One of the few good things left about working in journalism is the right to dress casually in the office. If a reporter knows they're going to be sitting behind a desk all day, making phone calls and typing stories, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to wear some god damn jeans. It's not like journalists—especially at newspapers—are getting paid a lot, or have job security or good remaining pension plans or a business in which layoffs are not forever imminent. Dressing down is really the only thing they can cling to when they ask themselves why they didn't go to law school. But not at the LA Daily News! After the jump, read the paper's new dress code that is a stake in the heart of every reporter who rationalized that, hey, at least my job is a good place to show off these designer jeans:

When the Asian American Journalists association announced that ABC's Nightline host Martin Bashir would be the keynote speaker at its July 25 Gala, the group's executive director said "We're excited to have Martin this year who is — so to speak —one of our own." It's true, because deep down the cancer-stricken Michael Jackson interviewer Bashir is just like you: A dude who wants to bone all of the women in his general vicinity, and is not afraid to go into detail about the causes of his erection on stage in front of a large crowd:

Did you hear the rumor about the Brazilian lottery winner? Supposedly a Brazilian immigrant bought a winning $126 million lottery ticket in Newark, but couldn't cash it in because they were illegal, so they passed it on to somebody else, now rumors are flying from here to South America, and nobody knows who has it, but everybody is so obsessed with looking for it, the media on two different continents is on the case, but maybe the whole thing is false. It's all a product of the ease with which the world communicates in this digital age, as well as a powerful statement on immigrants yearning for the American dream. One new clue is this actual sentence from a KKTV story about the Montauk Monster: "According to the Huffington Post, Gawker has raking in eleven billion page views since the picture came out Tuesday." So aren't we all really "lottery winners," in a way? [NYT]

We'll try to break this situation down for you as gently as possible so than any Australian members of our audience don't immediately begin tearing off their clothes and taking topless pictures of themselves, which seems to be a typical reaction to the following story amongst a certain demographic. Earlier this week, Gawker's sexy sister site Fleshbot tracked down a topless photo of Jessica Origliasso, a 23-year-old Australian pop star who sings in a group called The Veronicas with her twin sister. For ease of comparison, let's call her the Aussie Lindsay Lohan (they both like to kiss girls). Now people in Australia are going all WILD over this scandal and BARING THEIR BOSOMS. We must call for calm!

Summer is not just an excruciatingly slow time of year for actual news; it's also an excruciatingly slow time for manufactured news. It's not like ad agencies can just riff off all the interesting scandals in the news, when there are no scandals in the news. What does that mean for you, the consumer? A shitload of publicity stunts, in which advertisers try to create some interest out of nothing. What does that mean for advertising reporters? Stories about these very stunts-sometimes even a trend story, to give the appearance of being something more than just a roundup of items from Adrants. See, the system works! Although that doesn't mean any of these stunts are necessarily good:

It's a late-breaking story, and CNN's American Morning clearly thought it had a big "get" — a live interview with the brother of Bruce Ivins, a federal biodefense researcher who killed himself as the government prepared to charge him in the anthrax mailings of late 2001. Host John Roberts was prepared, no doubt, to delicately question a grieving sibling — not for the increasingly surly conversation that ensued. Of course, it's hard to fault him for not having a followup question ready for statements like, "I'm a paratrooper." The logical reply is a bit insensitive: "Are you entirely sober?" Click the video icon to watch a distinctly bitter sort of grieving.

"New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, who had been among the potential buyers for Newsday, might be interested in buying the Star-Ledger if it were for sale, according to a person familiar with Mr. Kushner's thinking." [WSJ, Previously]

Apparently trying to get people to "CRAVE" their ugly, 20-mile-per-gallon (city!) CR-V crossover, Honda made a dopey, computerized 20-questions thing for their website. In case you've never done one before, that means you think of some THING and the website asks you a series of questions and tries to guess what THING you've got in mind. There are any number of sites that can do this, so Honda apparently just downloaded some sort of standard programming library to make the game work, then wrapped it in a 3-D model of their car for marketing purposes. But they forgot to take out many of the racier THINGS one might have in mind, like an herbal jazz cigarette, also known as a "joint." We're told "cocaine" also worked at one point but can't get the game to accept that — it says "I am guessing that you're thinking of something your mother wouldn't approve of." Aww Honda, just throw open the floodgates. Then the game might actually be sorta fun! [Honda]

After wisely deciding that the massive John Edwards love child scandal is, in fact, a news story deserving of coverage, the Democratic politician's home-state newspaper the Raleigh News & Observer used basic journalism to uncover some interesting new information. Although Edwards' apparent mistress Rielle Hunter has claimed since even before her child was born that it was fathered by married Edwards aide Andrew Young, and even though Young issued a statement confirming this, the name of the father has been omitted from the child's birth certificate. Any other newspaper like the Times or Washington Post could have obtained this information, since informational copies of birth certificates are public documents in California. But those newspapers are too busy arrogantly destroying their businesses by ignoring the story to bother asking for a simple piece of paper. So they don't have either the birth certificate (PDF) or these fun non-denials:

I'm sure I'll be hearing this one at parties for months: 19 percent of American marketers say their organizations have bought advertising in return for a news story, according to a survey by PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee. 1 in 12 say they've sent a gift to an editor or producer to place a news story. 1 in 10 say they have an "unspoken agreement" to trade coverage for ad buys. Take a few seconds to pump your fist and shout I knew it! Now spot the hole in this story: Marketing people don't meet with editors. Marketers meet with the sharks from ad sales, who'll tell them whatever opens their checkbooks. 1 in 5 American marketers has totally been had. (Photo by yomanimus)

One-fifth of all marketing executives in a new survey say that they've bought advertising in a publication in exchange for a news story. Ten percent say they've had "an implicit/non-verbal agreement with a reporter or editor" for favorable coverage (seems low). And 8% say they've "paid or provided a gift of value to an editor/producer" in return for story (also seems low). It's all enough to make you want to run out and buy a bottle of Stoli Blakberi™, pour one part Stoli Blakberi™ in a tall glass with ice, top with three parts tonic, garnish with a lime wedge, and consume your Stoli Blackberi™ Tonic. [PRW (my former gig)/ MS&L via Adrants Photo: Reuters]

You thought that the search for new pictures of the mysterious world-famous street artist Banksy had come to an end? It has not! Our earlier shot at digging up photos of the maybe-identified but still unseen artist turned out to (probably) not be him. But! A tipster has sent us a lovely present: three still shots of Banksy in action, taken from a UK documentary filmed in 2000, when he was less obsessive about hiding his identity. We also have two photos of Banksy that were featured in an article in the UK's Squall magazine (now defunct) back in 2000. And for the finale: two art prints that are reportedly drawings of Banksy in profile, dressed as the Queen of England. None are full-on face shots; but this is probably the first time all these rarely-seen images have been collected in one place. Click through to explore. Stills from the 2000 UK documentary Boom or Bust, by filmmaker Si Mitchell:

Ebay is not just for auctioning off books related to obscure literary feuds; it's also a good place for members of the working class to hustle mementos of the humbling moments when celebrities crossed their paths and acted like jerks. One item that you just missed bidding on: a receipt from an Atlanta-area restaurant signed by Outkast rapper Andre 3000. The meal cost $46.01. Andre's tip: $0. But the receipt sold for almost $15, so the waiter came out ahead. That said, let's segue into THIS: a look back at some other fabulous celebrity-related items that appeared on eBay in the recent past:

The magazine industry cares about the environment. They promise. For example, did you know that magazines can be recycled? Just put them right there in the recycling bins and feel the satisfaction! The industry is even running a campaign to urge you all to "Please Recycle This Magazine" after you read it (though I choose to recycle Entertainment Weekly before I read it). But are the biggest publishing companies themselves living up to these lofty recycling standards? One possibly soon-to-be-fired Conde Nast insider says hell no! Conde Nast Portfolio media blogger Jeff Bercovici says in a post about the green campaign:

Click to viewThe mysterious Young Manhattanite writes: For months now I have been looking for a classic clip of Larry King drunk on his radio show that I heard way back in the dawn of the public Internet when my friend downloaded it from a newsgroup. It's NOWHERE online now. My friend finally found the cassette tape he transfered it to back then (yes, a cassette tape!) and redigitized it. After some digging, it appears this recording was made between 1987 and 1994 when his radio and tv shows overlapped. This witching hour call-in segment was called Open Phone America. According to Wikipedia, the phones would open up at 3 a.m. for callers to discuss any topic they pleased with Larry. Give it a good listen. Really picks up halfway through. Update: Transcript below!

People magazine has won the heated bidding war for the new Brangelina baby pictures, according to a report (unconfirmed, so far) on JustJared.com, who puts the winning bid at "between $10 million and $15 million." Rumors of a $15 million payday for the tot photos surfaced almost two months ago. People was bidding against OK!-where publisher Richard Desmond was reportedly so determined to land the rights that he was leading the negotiations personally. If People really walked away the victor here, they will have succeeded in staving off (temporarily) OK!'s ominous ambition to corner the baby picture market. [JustJared]

Good news! You don't even have to read the Times today. Because you already have! The cauliflower ear story (there's an Action Sports section now??) was in the Washington Post in March and the fucking shorts piece in Styles has already been spotted in Styles at least five previous times.

Email: it's no longer cool! Was it ever? Apparently it was, so I hope you didn't miss your opportunity to use your inbox as a "gauge of Digital Age machismo." Because now email, like The Blob, has turned into a monster that threatens to swallow us all in its pulsating, gelatinous walls. The problem has spread from nerds to regular people, and America is now paying attention. The LA Times even quotes one nerd proclaiming "EMAIL shall henceforth be known as EFAIL." Dang! "All your time are belong to email," I imagine internet scientists saying. And they're more right than you know!: Experts have discovered that Americans no longer go to work to perform actual work; they simply go to work to send and receive email about what would happen if they theoretically were to do some work. When they're not doing this, they're mentally recovering:

"A silvery shade of purple happens to be in vogue at the moment because it goes with a lot of the gray fabrics of the season. But in this election, the news media's objectivity has also been part of the story." [Times]

"The gathering was hosted by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and attended by Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily's List... Rep. Ellen Tauscher... and Hilary Rosen... who's now political director of the Huffington Post." [Post]