifting up a gray silk skirt, obviously wearing a bra underneath (her white blouse is see-through) and the pull quote: “I never played the Disney game of smiling and being a princess.”

While we don’t know whether any of the women who were in attendance at Ms. Coles’s luncheon last fall took the bait, it’s clear from the latest issue, not to mention the choice of cover girl, that the magazine is skewing young.

Naturally, the latest issue covers sex—it’s still Cosmo, after all—but the corresponding coverline testifies to a softer side of the bedroom story: “Your Best Sex Ever! 20 Moves From Cuddly to Crazy.” And the moves definitely tend more toward the cuddly.

Other features include “Threesome Confessions: totally awkward!” and “The 3 Words You Must Never Say to a Guy.” (Spoiler: they’re “I look fat.”) There are wardrobes for every budget, but the clothes are generally geared toward the medium to upper end of a Smiler’s allowance rather than the budget of a 20-something assistant with a credit card. And even though Ms. Cyrus isn’t wearing a bra on the cover—which is perhaps the raciest thing about the issue—the magazine looks like something that Miley’s fans wouldn’t have to be embarrassed to read in front of their parents at the breakfast table.

Which, from a marketing standpoint, is probably a good thing, since these Smilers appear to be awfully suggestible.

When the March issue hit newsstands, Ms. Cyrus tweeted at her 11 million followers to take over the newsstands by repositioning Cosmo so that it covered all other titles: “Lets play a game! All my fans go and put my @Cosmopolitan in front of all the magazines at the store!!!!!! Send me pics haha!”

The guerilla marketing tactic, which looks like a stunt masterminded by Adbusters, worked with a decidedly more commercial audience. The enterprising Smilers even created a hashtag, #BuyMileysCosmo, and tweeted and ’grammed their photos of newsstands across the country plastered with the pink Cosmo cover.

Like companies everywhere, Cosmo has been trying to use the power of social media to promote its content. But this marketing ploy was the work of an even more savvy social media presence: Ms. Cyrus herself.

“We couldn’t have planned it,” said Mr. Clinton, who thanked Ms. Cyrus for the publicity when he saw her at the party. “I told her we have to learn from it.”

Marina Khidekel. (Photo credit: Twitter)

Marina Khidekel has been named the new deputy editor at Cosmopolitan, FishbowlNY reports. Ms. Khidekel comes over to the Hearst tower from Condé Nast, where she was a senior articles editor at Glamour and covered health.This is the latest in a series of staffing changes at the magazine since Joanna Coles took the helm as EIC in September. Last week, Ms. Coles fired nine staffers--seven of whom were in the features department.

“New incoming editors in chief often want to form their own teams,”said a Cosmopolitan spokesperson said last week. “We will be announcing more new hires shortly.”

Looks like the spokesperson meant it when she said shortly. Ms. Khidekel started at Cosmo this week, according to Media Bistro.

Joanna Coles. (Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles fired six staffers in the features department and two in the photo department. That is a significant portion of the features team--there are only one senior editor, one associate editor and two editorial assistants left, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

“New incoming editors in chief often want to form their own teams,"said a Cosmopolitan spokesperson. "We will be announcing more new hires shortly."

Yesterday afternoon, after the staffers were let go, they returned to their desks to pack. 

And, according to the insider, this is probably just the beginning. New creative director Paul Solomons (formerly of British GQ) will start in December, which insiders expect will result in more shakeups at the magazine.

When new deputy editor Sarah Austin, who came over from Self, started on Monday, she wasn't  brought around and introduced, the insider told us. Other staffers have been left out of projects and meetings of late. Although Ms. Coles was friendly and chatty in the beginning, she stopped having editorial meetings and spent the past month interviewing people in her office, according to our source. None of this seemed exactly reassuring.

The changes didn't come as much of surprise to those outside the Hearst tower, either. During her first luncheon on Monday, Ms. Coles announced that the magazine would be changing in the next year. But the shakeups started just two days later.

“I would ask you to re-engage with the magazine; over the next year, I’ll be making changes," Ms. Coles said in her opening remarks at Monday's Cosmo 100 lunch.

Ever since September, when Ms. Coles left Marie Claire for Cosmo, the sexier sister mag at Hearst, there have been questions about how she would keep the lucrative brand's signature style while bringing some of her Marie Claire sensibility.

And we didn't even have to wait a whole year to begin seeing some changes.

“This is my first Cosmo lunch; I’m reigniting them because Helen Gurley Brown used to do them,” Ms. Coles, wearing a sleek black sleeveless turtleneck and black trousers, told the Transom. As precious lunch-hour minutes ticked by, Ms. Coles herded the fun, fearless women into the dining room.

“I’m sorry if I look a bit tired. I have to be truthful, I’ve been up the last few nights with my biographer,” Ms. Coles quipped in her opening remarks. “I would ask you to re-engage with the magazine; over the next year, I’ll be making changes. You all think you are here for a free lunch, but of course you are not. I’ll be hitting all of you up for ideas, your advice, your tips for younger readers.”

At least among those assembled, the verdict seemed to be that Ms. Coles might spark new interest in the magazine. “I do read Cosmo now and again—not regularly, but now that Joanna is there, I probably will,” actress (and Jon Hamm companion) Jennifer Westfeldt said. “She’s been such a great supporter and friend, and I think she’s such a wonderful lady.”

“I don’t have a lot of time to read magazines, but with Joanna at the helm, I think it’s going to be really great and aggressive and smart and surprising,” said Sarah Jessica Parker.

Rose McGowan, meanwhile, thought aloud, “I wonder how Cosmo will change, because it’s totally been a slut magazine.”

Ms. Coles also took the opportunity to celebrate recently elected women. During her opening remarks, she congratulated New Hampshire Governor-elect Maggie Hassan, Hawaii Representative-elect Tulsi Gabbard, New York Representative-elect Grace Meng, and Connecticut Representative-elect Elizabeth Esty, all of whom spoke during the fish course.

At the tables, however, the conversation turned less political.

“Wasn’t there a Sex and the City where Carrie was wandering around Paris and she was depressed and lonely?” someone asked.

“Let’s ask Sarah,” someone else suggested, motioning to the next table.

“I wonder if guys even like it when you touch their perineum; I can never tell,” Ms. McGowan mused. “Someone should actually ask guys that.”

Ms. Coles? Are you listening?

Meet Margaret: The New York Times has a new ombudsperson who is not Arthur S. Brisbane, who was given the old "don't let the door hit you" on his way out. In his place?

Former Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan, who has already filed her first entry on her blog. The kicker:

Whatever the conclusions, whatever the effectiveness, of challenging facts, the idea that we have to debate the necessity of doing so strikes me as absurd.

What is the role of the media if not to press for some semblance of reality amid the smoke and mirrors?

Consider this her marking her territory, one that initially seems to stand in stark opposition to that of her predecessor, who once successfully trolled New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson after asking if it was the Times' job to report aggressively. Improvements: They happen. [Public Editor / NYT]

Cos-metic Changes: Cosmopolitan has a new editor, and it's former Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles. She got the job after Hearst brass David Carey was told by now-former Cosmo editor Kate White that after fourteen years in the position, she was ready to hang up her Twenty Heels That Will Make This The Best Fall Ever, or whathaveyou.

Lest you doubt Coles' credentials for what may be the most prominent editing spot in the Hearst empire,
(A) She's British and
(B) This:

Ms. Coles is a former reporter — who are not necessarily prized for their fashion sense — and has worked for both The Guardian and The Times of London. She reported for The Guardian here and then eventually went to work as an editor at New York magazine.

Meanwhile, Anne Fulenwider of Brides is moving into Joanna Coales' old spot at the top of Marie Claire (she used to work there as executive editor under Coales). This comes on the heels of another big turning-0ver of power in the fashion world—Sally Singer parting ways with T—if you so care to recall. Fashionista did; they put together a slideshow of recent turnovers in glossies. Must be something in the air. [Media Decoder, Fashionista]

People Don't Like Jobs: Politico's Dylan Byers brings us the sad story of campaign reporters who aren't fans of the 2012 campaign (the words "devastating joylessness" come into play, here). Which is to say nothing of how the general public feels about 2012 campaign coverage or how the candidates feel about the media, all of which goes to say: Nonshocker. [Politico]

Futility of Large-Scale Endeavor Questioned, Part II: The National Journal has finally published the long-awaited companion piece to all of those "Why Are So Many Journalists Covering The RNC?!" pieces, which is titled—what else?—"Why, Exactly, Are 15,000 Journalists in Charlotte?" Why, Exactly, indeed. [National Journal]

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Are you a truth vigilante? Are you not a conspiracy theorist? Do you have something you think we might not delete more or less sight-unseen because doesn't concern about Ron Paul or hydrofracking as an alien conspiracy to probe our natural gasses? Basically: You have any media gossip? Give it to us now. Please.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

In case you've ever wanted to see what life as a women's magazine editor-in-chief entails, Cosmo released a behind-the-scene video where Coles practices her new editorial focuses, answering questions about the 365 sex positions a day iPhone app (order the "Linguine"!) and unintentionally displaying her multitasking ability to respond to questions while staring intently at her iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=063Sq7LgUmI

Anna dello Russo (GETTY)

We arrived early for Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti at the Avery Fisher Hall. Plenty of time to take a breather and people watch. A familiar flank of top-level editors began to trickle in… Roberta Myers, Virginia Smith, Glenda Bailey—all the glossy women’s magazines were covered.

“Who’s hotter? Robbie Myers or Joanna Coles?” The Observer asked, sotto voce.

“They both look fab!” answered a model-esque writer.

Benone! Editor-at-large for Vogue Japan and Italian style-empress, Anna Dello Russo, is fast approaching.

Posso chiedere qualche domanda in inglese?” we asked.

“Certo!”

“What’s been your favorite show this season in New York?”

“Listen! Listen! It’s the second day of fashion week! You cannot tell me that one! I need to see more shows!” dello Russo rebuked in a thick Baresi accent.

Whoa! She burnt us!

(We didn't dare correct her that it was actually the second to last...)

“So you’ve just arrived?” we hesitantly continued.

I mean no! It’s just starting… it’s like two days! I mean… It’s not possible to say the best shows. Of course I saw Marc Jacobs… beautiful…but there’s no time to give a – a… you know--- Let’s see!

“We agree… What did you love about the men’s calendar in Milan? We saw you at Ferragamo—”

“No! You know what I like about men’s now? What Riccardo Tisci is doing! I think Riccardo Tisci for men’s—is doing very, very modern and strong. I think he has the leadership now!” she asserted.

(GETTY)

We loved Signora Ferretti’s gunmetal, sand and platinum super-luxurious creations–fantastic daywear couture. Her bi-color and multi-material wonders used patent leather, crystal appliqué, fur, and even translucent PVC.

…But in the end, it was our run-in with Anna Dello Russo that kept us merry.

Joanna Coles (Getty Images)

Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles is to be the official mentor on the upcoming Project Runway: All Stars. The perhaps misleadingly titled show presents past fan favorite designers still struggling to make it in the fashion game; Ms. Coles's role will be analogous to that of Tim Gunn in the regular-flavor Project Runway.

Marie Claire, and Ms. Coles, have a long association with the reality franchise: Ms. Coles has appeared on the show for several seasons and the magazine's fashion director Nina Garcia is a judge on the program (on the new All-Stars series, her role will be played by Isaac Mizrahi and Georgina Chapman). In 2010, Ms. Coles told The Observer: “We’re developing more television," declining to give details, and noted that few believed she was actually a TV-fashion guru. An acquaintance told Ms. Coles "'Well, obviously you’d never be on a show like Project Runway’ because she only ever sees me when I have on, like, jeans and a T-shirt." Well, the British editor is a literary type.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

from @cocorocha

Chelsea Clinton arrived at the 44^th floor of Hearst Tower Tuesday night (“with amaaaaze makeup and an impeccable blowout,” one fan tweeted from the publisher’s headquarters) and soon began whispering with Randi Zuckerberg in the corner. The Observer, taking notes on the surrounding scene (high heels, designer dresses, crispy cheesesticks), lurked nearby, waiting to speak with her.

“Let’s keep private conversations private,” said Ms. Clinton’s aide. She had materialized on our right and was eyeing our pen.

“First, hear what she has to say,” she said, offering us her e-mail address.

Ms. Clinton had joined Marie Claire editor in chief Joanna Coles for a panel on social media, along with Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg (and sister of Mark), Common Sense Media executive Amy Guggenheim Shenkan and ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews, to discuss “the perils and the possibilities of living in a digital world.”

Among the first to arrive was supermodel Coco Rocha. With 45,783 Facebook fans (personal profiles have a 5,000 friend limit, she explained to The Observer), she also maintains accounts on Tumblr, Vimeo, YouTube, Google Plus and Twitter. The last celebrated its two-year anniversary two days earlier.

“I just felt like I’d like to have a little bit of a voice,” said Ms. Rocha, whose métier is to be seen, not heard. “It’s letting people into my world and into the fashion world.”

The Canada native (she is working on her green card) kept her followers updated throughout the event, posting a photo of herself and her agent posed in front of windows overlooking Central Park.

Barbara Walters was seated in the audience, somewhat unexpectedly. Her name had been omitted from the invitation because she RSVP’d late, but she arrived as close to on time as anyone.

“I thought I’d learn something,” Ms. Walters told The Observer, admitting she was neither on Facebook or Twitter.

Asked if she thought social media was helping the field of journalism, Ms. Walters, 81, said, “Well, it’s there… so I think you need to know how to deal with it.”

“Truthfully, between e-mails and iPads and the little job I have on the side, I don’t have time for it,” Ms. Walters had explained. She didn’t have time to stay for the entire length of the panel discussion, either.

After Ms. Clinton gave short remarks, she sat in the audience, and Ms. Coles told the audience a Wall Street Journal reporter "rather depressingly" had muttered to her earlier that evening that “these kind of things" weren’t usually very engaging.

The debate surrounded bullying on the internet; Ms. Andrews described what it was like to have a video of her nude passed around online, after a stalker filmed her through the peephole of her hotel room and posted the clip to the internet.

Next on the ladies’ agenda were issues of children’s online safety, which seemed aimed at Ms. Zuckerberg. She stated that age limits exist on Facebook and argued teenagers are savvier than they are given credit.

Ms. Walters piped up with a question from the audience: If she could, what legislation would each panelist propose?

“I thought this was going to be a vacation!” exclaimed Ms. Zuckerberg, who resides in California.

But it is safe to say the night went off without any un-friending. The next morning Ms. Zuckerberg tweeted “such a wonderful girl-power evening & panel,” and posted photos of the event to her Facebook page.

“I went to a very interesting symposium that was mostly made up by young women in the audience with great shoes,” Ms. Walters reported on The View.

As for Ms. Clinton, who made one interjection during the discussion and offered a few lines to wrap up the evening, Ms. Walters said, “She was so articulate, she was so intelligent…this is a girl who has a political future.”

Ms. Amos strode in a half an hour late but made up for the lost time by speaking for almost an hour about the challenges specific to bringing humanitarian relief to Haiti, Libya, and Sudan, barely pausing to nibble at her Good Housekeeping-recipe popover. 

Hearst editorial director Ellen Levine asked about the challenges of negotiating with male leaders whose customs dictate they shouldn't shake her hand. 

"They don't expect you to be tough," said Ms. Amos. 

Longtime magazine fixture Christy Turlington was there to be, as Marie Claire's slogan goes, "more than just a pretty face." Ms. Turlington is taking a break from getting her master's in public health degree at Columbia in order to promote her first documentary, No Woman No Cry, about maternal health. It debuted on Oprah Winfrey's OWN network last month. 

That Marie Claire aims to incorporate more international news and longform journalism than their lady mag competitors speaks to Ms. Coles's background.  She was a career reporter before becoming the New York bureau chief of the Guardian and the Times of London. Plus, she's married to foreign correspondent Peter Godwin. Copies of his latest book, The Fear, were available for guests. 

After Ms. Amos cited a particularly grim figure about the frequency of lethal natural disasters increasing with global climate change, Ms. Coles cleared the air. 

"I don't know how you don't drink more alcohol," she joked.

Both she and Ms. Amos abstained from the white wine served. 

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel