Here it is, folks, the moment everyone — or, at least, Mark Whitaker — has been waiting for: The winner of Gawker's first-ever High-Stakes Ellies Pool, in which the assembled media-pundit masses competed for prizes and praise by picked who'd win each of the 22 National Magazine Awards.
We've got eight entries filed in the High-Stakes Ellies Pool, and at least a few more are on their way. Plus there's still more folks we're trying to guilt into participating. (Come on, Dumenco. What kind of Media Guy worthy of the name won't hazard a few guesses?) As an additional enticement, we're now pleased to introduce Gawker Ellie, above, the keynote prize for the winner. There will be other, intangible prizes — compliments, esteem — and even, perhaps, some additional tangible prizes. But Gawker Ellie is the real tribute to your prowess. She's an elephant, in tribute to the Calder stabile known as Ellie. She's floppy, because her muscles have atrophied from sitting in front of a computer all day. And she's sad-looking, because aren't we all a little sad? (Also: Stuffed elephants, harder to find than you think.)
Our breath gets more and more bated and the countdown to Ellie continues, and, oh boy, is the tension rising. Big news today about the High-Stakes Ellies Pool. First, we've added five more eligible contestants, all of whom we obviously should have thought of initially: Kit Seelye, Julie Bosman, and David Carr from the Times, Sarah Ellison from the Journal, and HuffPost media editor Rachel Sklar. That's a total of 20 eligible contestants, and we'll do our best to hector as many as possible into participating.
Well, that was rude of us. Sure we're excited about our own Ellies pool. But we're equally that all sorts of offices around town are putting together their own pools, because of course everyone — everyone — has a raging case of Ellie fever. And so it seems only fair of us to provide for with an official entry form for your own Ellies pool. Change the deadline, if you'd like; eliminate certain categories, if you must. But we would appreciate if you'd keep the Official Gawker High-Stakes Ellies Pool tiebreaker:
Can you taste it in the air? Feel the excitement swirling around you? Oh, you know what it is, kids: The National Magazine Awards will be presented next Tuesday night, and New York has a bad case of Ellie fever. It's the biggest night of the year for the industry, and all around town mag stars are bursting with anticipation. They're picking up their borrowed jewelry from Harry Winston, they're getting final fittings on couture gowns from Armani, they're getting ready to face Joan and Melissa Rivers as they walk down that famous National Magazine Awards red carpet on their way into the show.
Rounds 1 and 2 of the Snacky or Flacky prelims (the first rounds in Valleywag's PR-hotties tourney) gave us a real victory and a fake-out. The honest-as-Woz victor was TagWorld's Paula Gould, who whipped ShopWiki's Carlos Odio, 337 votes to 130. Sorry Carlos, we'll always have a special place for you in our little black book.
Nominations for the Snacky or Flacky contest, where Valleywag readers will elect the sexiest PR person in tech, is extended through the night. Voting begins tomorrow. Here are more lovely flacks, nominated by you.
Last week brought us a confession from sneaky Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, who claimed that she was "influenced" by the works of Megan McCafferty, subconsciously transcribing word-for-word passages from those novels into the text of her own. Please — if you're going to cheat, at least be fucking good at it.
It's like an advertiser-sponsored contest, but it's not sponsored. (No, we don't get it either. But quit asking questions; it's free.)
Is it just me, or is the news full of ugly people this week? It's time to bring out the pretty folks in public relations — those kids in PR may not be the brightest, but they bring the beauty.
Congratulations, Kevin Marks! And congratulations, tech world, you have another word you did not need (but wanted so badly). Kevin coined "WiFired," defined as "getting thrown out of an internet cafe for spending 4 hours 'working on your startup' after buying one small mocha."
