The unit has a beautiful professional chef-designed kitchen to admire while you wait for your Seamless order to arrive.

Josephina, the Lincoln Center standby, stopped serving its pre-theater dinners in 2011, leaving owner Louis Lanza with only one Upper West Side location—Josie's West. And now it appears that Mr. Lanza is downsizing his neighborhood housing as well.

Mr. Lanza has sold his penthouse spread at The Fitzgerald for $3.32 million, city records show.

But he’s not moving out just yet. Mr. Lanza owned quite a cut of real estate at 201 West 74th Street—not only the three-unit penthouse combo, but also another, separate unit in the building. Some were passed down to Mr. Lanza by his parents, and some he purchased himself. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with knowing what you like.

The units that Mr. Lanza is parting with have been combined to form a 2,000-square foot corner spread, with three bedrooms and a 625-square foot outdoor space. And while West 74th Street is not located in a particularly hip location, the apartment does have a certain downtown style, boasting a sleek, modern white kitchen and "stunning South American Artisan Ipe wood floors throughout with complementary teak paneling," according to the listing. It also includes amenities like an in-unit washer/dryer and through-wall air conditioning units—not always a given in pre-war buildings.

Buyers Michael Lennon and Dara Altman were apparently quite impressed. The broadcasting bigwigs—Mr. Lennon is a former TV writer and producer, while Ms. Altman is an executive vice president at internet radio company Sirius XM—paid nearly the full $3.35 million ask for the apartment. Halstead broker Louise Phillips Forbes said that the condo was quite a hot commodity, setting off a bidding battle, with bids up to $150,000 more than the final accepted offer.

At least Mr. Lennon and Ms. Altman will probably get better use out of the state-of-the-art professional chef-designed kitchen with awesome custom-built wet bar than Mr. Lanza. While the eatery-owner undoubtedly knew his way around a kitchen, we can’t imagine he had much cause to use it.

The number of units combined to make up the apartment is surpassed only by the number of brokers who worked to sell it—Ms. Forbes shared the listing with her Halstead colleagues Jason Miller, Richard Johnson and Jonathan Schulz. Given the closing price, we’d say that the number of cooks in this kitchen was just right.

Mr. Johnson will join The Daily's editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo at the tabloid. Mr. Angelo has been named the Post's publisher. "Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post," said the News Corp. press release. Presumably, there will be other Daily refugees returning to the Post fold.

Mr. Johnson announced his return on his Facebook page hours after News Corp. announced that The Daily was folding.

"The Daily, the newspaper for the iPad we launched nearly two years ago, will stop publishing Dec. 15. I am now working for the New York Post," Mr. Johnson posted earlier today. No word yet on whether Mr. Johnson will return to Page Six, although a spokesperson said the scribe would remain in L.A.

A Brooklyn native, Mr. Walker is currently stationed in Los Angeles, with Richard Johnson's "Flash" gossip column. He will relocate to New York in October.

"I'm excited to bring Hunter back to New York to cover politics for NYO," Ms. Spiers said. "He's a fantastically versatile reporter and I know he'll do great things at the Observer."

Mr. Walker has written for Gawker, the Village Voice, New York, Forbes.com and Mediabistro, among others. He graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism in 2010.

"The Observer is an iconic New York media property," Mr. Walker said. "I love the direction the paper has headed under Elizabeth Spiers's leadership and I'm beyond excited to join the team."

“I thought about doors on the Lower East Side covered in stickers—what the LES used to be,” Mr. Johnson told the Transom, standing in front of one of his neon-hued creations. “It’s like New York City for real, going back to that sticker and skateboard culture.”

Mr. Johnson, who is 6-foot-4 and has red hair, is New York royalty of a sort. His father, Richard, is the former Page Six czar and current dean of the Daily’s scandal coverage. His stepmother, Nadine Johnson, oversees a fashion-and-lifestyle PR company.

Her firm doesn’t represent the artist, but it helped out a bit with the reception.

Mr. Johnson originally took up residence in the neighborhood surrounding the gallery in 2004, he said, before it became a tourist hub. “The Lower East Side was more fun then.”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

But will it actually work? 

As a story today in AdWeek makes clear, it's certainly a gamble. The project, when unleashed, will be the first standalone iPad news subscription, forcing it to rely on the tablet-owning population — just 4 percent of households, Nielson reports — for its entire readership. What's more, the AdWeek story calls into question the digital chops of the News Corp. lifers anointed to take the project forward: Johnson and one-time fellow New York Post editor Jesse Angelo — who, as it's revealed in a 2003 Observer profile, goes way back with the Murdoch clan.

Angelo met media scion James Murdoch while prepping at Trinity in the early nineties, and they attended Harvard together. As a sophomore Angelo wrote to his friend's father pleading for a job — he was "restless" and "bored," the story indicated. The 20-year-old paid his dues coffee-fetching before muscling his way into the Post by freelancing for Page Six. His specialty? "Crime, death, disaster, murders... the fun stuff," he told The Observer.

Will the Johnson-Angelo pairing, the concoction of Page Six's obsession with sex and Angelo's tendency toward the sordid, work on the iPad? By focusing on tablets as opposed to easily accesible browsers, the project is placing a big bet on the iPad-owning population — a stylish and well-heeled group that's a far cry from the Post's grittier, working class demo. Will these tabloid vets be able to translate their purview to the tablet format, while also taking the Post's distinctly Manhattan-centric approach national? The app is projected to launch at the end of this year, so we'll know soon enough just how much traction an iPad-only publication can have. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

SLIDESHOW: Scandal Report: The City's Tabs Go Head to Head (10/15)

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Ms. Kardashian came and left quickly, and Ms. Smith talked briefly with the club's owner about its alleged restrictions against short women, mentioned in a Page Six item the day before. Ms. Smith is about 5 feet tall.

After a brief stop at another event nearby, Ms. Smith made her way to the Gansevoort Park Avenue, where Chris Brown was at a party for a new line of Swatch watches. She arrived late--and was rebuffed at the door. 

"She just said, 'Come on, can you let us in?' She didn't say, 'I'm with Page Six," according to Alan Rish, a publicist who was out with her that night.

What Mr. Rish didn't know — and what nobody at the Gansevoort is going to let that doorman soon forget — is that a few hours earlier, Ms. Smith was let in on the biggest scoop of her career: She learned she would be taking over Page Six, the Post's gossip flagship, from Richard Johnson, its longtime patriarch.

HOW'S SHE DOING? > Check out the Scandal Report: Our Weekly Guide to the Town's Top Gossips. 

The ascension of a relatively unknown Fleet Street vet to one of Manhattan's loftiest social perches had the makings of a vintage Page Six item--the sexy outsider, the mysterious future for her predecessor, and all of it set against the prospect of a renewed gossip war between the Post and the Daily News, which has been staffing up.

Immediately, a few questions come to mind: How could Ms. Smith know the scene when she arrived at the Post a little more than a year ago? Does her tenure at a British tabloid mean the sensibilities of the beloved Post column will change? How did the Post land her in the first place?

Ms. Smith isn't saying. Even though she makes her living telling other people's secrets, she wouldn't talk about her new gig, reinforcing a feeling even among her friends that she's something of a mystery.

"That's what's awesome about Emily," said Rob Shuter, who writes a gossip column for the Web site Popeater and also saw her out last Wednesday. "She's silent." Mr. Shuter called Mr. Johnson the next day to ask if the news was true. How could Ms. Smith have kept the news a secret? "She's a tomb," Mr. Johnson told him.

 "She's like 5 foot tall and attractive and blonde, but she does pack a big punch. She is very calm. She doesn't show her cards," said Life & Style editor Dan Wakeford, who also saw Ms. Smith out that night and knows her from their days working together on The Sun in London. "She's not someone who would show her cards. She would take a secret to the grave."

"She's the female version of James Bond, the smiling assassin," said Piers Morgan, soon to be the new Larry King.

Former Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, who described himself, at 6-foot-3, as "large and loudish," said he was always envious of Ms. Smith's size. "She has that quality that's kind of lethal in a gossip columnist, which is seeming very harmless. She's diminutive and very charming and puts people at ease," he said. He lowered his voice into a quiet rasp: "And then she goes in for the kill."

Working for the Husband-Beater

Ms. Smith went to work on the news desk of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun when she was 21 after a year working on her hometown paper in Shropshire. She lived with her family in Oman and Abu Dhabi, where her father was a corporate accountant, until she was seven. She attended university at Liverpool.

She was recognized immediately for her reporting chops on the news desk and moved onto the TV beat. Soon after, she began working as a deputy on the newspaper's showbiz column, Bizarre. "The best way to describe it might be that she was quietly efficient," said a staffer at The Sun who shared bylines with Ms. Smith. He described her as friendly with her colleagues, but not particularly outgoing. "If you show any weakness, you'd just be torn to pieces. That's just the way it is in our office," he said. "If you don't deliver the goods, you're out. Simple as that."

Ms. Smith showed enormous potential at The Sun and the Bizarre column was a prized platform. It is where Andy Coulson, Victoria Newton and Martin Dunn, who resigned in the spring as the editor of the Daily News, all made names for themselves. "It's always been used by Rupert Murdoch as a training ground," said Mr. Morgan, who ran the column in the late '80s and early '90s. "If you look at the list of people who edited that column, you'll see how important it is to Rupert and News International." 

While Ms. Smith was working on Bizarre, Mr. Morgan competed against her as editor of The Daily Mirror. "She was very irritating because she got lots of stories," he said.

RELATED > 10 of Page Six's Best Items Since 2007

After two years as a deputy working on Bizarre,  Sun editor Rebekah Wade gave Ms. Smith a new television column, as part of a larger effort to expand celebrity coverage.

In 2005, Ms. Wade tapped Ms. Smith to move to the States to be The Sun's U.S. editor. (Ms. Wade spent a night in prison later that year for assaulting her then-husband, a former BBC soap opera star. She has remarried under the name Rebekah Brooks, and is now the CEO of Mr. Murdoch's News International.)

"At The Sun, the U.S. editor is seen as a prized position," said Life & Style editor Dan Wakeford. "Murdoch and the editors of The Sun only send the stars out there."

For the next four years, Ms. Smith covered all major news in America for The Sun. She worked nonstop, waking up early to talk to her British editors and staying up late to shore up her American sources. "She would be getting up at 5 in the morning and staying out until 3 in the morning every night," said a friend who worked with her. "She can be a little bit robotic," the friend added.

Friends tell stories about her calling from a Hummer while driving into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and living out of a car because there was no place to stay. Others tell stories about someone who barely sleeps and puts her career before anything else. "If she was asked by a boss on her anniversary to cover a story, I know she would. That's newspaper training--that always comes first," said one friend.

While at The Sun, Ms. Smith broke news that Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's butler, had perjured himself during an inquest in London. She also broke the news of Kelsey Grammer's secret affair and Paul McCartney's new girlfriend, and covered the Virginia Tech shootings for The Sun.

Ms. Smith remains particularly close with her father and her sister, who works in marketing for The Guardian in London. She lives with her boyfriend on the Upper West Side in the 70s.

In March of 2009, The Sun called Ms. Smith back to London. She had three months to close up shop in America and return home. "Both of us worked tirelessly never to go back," said Kimberly Bernhardt, a longtime friend of Ms. Smith's who now lives in Chicago with her family and does publicity for large companies. (Ms. Smith and Ms. Bernhardt moved to New York from London around the same time, and helped each other navigate the city's dating scene and American holidays. For Halloween her first year, Ms. Smith dressed up as a pirate.)

"I know that The Sun probably wanted her to return at times. She wanted to stay. She was very, very passionate about the city."

Ms. Smith used the three months to find another job stateside. Mr. Wakeford hired her as East Coast news director at Life & Style in June, partly to help her stay in America.

During her short tenure at the German-owned celebrity glossy, Ms. Smith broke news and left her mark on the title. Life & Style was the first magazine to suggest that Michael Jackson could have been murdered, a notion that remains under dispute.

Then, after barely three months at the magazine, Ms. Smith left for Page Six. (Her former boss wasn't entirely thrilled by the move. When Mr. Wakeford got married over the summer, Ms. Smith was invited to the reception but not the ceremony.)

The Daily News Gears Up

At Page Six, in August 2009, Ms. Smith replaced Paula Froelich, who left to focus on book writing. "To be honest with you, I didn't want to be there," Ms. Froelich told The Observer on Tuesday, talking on her cell phone while shopping for a sweater on the Upper East Side. "You know what? This is her dream job and frankly I think it's amazing because Page Six deserves to have somebody who wants to go in there every day and who loves it."

Ms. Froelich had eaten dinner with Ms. Smith in Soho the previous night. Did she have any idea what Ms. Smith had planned for the column? "No idea," said Ms. Froelich, who recently returned from a trip to Kenya. "Honestly, I was so jet-lagged last night." (She got distracted shopping. "Oh my God, somebody made a pillow out of feathers. A pillow out of decorative feathers!")

"I hope it changes," Ms. Froelich said, turning her attention back to Page Six. "Nothing is static. If you don't change, you're a rock, and rocks are boring. Everything needs new blood. Everything needs to be changed every now and again. And, you know what, I think it's great."

Chris Wilson, who left Page Six in 2006, also thinks Ms. Smith is going to do well in her new role. He worked with Ms. Smith in April when he came back to pick up a week of freelance work on the news desk at the Post. "On my first day back, she got this great scoop on Tiki Barber cheating on his pregnant wife with this hot young chippy," said Mr. Wilson. "It turned out to be the wood the next day, and we shared a byline on it."

He was impressed by Ms. Smith's ability to turn a small tip into a front-page story. "It was the difference between what could have been a tantalizing but unappealing blind item and a wood that rattled the whole media world," he said.

That night Stephen Colbert held up the Post with the "Sneaky Tiki" headline splashed across the cover. "I'd like to start out tonight, as I do on many nights, by saying bravo to the New York Post for being watchdog of our nation's morality," Mr. Colbert said on his show. Mr. Wilson said that, for gossip items, it doesn't get any better than that.

"If you can handle the sort of competitive maelstrom and clusterfuck that is Fleet Street," Mr. Wilson added, "you're gonna be just fine taking on the Daily News."

And that, in fact, may be Ms. Smith's most pressing initial challenge. Sensing a certain ennui on the part of Mr. Johnson, the Daily News has recently staffed up its Page Six rival, Gatecrasher. Frank DiGiacomo, a former Observer writer, is editing the pages, along with a new staffer.

The sense among Manhattan media types is that Page Six may now be vulnerable, though years of entrenched reading habits will make the column particularly hard to unseat.

Like his new rival, Mr. DiGiacomo declined comment.

zturner@observer.com / @zekeft

RELATED > 10 of Page Six's Best Items Since 2007

Over the summer, Richard Beckman tried to grab Mr. Johnson for The Hollywood Reporter in Los Angeles, but the Page Sixer couldn't get out of his contract with the Post. "I love Page Six and The Post," Mr. Johnson said in the announcement, "but I've always wanted to give Los Angeles a try."

Page Six will be left in the hands of Emily Smith, who "cut her teeth on Fleet Street." She is a former U.S. editor of The Sun. Nobody on the Page Six team has been on the column for much more than a year. Mr. Johnson's departure is probably bittersweet news for veteran Frank Digiacomo at the Daily News who is reviving Gatecrasher. The men are former colleagues, and gossip is more fun with competion. In 2004, Mr. Johnson spoke to Mr. DiGiacomo for a story in Vanity Fair about the history Page Six:

JOHNSON: "We're publishing seven days a week now, and I've run stories sometimes which I didn't really want to run, just because I needed to run them to fill the space. And the people I work with think that the column should be really hard-hitting. I'm constantly toning down stuff where there's an adjective in front of somebody's name which is just sort of gratuitously nasty. And some of that, of course, gets in."

Mr. Johnson's departure will surely bring about different rememberances of his time at the column. We'd like to nominate an item for his all-time best list from earlier this week actually, "Stevie Wonder enjoys Las Vegas house of horror tour."

Earlier: Rich Get Richer? Richard Wants Richard! Beckman Tries, Fails to Grab Johnson for Hollywood Reporter

The Village Voice's Joe Coscarelli and Foster Kamer survey the world of gossip reporting in their cover story this week, and suggest that as the playing field has become more crowded, the real art has started to fade. But nobody seems to be struggling too much, except for maybe Richard Johnson, who wants to quit his job and move west.

Mr. Johnson's 'purgatory' at Page Six is the first anecdote in the piece, and one succinct point that emerges is that there has been a lot of turnover at the different gossip outfits. Things aren't the way they once were, it seems.

Former Page Sixer Paula Froelich makes the point that the recent turnover at the gossip pages has disrupted the system of apprenticeship that has traditonally produced the best reporters.

"Gossip is not easy," she said. "A lot of people tend to think it's easy. It's insanely hard reporting — you have to have a large Rolodex across the board held in your mind at all times. You have to understand how to comport yourself." Ms. Froelich is the master of this. She told Messrs. Coscarelli and Kamer that Richard Johnson was "one of the best professors I've had in my life."

There are plenty of interesting voices in the piece, and it's nice to read something about gossip that doesn't stumble over the idea that the work gossip reporters do matters. "For the people who stick their nose up at it," Ms. Froelich says, "I laugh my ass off."

NYC's Golden Gossip Era Fades [Village Voice]

Gawker reported on Friday evening that Richard Beckman, who recently picked up Janice Min for The Hollywood Reporter, tried to snag Mr. Johnson from Page Six by doubling his salary and offering him a signing bonus. All of this was fine with Mr. Johnson! Post editor Col Allan prevented the deal from going through by holding him to his contract, which will keep him around for another few years. 

Retention is an issue at the Post right now. Investigative reporter Murray Weiss was the latest in a series of departures from the paper in recent months, and now would be a good time for Mr. Johnson to leave Page Six. His most experienced reporter, Neel Shah, just abandoned him last month after Corynne Steindler and Paula Froehlich took off last year. Meanwhile he has formidable competition at the Daily News since Frank Digiacomo took over Gatecrasher at the beginning of June.

Slightly related: Also on Friday, Page Six reported that Condé Nast employees might start to see their first raises since 2008 after the departures of Mr. Beckman and others created room in the budget.