NY Editor Moss wants no Condé Nastiness

SCRATCH Adam Moss

from the short list to take the helm at Vanity Fair, whose current boss, Gray

don Carter, is exiting in December after a 25-year run.

Moss, the 60-year-old editor-inchief at New York magazine, is telling friends he has no interest in leaving a job he loves for the tempestuous waters of Vanity Fair owner Condé Nast.

Moss is a prolific winner of National Magazine Awards, which are the coin of the realm inside Condé Nast. He also has managed to pump New York’s digital presence while cutting back print, enabling it to turn a profit.

The editor is believed to be operating under a contract that runs at least through 2019 with New York Media, now run by Chief Executive Pam

Wasserstein, daughter of the late Bruce Wasserstein, who first brought Moss to the weekly in 2004.

Carter is also said to have submitted a list of names of three candidates from inside and outside who he thinks should take over. On the inside list is Dana Brown, one of three deputy editors on the magazine.

Another new name to surface as a potential successor is Esquire Editorin-Chief Jay Fielden. He was in London earlier this week and then flew to Milan to hook up with Hearst Magazines President David Carey and Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles — who are likely to remind him that the company enforces the multiyear contracts it gives to its editors.

Insiders say Carter also suggested Vanity Fair’s digital director, Mike

Hogan, as a potential successor.

Forbes’ 100th bash

Brothers Steve, Timothy, Chris

topher and Robert Forbes are partying likes it’s 1999 as Forbes Media tosses a throwback gala to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the magazine founded by their grandfather B.C. Forbes. Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, delivered the keynote address, Stevie Wonder performed and the company was assembling 100 of the greatest living business minds for a massive photo op at a party at Chelsea Piers on Tuesday night.

Alas, the Forbes brothers currently own only 5 percent of Forbes Media, after selling majority control to Asian businessmen in September 2014 in a $416 million deal. Steve Forbes still carries the title of editor-in-chief and a daughter, Moira Forbes, is publisher of ForbesWoman, but the other brothers have largely stayed away since the sale.

The family also had a protracted legal battle with the new owners to get full payment in the deal; it was eventually settled.

The new majority owners formed a company called Integrated Whale Media headed by Hong Kong’s Yam

Tak-Cheung (aka TC Yam), Singapore’s Wayne Hsieh and company spokesman Sammy Wong. They are all expected at the event, but are not making themselves available to the press. Many of the 230 Forbes employees were not invited to the event.

The shindig is being staged not far from the pier where the familyowned yacht, The Highlander, used to be moored in New York. The yacht was mothballed and then sold off as the family divested its media and real

estate holdings.

But Forbes Media pulled out all the stops on Tuesday with more than 1,000 guests expected, including Buf

fett, Eli Broad, Jack Welch, Steve Case, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ray Dalio, John Paul DeJoria, Louis Gerstner, Henry Kravis, Sean Parker, Stephen Schwarzman, Russell Simmons and Sandy Weill.

‘Sticky’ situation

Jann Wenner is furious about the soon-to-be-released biography, “Sticky Fingers,” which chronicles his 50 years at the helm of Rolling Stone.

Wenner revoked an invitation for author Joe

Hagan to participate at a Nov. 1 event at the 92nd Street Y that is to feature the Rolling Stone founder.

“Sticky Fingers” was done with the full cooperation of Wenner but was being billed in a recent Kirkus Reviews as a “definitive biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner” and not an “as told to” ghost-written memoir. Wenner, 71, had bailed out on two previous authors who thought they had his cooperation. Those books never were published. With this one, he cooperated until the end, though he may now be regretting the move. Sources who have seen advance copies say the book details Wenner’s creative skills but also his cocaine-fueled editing sessions, his cavalier treatment of many of the editors and executives who helped him over the years, and the tortured bisexuality that he only came to terms with publicly in the late 1990s. Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for the Penguin Random House imprint, said, “The genesis of the event was that it was set up by the 92nd Street Y with Jann Wenner, who invited Joe to pparticipate.” Then Wenner got his hands on an advance copy of the book, slated to hit stores on Oct. 24. “My understanding is that shortly after Mr. Wenner received an advance copy of the book, the invitation was withdrawn,” said Bogaards. The 92nd St. Y now lists the event only as “a conversation with Jann Wenner.” The author and the book were removed from the Web site. A Wenner spokeswoman declined to comment.