Scenes from Vanity Fair’s power list

Hot on the heels of the Forbes Rich List (signature element: Facebook’s pimply Mark Zuckerberg eclipsing Rupert Murdoch in wealth) comes Vanity Fair’s annual New Establishment power list.

Again, Zuckerberg (now subject of a movie) beats Murdoch.

The Facebook chief executive is at No 1, the News Corp boss No 4.

Unflatteringly, VF notes that Zuckerberg “seemed uncomfortable and sweated” profusely during a recent on-stage interview with Wall Street Journal editors at the recent D8 conference.

(While there’s nothing new on Murdoch, the same October issue carries an engrossing feature his efforts to use his newly-acquired Wall Street Journal to attack The New York Times, which VF speculates could be his ultimate acquisition target. It’s also worth buying for the profile of Sean Parker, the Facebook and Napster co-founder.)

A few snippets from the rest of the top 100 list which, as usual, is a weird and wonderful mix:

8. Oracle’s Larry Ellison. He’s 66! Time flies.

9. Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and BizStone. VF’s profile says Twitter now has 124 million members, with 300,000 new sign-ups a day.

18. Jonathan Ive, Apple. The man known as “Jony” who left design firm Tangerine for Apple, is credited by VF as the creative force behind the iPad.

20. Johnny Depp. VF notes Depp is the only actor to have starred in two movies with $US1 billion or more box office: Pirates of the Caribbean II and Alice in Wonderland.

28. Bloomberg president Dan Doctoroff (Michael Bloomberg is No 7). The Bloomberg president engineered the purchase of Business Week – with its 900,000 print subscribers and 11 million/month unique web browsers, for the firesale price of $US5 million.

31. Carlos Slim Mexico - and the world's - richest man has lent the struggling New York Times Comp;any $US250 million at a nose-bleed 14% interest rate. The publisher will shortly have to start paying it back. God knows how, with the cupboard bare (conspiracy theory: is Mr Slim in cahoots with the circling, cash-rich Mr Murdoch?). Part of its plan is a paywall, due to be erected around some NYT.com content from early next year.

42. Arianna Huffington. The blog queen now employs 70 reporters and editors, and maintains an investigative journalism fund, for huffingtonpost.com.

46. Steve Ballmer. The Microsoft CEO habitually gets little credit, despite having driven up profits, and tripled revenue to $US58 billion, since taking over day-to-day control from Bill Gates. VF gives him none, either, dragging out his three-year-old quote that “There’s no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share”.

81. Seth MacFarlane. The Family Guy writer and producer now has a $US100 million contract with Murdoch’s Fox. The adult cartoon series has now sold 22 million DVDs, more than any other series.

See the full list in VF's October issue.