By 1:00 this afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 316 points. It closed three hours later up 552 points. What's going on in this insane market? Let's turn to the experts: "The market’s abrupt about-face left investors and analysts grasping for explanations. 'I have no idea,' said Michael Feroli, an economist at J.P. Morgan Chase." There you have it. [NYT]
Internal drama at baby picture factory OK! magazine? You don't say! Richard Desmond, the crappy celebrity mag's billionaire owner, brought in former Wenner Media exec Kent Brownridge to be GM of the American version of OK! just a couple of months ago. But apparently Brownridge hasn't been able to make any money yet, and it's making the Brit Desmond mad enough to get on a plane to the distasteful nation of America!: A tipster tells us:
Entertainment Weekly took its turn in the Time Inc. layoff machine today with 15 editorial layoffs, according the the Observer [UPDATE: Another source tells us the number is 22, including the research chief, two librarians, and "a bunch of AEs"]. And they didn't even offer anyone a chance to volunteer for buyouts—they just got fired. We also hear that Essence may be having its layoffs today, too. If you have more details, email us.
Is Martin Eisenstadt, the neo-conservative think-tanker who claimed to have spread a rumor that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent, real? Perhaps not, but then again, how do we know if the New York Times, the august journal which exposed him, is real, either? Eisenstadt, a Times article reports, is actually Eitan Gorlin, an actor playing the part of a neoconservative think-tanker. Gorlin's response on the Eisenstadt Group website he created as part of the hoax: How do we know this is the real New York Times? Times writer Richard Perez-Peña pokes at the incident's surrealism, quizzing his sources on how they, too, can prove they're not part of the hoax. But our tenuous grasp of reality is far worse than his gibes suggest.In an age of Photoshop, Iran can have as many missiles as it wants; headlines can be faked; and bodies altered beyond any relationship to the real human form. But the problem of identity goes far deeper. Stephen Glass, as a writer for The New Republic, created a website for a fake company, Jukt Micronics, for a story; Forbes exposed this lie, and countless others. But today, Glass might well have gotten away with it. Convincingly complete websites are easy to assemble. They don't even require human hands: Automated software cobbles together topical websites from republished copy scoured from the Web to trick Google into giving them free advertising revenue. And someone looking to hide their identity can now use proxy services to register domain names anonymously. For that matter, the Internet's domain-name system — the root of all online identity — is dangerously vulnerable. Earlier this year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky found a nearly fatal flaw that would allow hackers to hijacks visits to website and redirect viewers to alternate ones. That flaw has mostly been fixed, but who knows what other ones await discovery? By tricking the systems which route a request for a domain name — nytimes.com, for example — to the right server, a troublemaker might not just fake up a headline, but an entire alternate version of the Times online. Trust for media, old and new, continues to decline. Readers demand speed, punishing sluggish outlets by withholding their attention. Celerity replaces seriousness as a measure of authority. Who said what? Can you believe it? And does it matter, as long as you were the first to know?
We hear that National Geographic just laid off 13 people on the magazine staff—including a cartographer. We also hear that they are planning 5%-10% cuts across the entire company. This is bad. What will become of the cartographer? When a magazine cartographer can't get a job at National Geographic, the rest of the magazine cartography market must look especially barren. If you know more about the layoffs, email us. [UPDATE: We hear that the mag has "over a dozen" total cartographers on staff. And further, "They did similar 'restructuring' in the 1990's and laid off lots of people, but they were quite generous with severance and benefits."]
Name-dropping old man James Brady is just about the oldest old man in all the working media. He's turning 80 on Saturday, so he decided to dedicate his Forbes column to that most interesting of topics: his own career. This is a slight departure from his usual practice of reciting as many names as he can in 800 words and being shocked about this modern age. Brady's learned a mess of things in his long, long media career; but "modesty" was not one of them: He's a lover:
It's hard times for online media, and any twit with an idea and some bandwidth is no longer guaranteed an audience. With that in mind, actress Gwyneth Paltrow might want to get out before it's too late—or before she embarrasses herself further. Her puzzling soft-launched, minimalistic website—Goop.com (gross)—is about "nourish[ing] the inner aspect" and telling us how to live. (She already thinks we want her to tell us to vote.) In fact, the website is almost completely devoid of content, but we just received a GOOP e-newsletter, with quiet wisdom straight from Gwyneth.
If you're the sort of magazine industry obsessive who looks forward to the first week of December when Condé Nast releases its holiday luncheon seating chart—wherein Condé overlord Si Newhouse either exalts or punishes his editors according to where he seats them at the Four Seasons, and with whom—you're going to have to wait until next year. The company's CEO, Chuck Townsend, informed staffers yesterday that the lunch has been canceled. Of course, you probably don't need a chart to surmise that if the lunch had taken place, Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman could have expected to nibble on her Cobb salad in the coat room. [WWD]
♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]
You know what's really important to up-and-coming young entrepreneurs these days? What you wear! More important than, for example, economics. This is why older people run all the real businesses, while younger people spend their time talking to WSJ columnists for unintentionally hilarious and depressing features on how kids avoid going "corporate" by buying the correct name brands. Is your CEO "urban" or a "surfer?"
Jeff Jarvis, former TV Guide and People TV critic and founder of Entertainment Weekly, is now an internet expert. He was one of those guys who became internet-famous back when there were like six bloggers, all of whom were guys whom 9/11 turned into HAWKISH ACTION HEROES, and they all brayed about the Islamist Menace and felt quite proud of themselves for being former liberals who grew balls and for some reason none of them went away? (Another one of those guys is Nick Denton!) Anyway! Then he became an internet futurist, which means spending a lot of time gloating about the death of print and babbling about the future of media gallivanting around to conferences and "consulting" and just wasting everyone's time with obnoxious writing and simplistic evangelizing for a miserable digital future. Now he's in an immature fight with Ron Rosenbaum, who is much smarter than he is, if also old and blinkered, about THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM. It's fucking bleak. Rosenbaum just took him down in Slate, partly for his new book about Google that happens to be just made up of things Jeff Jarvis thinks about Google. Here is the important part of the rant:
"Something has changed in the last year or two," Slate's Ron Rosenbaum says of Entertainment Weekly founder turned professional conference-goer Jeff Jarvis. "It's the callous contempt for working journalists that grates. It's a contempt for the beautiful losers." True, it's puzzling to watch new media pundits spit in the faces of all the sad, doomed newspaper reporters whose careers are being eroded by the Internet. Rosenbaum goes way longer than Slate ever lets me write, so I've pull-quoted his best 100 words:
The commie pinkos behind today's liberal fantasy spoof of the New York Times have released a video communiqué! It's basically a rundown of the printing and distribution and fabulous wonderment of the stunned populace as they considered a world free of bloodshed. The best part comes half way through: Actual NYT employee: "I don't understand what statement they're trying to make. We've been all over the Bush administration since day one. We set the standard for coverage of the Iraq war!" The faceless response: "Like Judith Miller?" NYT Guy: (turns around and leaves). Ha, they're both right! The video is below:
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer has a breezy attitude about this current financial apocalypse, but not because he's the fabulously wealthy direct descendant of the founder of the Dutch West India Company; it's because he knows that he's a self-made man, and he knows that while recessions are ruinous for the poors, they are only setbacks for plutocrats. Like his own family, for instance! Kiliaen (pictured with unpopular socialite Olivia Palermo, who we hear he used to date) is confident that the world judges him on his actions alone. Foolish rich people, when will you learn not to be profiled by the Observer? Spencer Morgan will just hang you with your own quotes:
♦ NBC chief Jeff Zucker is tightening making another round of cuts. This time it's CNBC, which will see its budget slashed by 10 percent. [NYO]
♦ A group of liberal activists printed up fake copies of the New York Times today to hand out to passerby in Midtown. [NYT]
♦ Gerard Baker has been named deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. [Romenesko]
♦ Katie Couric's advice for Sarah Palin: "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing." [Page Six]
♦ John McCain's first TV appearance since he lost the election translated into big ratings for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. [THR]
♦ Monday's interview with Sarah Palin was also a winner with Greta Van Susteren's On The Record earning its best ratings of the year. [B&C]
Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson is continuing to reshape the post-Murdoch version of the paper in his own image. In the wake of an early October reshuffling of editors, Thomson sent another top editor to lead the London bureau a few weeks ago, in a clear push to try to expand the paper's international prestige. And today Thomson told the staff that Gerard Baker is the new Deputy Editor-In-Chief of the WSJ and Dow Jones—and, like Thomson himself, Baker is veteran of the Times of London and the FT. Taste the international flavor. The full memo introducing Baker to the staff is below:
Nick Denton, who rules over the entire Gawker empire, is the most pessimistic man in the media. In a way, this is comforting, because you know it's very unlikely that things will be worse than he predicts. In another, more visceral way, it is not comforting at all. But nobody said it was supposed to be, so oh well. Today Nick has issued his 2009 Internet Media Plan, which amounts to one big Forecast of Doom. Highlights: The main point:
The Iraq War is over, according to the fake New York Times! This morning a cadre of volunteers has fanned out across New York City to pass out a remarkably good, faux-copy of the Times dated July 4, 2009. They've even set up an entire website with all of the liberal fantasy headlines. Universities to be free! Bike paths to be expanded! Thomas Friedman to resign, praise the Unitarian Jesus! It's not funny like The Onion, but obviously a lot of work went into this. Now we play "Who did it?" We already know!: We have done some sleuthing based on intelligence received yesterday. First of all, this stunt needed a lot of volunteers to distribute the papers. They were rallied online, via BecauseWeWantit.org. This email went out to the collaborators last night:
With the stock market officially crashed and the economy collapsed, everyone wants a piece of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout package, especially now that there's only $60 billion left. The cash line includes automakers, insurers, credit card issuers, boat financers, blah blah blah the important part is they all have to go beg as supplicants to a strapping man in a cowboy hat, who says no, and spanks them. Forget bald, hunky Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson or his young ski bum deputy Neel Kashkari: Jeb Mason will neg you for the win. Reports the Times:
