It took years and years and the attention of a new movie, but someone finally uncovered a smidge of plagiarism in the fired Vanity Fair Brit's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Daily Intel found near-identical passages from the book and a New York Times article by John Tierney. Young was unruffled, saying it wasn't plagiarism but loose English journalistic standards at work:
Early Saturday morning I dragged myself to the New Yorker Festival in Midtown, to see media mensch Ken Auletta moderate a panel discussion with Times editor Bill Keller, Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates, Slate press critic Jack Shafer, and breathless WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan, the token conservative. I'll leave out the boring recap parts and distill the experience down to its key point: Peggy Noonan should go back to writing political speeches, because—even taking into account the fact that she's a Republican hack—her dishonesty is embarrassing to watch. Ugh. Noonan, remember, was caught on a live mic talking about how the selection of Sarah Palin as VP was "bullshit." A fact that was referenced repeatedly by Ken Auletta! So what did Noonan spend the bulk of her time on the panel (subject: "Covering the Candidates") doing? Defending Sarah Palin. It was far too early to take notes, but I'll sum up Peggy's arguments: "Sarah Palin, fresh, new, American, real, six-pack, women, sexism?, the American people." The experience was strange because every single person sitting in the room—the panelists, the moderator, the audience, the security guards—was well aware how dumb Sarah Palin is. But there was Peggy, gamely searching for some all-American Reaganesque prose to elevate Palin into something legitimate. The panel was about the media, so the bold political hackery was jarring and out of place, like when those crazy Christians wave signs at the funerals of dead soldiers saying God killed them because of fags. There's a time and a place for your brand of lying, Peggy. It's on the weekend talk shows, after you sign on as a speechwriter for the sure-to-be successful Palin administration. There are lots of political hacks writing columns; but Noonan always wants to pop up as some sort of spokeswoman for Middle America, in the most patronizing way possible to actual Middle Americans. You failed at the New Yorker Festival, Peggy Noonan. The contrast between Noonan and the other panelists was what made the entire ordeal grimace-worthy. Bill Keller has more political pressure on him than almost anyone in the entire media. But when Ken Auletta asked him how it affected him when the McCain campaign charged the Times with being in the tank for Obama, Keller said (approximately): "It makes me want to find the toughest, hardest story about McCain we have and put it on the front page the next day." That's called honesty, Peggy Noonan. Retire with your trademark false grace. [Pic via Startraks]
Magazine-turned-web guru Tina Brown has never claimed her design sense was that original. At the stillborn Talk, she opted for a portable format, a magazine published on thin paper that could be rolled up and carried around like a European newsweekly such as Stern. And that same inspiration is shared by her baby news website, the Daily Beast. "I've always loved the look of the European smart tabloids," she says with the sophistication that comes from a media career on both sides of the Atlantic. There's just one problem: the logo of the new IAC-backed website looks more like that of the Philadelphia Daily News, the tabloid paper of New York's rather dowdy southern neighbor.
We're told Bauer Publishing chief Hubert Boehle has grown tired of the never-ending stream of outside editors atop his celebrity fashion title Life & Style. He finds them hapless. The solution: Boehle will bring in Dan Wakeford, executive editor of another Bauer celebrity mag, In Touch, as top editor. "He wasn't given any choice in the matter," our tipster said. With both the fashion industry and celebrity magazines socked by the economy, he's got his work cut out for him.
Beloved child actress Lindsay Lohan's shocking "I'm Gay!" cover has hit newsstands! And it is truly shocking. The word "gay" is nowhere to be found?! It's all "Love" and "Wedding Plans" and "In Other Old News, Oy That Is A Remarkable Rack." But everyone knows the correct way to reveal one's gayness on a magazine cover is to make arrangements with a distinguished Time Inc. publication to run a cover story that somberly declares: "Hey! Hi! I am ready to air my deep painful lifelong secret with the world in a supportive setting! If just one kid in Nebraska with an elaborate Christian Siriano fantasy and a dream can read my painful painful story and feel a little more 'normal' as a result then it will all have been worth it! Because this is really painful for me, telling the world what they already knew about me! Even though being gay is nothing to be ashamed of; it is just like having Lyme disease or something!" Not Lindsay. When Lindsay Lohan turns out to be gay, it is like …aspirational! And that adorbs snapshot of her and girlfriend Sam Ronson in those Come On Feel The Lemonheads shirts: whose inner college lesbian without the college isn't tingling experimentally over that image? It is like Jamie Lynn and her enviable teen pregnancy, but without the weight gain.
Yesterday we learned that our national diet is shifting towards cheap, simple meals like tomato soup and Kool-Aid because of the national economic meltdown. But that doesn't mean your tomato-Kool-Aid soup must be boring and plain! Publishers are flooding the market with a new crop of food magazines, just in time for our collective shift from a nation of gourmet snobs to a nation of bony, coupon-clipping scavengers. 2008 saw the publication of 336 food magazines, up by a third from only five years ago. That's probably way more than necessary! Bad move? Here's a market summary: Interest is up. News stand sales and web traffic are both up. But! Ad pages are down. Several big food magazines have already seen double-digit drops in ad pages. And outside industries like travel and home furnishings that advertise in some food magazines are also hurting, and buying fewer ads. So what are publishers doing? Tying new magazines to celebrity chefs, or to the Food Network. Paula Deen! Sandra Lee! Rachael Ray! All big successes, or predicted to be! Other, more mundane cooking titles will surely fall by the wayside over the next year. The future of American food publishing: "Rachael Ray Tells You How To Use Lard To Re-Fry Your McDonalds Burgers To Raise Your Family's Caloric Intake Above Minimal Survival Levels." Mmmm! [WSJ]
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter sounds positively exasperated that Toby Young is still stuck—gum-like—to his shoe. A decade after the British hack's disastrous six-month stint at the Conde Nast magazine, Young's account of epic failure to take New York by storm comes to screens later this week. "I can only compare it with a brief one-night stand that results in octuplets," says Carter, who is played by Jeff Bridges in the movie version of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People. But the Vanity Fair poo-bah ought to show more respect for noble failure. After all, Carter's own reputation was made by Spy, a magazine that won plaudits but lost money in all but one year of its existence. Disclosure: despite a history of mutual abuse, Gawker is co-hosting a party for Toby Young on Wednesday.
Lists of the best/most influential whatevers can get a bit boring, but guess what: they sell magazines! (It's surely been focus-grouped.) Six influential people (oh hi, Tina) chose their top ten influentials other than themselves for New York magazine. We aggregated all their choices to make our own table of the definitive list of important New Yorkers. By our logic, the top score would be 60. Who came out on top? Bloomberg, Koch, and Scorcese—but also Warhol. Click for it, you non-influential. [New York]
Hip hop music was formally unveiled on an August night in 1973, when DJ Kool Herc started cutting two identical records back and forth to keep the freshest part playing, making the world's first break beat. It was only a matter of a few short years until the "up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie," and another few years to "Sucker MCs call me sire," and then things really started rolling, and within a decade there was Puffy rapping about money while dressed in money driving a money car made of money. And who lost out? Kool Herc himself. The man is the walking embodiment of hip hop's shunning of its quasi-spiritual roots:
♦ Will Project Runway move to Lifetime from Bravo? NBC won the first legal battle against PR producer Harvey Weinstein on Friday, which means it's not entirely clear where the show will end up. [NYT]
♦ The Sun may publish an issue tomorrow after all. [Portfolio]
♦ Tina Fey to the rescue: Saturday Night Live has seen a major boost in ratings so far this season. [THR]
♦ Vanity Fair on the face-off between Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett. [VF]
♦ An Indian version of GQ debuts this month. [Guardian]
♦ Howard Kurtz says unseen clips of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin are on the way; CBS says it has released everything it's got. [HuffPo]
♦ The Times looks back at the drunken career of the Post's Steve Dunleavy, who's retiring after 41 years in the business. [NYT]
♦ The Wall Street Journal has launched a mail-order wine club. Really. [NYT]
Running mates—and vice-presidential debates—are supposed to be mere sideshows of the general election. But that conventional wisdom may be shaken by this year's campaign and this week's debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. The Republican candidate was widely mocked for including among her foreign policy credentials the geographic proximity of her home state of Alaska to Vladmir Putin's Russia. "You can see Russia from parts of Alaska," said Palin. Yes, but you can mainly see Alaska and more Alaska, as this week's New Yorker cover makes plain. The conceit on which it is based, Saul Steinberg's famous 1976 vision of New York at the center of the world, is after the jump.
A previous winner of the New Yorker's cartoon-caption contest once wisely said, ""You are not trying to submit the funniest caption. You are trying to win the New Yorker's caption contest." The magazine's cartoon editor Robert Mankoff explained further in the Times yesterday about the impossible-to-capture essence of a good cartoon caption:
♦ David Letterman ripped into John McCain once again last night, which he'll probably continue to do as long as he gets this much attention for it. [NYT]
♦ Sarah Ivens is out as the editor-in-chief of the moneylosing tabloid OK! And, no, Bonnie Fuller is not taking over. [NYP]
♦ CNBC's David Faber is writing a book about the Wall Street meltdown, too. [NYO]
♦ ABC won the Thursday night ratings war thanks to the two-hour season premiere of Grey's Anatomy. [TV Decoder]
♦ Brigitte Quinn and Page Hopkins are leaving Fox News. [TV Newser]
♦ The Magazine Publishers of America will announce the winner of the cover of the year on Monday; here are the three finalists. [Jossip]
As if celebrity babies didn't face enough perils — paparazzi, feuding celebrity parents, ill-advised playdates with Michael Jackson — they now have to keep a weary little eye on the stock market. Because amid Wall Street meltdown and the worst advertising decline in seven years rumors are now swirling that the undisputed highroller in the market for pictures of famous infants, OK! magazine, is cutting off payments for exclusive shots of the little tykes. (Sure, the fees usually went to charity, but you can't put a price tag on adulation.) New general manager Kent Brownridge has allegedly said "no more picture buying, and to keep readers interested we will have to 'get creative,'" a disgruntled staffer told Page Six. Underlings are no doubt praying Brownridge doesn't confirm another rumor and squander the savings hiring boss-from-hell Bonnie Fuller to replace a departing Sarah Ivens. Reports the Post:
Cover line from the October issue of Good Housekeeping: "Your Secret Cash Source." Huh? "It's on the nightstand." (My Xanax? ...Diaphragm?) Now we're really curious.
This is what happens when stupid magazine staffers get ahold of them. The internerds at Ectoplasmosis can't decide whether to be appalled or amused by this unfortunate juxtaposition of advertisements in a vintage magazine."Don’t the editors look at these things, or is it just that we here at Ectomo have really twisted senses of humour?" asks one. But the magazine is obviously a teen magazine from the nineties, which means it might actually be Sassy, which means it is possible silly production guy was doing it for the lulz more than a decade before lulz were even invented. [Ectomo]
Ailing nudie mag Playboy is awesome! First, we love it for the articles. Second, with the rise of abstinence-only education in schools, Playboy serves a practical purpose as practically the only form of sex ed left in some parts of the country! Third, sometimes one needs their porn to be portable, able to be carried in backpacks and stuffed under beds. (This is where the Internet fails.) How else would our nation's 2 million prisoners sneak a look at contraband girlie pics? The magazine isn't doing well, the Telegraph reports, with the economy tanking, YouPorn, and lackluster profits on its pay-per-view flicks. Even worse, it's been reported that 2 out of 3 of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends are cheating on him. Which brings us to the question: how can it be cheating if he has three girlfriends? Whatever. Click for our chart of its limping profits, very much in need of Viagra.
At right is that horribly tasteless New Yorker cover from a few months back, and at left is Entertainment Weekly's new parody cover. There's faux conservopundit Stephen Colbert, dressed as a smirking Michelle "Angela Davis" Obama, terrorist fist-bumping with his old Daily Show boss Jon Stewart, who is clad in Islamobama gear. It's a well-executed (if a tad late) little bit of satire, and an example of just how thoroughly this endless horse race of an election has seeped its way into our idea of "entertainment." Click for (slightly) larger.
