To: Whoever Tried To Burn Down the Fire Hazard That Is the Townhouse of the New York Observer This Morning, Resulting Only In a 20-Minute Evacuation/Extended Cigarette Break As Smoke Poured Into the Fourth-Floor Editorial Offices and Firemen Were Ogled and A Faulty Air Conditioner Was Blamed
· So long, NY Sports Express — this week marks the last print edition. [NYSE]
· Super-bitchy fun-loving Blender cabal says they'll overtake Spin's circulation. Somewhere in midtown, Spin editor Sia Michel is drinking a milkshake of human blood and bone, preparing for battle. [NYP]
· Chanel locks down secrets of new perfume launch like it was the address of where Dick Cheney is hiding Osama bin Laden. [WWD]
· Best media alert ever: 2 p.m. today, "TLC Commissioner thanks cab driver who returned $70,000 in pearl jewelry to owner; 40 Rector St., at West Street, 5th floor." Could some cub reporter please find out what sort of moron loses 70K in pearls in a cab?
At the family reunion that is the New York Times, the Style section is the snotty Garment-District-living homo cousin, and the Metro section is the nice mechanic dude who stayed home in Queens to take care of Grandma.
Hell, while I'm settling some legal grudges today... A few months back a correction was appended to a NYT wedding announcement — interesting historically, as people speculated this was the first correction of its kind. (Though we all know tons of people who wish they could make retroactive corrections to their wedding announcements. When the hell is the "Divorces" section coming to the NYT?)
The major takedown of Fox News is humming along pretty well. We wish the alternative media would devote this much attention to important issues — What exactly is going on with the culture section revamp at NY mag? What happened to the disappeared Guy Trebay article on the culture of untucked shirts?
· Commie liberal NYT employees make extra-ethical donations to the John Kerry cult. [E&P]
· Poor Peter Carlson — the WaPo writer is scared of ordinary-looking naked people in the nudist mags. Beyond obnoxious. [WaPo]
· Newsday and two other papers get smacked for inflating circulation numbers. [WSJ]
Don't get me wrong — we think it's clear that the Drudge Report is the last refuge of 1950s-style self-hating camp. (But we feel that way about the NYT styles section some weekends too.) Really, Drudge is the Far From Heaven of websites. But there is such a thing as getting way too serious about things, and today, the cats at Buzzflash totally go off on Drudge.
Matt Drudge, a Gay Who Backs the Gay Bashers [Buzzflash]
· Reports from England say that Rolling Stone has been approaching overseas publishers about launching a UK version — and British publishers remain decidedly skeptical.
· Not to simplify, but: everyone at the NYT hates their public editor, Dan Okrent. [WSJ]
· Rupert Murdoch, like all publishing moguls small and large, was an unverifiable tipster for tons of stories at the NY Post. [Romenesko]
What do you do with your magazine editor when you're paying them tons of money, given them lots of "hot new thing" ink, and need to get them the hell out of the head office? Why, you give them a "lateral" move to your mag's "other media" department.
The NY mag story on gossip folk, spurred by the firing of Page Six's Ian Spiegelman, is out — in some ways it's incredibly toothy, especially about apparent conflicts of interest, but also it only scratches the surface. This sounds familiar though:
If there were any people who should understand that talking to the press is never a good idea, you'd think it'd be gossip columnists, right? Evidently not. An enticing chunk from the Vanessa Grigoriadis piece on gossip from next Monday's New York mag, in which clearly people say too much:
Lad mad king Ed Needham ditches his managing editor post at Rolling Stone to become editor-in-chief of Maxim. Good for him — he lasted two years under (tee hee) Jann Wenner. We're sure Ed will be much happier in the land of bodacious boobies and soft-core laddery.
We have a question about this whole "Rupert Murdoch dictated the infamous Kerry/Gephardt NY Post cover" story that's going around. In the NYT, the single-source story is attributed to a Post employee, which narrows it down to about 930 people — nearly all of them, of course, employed as professional fabricators.
It looks like LA is finally reversing NY's talent-sucking tractor beam, as the LAT has nabbed the New York Observer's Maria Russo for the new position of "assistant entertainment editor for criticism." [Ed. note—You can't see us, but we're nodding and pretending we understand what that means.] According to LA Observed, The LAT is also sliding TV critic Carina Chocano (pictured at left) across into a film critic chair to replace Manohla Dargis, whom the NYT kidnapped in the middle of the night like a millionaire's baby.
The New York Times has apparently only printed the word "shit" twice — and they were both typos. The NY Post has also printed "shit" twice, but at least they meant it. More interesting: there is an outrageous print imbalance in references to penises and vaginas. The Post, in particular, has a phobia of the vagina. Paging Eve Ensler! More surprises inside, brought to you by resident statistician Andrew Krucoff.
· In praise of less ethics, more kickbacks, and more corruption. Yay! [SF Chron]
· In praise of our gentler, softer, and less money-obsessed Canadian magazine neighbors. [Folio]
· Pity the magazines that think everyone is a slutty whore. [Folio]
· Finally, ex-NYT editor Howell Raines was scared that his new book proposal would fall into the evil clutches of journalist Seth Mnookin, still in edits on his own book about Raines and the NYT. [NYP]
What's that we see outside Cargo editor Ariel Foxman's office? Waves of human blood rushing from the elevators? Preliminary reports indicate that three Cargo staffers quit today — details supposedly are forthcoming. No word yet on the source of disgruntlement, or whether — unlikely — folks are getting poached en masse.
1. Was the NY Post screw-up yesterday the doing of Rupert Murdoch? [Tim Blair]
2. Tabloid pressure makes celebrities cry, but Us Weekly editor Janice Min doesn't give a rat's ass, saying "accept the fact that you're a public commodity.'' (We'll have the stalkerazzi snapping pictures of her month-old baby tonight!) [USA Today]
3. Folio's news editor Michael Rovner is getting married — to a Canadian! Eww! [NYO]
4. Excerpts from Kill Duck Before Serving, a jolly collection of corrections from the NYT. [M.U.G.]
