The New York Sun, the little neocon paper we glance at so you don't have to, has a provocative question: what if Absolut, instead of making ads about Mexico taking over America, made an ad about TIBET? It's as if Matt Sanchez has surreptitiously landed a job on the Sun's editorial board, a scenario which is quite possible. The paper's reasoning, as it were, goes something like this: Tibet is tiny. But the IDEA of Tibet, under the "ice of Communism," is "a vast land extending deep into what is claimed by the Chinese communist party." Also, Tibet has been in the news lately with the Olympic torch protests, and so has Absolut. Makes perfect sense!

Bill Cosby is back in the news! And as cranky as ever. The Atlantic has a loooooong think piece about Cosby by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who incidentally is one of the only tolerable writers about hip hop ever to work outside of the music press. Coates runs down Cosby's whole history, and his transformation from the friendly black face popular with black and white Americans alike to a latter-day Booker T. Washington whose gruff dismissal of things like, you know, racism, rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But the key lesson of the story: whatever you do, don't ask Bill Cosby about Obama!

"At Tribute, Mailer Children Recall a Family Man," is the NYT headline to the article about the tribute for the late, pugilistic writer Norman Mailer, who had six wives and nine children. It sounds like the Times is a little tentative about which tone to take; one mustn't speak ill of the dead! His family, however, didn't hold back: the photo on the left is of son Stephen lying on the floor, re-enacting a family scene (and presumably, working out some issues.)

This is a news report from an Arizona TV station with actual footage of Village Voice media CEO and asshole-in-charge Mike Lacey at an awards dinner last week, where he called a white journalist friend "my nigger" during an acceptance speech (the word is bleeped, but YOU know what he says). This report nicely juxtaposes Lacey's comment with the other item of business at the awards dinner: the 82-year-old mother of recently deceased black journalist Bob Moran accepting an award on his behalf. Classy. At least Lacey prefaces his comment with "if you don't mind the expression...," which is always a bad sign. Click to watch the clip.

Canadian celebrity journalist Malcolm Gladwell got in a bit of trouble recently for telling an embellished story about sneaking a funny phrase into the Washington Post. Canadian less-famous journalist Clive Thompson recently received a minuscule amount of press for admitting that he's jealous of Gladwell. This, Clive, is not the healthiest way to work through those feelings: "These tools raise a fascinating, and queasy, new ethical question." [SilverJacket]

Roger Stone is not some shady Republican political operative who plants items about his enemies in the press secretly. No, he's a shady political operative that ensures that he gets credit for planting things about his enemies in the press! Stone's latest shady press leak coup: he gave info to columnist Robert Novak about questionable billing practices at the PR firm Burson-Marsteller. Now that Burson CEO Mark Penn has been booted as Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, Stone is being credited as a player! If he had a dollar for every "Roger Stone" Google Alert, he would be a fairly compensated man. [via Alex Balk]

The NYT's news section under current editor Bill Keller, who has been in charge for 53 months, has only won six Pulitzers. In just 21 months under former editor Howell Raines, the news section won seven Pulitzers. The Times has been shut out of Pulitzers for its Iraq war coverage under Keller thus far. All of this adds up to one simple conclusion: Bill Keller is a more attractive man than Howell Raines. [NYO]

Mike Lacey, the pugnacious chief of Village Voice Media and overlord of alt-weeklies across America, is known to be a man not afraid to speak his mind. In fact, he's the self-proclaimed "asshole in charge." So attendees at a Phoenix Society of Professional Journalists awards dinner last Friday might have expected Lacey to say something interesting when he accepted an award on behalf of one of his papers [East Valley Tribune]. But they were less than amused when (the white man) Lacey referred to his deceased friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning [UPDATE: also white] journalist Tom Fitzpatrick, as "my nigger."

Despite retraction: "A spokeswoman for the newspaper said [Chuck] Philips, a Pulitzer Prize winner, would remain with the newspaper as an investigative reporter. She would not comment on whether any disciplinary measures had been taken." [Times]

It had already apologized, but now the LA Times has formally retracted its story about how producer Puff Daddy knew in advance that rapper Tupac Shakur would be gunned down in 1994. The paper retracted not only the story but statements from two chats and a blog post. The article is coming off the website. Specific names are formally cleared (lawyers were obviously involved in the writing of this thing). The worst part? The retraction and publicity around it come on the day Pulitzer prizes are set to be announced at noon. Some are already predicting a shut out for the paper.

Remember the Howard Kurtz piece about how the New York Times and the Murdochifying Wall Street Journal have a little war going on, or something? As usual, Kurtz missed/buried the story. The Times refused to comment on bitchy things said by British-import Journal publisher Robert Thomson. But a "Timesman" apparently called up Toronto Life's Spectator blog to give his side. Huh. Maybe he thought his unauthorized comments wouldn't be noticed in a Canadian publication? "Whatever it says on the masthead, Thomson's the editor," Mystery Timesman reports. "He's moved his office next to the news floor." Murdoch will destory journalism!!! There's more off-the-record sniping and gloating, below.

Amid the jailing of Times reporter Barry Bearak, news organizations are rightfully getting scared shitless about covering the nation of Zimbabwe, where elections are believed to not be going well for the ruling government. So CNN took the unprecedented step of concealing its reporter's identity. The BBC blurred the face of its reporter. Huge credit to the networks for filing from a country where they are formally banned; apparently people in the streets are "absolutely thirsty for information" and get most of it from foreign outlets. CNN's anonymous report:

Lehman Brothers' Japan office is under scrutiny for making a little mistake: it lost a $350 million investment in a fraud. They thought the project they were investing in was backed by a reputable Japanese trading house, but it really wasn't. How did the scammers pull off their master plan? With fake stationery and business cards. Yes: somebody showed them some documents with an "official" company seal, handed over that genuine-looking business card, and next thing you know, $350 million! When things like this—or, say, a low-level trader at Societe General losing $7 billion by himself— happen at some of the world's top financial institutions, the impulse is to call those involved idiots or crooks. And sometimes they are. But guess what: getting scammed can be way easier than you think. And that especially goes for journalists!

A blogger put together a visual cloud of tags that pop up most frequently on AngryJournalist.com, the rant-laden site that is the most accurate current summation of the journalism industry. The visual illustration makes it very clear what reporters hate the most: fucking work! Click to enlarge. [Eric Ulken]

Be forwarned, youngsters: the magazine industry has no room for you any more. Also, it can't find you! You're all out there working on the blogs and not learning how to do real journalism. Which makes you suck! "These people don't leave their fucking laptops," says elderly writer Gay Talese. "It used to be, you would go outside." My, how things change for the Gay. The Observer's attempt to capture the magazine freelancing zeitgeist in article form is written by former Gawker blogger Doree Shafrir, a fact which does not seem to register with the irony-proof older generation quoted therein. So the aspirational young magazine crowd either succeeds quickly or withers away into bitterness at the closed doors of the industry, while old veterans of top-tier magazines grow increasingly out of touch and bemoan every little change since their golden days. Isn't this how things have always been?

Every year, on April Fool's Day, the Vail Daily of Vail, CO, prints some funny fake stories in the paper, because no news happens in Vail anyway so no one really minds. This year, they printed an eight-page supplement of made-up bullshit. "It was also a money-maker, boasting numerous advertisements, including two full-pagers inside," according to Editor & Publisher. Printing entire sections of lies have long been profitable for newspapers, which is why so many of them have "Health" sections. But sometimes, truth slips through. After the jump, the UK Telegraph's list of April 1 stories that were actually true, no matter how much we wished they weren't.

The New York Observer, the fancypants pink paper read by the city's liberal elite, is about to roll out some changes. The two major ones: its cover price is going up to $2, and it's starting a full-on book review section, called the "Observer Review of Books," or "ORB." Recently laid off book reviewers of America, rejoice! This represents a big bet by the paper that its rarefied audience will be willing to pay more money for more literary coverage—and that the publishing industry, skittish as it is, will be willing to pour enough ad dollars into the Observer to make the new section viable. The NYO is no exception to every other print media outlet these days, in that it's trying to find a way to make its (vital) print product financially viable in the long term. Given all the papers across the country that have slashed their book review sections in the past year or two, it's not a bad niche to try to fill. This info courtesy of Observer President Bob Sommer. Contacted for reaction, former Gawker chief and current NYO gadfly Choire Sicha said—direct quote— "!!!."

On March 23, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an uplifting story about "Virginia Gillis," who had lost her perfect life when her husband started using methamphetamines, burned down their house, and attacked her with a straight razor, cutting her throat "almost all the way through." After a stint of homelessness, she slowly rebuilt her life, and now works as a chef at a homeless program, feeding hundreds of people a week who are stuck in the position that she once was. The paper compares her story to the resurrection of Jesus Christ—this was an Easter-themed feature. But further investigation revealed that, like Jesus, Virginia Gillis' story had a bit of mythology in it. Such as: her name, her age, her location, her outstanding warrants, and everything else about her story! It might have been easier if they just told us what was true in the original, rather than false. The entire, and truly epic, editor's note from page one of yesterday's paper [via Romenesko], after the jump.

Remember when Hillary Clinton told that crazy lie about flying into Bosnia with Sinbad and evading sniper fire and killer robots or something, and it turned out she just stepped off a plane and heard a poem from a little girl? The New York Post finally tracked down that little girl, who is now 20. And they took a hilarious photo of her looking serious and holding up the poem. Headline: "FROM BAD TO VERSE FOR HILL." What does that even mean? The little girl was just confused by Senator Clinton's crazy story of snipers and werewolves so the Post found some random other Bosnians who were outraged, angered, and disappointed. Representative quotes:

"Now demographers say Manhattan is increasingly a borough of babies, and more and more of them are white and well-off." We've been saying that for years! But these demographers are talking about the actual kind of babies, ones that drool, whine, and live in expensive apartments, but are not the full grown adult versions. The Washington Post, in the cute way that it always hops on NYC trend coverage several months or years after it becomes passé up here, finds that Manhattan is no longer "an island of adult vices," home to "hustlers, runaways, addicts, murderers." No, today this gritty island enclave is being overrun by wealthy Caucasian toddlers!