Yesterday Forbes magazine, in their annual ranking of the rich, declared New York City is no longer the billionaire capital of the world. Where have all the dollar signs gone? To Moscow, of course, who beat us out by 3 billionaires (they have 74 to our 71). Most of the big buck city dwellers are familiar names: Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($11.5 billion), publishing powerhouses Samuel Newhouse Jr. and Rupert Murdoch ($8.5 billion and $8.3 billion),......

drunkie the snowman, by brainware3000 at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an officer shot on Vandalia Ave & Ardlsey Loop in Brooklyn, a gas leak at Dongan Pl. off Broadway in Manhattan, and an aircraft emergency at JFK in Queens. The City's investigating whether its artificial turf fields are poisonous. The Brooklyn Paper finds Obama did get votes in many Brooklyn districts (here's the congressional district breakdown for all of NYC). Blogging by......

The Wisconsin, Washington and Hawaii primaries have been going on today, and while John McCain is expected to further solidify his presumptive nomination, the Democratic race is tight as ever, with a Gallup pole now showing Clinton closing the gap on Obama after his string of eight straight victories. What’s passing for campaign news at the moment is a teapot tempest stirred up by the Clinton team, accusing Obama of plagiarizing Governor Deval Patrick......

Bronx snowfall, by Somebody Shouted McIntyre at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: person under a train fatality at Lafayette and Classon Aves. in Brooklyn, another person under a train at 53rd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and yet another person under a train at Lincoln Ave. and N. Railroad on Staten Island. The giant apple will be popping up every time a Mets player hits a home run at the new Citi Field......

On Friday, Gawker speculated that The Brooklyn Paper was in trouble after a tipster told them freelancers haven't been paid since last summer (a late freelancing check...unprecedented!) and perhaps more relevant, if true, that editor Gersh Kuntzman told staffers the "independent, family owned, locally-run" since 1978 paper is "undergoing some turmoil." We asked Kuntzman about the rumor, and here's what he had to say:"The Gawker story is a complete fabrication. The Brooklyn Paper, which just......

Photograph of News Corp.'s Midtown headquarters by Triborough on Flickr Now that Rupert Murdoch owns The Wall Street Journal, he wants all his toys in one toychest properties in one building, namely News Corporation's Sixth Avenue building. The Wall Street Journal newsroom has always been downtown and is currently located at the World Financial Center. What's interesting is it seems like WSJ staffers would welcome a move to Midtown. The World Trade Center attacks......

While everyone knows that the proposals five development teams have offered up for the MTA's West Side rail yards are likely to change, the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff made it clear that he hopes they do, with a withering review of the five plans. Noting the great opportunity that developers have, Ouroussoff says the designs "are not just a disappointment for their lack of imagination, they are also a grim referendum on......

Fox News Porn Robert Greenwald, the man behind the 2004 documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism which concluded that Fox News Channel is biased to the right based on memos and footage from the network, is at it again. This time around he is using clips from the channel culled from six months of broadcasts featuring women in bikinis and pixilated nudity in a YouTube video and website that mimics a porn site called......

Controversial publisher Judith Regan dropped a 70-page lawsuit on her old bosses at Harper Collins and News Corp yesterday. The $100 million defamation suit claims she was the victim of a smear campaign in order to protect Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid (read: Rupert Murdoch's political agenda). She states they asked her to lie to federal investigators about her one-time lover and former police commish, Bernard Kerik (who at the time was working with Regan on......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue off the beach at 105th St. and Shore Front Parkway in Queens, a person struck by a train at 77th St. and 4th Ave. in Brooklyn, and a shooting at Martin Luther King Pl. and Tompkins Ave. in Brooklyn. A middle-aged man was arrested Sunday evening after attempting to rob a McDonald's on Staten Island, but settling for ripping the clear acrylic box of donations for......

Now that Rupert Murdoch is on his way to owning the Wall Street Journal, not only does he get to enjoy owning the successful and admired newspapers, he gets to feel the brunt of its personnel headaches too! The NY Times reports that signs from contract-less employees, including the phrase "Show Me The Money," have been plastered on WSJ office walls, only for someone to tear them down...and for someone else to put them......

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has secured the votes necessary to purchase Dow Jones & Co., Inc. which includes The Wall Street Journal itself. The win comes after a lengthy proxy battle in which the Bancrofts––the family that has acted as stewards of the company from afar for more than a century––resisted a very generous overture from Murdoch. The Australian media tycoon eventually won the day by convincing a......

The Simpsons Movie (directed by David Silverman) This weekend marks the move of America's favorite dysfunctional family the Simpsons from the suburbs of television to the urban center of the big screen. After all of the viral marketing of Simpson-ified magazine editors, real life Kwik-E-Marts and ticket giveaways, is it too much to hope that there's still fresh material to be mined from the long-running animated sitcom? According to the critics, the movie is just......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on East 79th St. in Manhattan, another bank robbery on East 89th St. in Manhattan, and a police scooter accident at Adams and Tillary Sts. in Brooklyn. A parking ticket fixer was sentenced to three-to-six years in jail for arranging false-documented excuses to get people out of parking tickets. Robert Deniro and Al Pacino are teaming up as detectives tracking a serial killer in a new......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: An escaped prisoner from Elmhurst Hospital, an unusual crime on 42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan, and a water rescue at Coney Island Is John Liu a born-again preservationist? Tiffany & Company and company opened its first store on Lower Broadway in 1837 before moving uptown to its present location. 170 years later, the company is reversing direction and will open a Tiffany & Co. store......

The owners of a controlling interest in Dow Jones & Company, Inc. may be considering a move to sell the company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. When the news that Rupert Murdoch was interested in acquiring The Wall Street Journal and adding all of Dow Jones to his News Corp. media empire, we wrote about the potential reluctance of the majority owners of the acquisition––the Bancroft family––and their longheld view that family ownership of a......

One can practically hear the giggling between the lines as The New York Times covers the New York Post's gossip page scandal that had the Post airing its own dirty laundry. Last year the Post fired Jared Paul Stern, a Page Six freelancer, after a billionaire accused him of trying to shake him down with promises to not write embarrassing things about him in exchange for cash. Stern is now suing the Post for his......

Rupert Murdoch did not become a media tycoon by turning tail at the first sign of resistance in his business dealings. New York Times media columnist David Carr examines Rupert Murdoch's past successes in wooing reluctant sellers into folding their companies into the News Corp. family with promises of benign oversight and marginal interference at best, only to run roughshod over the company and imprint it with Murdoch's style before the ink is dry on......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: unstable scaffolding at Manhattan's 265 West 37th St., a police car multi-vehicle accident at Thomas S. Boyland St. and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and a suspicious package at East 161st St. and Grand Concourse in the Bronx. How could the McGreevey saga get any more strange? Maybe if Jim McGreevey decided to join the priesthood. He told WNBC that he is entering a seminary to become an Episcopal priest.......

The Bancroft family, who owns a controlling interest in publicly traded Dow Jones & Co., Inc., is considering an unsolicited bid from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to purchase The Wall Street Journal. Trading in Dow Jones shares was halted temporarily after their price jumped 57%, or nearly $21 during the day. Murdoch is reportedly offering $60 a share for the company, which would make the total offer worth approximately $5 billion. The New York Times......

Two weeks ago, Post announced that it was raising its price from 25 cents to 50 cents, with the change going into effect this week. Gawker noticed that a camera crew was filming the new price change for the paper, but NY1 found that the Daily News lowered its price to 25 cents for the week! So sneaky - we almost expect Rupert Murdoch (whose News Corp owns the Post) to visit Daily News owner......

Gothamist had the chance to sit down with veteran news anchor Rosanna Scotto of Fox 5. Scotto, a Brooklyn native, began her television career with WTBS in Atlanta in 1980 and returned home to work for WABC-TV in 1982. She moved to channel 5 in 1986 as a reporter and weekend anchor, moving up to the weekday anchor chair in 1994. We felt that since the Ten O’clock News on channel 5 will be......

A look at some noteworthy televison this weel: Nature - The Best of Nature: 25 Years (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNET 13) Don't be fooled by the title, but this is a pledge drive clip show special. http://abcfamily.go.com/dukeboys">The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. ABC Family) If you liked The Dukes of Hazzard, you will probably like this made for TV movie. The Winner (Sunday, 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. WNYW 5) The buzz......

HarperCollins president and CEO Jane Friedman fired editor Judith Regan late-yesterday. The dismissal, which was announced while most employees were at the company Christmas party, comes after last month's O.J. Simpson book and Fox TV interview fiasco. Regan was the driving force behind the project, in which Simpson described how he might have hypothetically killed his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. After the project came under intense criticism, Rupert Murdoch, HarperCollins......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: iVillagelive (WNBC & Bravo, Monday, 12:00 noon) NBC launches this lifestyle show focused on women on Monday. What makes it different from other such shows is that it is going to have an interactive component, since it is a spin-off from the NBC-Universal owned website iVillage.com. The 2006 Billboard Music Awards (WNYW 5, Monday, 8:00 p.m.) Yet another music awards show. The only reason it is noteworthy......

You may have noticed that we've added another data source to our Gothamist Newsmap: now twice as much mayhem! Today's catastrophes: a water rescue in the Hudson off Houston Street, a "scaffold incident" at Leonard and Broadway, and double and triple shootings in Queens and Brooklyn. Yikes! On tonight's Nova science Now, Neil deGrasse Tyson (from the Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History) "mass extinction, the 1918 pandemic flu, robot engineer Cynthia......

CBS 2 World Exclusive Monday night at 11 p.m. WCBS finally aired what they have been touting as a world exclusive interview with Golan Cipel. In the interview he denied claims that he was the lover of former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and claimed was the victim of sexual harassment at the hand of the former governor. Anchor Jim Rosenfield conducted the interview that included a visit to the Woodbridge condo, which was the......

Finally, a good decision from Fox: The O.J. Simpson special AND book have been canceled by the News Corporation! Apparently being criticized nonstop since last week, with threats from all parts - even its own Fox News ranks - finally knocked some sense into Rupert Murdoch and friends. Murdoch's statement:I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families......

Can we just never hear about O.J. Simpson again? The whole idea the book and planned TV special from O.J. Simpson who explains how he would have killed his wife if he did it is just so disgusting and exploitive, we can't believe it was ever allowed. But we're naive and such is life, and the story has been getting crazier, with the book's publisher Judith Regan issued a statement saying she published the book......

- $500m spending cap for WTC Memorial? Not likely! - An 81 year old man was attacked and robbed in his Washington Heights apartment building elevator - Fox 5 went on the fritz last night - we think of it as slight justice for Rupert Murdoch effing up the channel 9 schedule - A Bryant Park webcam for those us stuck in our offices to envy those who get to leave - The skatebowl......