This NYT story looks at how Vanity Fair, largely regarded in some circles a a high-end National Enquirer, has actually been doing some serious journalism in recent times.

An excerpt:

... Why would two of the most serious, successful magazine journalists want to work there, of all places?

Because beneath Vanity Fair's louche exterior lies the beating heart of a well-financed, well-edited enterprise that has managed to break news as a monthly at a time when the news cycle is frequently measured in minutes.

In the last year, the magazine has revealed the identity of Deep Throat, had an exclusive interview with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and disclosed big celebrity news despite the fierce competition of swarming weeklies. It helps, of course, to have a phone book's worth of high-price ads most months, but Mr. Carter has invested in new editorial resources at a time when other news organizations are madly cutting anything that is not nailed down. In addition to Mr. Murphy and Mr. Langewiesche, he has hired Todd S. Purdum, a former reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, and Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian.

SO maybe we should start forgiving it for using starlets as a fig leaf for its better intentions. It is not, after all, Vanity Fair's deconstruction of the Florida recount, or its annotation of the run-up to the Iraq war, both good for 20,000 words, that moves the magazine. The cover featuring Jennifer Anniston, after her breakup with Brad Pitt, sold almost 740,000 copies on the newsstand in September.

"The cover is basically wrapping to get it off the newsstand, and in that sense we are a victim of our success," Mr. Carter said. "You have to tend to all parts of it: circulation, revenues, less measurable things like buzz — it all matters."

If Mr. Carter doesn't get the credit for all that success, it's probably because the magazine still moves on a track laid down by Tina Brown. But after almost 14 years, Vanity Fair has become Mr. Carter's world view writ in large, glitzy type — where aspiration, gritty world politics, business pathology and Old World snobbery are arrayed over new establishment times. In the process, he is no longer the nose pressed up against the celebrity glass. He's the glass itself, defining and iterating celebrity.

His easy familiarity with Hollywood elites and folkways has gotten him access and brought him disrepute: he was roundly criticized for taking a payment for $100,000 from Universal Studios for pointing them toward the book "A Beautiful Mind," which became a successful film.

So while Mr. Carter's political instincts were on public display in "What We've Lost," an unrelenting indictment of the Bush administration in book form, he is better known as the overlord of the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Mr. Carter, who jokes at his own expense (because he can), said, "Beyond making sure the nut bowls are filled and there are enough crudités, what I do at the party is not particularly important." Except, of course, he draws up the guest list.