Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten has been looking for an assistant — and we've found a great applicant over on Mediabistro!

We can't help but feel a little lonely down here in New York today. What with 15,000 journalists (and some "journalists") up in Boston, there's a decided sense of lack down here. (Not to mention insanity — the entire Democratic Convention could be handled in one easy email: "We're nominating Kerry and Edwards. Okay, see you later!") With all our journalists gone, who will write the articles about the hairdos of Manhattan? Who will type up reports on how many people alleged "It" boy Fabian Basabe had sex with at Calvin Klein's party? We have NEWS to cover down here!

· New York Times Hollywood reporter Bernard Weinraub makes a surprising pull-out to "embark on a new adventure." Yes, we heard they were trying to develop a third Weinstein brother. [LA Weekly]
· New York Post columnist Linda Stasi finally admits she doesn't make sense. Oh yeah, and someone tried to sort-of kill her. [NYP]
· According to their public editor Dan Okrent, the New York Times staff wants all babies to be born gay, or at the very least, made gay at a later date. Clearly, the NYT is the gayest place on earth — it's like Disneyland on gay day over on 43rd Street! [NYT]
· Full-time harpy and fag-hag Ann Coulter refused to make edits to her columns to USA Today, and, shockingly, the paper refuses to print them when she doesn't. [E&P and Ann Coulter and World.net (Guess USA Today doesn't need to publish it now that she has?)]

Jeffrey Steingarten, the Vogue food critic (oh, the irony — it's like having a fashion critic for Nudist Monthly), is searching for a new assistant. And the ad, well — it sounds a little high maintenance over there.

Reuters, not normally known as a hotbed of faggotry, has taken the big prissy cake today with the following headline. We're impressed.
Gay Channel Coming Out with Cher, Cumming Projects [Reuters]

Henry the Intern watches Sunday night's Topic A With Tina Brown so you don't have to. Pornographer Larry Flynt, potential First Hottie Chris Heinz, and mogul Mort Zuckerman duke it out in the kiddie pool. Also, chat-hostess Tina Brown is concerned about Monica Lewinsky's weight gain — under the principle that "we hate it when our Presidential ex-tricks become successful," Tina blames Bill Clinton.

No sooner did I leave for the weekend than the Slate sale story finally broke. That giant BONK sound you heard around 4 p.m. Friday was my head hitting the roof of my Escalade on the L.I.E. when I got paged with the news.

David Pecker, American Media head and publisher of the Star, gives a fairly softball interview to WWD today. Let's summarize:

New York Times political reporters bound for Boston this weekend will be thrilled to find out that "escape hoods" — half gas mask, half beekeeper's hat — aren't mandatory for their Democratic Convention coverage. (So ungainly! What would Styles reporter Guy Trebay say?) Still, according to an internal memo, they'll be training the NYT staff on how to use them in case of an emergency.

Happily for Associated Press staffers, their new Headquarters in Upper West Chelsea/Lower Hell's Kitchen comes with an enthusiastic Irish bar across the street. Unhappily, everyone at the AP is already so drunk they can't remember what the bar is called.

In case you were wondering why you still hadn't gotten your next issue of Radar — or why you haven't seen its editor/publisher, Maer Roshan, teetering out of the East Village 'mo-haunt The Cock at 4 a.m. recently — blame it on New York mag. The long-rumored New York Republican Convention special plans have been leaked, and, as we've heard, Maer will be at the helm of a special daily issue. Undoubtedly, he'll be serving up breathless accounts of all the intramural drink-tossing, legislative lap-dances, and the ins and outs of the lubeless Republican fist-fucking that Manhattan will be getting in just four short weeks.
New York Mag to Launch Their Own Daily [Fashion Week Daily]

I was actually just paging through the music issue of Time Out, that miraculous testament to service journalism. Evidently, so were people with better memories than I, who caught a serious resemblance to the cover of the Voice's music issue of three summers ago.
Time Out New York's Hand Job [Stereogum]

Usually when we mention a rumor about a rumor here, the denials and/or better information come hurtling towards our inbox. Not so, in the case of the hush-hush chit-chat that online mag Slate is for sale. No secret missives from Hotmail accounts about what an idiot I am, no official denials, just suspicious, suspicious silence. It's what we like to call "silent but deadly."

In the last couple days, we've sensed an agitation in the matrix, a shitstorm in the tabloid pipeline. It comes to the forefront today in the NY Post: the National Enquirer's editor, David Perel, is pissed at Us Weekly, claiming Us stole their Michael Jackson exclusive. (Jackson is allegedly — ALLEGEDLY — going to be the father to quadruplets.) The Enquirer's story appeared in the July 26th issues, the Us Weekly story came out August 2nd.

The poor reporters who have to follow around the President are losing their minds — and they've got 103 days 'til the election. One of yesterday's pool reports, filed by David Sanger of the New York Times, was composed in Suessian rhyme scheme:

Black Table gets a load of Daily News-style gossip-typer-upper Lloyd Grove-isms today. Like Candyman, Lloyd claims he's coming to snuff all the Page Sixers, one by one.

Daily News gossip-boy Lloyd Grove gets a shocking exclusive: JOURNALIST DOESN'T SLEEP WITH SUBJECT WHILE WORKING ON STORY. Well, actually, perhaps it is newsworthy that Vanity Fair's Nancy Jo Sales waited til after her story was filed — and killed — to make a move on her interview subject. I mean, I saw that Adaptation film — that Meryl Streep New Yorker chick went right for the snorting expensive flower-dust and riding her subject like an orchid-picking pony.

Of all the rumors that get spread around these days, we're perhaps most shocked at the spurious gossip that a certain snarky little internet mag is for sale. Who would benefit from spreading the hearsay that Slate is on the auction block? Even if Microsoft's Bill Gates is looking to unload the fashionable — if occasionally unprofitable — Slate, well, who on earth would buy it?

Seriously. Is there some sort of space-time distortion on Larry King? Because that's a lot of ear, sister.
Transcript: Martha Stewart on Larry King [CNN]

We are now forced to weigh in on a truly dull topic for moment. But the new media shitstorm is all about bloggers — those inverted, home-bound chronic masturbators who put things on the so-called "internet" — getting press-credentialed to attend the upcoming political conventions. The print world has its panties all in a twist over this — jealous much?