Si Newhouse Jr. is 80 years old and not half as cranky as Graydon Carter, the 59-year-old editor he hired in 1992 to helm Vanity Fair. Newhouse is in good health, good spirits, and good company. He's never been one to so boldly criticize an editor to his face; he simply has him fired when his missteps number too many. Though he publishes a magazine that dictates how the fashion industry moves month-to-month, he wears a sweatshirt to work. Newhouse has his table at Conde Nast's cafeteria — its the one on the right, by the registers — and selected it by happenstance. While he counts the number of ad pages in a magazine by himself, by hand, he does not make a big fuss over whether your magazine makes any money; Vanity Fair and The New Yorker have padded his pockets for fewer years than they bled them. And speaking of bottom lines, the fleet of towncars waiting outside 4 Times Square is not an extraneous expense, but an accepted cost of doing business.

So he sounds like the docile grandpa any editor would be lucky to call boss, then, wouldn't he?

CONTINUED »

Did you hear? Portfolio's senior editor, Dan Roth (whom EIC Joanne Lipman once poached from Fortune "with much fanfare") has now officially been poached by the Conde Nast mag's top in-house competitor, Wired magazine.

What's more, in the hours leading up to Roth's defection, Wired editor Chris Anderson (a.k.a. "the mean man who stole Roth away") had the audacity to show up to S.I. Newhouse Jr.'s annual holiday lunch and shove down food as though nothing had even happened.

Worse still? According to Matlock doppelganger (and fellow lunch attendee) Keith Kelly, Anderson "didn't even have that great a seat." Poor Joanne. When it rains, it pours. [NYP]

Jacob Lewis lost his job security over eggs.

At a breakfast meeting between Joanne Lipman and S.I. Newhouse, Lewis, the managing editor of the New Yorker, became the managing editor of Portfolio.

Lewis is a Conde man through and through. He met his wife, who then worked at Vanity Fair, through Conde Nast, and their meet-cute/awkward courtship was the subject of an extended piece in Vows.

Blaise Zerega of Wired fame will become a deputy editor based in San Francisco for Portfolio, though one source told Keith Kelly, "He's being called deputy but it doesn't look like he will have any serious management responsibilities. Have you ever heard of a deputy 3,000 miles away?"

Another good question: Have you heard of a successful magazine with declining ad sales and unstable editorial board?

If there's one lunch we'd like to sit in on – besides the constant meals David Zinczenko and Michael Caruso continue to have at Michael's – it'd be today's Conde Nast extravaganza Si Newhouse Jr. is throwing for all his editors and publishers.

They're all being whisked off in a train of black sedans to the Four Seasons, where their meals could pay the salaries of a half dozen editorial assistants. Even the Fairchild flacks will be there, from Details' Dan Peres to Jane's Brandon "She's So Jane" Holley. They're bastard children no more. (Well, for those who don't work at Vitals.)

And while the assistants of the editors and publishers will have there own merry holiday event (at the, ahem, Conde Nast cafeteria), we can only concern ourselves with one hot button issue: What is Joanne Lipman wearing?

'Tis The Four Seasons [WWD]