Have you ever come across somebody who is ostensibly a "Writer/ Editor/ Educator," but doesn't seem to understand how those things work? [Name removed in the spirit of forgiveness] is just such a person! According her website she re-entered "the writing biz" in 2002, and has been keeping busy. She's even going to be writing a guest column in the Society of Professional Journalist's Quill magazine about "the importance of being one's own publicist." That's...uncomfortable, since her method is apparently to send the exact specifications for her stories out to a list of PR people, and then use whatever they come back with to "write" her "article." This is much more egregious than Profnet: A PR person writes to say, "I just wanted to point out the worlds laziest freelancer. she literally forwards her assignments to a list of publicists in a mass mailing and has them [write] the copy." Like this!:

We are pretty sure this is a photoshop. But who knows because it just appeared out of the blue on a Tumblog today, without attribution or sourcing. Maybe crazy Rex is right about this [via] business! It's been tracked back to this demotivational poster, making it already an altered image, though it was presented without that crucial bit of information when it first set down on a the microblogging corner of the internet today, whereupon it was emailed and IM'd to your editors like three times in ten minutes. Now it's been reblogged on god knows how many other Tumbling Logs! So let's play Snopes: find us a clip, guys, because this looks like bullshit. If it's not on MediaMatters it didn't happen. We did crack up last night when the Fox graphics said "ALERT: MRS OBAMA: I LOVE AMERICA" though, among other statements that look hilarious when preceded by "ALERT."

The New York Times Company's total revenue dropped 10 percent in July, to $235.9 million. Total Internet revenue, which now makes up 12 percent of the Times's roughly billion-dollar annual business, was up 2.6 percent — which only looks good compared to the rest of the newspaper industry. [PaidContent]

Several months ago, Brad Pitt fired his flack. His other half, Angelina Jolie, doesn't have a dedicated, full time PR rep herself either. The fact that the couple generally gets great press anyhow raises the obvious question: if Brangelina doesn't need a publicist, who does? The nuanced answer has to do with the changing nature of the celebrity media and the shifting balance of power among various types of Hollywood insiders. The blunt answer is, "Very few Hollywood people need flacks any more." Disintermediation is the new black! When you think of celebrity media today, think of two words: OK! magazine. Its entire business model is based on working *with* celebrities to come up with the nicest, most agreeable presentation possible. OK! is so celebrity-friendly it is edited by a former celebrity flack.

Bill Ayers was a founding member of the Weather Underground, a patently ridiculous white radical organization that specialized in being dumb hippies. They liked to blow up symbolic things like statues. Once they put a bomb in the Pentagon! No one was hurt except for some files. Anyway. This was years ago and since then, Bill has become so goddamn respectable that Mayor Richard Daley tapped him to head a "public-private partnership" dedicated to improving Chicago public schools. Barack Obama was on the board of a philanthropic foundation with Bill in 1999 which means, according to this fantastic attack ad, that Barack Obama wanted to blow up the Pentagon just like the terrorists of 9/11. Except worse! Ha ha this ad is ridiculous and you won't see it on TV because no one will air it, except for an obscure little company that owns local stations covering a quarter of the country. (And us. And we cover the world! Except for China probably.) A McCain fundraiser named Harold Simmons funded the ad through one of those shadowy nonprofits the kids are so into these days called the "American Issues Project." Simmons was, you may be shocked to learn, also a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth funder. This particular ad is so distorted that CNN and even Fox News have refused to run it! Which leaves, of course, the local channels owned by Sinclair Communications. The Sinclair Broadcast Group owns the largest number of local TV stations in the country, mostly throughout the South and Midwest. They last made headlines in 2004, when the company refused to allow its stations to air the Nightline segment that named American casualties in Iraq (they hate the troops!), and then six months later when they made all their stations broadcast a crazy Swift Boat documentary about how John Kerry committed treason in Vietnam. Oh, and then they were the ones behind the Armstrong Williams debacle, in which Williams was revealed to be a White House-paid propagandist while hosting a syndicated show as an ostensibly independent commentator. The show was produced out of Sinclair's "New Central" office, which produced much of the insane "news" content Sinclair feeds to its many stations. (Sinclair received a $36,000 FCC fine for their trouble.) But besides a GQ story on Sinclair back in '05, no one really pays any attention to the work of Sinclair. They reach nearly as many homes as an actual television network and purposefully exert more control over the message they broadcast than any 24-hour news network, but because they own podunk affiliates in flyover country, no one notices. Per Wikipedia:

I never thought the day would come when I might feel sympathy for Jared Paul Stern. When he was busted for trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Ron "I'm a billionaire, baby" Burkle back in '06, I wrote a dismissive piece about how Stern was such a scumbag in a scumbag industry that nobody should really be surprised. I would sum up my appraisal of him at the time with this word: "Scumbag." But times change! Stern's dogged pursuit of doomed lawsuits against the chuckling billionaire and a painful sex scandal have softened my heart. I may have been too harsh on poor JPS, after all. Consider the man's history. Starting out as nothing more than a dude with a ridiculous hat, he worked his way up through the gossip muck to the top ranks of the New York Post. He had his own column called "Nightcrawler" for a time, and was a regular contributor to Page Six. He was living the life that the young man who first put on the stupid hat dreamed of living. Then, of course, he tried to extort Burkle, and got publicly scandalized and tossed aside by the Post. He's quietly made his way back into the media with various projects, but nothing as high-profile since. And then last week some random guy decided to publicly release a (purported) tape of him having sex with JPS' wife. Damn. People can bounce back from most scandals. In time, even the "Payola Six" affair-sensational though it was-would have receded into history. But JPS has never been able to bounce back, because his ongoing lawsuits and, now, alleged cuckolding cause the original damage to his reputation to keep getting rehashed. So here's our gentle advice, JPS: the sympathy of the world has now, excruciatingly, returned to your side. Use it. Drop all of your various lawsuits against everyone involved in the Burkle mess-they'll ultimately do nothing but drain your bank account. Hold your head high, admit some wrongdoing in the past, and forge ahead. Disgrace is almost a foreign concept in the gossip world; schadenfreude does not run deep enough for people to say you deserved all of this. With an extended moment of grotesquely poor judgment and a run of very, very bad luck, most anyone in the New York media could be in your shoes right now. So get out there and make it, JPS-for all of us!

It has been months now since Fox News' PR machine issued one of its trademark slams of a critic, and we, for one, are happy that they have come off their summer vacations and gone back to work. The target this time: Jon Stewart, darling funnyman of the liberal elite. Surprise! The best part about this new spat: the person who comes off looking worst of all is not Stewart, nor Fox's flack, but rather the Washington Post's vacuous conventional media wisdom purveyor Howie Kurtz. A fight to admire, and a symptom of increased media fragmentation and public alienation! A full recap: The Democratic convention is such a news-bereft wasteland that Stewart was apparently giving a press conference, consisting of him riffing to a roomful of eager reporters. During the course of this, he said that Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan is "the biggest 'fuck you' to people with brains that I've ever seen in my life" and that Chris Wallace is the network's only legit anchor, and that Fox is biased against Obama. Stop the fucking presses, right? But Howie Kurtz, trooper that he is, put in a call to Fox, and came back with this paragraph for his story:

Have you ever noticed that there are certain names in the newspaper day after day, industry "experts" whom reporters seem to constantly hit up for quotes? That journalists go back to the same well again and again is no surprise. Journalists are lazy. Why bother trying to squeeze a soundbite out of someone new when you have ten minutes to finish an article and there's already an eager pro who's given you his cell phone number and told you to call him day or night? Below, some of the most prolific quote-givers—who they are, the topics they're inevitably called to comment on, and how many times they got their "expert opinions" into newspapers for the first half of 2008.

Sure, it makes sense that gay media mogul Paul Colichman, owner of Out and the Advocate, is taking some flack because he doesn't support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. To gay rights advocates, after all, Obama is far preferable to his opponent. But Colichman's critics would do well to distance themselves from comrade-in-arms Neal Boulton, the Genre editor who slammed Colichman in Page Six today and declared his own support for Obama "whether he says he's for gay marriage or not." Pansexual playboy Boulton should realize that's easy for him to say, but for Colichman and his gay partner it's an entirely different story. Boulton is already married to a woman. The marriage is one of some devotion, and a natural outgrowth of Boulton's attraction to women. And it's hard to imagine the editor settling down with a man.

Hey, remember that CNN freelancer who was looking for people bartering sex to get their masters thesis edited or kitchen renovated or taxes done or whatever? It was kind of an uphill battle, since the freelancer ruled out using anonymous sources. But she still managed to find one sex trader! It all started with a young a college coed spending a semester in hot, steamy Brazil, dying for the rainforest tour no one would give her — until she met a native busboy at the local resort. And then... (cue steamy music)

Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention in about an hour. It's the first thing any reasonable number of people will care about at the big political show in Denver. When the speech ends, and talking head spin mode begins, everyone should remember the TV people are completely desperate to conjure news at the pointless, made-for-media convention. Here's some evidence, in the form of a CNN segment that seems to be hinting that Pepsi controls the Obama campaign and entire Democratic party, because of its logo.

"NBC News’ strategy in hiring young Luke Russert is now clear: whenever anything happens, Brian Williams can ask Luke what his dead father thinks about it." [Wonkette]

Here's Lou Dobbs, CNN immigrant-hater, complaining about how the entirety of the press—besides him!—is totally, completely in bed with Barack Obama. He's right, of course. Except that the media attention is so self-defeating, twisted, and unhelpful that it's facile to paint it as a neat little example of liberal bias. Also what the hell is he still doing on CNN? Everyone else on the network seems embarrassed to be associated with him. Him and Jack Cafferty should have a show together. A Broadway show! Because then we would never see it.

Media relations is a delicate cat-and-mouse game full of silver-tongued gurus with their fingers on the pulse of the news cycle. It's not something to be left to-for example-bumbling fools. Unless, of course, you hire a firm called MEGA Marketing & Media, which sent out the following actual pitch we just received from an actual reporter at a major news outlet. The persuasive hook, designed to lure the journalist in: "I figured with such a political week, such the the democratic convention just ended, and the republican starting this week." Uh, what?

Dave Matthews, Kanye West, and Sheryl Crow are all performing like monkeys for VIPs in Denver this week. Also expected to be skulking around Denver this week are Ben Affleck, Josh Brolin, Annette Bening, Spike Lee, Anne Hathaway, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron, according to AFP. Oh, and Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi are performing before and after Obama's acceptance speech, at that stadium! Soooo many celebrities! Because America loves its celebrities, except that it also despises and resents them. You know how most of America's problems are caused not by the disastrous failure of government over the last like 30 years but by, uh, Tim Robbins? Yes, of course you do! So do Republicans, who learned long ago that the only thing America loved more than obsessively consuming pop culture object is loudly decrying the creators of those objects as unAmerican queers. The fact that Hollyweird (along with the music and television weird-ustries) caters directly and scientifically to every desire of every American demographic does not mean that anyone actually likes famous people, because, obviously, they are misanthropic wealthy blinkered assholes whose lives bear no resemblance to the lives of their audiences. Which is true! They are! Just like politicians and their constituencies! Except no one knows who their Representative is, and everyone knows who Ben Affleck is. He is the Vince Vaughan who isn't funny! And then it gets really odd, because even someone like Bruce Springsteen-who is unreservedly beloved by basically all white people older than 30-suddenly becomes a loathed example of garish flashy wealth when he sings a song for a Democrat. But, you may say, if you actually like Bruce Springsteen it is patently obvious that he has always sang bleeding heart songs about losers betrayed by their countries! But he also sings about cars which cause the Global Warming, which is a myth except when liberal celebrities have big houses, and then it is real. So. Now Obama has to "stay away" from these famous people, except for the ones singing to him on TV, and also George Clooney has issued a press release announcing that he's never texted Barack Obama. George Clooney, in case you are unfamiliar with him, is basically the single most well-liked man in America, which is why his support for Barack Obama is the kiss of death. Of course, if you are a Republican, you get to have the support of shitty country acts who are massively, hugely, insanely popular across the entire country except in the places where journalists live, so they don't count as "celebrities." Get it? Photoshop: Steve Dressler

Are you familiar with the phenomenon that is Jared Seligman, wunderkind realtor to the downtown stars? If not, wake up and smell the $40 million in billings! Seligman sold that much property for the Corcoran Group last year at the tender age of 21, to real estate connoisseurs like the Olsen twins. And though he's already been profiled by W magazine and is a running meme at Curbed, He doesn't "really have time to pay attention to the press." The hectic life of a now-drinking-age condo king! Seligman started in the real estate game at 18, and he's already a millionaire. Cool kids love him!

Update: MSNBC does have its very own terrible stupid sportsbar to broadcast from Denver in. Though we're not sure if they tricked it out like CNN and Fox did theirs. "Morning Joe" was live today from a place called "Sam's No. 3 Grill and Bar." It is a "USA Mexi Grill and Bar" that serves "comfort food with an attitude." UGGGHH. We put a stupid video of this after the jump because why not. It takes place at a strip club so click!! [Observer]

When Alex Bogusky, the ad guru for Burger King and Domino's Pizza (among others), announced last week that he is publishing a diet book, the general reaction was, "Ha, hypocrite Whopper-seller." An alternate theory, though, is that the book is part of some elaborate hoax, or will turn out to be the peg for a new Bogusky ad campaign. But if it is, he's doing a good job keeping it a secret; Burger King and Domino's, the two fatty food-touting clients most obviously affected by the book, had to find out about it by reading a news story:

It's time for the Democratic National Convention in lovely, boring Denver! Are you psyched? Journalists are! Because they're going to be drunk for a week, thousands of miles from home! Just two of the many venues in which hardworking journalists will be getting their drink on the over the next few days are the bars taken over by the cable news networks. Fox's hip FOX Experience and the down-home CNN Grill. Which one looks more like the worst possible place you could ever get drunk? Let's see!