• Does it count as a New York magazine stunt if no one notices, or cares? [Romenesko]
• ASME elects new prez and veep; new prez and veep promptly make Bush and Cheney jokes. [WWD]
• Lachlan Murdoch has a second son; Choire Sicha promptly begins lusting for him. [Advertiser]
• WSJ editor Paul Steiger named chairman of Pulitzers board. This will have no practical effect on you in any way. [NYT]
• Hell freezes over, and Lachlan Murdoch finally puts 11 Spring Street up for sale. He bought the joint for $5.25 million in 2003, intending to turn the former horse stable into a luxury home, but the project stopped there. Now he's selling the property for $14.75. Sigh. We guess this means he really is gone for good. [The Walk-Through]
• Why you shouldn't bother with the cute intern. [Office Pirates]
• Believe it or not, Fox News screamer Bill O'Reilly was once 26. And what a bright young thing he was. [TSG]
• We still totally hate stylist Rachel Zoe. But we'd totally let her dress us. [Guardian]
• Apprentice failures can always go work for the Donald's blog. [Mediabistro]
• At the last minute, Britney Spears makes the difficult decision to not whore her infant son to People magazine. No matter: This is the age of the internet, Brit, and the fate of the Federletus really isn't up to you. [Page Six]
• LACHLAN MURDOCH IS BACK IN NEW YORK!!! He's probably just visiting, but we don't care — hand us the lube, it's time to celebrate! [R&M]
• Can celebrities please try to fuck off-camera? Yeah, Carolyn Murphy, we're talking to you. [Page Six]
• Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham throws a hissy fit at the Rock and Republic fashion show when she hears that her denim won't be used on the catwalk. Slow news day. [Lowdown]
• Steve Fishman reconstructs and deconstructs the entire relationship between Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert, determining that Lach left because dad wouldn't let him be his own man. [NY Mag]
• Anderson Cooper, meanwhile, remains inscrutable — about his job, about his sex life, about where to have lunch — while everyone just keeps loving him more. [NY Mag]
• Everyone, that is, except Franklin Foer, who finds him "a Yale-educated Geraldo Rivera." [TNR]
• Celebrity Living, which apparently wasn't really a gossip mag before, now is. [WWD]
• Enjoying the VMAs with celebs' favorite celeb photographer. [Slate]
• The new business mag for Conde could be what InStyle was for Time Inc., says David Carr. [NYT]
• OK America!'s editor eats at the Olive Garden. Gasp. [The Observer (London)]
Man, those quarters really add up. Post Sith Lord Rupert Murdoch received $19 million bonus last year, bringing his salary to $23.6 million. Murdoch's net worth is estimated by Forbes as $7.8 billion, which probably means he spent his bonus on hats, or perhaps nick-knacks for the kitchen. Maybe cat food.
• God bless Jack Shafer, who writes what most journalists know but don't say: That readers are two-faced nincompoops. [Slate]
• BusinessWeek gets hammered by new circ rules; other pubs likely to follow. [NYP]
• Natalee Holloway's Aruba disappearance is, while bad for Natalee, very, very good for Greta Van Susteren. [AP]
• Explaining the baby-mag boom. [Mediaweek]
• Esquire announces five-year-plus series on building the Freedom Tower. [NYT]
• More proof of Simon Dumenco's very strange fantasy life: An imagined Thanksgiving at the Murdochs'. [Ad Age]
• Mediabistro's Elizabeth Spiers doesn't like women's magazines. Also, she is friends with people who are friends with Christopher Hitchens. [mb]
• On the recently wrapped MTV reality show Miss Seventeen, 17 girls compete to win an internship from Atoosa. [WWD, second item]
• At Advertising Week in September, the headline event will be Jon Stewart interviewing four yet-unnamed prominent magazine editors. We really hope it's Newsweek chief Mark Whitaker. We hear he's a laugh riot. [AdFreak]
• "[B]logs are often just a way of making oneself appear on the Internet," observes NYT editorial. No word on whether newspapers are a way for making oneself appear in print, of if TV is a way for making oneself appear on TV. [NYT]
• More on the Murdoch Family Feud: It wasn't that Rupe couldn't let go, it was that Lach just didn't care enough. And dad was very disappointed in him, young man. [Economist]
• Top flack Peter Costiglio to leave Time Inc. at end of summer. Also, EIC Norm Pearlstine could hand over the top chair to editorial director John Huey around then, too. Ah, they grow up so fast these days. [NYP]
• Army Archerd to end column, but not leave Variety. [NYT]
• Will Fairchild honestly name a new editor to take over Jane within the next week? And does this new editor actually exist as of yet? [Folio]
Some numbers from today's Journal:
• What does the Murdoch family feud mean for 11 Spring Street? No one knows yet. [Curbed]
• Sudoku vs. Sodoku: One is a game transmitted by the Post, one is a disease transmitted by rats. We fail to see the distinction. [Hard, Cutting]
• Trickle-down Hottie contests. Nominate NYC politicos over at the Observer's Politicker. [The Politicker]
• Thank God we're not the only ones who confuse LES blogger/stalker Lindsay Robertson and Long Island actress /trainwreck Lindsay Lohan. [Lindsayism.com]
• Everybody loves a byline. [Overheard in New York]
The Times today explains the reasons for last week's surprise departure of Lahlan Murdoch from his high-level News Corporation gig, the publisher job at the Post, and, in its entirety, New York City.
Remember back when Lachlan Murdoch resigned from News Corp? Seems just like this morning... We're nostalgic for the mystery surrounding his departure, although we hear it might have to do with some creative number crunching for the Post's circulation. (To which we say: Big whoop. What paper DOESN'T fudge the math these days?)
Now this is shock and awe: Lachlan Murdoch, the 33-year-old Chief Operating Hottie for his father Rupert's world domination machine, News Corp., has announced that he is resigning from the company as of August 31. There's a Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader metaphor somewhere in here, but we're too flustered to work it out.
NYT writer Joyce Purnick says it's the season for making apologies, and points out a few people that notably haven'tKissinger, for a rather convincing and long-running impersonation of the Prince of Darkness; the head of the MTA, for telling the mayor to "shut up,"introducing the "kindergarten sandbox" phase of the negotiations; and Mayor Mike for buying a $600 bike most New Yorkers can't afford. (She may have been grasping for straws on the last one. If he'd have bought a discount bike, someone would have complained that he was shortchanging local businesses more money, but we digress...)
