BenPhoto: Getty Images
MEDIA
• What’s this we hear? Does Condé Nast want to buy Rolling Stone? [Folio]
• CBS thinks it’s “unreasonable and oppressive” that the government is requesting to review the un-broadcast parts of a 60 Minutes interview with an officer who is being prosecuted over the attack on Haditha. [NYT]
• Following in the grand tradition of fellow actor-vists like Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck will report live from eastern Congo on Nightline next week. [Reuters]
REAL ESTATE
• Spider-Man and urban climbers alike might soon face harsh penalties for scaling buildings if the city passes new legislation making crawling up skyscrapers illegal. “We don’t want our city to become Disneyland for base jumpers or climbers,” says the chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety. [NYT]
• Is FiDi the new Tribeca? (It will never be as cool as SHNOT.) [Curbed]
• A Brooklyn real-estate firm that asked a black client if she was Jewish is being sued for racial discrimination. [Metro]
LAW
• Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been shaking up Wall Street, trying to fight industry practices that his office believes have hurt investors, borrowers, and homeowners, but has avoided the big public brawls that defined Eliot Spitzer’s crusading tenure. [NYT]
• Summer associates are keeping a low profile this summer, much to the dismay of legal-gossip bloggers. [Above the Law]
• Attorneys from the elite law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton filed into court to watch as Cleary’s lawyer, Roy Reardon of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, tried to defend the firm against a sanctions order. Reardon argued that the decision by a New York judge who said the firm had shown “a willingness to operate in the murky area between zealous advocacy and improper conduct” was “stark and harsh.” [Law.com]
FINANCE
• A report suggests that banks might have to reduce their staffing levels by 20 percent to maintain profitability, which means that the bloodletting on Wall Street might have only just begun: Staffing levels at Goldman have fallen only one percent, and at Merrill Lynch, 2 percent. And Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers levels have dropped just 2 and 9 percent, respectively. [DealBook/NYT]
• The 9.4 percent slide on the Dow Jones this month makes it the worst June since the Great Depression. That’s something to be, well, depressed about. [NYP]
• JPMorgan changed the cafeteria prices at the Bear Stearns building. [DealBreaker]
