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Yesterday evening at the Four Seasons, scores of well-dressed Manhattan women gathered to chat and mingle at the fifth annual Dinner & Dis(course) cocktail and dinner party. The event, organized by MediaBistro.com, drew together an array of female leaders in the magazine industry, along with one visibly uncomfortable male, Media Bistro associate editor Noah Davis. "At least I have good odds," he quipped.

Laurel Touby, the evening's hostess and the founder of MediaBistro.com, donned a chic Pucci dress, a white feather boa (apparently its been her signature party piece for years) and those quirky-cute glasses. "I just thought we needed to get the girls together to bitch and brag and brawl in the face of ever-increasing stupidity in the marketplace!" she explained. "But really, I know how lonely it can be for people in the industry, how isolating it can be, and I just thought it would be a great chance for us all to get together and mingle with one another,"  read more »

On Thursday afternoon, Gail Shister was explaining her recent reassignment at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
After 25 years of writing about television, the Inquirer’s management recently killed her column and reassigned the veteran writer to the metro beat. Thursday marked her fourth day on the new job.
“It’s going to take me months to feel comfortable,” said Ms. Shister.  read more »

Laurel Touby has sold her media gossip/bulletin board/media YMCA superstructre for a lot of money.

Drumroll: $23 million.

Here's the Times lead, which Ms. Touby posted to her own Web site just as the only people likely to be interested were trying to figure out whether Rupert Murdoch was going to get away with buying Dow Jones Inc. for $5 billion (Laurel never could share a room):  read more »

Correction to items written today by Dylan Stableford on Mediabistro's 'Fishbowlny', an oddly named New York media blog.

1. Is Page A2 of the New York Times really that funny?, Dylan asked of the Times' advertisement of a chuckling fellow holding open the paper. Caption: "Darfur? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Actually, A2 carries the News Summary, corrections, editors notes, and "for the records," not news about international genocide.

2. Dylan takes note of a publicity email he received from the New York Daily News about the escalation of Ben Widdicombe's gossip column to 5 days a week. "We like to think of Widdicome as the Owen Wilson to our Luke, at least on the media party circuit. This well-meaning Daily News flack apparently agrees," he writes, and then reprints an email from said flack, in which Dylan is asked to consider "booking" Ben Widdicombe on his "show."

Actually, Ben Widdicombe is the Owen Wilson to Dylan's Carnie Wilson.

Fishbowlny regrets the errors.

Former Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld will soon head to New York magazine. He will be a senior editor for the magazine's website. Oxfeld confirmed that his start date is August 7.

"I'm hugely excited for it," said Oxfeld by phone today. "That's not spin or a line. It's a magazine that I've always wanted to work for."

"I've known a lot of folks at New York magazine for a long time," he said. "In fact, I was at July 4th fireworks at a New York staffer's place. That's where I met Ben Williams, who is running their web project."

Oxfeld follows, in a way, the path of Gawker's first editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who left that website to work at New York. But she has also followed him! Spiers later moved to Mediabistro.com, to fill a position identical to one formerly held by —wait for it— Oxfeld. Spiers has since moved on to found her own weblog company.

At Mediabistro, Jesse Oxfeld was the editor-in-chief of online media. He left that job for Editor & Publisher; in September, 2004, he told Gawker that "I hate change, so this is kind of sad, but it's a great opportunity."

Since his sudden and unexpected departure from Gawker Media a few weeks ago, Oxfeld has been working part time at Us Weekly; yesterday, he was working in the Wenner Media offices.

"I'm sad to give up my mid-afternoon naps," he said, of taking full-time office work, "but health and dental is a fair trade-off."

—Michael Calderone

Did you hear the one about CIA tracking Osama Bin Laden in rural China using computer-enhanced satellite photos and technology like you might've seen on Murder, She Wrote? Oh, and that they shit their pants when they saw the photos?

If you read the Verdad ("true") issue of Vice, you did. You also might've read about Angus, the adorable dachsund/cat hybrid some Dr. Moreau whipped up in a lab. (Not to mention the awesome pygmy whales!)

Of course, the entire "true" issue is anything but—from the cover that features a BMX rider jumping the Grand Canyon to the report on kidney thefts, it's one long piss-take.

But none of that could stop FishbowlNY from posting an entry yesterday entitled Vice Knows Where Osama's Hiding and gushing, "Believe it or not, Vice does do a fair amount of international reporting."

At least, Vice does enough international reporting to offer a Fishbowl-baffling barrage of Central Asian place names in the deadpan opener, before throwing the Murder, She Wrote reference at the end. Though for future reference, China's policies toward Muslim separatists would actually make Xinjiang about as hospitable an Osama hideout as Tel Aviv.  read more »

The Media Mob alerted the post's author to the mistake in an email this morning, but it remains uncorrected or qualified.

Luckily, the item didn't make its way into Mediabistro's 'Media Feed' this morning. Oh, wait. No es verdad.