Three guys who refuse to answer for sleazy spam tactics on behalf of their startup might expect to be shunned. Circumstances being what they are, the same three guys are bathing in money and adulation.
NICK DOUGLAS — To everyone who was "there for the first bubble," let me speak on behalf of those of us who weren't (and those who were and don't need to keep yammering about it. We get it. You're old and experienced and SO OVER this retro fad called making money off the Internet. Now shut up and let us make some.
Are we in a bubble yet? One indicator: When there's a lot of demand for talent, the smartest talent goes freelance, because there's no upper limit to what you can charge when you're a consultant. Open-source programming guru Nat Torkington notes that many of his techy friends have done just that, presumably in search of $300 per hour IT consulting fees.. The flipside: when contractors start heading for the security of regular jobs, watch out.
The NY Times took a break from glad handling Google to report after 10 years in business, the massive server farm Internap Network Services finally posted two whole quarters of profit. Congrats on not getting delisted from NASDAQ!
Google's new infrastructure, now rolling out, is named Bigdaddy. No comment needed. [Matt Cutts]
Bubble's back, babe. [Techdirt]
CBS proves its loyalty to Google Video. [LA Times]
Okay, so Robert Scoble was the "big-name blogger" who wanted his evil back — turns out he even blogged it. The pain of discovering this scoop's old age was mollified by the discovery of Google: Evil or Not? [EvilorNot]
Linus Torvalds joins the "Sliding Scale of Evil" movement [CNet]
• With the disclosure of Karl Rove's phone call to Robert Novak, today's the day the Cooper/Miller/Novak/ Plame/Rove saga finally becomes a genuine -Gate, says the epperific Greg Mitchell. [E&P]
• Finally: Janice Min's new, 2-year Us Weekly contract is signed. [NYP]
• Even as TV loses its audience, it hangs onto its advertisers, says Sexy Jon Fine. [BusinessWeek]
• If you just spent $35 million on some dying biz mags, why spend an additional chunk of change on a Times ad celebrating the purchase? "To make a bold statement," says new Fast Company and Inc. owner Joe Mansueto. Obviously. [Folio:]
• The Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and Desperate Housewives tied Will & Grace for the lead, with 15. Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher, and Felicity Huffman, are up for best actress; Eva Longoria and Nicolette Sheridan are not. But we're sure that won't cause any tension. [NYT]
• At least there's one upside to prison: "The New York Times and Miller will cleanse themselves of their WMD sins," says Margaret Carlson. There must be an easier way. [LAT]
• An ailing Peter Jennings, once a longtime ABC correspondent in London, played a big role in last week's bombings coverage. [USAT]
• Martha Stewart to write how-to business book. No. 1 tip: Don't piss off Doug Faneuil. [NYP]
• We hate ourselves for this, but we can't resist pointing you to Greta Van Susteren's yacht. [Tamby Bay Illustrated via TVNewser]
• Americans actually don't hate anonymous sources nearly as much as Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wants you to think they do. [AJR]
• Good thing Time Inc. honcho Norm Pearlstine has that lawyer in his head. Now SI seems to be up a legal shit's creek. [WSJ]
• And apparently the lawyer in Pearlstine's head is a better strategist than the one at Judy Miller's defense table, or so say Howie Kurtz's sources. [WP]
• But that's OK, because Bob Woodward tells Larry King he'd be happy to serve Miller's jail time for her. Then he goes back to his townhouse in Georgetown. [E&P]
• Meantime, you know what'd be great? A book about being a reporter in Iraq! [NYO]
• Now, newspapers maybe kinda sorta like blogs. [WSJ]
• But bloggers still don't get to count as real journalists. [National Journal]
• Unless, of course, the Federal Election Commission says they do. [WP]
• While they're figuring it out, we'll be taking Simon Dumenco's yuk-alicious media-studies pop quiz. [Ad Age]
• And staying far, far away from Don Imus. [AP via Yahoo]
• Matt Cooper's original conversation with his source was on "double super secret background." Which apparently can only be relinquished with "dramatic" and "secret" permisison. [Newsweek]
• But Cooper's "dramatic" and "personal" release from his confidentiality pledge was neither dramatic nor personal. Discuss. [NYT]
• Norm Pearlstine: Journalist, lawyer, businessman, David Carr subject. [NYT]
• Miller/Cooper fallout reaches Cleveland, where the Plain Dealer is holding two stories because they're based on illegally leaked docs and no one wants to go to jail for publishing them. [E&P]
• Who owns a reporter's notes? Who knows? (And how much would some scrawled notepads with Media Bubble lists and possible Times-mocking punchlines fetch on eBay?) [Slate]
• Breaking: In wake of London bombings, Fox News is insensitive and anti-French. [Guardian]
• Even worse: Big July news screws with journos' vacation plans. [USAT]
• Dressed to be sentenced yesterday, Judy Miller's "quilted jacket speaks of Barbour and the Upper East Side. And the black reads like a nod to glamour and chic and the thing that proclaims: I'm a New Yorker and not some well-to-do lady from Chicago." [WP]
• Today she's wearing "a green or brown jumpsuit with the word 'prisoner' on the back." [NYT]
• But, hey, whatever she's wearing in jail, it's basically just book leave, says Russ Baker. [Mediacrity]
• PBS and ABC clean up in news Emmy nominations, and ABC's World News Tonight — who could use some good news — gets most nods of the three evening newscasts. [NYP]
• Virginia Heffernan doesn't like comedies that aren't necessarily funny. Much as we feel about reviews that we can never tell if they're positive or negative. [NYT]
• And reports of the press's death might be greatly exaggerated. [National Journal]
• A "proud but awful moment": We confess that the Times's Judy Miller editorial leaves us a touch verklempt. Really. [NYT]
• The Post misses Harvey at Sun Valley. [NYP]
• New Today show EP has an epiphany: Let Matt and Katie talk to each other! [NYT]
• Inexplicably, the Timesman who admitted in his Iraq memoir that he sometimes made shit up when he couldn't read his notes is not the most popular man on 43rd Street. [NYDN (Second item)]
• Two weeks are left till Maureen Dowd returns from book leave. We're pretty agnostic on that, but we're psyched to see that her final pinch-pontificator is Sarah Vowell. [FishbowlNY]
• Why so many magazine deals? Because rich people are buying them. Or something like that. [NY Sun]
• There are two new AMEs at the Times — which isn't the most riveting news in the world, especially because their duties don't seem to be changing — but it doesn't happen every day and it gets their names on the masthead, which is cool. [NYT]
• Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley media cofab is set to start, despite some mogul's jets landing late after being delayed by the prime minister of Turkey's plane. Fucking Turks. [NYP]
• Hey, Tom Brokaw's got a secret: Bob Woodward had this secret source he used to meet in a parking garage. [E&P]
• Just when you thought there was no way the Bush administration could be worse for the press — controlled information, Armstrong Williams, the new public-broadcasting ombudsmen — it turns out the leaker Matt and Judy could go to jail for protecting might well be Karl Rove. Boy genius, indeed. [Newsweek]
• The rule of law always trumps a reporter's promise of confidentiality, says a fair and balanced report in Time magazine. [Time]
• From Napster to TiVo, the important thing is the technology, not the gimmicky name. And even gimmicks — like, say, giving away some regifted swag — have limited utility if they're unveiled while everyone's busy watching Fireworks. [AdAge]
• Is NBC maneuvering to replace Katie Couric with Alexis Glick? Um, probably not. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• "The journalist and the lawyer were fighting in my head," Time Inc. chief Norm Pearlstine tells the Times about the decision to hand over Matt Cooper's notes. Then, of course, while the ref's back was turned, the corporate exec rang into the ring and joined the lawyer to double-team the journalist, who was left unconscious and bloodied on the mat. [NYT]
• And the Journal realizes that actually, no, Time never published the name of the source. Duh. [Regret The Error]
• Two generals familiar with his thinking on the matter and four retired members of the intelligence community, one of whom worked on covert operations in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and another of whom has seen the actual contract, confirm that Sy Hersh has signed a $750,000-$1 million deal to write a book for Knopf. Also, Keith Kelly reports it. [NYP]
• Class, class, newspapers, class. Times class, Journal, class. Reporters, bankers, New York, series, class class class class. [Slate]
