Now that every department at the New York Times has moved into the new building, you're probably wondering where everyone has gone! So let's go floor-by-floor, shall we? And as we work our way up, we'll see who really matters in the Times organization.
AdAge has a super-servicey piece today about how to tell if you should find another job. The piece offers five indicators that may mean it's time to move on. I've been feeling a little bit of workplace dissatisfaction lately, but assumed it was just weather-related. I decided to do a little self-assessment based on the AdAge metrics. The results were disturbing.
Tonight, at 9 PM, on HBO, The Sopranos returns for the home stretch of its sixth and final season. Imagine if there were a day in which God comes back from the dead one last time before going away forever. This is like that day, but bigger. In fact, basically every demographic, interest group, and extant species is primed to benefit from the brief earthly return of The Sopranos before its ascension, nine episodes from now, to the heavenly pantheon currently occupied by other such pillars of Western civilization/dearly departed HBO originals as Rome, Socrates, William Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Tracy Takes On... and Arli$$. Everyone, that is, except TV critics. Indeed, the Inquisition dilemma facing the nation's small-screen literati this weekend is stark and unforgiving: To ignore The Sopranos would be sacrilege, of course, but to actually claim to "review" it—that is, to claim oneself as capable of understanding its true nature—would be heresy. The only solution? Total Prostrated Submission.
A letter to Romenesko, sent to us as well, by ABC News Senior Vice President Jeffrey W. Schneider begins: "There are glaring errors in Alessandra Stanley's column today." At this point there's little more to do than shrug one's shoulders and mutter the Hebrew from the Passover question. We're not sure how something like this could have happened!
Yesterday, we charitably declined to take New York Times T.V. chick Alessandra Stanley to task for screwing up Lost plotlines. Seriously, we watched that shit last night and already this morning we can't explain why Sawyer was getting all sand-in-the-Vaseline with Jack on the beach. Oh wait. Maybe that was the creepy slash fic we "found" late last night. But no charity could stop this morning's Times from bonking Lady Stanley with her third correction of 2007.
It's a given, at this point, that any woman writer who tries to contradict Christopher Hitchens's airtight assertion that "Women Aren't Funny" (which he later amended, of course, to 'Non-"hefty, dykey, or Jewish" women aren't funny') will be on the receiving end of a predictable, nyah-nyah "You just proved my point." But today, in a review of two new tv shows featuring "funny" men and ornamental, dim ladies, Alessandra Stanley puts herself on the line for the women-are-funny cause:
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster was the blogger. On Christmas Eve, as the blogger sharpened stakes of holly to drive through the hearts of media "celebrities," Intern Stephanie timorously asked to take the next day off.
So what's the latest on the Rush Limbaugh vs Alex P. Keaton beef? Well, after getting thorughly p0wn3d by the TNR's The Plank and his own inept research department, he apologized for accusing Michael J. of faking Parkinson's, though not as "bigly and hugely" as promised. The former ESPN personality added that Fox "is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician." Sheesh Rush, it's Parkinson's, he's not retarded or anything.
Today the Times reviews Calista Flockhart vehicle Brothers and Sisters, the ABC drama that anorexic Ally McBeal fans have been waiting for. The first page reads fine, but the second page? Looks like someone forgot to remove the placeholder text. But it doesn't matter what the page should say — it's an Alessandra Stanley piece, so of course it's wrong.
We've always assumed Alessandra Stanley got the TV critic sinecure as a consolation prize for not rising farther at the Times; you'd figure as a former foreign correspondent, she'd at least be able to bring some of that reportorial skill to her review of The Path to 9/11, the controversial ABC mini-series suggesting that Bill Clinton and Osama Bin Laden planned the attack on the World Trade Center together one boozy night at the Viper Room. Well, as Think Progress notes, not so much:
You watch the Emmys, kids? Yeah, same here. Still, we read the coverage in The Paper of Record and came across this:
Believe us, we take no pleasure in pointing out the frequent errors committed by Alessandra Stanley. It is, at this point, a heavy burden from which we wish we could be unyoked. Today, however, is a special day in our Alessandra coverage: We're taking issues not so much with her factual record, but with some of the opinions she asserts. We refer specifically to her analysis of TV news, a piece based around a review of "Walter Cronkite: Witness to History," a documentary about the legendary CBS anchor. We have no particular brief for Uncle Walt; we never saw him broadcast and, quite frankly, frequently confuse him with Captain Kangaroo. But Stanley's oddly antagonistic piece sits uneasily with us, not least because if Stanley's thesis that the Cronkite brand of cultural authority is no longer relevant, why the fuck would we bother to read an analysis of it an a dead-tree organ like The Times?
Speaking of Tabloid Wars, we couldn't help noting the following in yesterday's NYT review of the show:
Er, BREAKING: After 10 years of mutual love and support, Diddy and PR man Dan Klores are getting divorced. Word is that Puff left DK for another woman — Jill Fritzo at PMK. But just in case Diddy gets involved in another shooting, Klores is staying on a $1K/month retainer. Gotta keep the bases covered.
Because American Idol is not merely a television show but rather a very popular television show, news about its winner has been elevated — perhaps everywhere, but certainly at the Times — from the remote precincts of the Arts section to the sober pages of the National Report, where today, for the second consecutive edition, Alessandra Stanley is given an A-section spot for her musings about cheesily overwrought TV-show singers. But you know what makes Alessandra's report today particularly compelling? That we count at least three errors.
• Jacob Bernstein reports that ineffectual Times public editor Barney Calame is considered either: "[L]ike Kenneth Starr," unable "to step back and ask what any of it means"; unable to see the forest for the trees; like a "mosquito," always biting but never wounding; an "umpire," merely calling balls and strikes; or "a judge, not a prosecutor." None of these are compliments. [WWD]
• CBS Evening News wasn't in third place last week for the first time in years. To reward Bob Schieffer for this significant accomplishment, naturally they're replacing him. [USAT]
• Bids are in to buy Knight Ridder's two Philadelphia papers from McClatchy, and Mort Zuckerman and his Daily News crew are among them. [NYT]
• Alessandra Stanley is no more accurate when covering politics than when covering television. [Wonkette]
• AMI loses a top exec, and faces circ trouble across its titles. Fun! [NYP]
• Jack Shafer is tired of magazines' anniversary issues. [Slate]
• To be clear: Endeavor agent Ari Emmanuel is not backing Radar. [WWD (last item)]
