The future is digital! Print will never die! Media barons proved again this week that mixing a cocktail of print and digital, old and new, hot and cool media makes a tepid and kinda gross drink. Kinda like a Chocolate martini! It was a short but complicated week, chock full of conflicting messages about atoms and bytes. Let's recap!
Good stories we've heard: "At Jeffrey Toobin's book party the other night, I watched David Remnick ball up a piece of fried shrimp in a napkin and throw it on the floor. He's totally over it."
Harvard reject David Remnick clearly has no beef with that university, because this week's New Yorker is chock-full of Harvard kids! Of course there's '07 Simon "son of Frank" Rich's Shouts 'n' Murmurs. There's also Louisa Thomas (Harvard 04!), who's the daughter of Newsweek's Evan Thomas (he's Harvard '70-something!)—she just completed a stint as Remnick's assistant, and got a Talk of the Town published this week. But there's more! Zach Kanin, has a cartoon this week—he's on staff now, and he was president of the Harvard Lampoon the year before Simon Rich was. That's so neato.
On the first of this month, genial New Yorker writer Dan Baum quietly finished his New Orleans Journal for the magazine's website, and announced that he and his wife, writer Margaret Knox—with whom he collaborates on nearly all of his written work—would be leaving the city and returning home to Denver. What Baum didn't announce was that these may be the last words he'll be writing for the New Yorker, as David Remnick has decided not to renew his contract.
If you read today's encomium to "The Sopranos" from New Yorker capo David Remnick—"the richest achievement in the history of television"—you'd be hard-pressed not to see certain parallels between Remnick's history of the show with the history of a certain magazine we all know and love. Here's the translation.
Yesterday's trial proceedings of futuresexcrazyfakefiremanvillain Peter Braunstein brought another frightening peek into his twisted mind. He wanted to kill Vogue editor Anna Wintour! "I'm going to kill Anna Wintour—because I just feel like it," the former WWD reporter scrawled in his journal. Our precious Wintour! But why?
Totally non-gay catfight ahoy! This week's New Yorker brings a hefty piece by Michael Specter on HIV denialists in Africa and the U.S. Nowhere in the piece—which is bizarrely not online—do the names Celia Farber or Roger Hodge appear. One year ago, new Harper's editor Roger Hodge shit the bed entirely—in the name of "teaching the controversy," one which of course did not exist—with a story by journalist and "AIDS dissident" Celia Farber. (Hey, at least she was a chick, unlike most of his writers!) It caused all kinds of squabbles, including a document by doctors and activists proposing 56 corrections. None of that made an impact on Roger, though, who "stood by the story" and made noise about not being a scientist. (Batman was a scientist! Why can't Roger be?) So now that Specter has chewed up and spit out a good chunk of Farber, and Roger's been thoroughly, totally spanked by the New Yorker, maybe Roger will lose a bit of the 'tude. Plus, man, how awkward are those magazine awards lunches going to be now?
Today we learn, via WWD, that New Yorker editor David Remnick has a softer side. It's very soft. One might say it's made of a combination of tulle, peau de soie, and the gently-worn edges of a massive pile of ad dollars: just in time for Paris fashion week, Remnick has "suddenly . . . found a love of fashion." In a move that an "insider" calls "a little odd," he's throwing a massive Nast-funded shindig on Monday to laud the arrival of new fashion editor Susan Morrison. The quotes Remnick gave WWD did seem uncharacteristically bouncy:
• Federal judge orders the NYT to disclose its sources in the Hatfill defamation case. Times vows to appeal. [NYT]
• Katie Couric's taking all the good jobs away from the girls. [B&C]
• New Yorker Editor David Remnick attracts groupies. [FBNY]
• Tabloid Wars: News circulation up, ad revenue down; Post's circulation up, ad revenue up. Of course, the News is still ahead on that whole "not losing millions of dollars a year" thing. [Crain's]
• PBS brass doesn't give a shit who Charlie Rose honors. You can take your precious ethics and stuff 'em. [PBS]
• It's tough to be homeless in New York. [NYO]
• Dick Parsons to GooTube: "Good luck. Also, we're going to sue your socks right off your ass." [Guardian]
• LBO speculation sends Times stock soaring. [NYP]
• Jon Friedman discovers David Remnick, an obscure editor who toils in the service of a literary New York magazine one rarely hears about. [Marketwatch]
• Newsweek knows your ignorant American ass doesn't want to deal with complexity. [Wonkette]
'People have forgotten that - and this is not by any means an exaggeration - David was the great newspaper reporter of his generation. And had he never been anything but a newspaper reporter he would be, right now, the best. At the Washington Post there was one day when he had three stories on the front page, which I don't think has ever been repeated. He was in a league by himself. So the idea that he would have a second act where he would outperform his first act is kind of unbelievable.'
New Yorker Editor David Remnick and Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham are fighting over who thought of running Picasso's anti-war painting, Guernica, on their cover first. Actually that's not true. Guernica-gate paraphrased: Lapham is claims that "Remnick copiedno fair!" and thinks, in fact, that the New Yorker may have planted spies. Remnick responds with a very telling, "We have the same cover? I didn't notice." Guess Mr. Remnick doesn't read Harper's.
G+J planning gala debut [Keith Kelly - Post]
Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Art Spiegelman, is leaving The New Yorker. Again. Spiegelman insinuates that Remnick's New Yorker is too timid for his tastes and that he feels as if he were in "internal exile." The exiled Mr. Spiegelman will be taking refuge in the European media, with a book coming out in Milan, and his work published by German newspaper, Die Zeit.
Spiegelman splits from The New Yorker [Observer]
Conde Nast is a notoriously political and opaque organization, and the seating plan at Si Newhouse's Christmas lunch is one of the few ways to work out which magazines are in favor. At the top tables: David Remnick of the New Yorker, Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Alexandra Golonkin of Lucky, and Linda Wells of Allure. Tom Florio, publisher of Vogue, and Walter Anderson, president of Parade Publications, were further from the power seats. Am I really writing this?
Si's power luncheon [New York Post]
