If you're anything like us, you were drinking and dancing till the wee hours last night, celebrating the announcement of this year's National Magazine Award finalists. Such excitement! Such drama! Such drug-addled nightmares of being stampeded by a herd of bronze elephants! In the sober light of morning, finally, there's a chance to ponder some of the great metaphysical questions raised by yesterday's announcement:
This morning, we noted that David Katzenberg,* son of Dreamworks' CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, was reportedly wallowing in grub work at Vanity Fair with fellow spawn-of-famer Cate Edwards, daughter of former Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. We stand corrected: it's David's twin sister Laura doing the bitch work with Cate — not that it makes much difference. Their mutual fanciness is hardly a coincidence. As several readers have noted, media gigs come a lot easier when your family could have an editor by the balls. As one tipster put it:
Put on your monkey suits and call your bookie — The ASME has just announced the finalists for the 40th annual National Magazine Awards. While we'll have to wait until May 9 to see the winners accept their elephantine prizes, there's still more than enough time to organize your office betting pool.
• Will Ferrell did not die in a paragliding accident. And if he did, do you really think you'd hear about it through a barely literate press release? [Defamer]
• So long as MTV-ready bands behave like this in Manhattan hotels, we'd rather sleep in our shoebox. Fucking trash monkeys, all of them. [Hotel Chatter]
• Ladies, prepare yourselves: Tomorrow is Steak and Blowjob day! Share it with the man you love, or at least one you don't mind sucking off. [SteakandBJDay]
• We can hardly fathom paying $82 for a stack of magazines. Make them a stack of bridal magazines, and you've the third ring of hell. [Bridal Blog]
• A Gay Clay is a defective one. [Got Detroit?]
• The bad thing about winning the U.S. Memory Championship is being unable to forget the reporter bugging you, that damn Foer kid. [Slate]
• Penguin wins auction for Alan Greenspan memoir with an offer believed to be nearly $9 million. Obligatory question: Irrationally exuberant? [NYP]
• The dude behind the allegedly forthcoming mags Everything for Men and Everything for Women is a con artist and a felon. Unlike most mag people, who are merely con artists. [WWD]
• Arthur S. holds his State of the Times meeting; reporters question why he gets paid so much and they so little. [Media Mob/NYO]
• ABC's Bob Woodruff reportedly now conscious and talking, though heavily medicated. [ABCNews.com]
• Air America could lose its New York affiliate on April 1. We'd be bummed, if we ever listened to it. [NYP]
• The Jew and the gays brought Oscar his second-worst ratings since 1987. [WP]
• Does Diane Sawyer want to anchor World News Tonight? One gossip site says so. [TMZ]
• Candace Bushnell to launch weekly Sirius Satellite Radio show giving advice to women. First piece of advice we'd like her fans to hear: "They're just cupcakes. Stop waiting on a line around the corner for them." [NYDN]
• Will Nick Sylvester be a Stephen Glass, a Mike Barnicle, or a Janet Cooke? [Media Mob/NYO]
Absolute magazine — the recently launched lifestyle mag for people much, much wealthier than you are or will ever be — folded today, editor-in-chief Andrew Essex confirmed to Gawker. Twenty-six staffers, about half of them editorial, are out of work, including Essex. The move comes as a shock; we hear the mag's owners paid an office visit only two weeks ago and expressed nothing but confidence and support.
If you're anything like us, you often wonder what magazines have the gayest readerships. Thankfully, Fairchild's DNR got hold of the research this week, and it told us. (On Monday. None of you saw this and could pass it on before now? Jesus, people.)
• Remember how Ad Age told us last week that when the biannual circ numbers came out they'd show the celeb weeklies way up and O, The Oprah Magazine way down? Well, they came out, and they did. [NYT]
• Designer working on WSJ overhaul is urging the paper to consider more fashion and celeb coverage. Dow Jones execs can't wait to catch the celeb-mags circ mojo — and we can't wait for the stipple portrait of Jessica Simpson. [St. Pete Times]
• Nick Kristof raises $727K to send Bill O'Reilly to Darfur. It's amazing how much money you can raise when people will never actually have to fork it over. [E&P]
The new batch of Audit Bureau stats on magazine circ isn't out till next week, but Ad Age's Nat Ives is growing restless. He's tallied up a bunch of early reports and finds a shocking amount of good news (for the industry, if not so much for society):
• Mr. Magazine says Domino was the launch of the year. Runners-up include Celebrity Living Weekly and Everyday With Rachel Ray. Which is great, because the world needed more shopping, celeb, and vanity magazines. [MIN]
• The Atlantic is now safely ensconced in Washington, but it still lacks an editor. And might for some time. [NYO]
• Newspapers and magazine want to convince marketers to advertise in them. Also, the sky is still blue. [NYT]
• Diane, Charlie, and Barbara gamely go once more into the breach for God and network. [NYO]
• Viacom chief Sumner Redstone's son sues to break up the family business. Oh, those impetuous little kids. Those impetuous, 55-year-old, little kids. [NYT]
There were lots of reasons, as blogger Kyle du Ford points out, why Budget Living shouldn't have had to close: The magazine, by his calculations, was grossing $17 million a year, which is enough to keep even Maer Roshan happily publishing for a while. Impressive, yes? Actually no. Budget Living really did shut down yesterday, as both WWD and Keith Kelly report. Severance packages are still be determined, but staffers seem likely, at best, to be paid for another two weeks, till the end of the month. After that, well, one hopes they've been reading their magazine carefully.
The last news out of Budget Living magazine — the young "spend smart, live rich" title that won a general-excellence Ellie two years ago — was that founder Don Welsh was looking for a buyer. "Now is the time to sell," Welsh told Keith Kelly for his Dec. 16 Post column. "It needs a giant magazine company to be its home." Welsh said he'd find a buyer within 60 days.
• The Onion Diet: Move to New York, eat sushi, slim down. [NYT]
• Sez Dumenco: Magazines will soon start to die, too, and Anna Wintour will lose her Town Car, and it's all Lucky's fault. Of course, he says it with words like "transactionality." [Ad Age]
• WSJ discovers people. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer says newspapers better give him what he wants, or else they're just gonna wither and die. [Slate]
• Joel Stein, says Jon Friedman, is just like Oprah Winfrey. But, you know, poorer and whiter and Jewier. [MW]
• Journo types who drink tab: David Edelstein, Steve Brill, David Bradley, and Danny Goldberg. Now you know. [New Yorker]
• Layoffs at Blender. [WWD (second item)]
• Journalism needs to more money and time from owners, more facts, more international coverage, and more tough questions, says Dan Rather. Also, it would very much like a pony for its birthday. [LAT]
• If CW — the WB-UPN amalgam — works, a CNN-CBS News merger could finally happen. [Mediaweek]
• Everything at the Times is great, says Sulzberger! He loves Bill Keller! His job is totally secure! The staff is all happy! And he still believes, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart! [MW]
• Stephen Colbert, fake blowhard political pundit, to emcee annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, filled with real blowhard political pundits. Also, universe to collapse just a little bit further. [FishbowlDC]
• Finally, some good news: Magazines aren't necessarily going away. [National Journal]
• Hed: "'First-Ever' Urban Gay Men's Lifestyle Magazine to Get U.S. Debut." You know, except for Details. (And we won't even get started on its name.) [Folio:]
Today's Times carries news that The New Leader, "a liberal beacon" for some 82 years that has published "everyone who was anyone in liberal intellectual circles," will shut down after releasing its January-Feburary issue late next month.
• How'd People land the preggers-Angelina scoop? By donating something like $400K to one of the actress's favorite charities. "It is not a pay for access deal," says the mag's new chief. No, not at all. [NYP]
• Brandon Holley's Jane is kicking ass on the newsstand, it turns out. [WWD (second item)]
• Regret The Error's Craig Silverman is nitpicking because he cares. Yeah, us too. [Media Orchard]
• Thought Radar was short-lived? Behold Game Industry Report, which lasted for one day. [Folio:]
• It's not just Abramoff: Turns out the mag biz pay several firms about $500K each year to lobby lawmakers. [Folio:]
• With three jobs instead of his one old one, Ted Koppel really promises he'll be working less now. [WP]
• And Nightline vet Dave Marash signs on as Washington anchor for soon-to-launch Al Jazeera International, presumably only after Koppel decided three "retirement" gigs were enough. [Media Mob/NYO]
The Observer's lead media story this morning was Lizzy Ratner's shocking — shocking! — expose on the near-uniform lily-white-ness of the magazine business. Confronted with such an important topic — race, America's original sin — and with such a lengthy look at it — 2,500 words — we knew this was an article we must address. But, still getting our minds around the simple idea of gentiles in publishing (a shonda!), we also knew that we're not at all the right people to address it.
