Conde Nast

Publisher Conde Nast is creating video networks based on its Glamour and GQ magazines. The move is part of a broader expansion the company is making into television and digital under Dawn Ostroff, a former high-ranking television executive who has overseen programming at Lifetime and the CW Network. The Glamour channel, which will be available on the magazine's website as well as on YouTube, will include shows about makeovers and, of course, what guys want. The GQ offering will focus on fitness and fashion.

Halle Berry's dress kept "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno more than engaged during the star's visit to the program Monday night. Berry left very little to the imagination in her cleavage-bearing Reem Acra mini-dress. [ Los Angeles Times ] Ann Wintour has gotten a promotion. Conde Nast will announce that the editor of Vogue and editorial director of Teen Vogue will be the new artistic director of the company. Wintour will continue her duties at Vogue and Teen Vogue but will take over some of the tasks Si Newhouse, Conde Nast's 85-year-old chairman, used to oversee more regularly.

The world watched in fascination when eight people emerged intact after two years sealed off in Biosphere II. Yet here in Manhattan, it seems perfectly normal that armies of skinny women wearing regulation black survive year upon year sealed off from reality at 350 Madison Ave., the command post of Conde Nast and its 13 magazines. Inside 350 is the beating heart of sophistication. Like the magazines themselves, the people who work there are chic yet predictable.

Publisher Conde Nast is creating video networks based on its Glamour and GQ magazines. The move is part of a broader expansion the company is making into television and digital under Dawn Ostroff, a former high-ranking television executive who has overseen programming at Lifetime and the CW Network. The Glamour channel, which will be available on the magazine's website as well as on YouTube, will include shows about makeovers and, of course, what guys want. The GQ offering will focus on fitness and fashion.

Regarding Wilson Low's suggestion on including more information on first-class travel ("Rich Man, Poor Man," Letters, June 11): If we had just won the lottery or even if we were in our 80s and had never traveled, we would not be receptive to $5,000 each to fly first class to Europe. The type of travel that he espouses is completely out of reach for most of us. He should stick to Conde Nast. CHARLES JONES Calabasas

Halle Berry's dress kept "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno more than engaged during the star's visit to the program Monday night. Berry left very little to the imagination in her cleavage-bearing Reem Acra mini-dress. [ Los Angeles Times ] Ann Wintour has gotten a promotion. Conde Nast will announce that the editor of Vogue and editorial director of Teen Vogue will be the new artistic director of the company. Wintour will continue her duties at Vogue and Teen Vogue but will take over some of the tasks Si Newhouse, Conde Nast's 85-year-old chairman, used to oversee more regularly.

Re "The gloss is off the magazine industry," Oct. 6 How sad to read that Gourmet magazine was pruned by its parent company, Conde Nast. In the current corporate model, when a division or product line struggles, instead of rallying the business acumen needed to fix it, the company lops off that division or product. In doing so, it fails its employees; it fails its customers; it fails the history and tradition of the products we use; it fails to shepherd excellence. Conglomerate giants, with their witless slash-and-burn methods, have proved themselves too big not to fail.

Mitzi Newhouse, the widow of newspaper and magazine publisher S. I. Newhouse, a patron of the arts and a leading figure in women's fashion, died today at 87. Mrs. Newhouse was an ardent supporter of the theater, and her gift in 1973 of $1 million to help establish the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center enabled Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival to become part of the performing arts center. She was also a contributor to the Parsons School of Design, where she studied as a young woman, and to the Manhattan School of Music.

"There's No Getting Away" (May 10) is a much-needed wake-up call for a lot of us. Our acutely consumerist society sets us up for this, however. It's no surprise that the magazines on my nightstand bear such familiar headlines as "Hawaii: 20 Perfect Places to Stay Now," "St. Bart's Sexiest Villas" and "World's Best Cruise Ships." We're conditioned to gauge the quality of vacations by whether they are "perfect" and "sexy" and ranked. Somehow I think Robert Louis Stevenson (the great Scottish author)

"The fashion world's a dangerous place. The most vulnerable don't survive it." --Kennedy Fraser, "On the Edge: Images From 100 Years of Vogue" Celebrating Vogue's 100th anniversary, "Images" describes the ways in which this cornerstone of the Conde Nast empire has both invented and survived the dangerous world of fashion.

Ruth Reichl has always been fearless, as a restaurant critic, as a boss and as a friend. She'll tell you exactly what she thinks, good and bad. In an interview this weekend with the fashion website Daily Front Row , it's good to see nothing has changed. Writer Alexandra Ilyashov got the former L.A. Times and New York Times restaurant critic and former Gourmet magazine editor-in-chief to open up over lunch at Barbuto. Although, knowing Ruth, "getting her to open up" probably consisted of turning on the tape recorder and asking the right questions.

Magazine publishing giant Conde Nast shook up its corporate sales staff Wednesday by placing digital advertising boss Josh Stinchcomb over sales for print, digital, mobile, video and marketing services. The change displaced Tom Hartman, vice president of corporate sales, who is leaving the company that publishes Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Allure, Vanity Fair and 13 other titles. Hartman previously served for five years at Gourmet magazine, ending as publisher. He is one of a dozen staffers leaving as a result of the changes.

Prepare to dream. The Conde Nast Traveler's 2012 Hot List of new hotels, resorts, spas and restaurants is out -- offering lots of travel fantasy fodder. Editors, not travelers, compiled the list of the best 121 new (which includes the seriously renovated) hotels in the world. These in the West made the cut: -- Hotel Bel-Air , 701 Stone Canyon Road, L.A., which just emerged from a two-year renovation. Its Prairie spa also won a best-spa mention. -- Mr. C Beverly Hills, 1224 Beverwil Drive, L.A., scored high marks for its high-rise style.

What does Charleston, S.C., have over Los Angeles ? The Southern charmer for the first time was selected top dog for U.S. cities, according to results released Tuesday in Conde Nast Traveler's 2011 Readers' Choice Awards . Los Angeles didn't make the cut on the list, which, after Charleston, ranks these cities as the 10 most popular: San Francisco, Santa Fe, Chicago, Honolulu, New York, Georgia's Savannah, tiny Carmel, Seattle and Boston....

What's it like to stay in the best hotel in the United States? While that title is strictly subjective, Conde Nast Traveler readers singled out Chicago's Elysian Hotel for that top 2011 honor for big-city hotels. And survey results released Tuesday also picked Peninsula Chicago as third best. Rooms at these places are pricey, but even luxury digs sometimes have special offers for those who want something extra with a splurge. Elysian Hotel (11 E. Walton; 800-500-8511)

Shifting reading habits and a brutal recession may have caused the demise of Domino, Metropolitan Home and House & Garden, not to mention smaller publications such as Oprah Winfrey's O at Home and Martha Stewart's Blueprint, but a surprising phenomenon has been developing elsewhere: While shelter magazines fold in the States, a new generation of interior design titles has taken off in Brazil, Russia and, most aggressively, China. We're not talking digital click-throughs, the online decorating guides such as Lonny that have sprung up here, sometimes staffed by writers and editors who were laid off during the industry meltdown.

Architect David Rockwell maneuvered through the exhibit of artfully displayed everyday objects until he reached the area titled "Dynamic." Here, he paused to pontificate on the beauty of a bright yellow vacuum cleaner. "It has an original point of view," he said, noting the transparent dust-collection area. "It exposes function, and it takes that function and makes it a unique and surprising form."

Magazines will continue to woo Generation Xers and baby boomers--and now that publishers have discovered that the former have money, they want to offer help managing it. Starting this spring, P.O.V., a young men's lifestyle magazine, will give industrious twentysomethings career and financial advice, and Money will publish a test issue of a companion magazine aimed at twenty- and thirtysomethings. And as baby boomers settle down to home and hearth, magazines are doing the same.

A nude Kim Kardashian photographed full-frontal by artist Barbara Kruger. Katherine Heigl as the epitome of the new American family posing with her adopted Korean daughter on her lap. And starlet Rooney Mara, pierced and tattooed, with blood on her hands, for her role as "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. " Those are just a few of the arresting images that have graced the covers of W magazine since Stefano Tonchi took over as editor in chief with the September issue. W has never shied away from provocative visuals.

Five major publishers -- Conde Nast Publications, Hearst Corp., Meredith Corp., News Corp. and Time Inc. -- announced Tuesday that they would join forces to develop an online storefront to rival Amazon.com Inc. The companies -- which publish such titles as Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Wired and Vanity Fair -- said their venture would sell newspapers and magazines online but could also be used to sell digital comics and books. As more readers cancel their print subscriptions in favor of browsing stories online, which has led to precipitous drops in advertising revenue, traditional media companies have been frantically experimenting with ways to deliver and make money from digital content.