MEDIA
• Rupert Murdoch personally called several reporters at The Wall Street Journal, including Tara Parker-Pope, Kate Kelly, and Henny Sender, to try and persuade them to stay with the paper. Some staffers are jealous, others asking whether the media baron is already overinvolved. [LAT]
• Despite its huge ad counts, the Times Magazine is cutting first and business-class flights for reporters. From now on they’ll have to get masthead-level approval to avoid us plebes back in coach. [Gawker]
• Former Jane staffers hope subscribers trash the Glamour issues they’re being sent as substitutes for the shuttered mag. How Jane of them. [NYP]
FINANCE
• Joe Montana’s hedge fund, HRJ Capital, took a big hit in the subprime scrimmage, losing more than 12 percent in August and dropping all of its gains for the year. [NYP]
• The SEC has seen a dramatic uptick in husband and wife insider trading this year, giving new meaning to the vow “for better or for worse.” [NYT]
• Lord John Browne, the former BP chief who resigned in a sex scandal, found a new job with Riverstone Holdings, an extremely hush-hush New York private-equity fund. Browne will head up the firm’s new London office. [Bloomberg]
LAW
• Turns out that ridiculous Nixon Peabody “theme song”; was for real, though the firm insists it’s not a theme song, just another sign that “fun is not prohibited here.” [Above the Law]
• One summer associate at Skadden insisted on wearing a black thong with her white pants, while another kept leaving his underwear lying around the men’s locker room in the gym. [Skadden Insider]
• Your JD may not be a get-out-of-jury-duty-free card anymore — it seems that more and more lawyers are getting picked to serve. [Law Blog/WSJ]
FASHION
• Gap’s profits took a positive turn for the first time in eight quarters. Gooo chinos! [NYT]
• Kate Moss is opening a U.K. gastropub. What next? Paris Hilton opens up a school? [British Vogue]
• The Hills star Lauren Conrad is designing her own clothing line. Yes, you read that correctly. [Downtown Darling]
