Remember when people aspired to be magazine editors? So archaic. Editing a magazine has become pedestrian. Now one must be a magabrand curator, lording over an entire stable of loosely related titles that make up your own media mini-empire. Why should Anna Wintour settle for editing Vogue when she could become the "editorial director" of a whole slew of Vogue spinoffs? That was good aspirational thinking. Until yesterday. Yesterday, Men's Vogue folded. That was a major embarrassment for Anna Wintour. She was a force in the women's fashion world, but she thought she was destined to build her own fashion magazine empire in her own little corner of Conde Nast. MV was supposed to be a big part of that. Now it's dead, along with Fashion Rocks, the huge advertorial project that Conde Nast put on each fall. Teen Vogue is rumored to be shaky as well! That means fashion advertising is weak overall, and Anna's dream is deferred. If not dead. You know who this should be of concern to? Dave "Abs" Zinczenko! And every other aspiring magabrand mogul. Dave Z made his name editing Men's Health, but now he oversees a bunch of "Health" titles, writes ridiculous "Health" books, and goes on the Today show as an expert all the time. He's not an editor, he's a brand name. Until the advertising collapses! Then he's back to being just another dude checking copy and approving pages and hopefully getting out of the office in time to go to the gym, not so he can look good on TV, but just so he can feel good for himself. Don't worry. Pretty soon you'll be thankful just to have those editing jobs. [Pic via Reuters]

As we noted Thursday morning, the Washington Post this week prominentaly mentioned that the wife of Democratic politician John Edwards, Elizabeth, was missing her wedding band when she recently stepped back into public view. Perhaps, we thought, this was a sign the marriage was over. But as commenter La Cieca first noticed, Edwards also went ringless in 2007; we dug through photo archives and found she's been slipping her ring on and off for years now, seemingly without regard for the ups and downs of her marriages. The band would appear meaningless as to the state of her marriage. And yet:

What do average Americans count on for comic relief in these troubled times? Salvia clips on YouTube and G-spot enlargement injections, right? No, those are elitist coastal pastimes. Readers of Denver's Rocky Mountain News have a keener funny bone: "More than 2,000 readers wrote, e-mailed and called our comics hot line after the strip was dropped. Many Garfield fans told us that in these troubled times, they counted on the comic relief of their longtime favorite strip." Huh. And just the other day someone was saying that there were smart people in Denver. [RMN via Westword]

Everybody in the media fucks up once in a while. Sometimes the fallout is bad. Remember when Bloomberg accidentally ran Steve Jobs' obituary while he was still alive? Then shortly afterward they mistakenly ran an old headline about United's bankruptcy as if it was current, and temporarily destroyed the company's stock price? Both are very bad errors, but at least Bloomberg apologized for them. Which is more than you can say for Dow Jones, which handily fails to mention its own mistake that crushed GE's stock price yesterday: With 15 minutes left in the trading day yesterday, Dow Jones ran a mistaken report that (almost singlehandedly) erased the day's gains in the DJ Industrial Average:

The presidential campaign has been going on for, what, 10 years now? The sad campaign reporters are all about to collapse. Take CNN's Candy Crowley, who writes the following on a Post-It to look at as soon as her three alarms go off and she wakes up, weary and confused: "What city is she in? What time zone? What time does she have to be out of the hotel room the next morning? What day is it?" Crowley pleads with a New Republic writer (do follow that link, it's an awesome story) that she just wants. To go. To a simple. Grocery store. Please! And the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza described a harrowing scene on board Barack Obama's stinky airplane:

Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, it's true. But it is surely unexpected that a Supreme Court justice, of all people, would have to wait so long for deliverance from reckless cruelty. Over and over and over again, year after year since 1980, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had to endure the sight of her name carelessly rendered "Ginsberg" or some similarly awful facsimile in the pages of the Times. Would the paper deign, even once, to run a correction? No, it would not. Any formal objections were presumably, well, overruled. Until now.

When Robert Thomson's Wall Street Journal ran a story labeled "EMBARGOED!" in June, we held out hope the tag referred to the paper's in-house lingo for an exclusive to be kept off the Web until the last possible minute, not to the sort of embargoes where sources dictate when information may be published. But alas, it appears former managing editor Marcus Brauchli's noble defiance of public relations choreography is truly abandoned, as evidenced by the screenshot above and the factually identical stories in the Times and Journal this morning (about a Netflix-TiVo deal). Sometimes, even the Journal will submit to a flack's rules. And even add a slammer!

It's probably safe to say that Howard Kurtz is the most prominent member of his disreputable clan, the media critics. He analyzes the press full-time for the Washington Post, one of the few national papers left, while the Times has no one regular press critic. Kurtz also has a tv show of his very own! How did he swing such a cushy job? By regularly producing the kind of trenchant media analysis on display in today's column, about a magical fantasy world in which Barack Obama is losing. In this bizarro universe, the Obama campaign is poorly managed, beset by gaffes, and the candidate is a national joke. It's really useful thought exercise, if you're into thinking about things that don't relate to reality. This is his thesis:

After it was revealed that she doesn't write her own column for Page Six Magazine, socialite and self-styled "Freelance Journalist" Lydia Hearst took to her Facebook to announce she would devote her "eighteen-hour days" to a "new beginning." What will this fresh new start for the model entail? She's not really sure, but it's going to be awesome, because anything can happen in New York. After all, Krispy Kreme donuts were invented here!

The man who shall save newspapers is back with another newspaper-saving memo! Possibly written while under the influence of ibogaine! This time Tribune's Chief Innovation Of New Ways To Make Bongs Officer Lee Abrams is doing what he does best: showering a far-flung newspaper with ideas about how they should do their job, according to none other than career radio man Lee Abrams. "What does Pravda say about our economy?" "Poker is the 21st Century Bridge." Think about it, newspaperpeople! This is hands-down the BEST LEE ABRAMS MEMO YET: And now, Lee Abrams' suggestions to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

We were thoroughly confused yesterday by the feud that erupted between model/heiress Lydia Hearst and the Post. Why would the tabloid's gossips alter Hearst's Page Six Magazine column to make it look like she was trashing her family, then release a column preview exposing their fabrication to the world?Something seemed fishy. And indeed it was: The self-proclaimed socialite "journalist" has had her columns ghost-written all along. SHOCKER!

What is the saddest thing about the death of Radar? Its current weird zombie TMZ state? The way they locked everyone out of their computers and kicked them out on the streets? Here is a sad and oh-so-poignant symbol of how basically we are all fucked, in this industry: Wonkette founding editor and terribly famous, talented, and successful blogger Ana Marie Cox, who is often on TV and who still writes for Time, has set up a personal fundraising drive whereby donors can pay for her to cover the end of the McCain campaign and receive, in exchange, AMC's AIM screen name and, for big spenders, a post-election dinner! This is, appropriately enough, a political fundraising method, where donors get special access and personal attention for their cash. All it is missing is cute names for each tier, like Bush's "Rangers" and Hillary Clinton's "Hillraisers." As a model for the future of professional journalism, it is perhaps worrying! But you know we're all "marketing" our "personal brands," right? Now we are microtargeting, too. And once we are finally out of work, when Nick Denton decamps to his secret underground fortress to ride out the End Times, we will gladly email you, personally, 200 words on why Rachel Maddow is so popular in exchange for a hamburger. But who will donate to the commenters? The system is unsustainable!

Dear Project For Excellence in Journalism: please just stop. Stop doing these studies or just stop releasing your so-called "empirical" findings to the press. Because Howard Kurtz "reporting" that the press is so mean to John McCain and so nice to Barack Obama all the time is not "excellent journalism." It is more like "the Project for No Context and More Bullshit in Journalism." Christ, PEJ, how does it further excellent journalism, learning this factoid:

Three years ahead of schedule, Columbia J-School has met its goal of raising $100 million, thanks in part to a $20 million donation from John Kluge, a rich man who values Ivy League schools over starving children in Africa. The school plans to increase scholarships, start an "academic center focused on the coverage of race and ethnicity," and also get started on the big "Center for Internet Journalism," which will finally teach young people how to write things online. A worthy use of $100 million if there ever was one. Nick Lemann can afford to buy enough paper for his long memos, with enough cash left over to Make it Rain on Them Hoes, if he so chooses. Meanwhile, less upscale schools are forced to do things like this to raise money: The alumni office at Framingham State University recently sent out a fundraising letter that attempted to be cool and appeal to "Generation X" by using the word "blah" 137 times.

Early-to-rise AM New York takes a look today at an issue that will only grow more pressing as the economy sours and humans scavenge the city ever more voraciously for food: people posing as journalists to get into events—events where there will be free food, and drink, and warmth. The story is fundamentally an excuse for AMNY to shout "We're onto you!" at "Robert Miller," some dude who goes around town trying to crash events by posing as an AMNY reporter. Dude, bad idea for so many different reasons. But the larger issue is valid: how can flacks be sure they only kowtow to real reporters? And how can ordinary jerks crash parties reserved for media jerks only? Both questions answered in full, below: Flacks: Is this person a real reporter? Ask yourself these questions: 1. Is he poorly dressed? If so, you're probably dealing with an authentic journalist. Also a good option: Google the name on your little Blackberry, for chrissake. Do you find links to articles the person has written on the website of the news publication where he claims to work? Bingo, you've cracked the case. For regular people trying to pose as journalists to score some of those sweet spring rolls, mini-cheeseburgers, and signature cocktails named for the event sponsor, just follow these simple rules: 1. Dress poorly. 2. Act haughty and self-important. 3. Walk right in, acting surprised that they don't know who you are. 4. Claim to work for a blog. They can't call your boss. 5. Claim to be a freelancer. They can't call your boss. 6. Gaze into the crowd; wave randomly towards the back and shout, "Harvey!" Chuckle. Turn back to flack and say, "Now what's the problem here?" 7. Threats, threats, threats. If all else fails, pose as a UPS deliveryman. Those guys get in everywhere. [AMNY via PRNewser]

The Obama campaign, not content with the eleventy billion dollars it raised last month, is going to squeeze countless thousands of dollars out of news outlets who want the "privilege" of covering election night in Chicago. That'll be $935 for access to the filing center, please. Or for those publications on a budget (all of them), $880 will buy you a nice spot on a riser! The public must know what the view is like from the sixth step on the riser there, fellas! The campaign says it's just covering costs, which would indicate risers made of white gold. Full rate card after the jump; reporters across the country are, right now, literally begging for their bosses to purchase them access to the heated section. Sad:

The Times ran a special editors' note this morning accusing one of its freelancers of twisting the truth "to fit his theme, contrary to the Times' standards of integrity." The writer, Paul Burnham Finney, apparently distorted an American Psychological Association survey to reflect his article's thesis that business travel and the Wall Street meltdown are stressing people out more than anything else. In fact, the survey showed the economy generally is stressing people out. Also, he rewrote a therapist's quote to also be more specific in the same way, the paper said. Having developed something of a history running false stories, the Times seems to have been eager to get out in front of this one, running its correction barely one week after the original article came out — quite a speedy timeframe for deciding one of your contributors is a liar. The full editor's note is after the jump.

John McCain's presidential campaign won't let Time columnist Joe Klein aboard its campaign plane because, according to an official statement, " we don't allow Daily Kos diarists on board either." Translation:

Our rapid 24-hour-a-day news cycle is turning "solid journalism" into a quaint anachronism! As you may have heard. First it was round-the-clock cable news, then the internet happened, and now even real news outlets are making all types of errors trying to keep up with blogs, where we just invent our stories whole, like Keyser Soze staring at a police station bulletin board. Fortunately some journalistic theorists have just the thing to prevent the general public from being suckered into believing everything they read: media training for tots!

Steve Barnes (pictured), the restaurant critic for the Albany Times-Union, was coming out of a restaurant with a friend last Friday night when, with no warning, two young men walked up nonchalantly and beat them up. "They said nothing, just punched us both repeatedly in the face." Barnes doesn't think he was targeted because he was gay, and he doesn't think he was targeted by the restaurant he just left—but he does think he was targeted: