Answering a phone call at 6:30am is not usually advisable; when the caller ID shows the name of a Gawker editor your best bet is to hurl the gadget like a grenade. Well, for the past month I've been tip-toeing around the Green Line in Israel and I once microwaved an egg so I'm used to things blowing up in my face.
Even if we occasionally tire of their aggressive media omnipresence, you have to hand it to the scrappy soldiers at PETA. Not content to let more than 2 days pass without coverage of their harassment of fur-bedecked Vogue editor Anna Wintour (it was just Monday that they plastered the Four Seasons urinals with Wintour stickers), now PETA is sending holiday cards to the entire Vogue staff.
• John Huey is finally initiated as the successor to Norm Pearlstine's editorship at Time Inc. The ceremony involved branding, hazing, and some tasty swag.
• Daily News EIC Michael Cooke barely lasts 10 months before scampering back to the Windy City. At least he'll be taking a nice, new pair of shoes home with him.
• The Upper East Side's finest brats open their own under-18 Chelsea nightclub, where they won't be drinking or blowing rails.
• Fabulist Jayson Blair returns to the Times building, but naturally lies about the incident.
• Actor Chris Klein attends the Condé Nast holiday luncheon!
• We haven't sold out to the New York Times Company, but can you imagine if we did?
• Body-armor magnate David H. Brooks breaks all records for nauseating indulgence by throwing his daughter, Elizabeth, a $10 million bat mitzvah at the Rainbow Room, complete with A-list entertainment and princess costumes.
• Woody Allen graces Lincoln Center, prompting us to recall when his films were consistently good.
Because mornings are for tears and existential loathing, we present you with MediaPost's 2005 Mag Rack, published last January, which mentions the publications they were looking forward to in the coming year. As 2005 draws to a close, we found the following old list of anticipated publications to be most appropriate for your seasonal depressive nostalgia. What they once were hoping for:
• This year's Conde Christmas lunch welcomed Fairchild and Golf Digest editors and publishers, too. "It's gotten too big," one vet sniffed to Keith Kelly, reminding us all why we love to hate the Nasties. [NYP]
• Did Martha Stewart's gang steal the idea for Blueprint from Time Inc. Well, no. It just seems like they did. [WWD]
• Rightwing loons from WSJ editorial page move their TV show from PBS to the far more hospitable Fox News. [LAT]
• Tina Brown believes Bob Woodward. And she would know, being something of an expert at becoming intoxicated by proximity to powerful sources. [WP]
• Oh good. It looks like there might be buyers for Knight Ridder newspapers, which is being forced to sell itself by the soulless private-equity group that owns a big chunk of the company. The likely new buyers? Private-equity groups! [WSJ]
• How do you know the Bushies have really gone too far in their payola gimmicks? When Richard Edelman — as in Edelman PR — blasts them for giving the flackery business a bad name. [Edelman.com]
About a month ago, Fairchild Publications — the Newhouse publishing division behind W, WWD, Jane, Details, and all your favorite rag-trade trade pubs — sent a company-wide email reminding staffers of its prohibition on holiday-time gifts from "clients and contacts." But Fairchild is being merged into Newhouse's glitzy and glossy Conde Nast umbrella, and that's creating an interestingly dichotomous Christmas season. Emails a Fairchild friend:
• Investor Carl Icahn signs on Bruce Wasserstein's Lazard to join in his crusade against Time Warner management. New York feature on Icahn's clever business strategy TK soon. [NYT]
• NYT Mag bigthinker Michael Ignatieff leaves magazine, Harvard gig, and the country to rescue his native Canada from its political crisis. NYU bigthinker Noah Feldman, recently signed up as Times Mag contributing writer, seems set to replace Ignatieff there. [NYP]
• Steve Capus named president of NBC News. [NYT]
• And Rome Hartman, 60 Minutes vet, named executive producer of the still-anchorless CBS Evening News. [NYT]
• Dear Les Moonves: For the love of God, please don't make Katie Couric the CBS anchor. Please. Love, Jon Friedman. [MW]
• Conde's standard Christmas directions aren't good enough for Anna. [WWD]
Today is THE day to camp outside of 4 Times Square: it's the annual holiday lunch for Condé Nast editors and publishers! It's a little early this year (last year, we recall, the lunch was on December 22), but the glossy holiday spirit can never arrive soon enough. We're not sure what time, exactly, the food-picking is set to commence at the Four Seasons, but if you park yourself near the Nasty tower from, say, 11:45 AM till 2 PM or so, we're sure you'll see all your editorial idols hopping in and out of their individual towncars. (You don't honestly think they'd carpool, do you?)
A new Nastie reports:
Spotted parked in front of Times Square yesterday evening:
When we first saw a Cool Hunter item headlined "The Anna Wintour Mug," we got terribly excited, expecting one of those ceramic Royal Doulton souvenir things, a vessel shaped like a caricature of some famous person's head, from which you may then glibly drink the beverage of your choice.
A cameraphone-armed spy in front of the Conde Nast Building earlier this afternoon reports:
Sure, Conde Nast might have successfully scared all its minions into submission with Monday's cursory dismissal of Gawker mascot and Times-certified First Amendment hero Andrew Krucoff. But is that victory turning Pyrrhic? What really matters to the mag empire is selling copies, and we hear the brouhaha is costing Si's subscriptions, especially in the coveted Anne Arundel County, Maryland, demographic:
We're going to go out on a limb here and just admit that, at this point, we're a little tired of PETA's militant antics. Yes, baby animals are cuddly and precious, and no, we don't think you should kill a kitten in order to have a new collar for your coat. But PETA's relentlessly self-promoting activism is striking us as a little tacky. We only mention our discontent because this morning, like so many others, brings their latest press release:
The internet is made up primarily of smart people who waste a lot of time. Some of those smart people have a lot of helpful hints over at MetaFilter for the less smart ones looking to waste time too without the bosses finding out. This is required reading for those of you who feed us our memos and leaks. Here's a sampler:
Favorite 4 Times Square Mole reports this morning that Conde Nast's management might well have achieved its real goal: Not so much ridding the company of Andrew Krucoff as scaring the bejesus out of its remaining employees. F4TSM emails:
Silly, silly us: This Conde Nast memo has been moldering in our inbox for a few days, repeatedly getting buried behind all the other tips and insults. But now, as we say a quick yisgadal v'yiskadash on this first night of shiva for Andrew Krucoff's tragically departed Conde career, it seems a good time to pass on word of how you can let your child being taking advantage of for the entertainment of craven media planners and the enrichment of the even more craven Newhouses.
Because recently-deposed Condé Andrew Krucoff is not just Gawker's mascot, but the mascot of underdogs everywhere, we've commissioned famed impersonator of Condé Nast photo editor Barbara Kruger to create a limited-edition Krucoff tribute poster. Click to enlarge, print it out, and get your silkscreen on.
