· New Yorker editor David Remnick says "Bring it on" to Adam Moss, the new editor of New York. [Paul Colford]
· Vanity Fair's associate publisher Steven DeLuca named Rolling Stone publisher. [Jon Fine]
· Martha Stewart Omnimedia busy cooking up schemes in her absence. [Greg Lindsay]
· Shop Etc., the forthcoming Hearst shopping (duh) mag, continues to glean staff from all over town. [Keith Kelly]
We all know journalists and editors can't be trusted, so we live in the age of the ombudsman. We're actually looking forward to the day when the NY Post gets one. The reports are going to be like: "More dead bodies on the cover please! More unsubstantiated gay rumors! More gossip items about dead people who aren't dead!" Esquire introduces you to the ombudsmen who care:
· New NY mag editor Adam Moss spells it out: "I intend to take the bones of what New York magazine has been all of its life, and figure out a way to make them relevant again. We ll be rethinking everything." (Suddenly, a half-dozen NY mag employees throw down the glossy mags they're thumbing through and start looking like they're working really hard.) [Greg Lindsay]
· Says an anonymous NY mag staffer: "I'm so glad they brought him in rather than someone like Maer Roshan or Tina Brown." Also: outgoing editor Caroline Miller's reported salary: $630,000 a year. [Keith Kelly]
· "Wendy Wasserstein [playwright and mag owner Bruce Wasserstein's sister] is really running this magazine" is the claim made by a NY mag staffer. We'll be hearing that old line over and over. [Keith Kelly]
· Moss believes that Wasserstein will put his money where his mouth is. [David Carr]
Aww: NYT exec editor Bill Keller is "sad" that Adam Moss is leaving the NYT for NY mag. Actually, the only thing interesting in the official memo from the New York Times is that Adam's last day will be this Friday. That's intriguing: Adam's desk is apparently already cleared off and the decision has been in the making for a while, eh? Secretive bastards.
The very definition of unhot: Harvard students get approval for a campus nudie porn mag. Just think, wouldn't it be nice to have a nekkid file on Harvard alums like Newsweek's Seth Mnookin, or Rupert Murdoch's (dropout) son James, or the Sun's Rachel Kovner, or the NYT's Jennifer 8. Lee? Or even New York mag owner Bruce Wasserstein?
In light of his new job as editor of New York mag, Timesman Adam Moss revisits his career.
· Vogue's Anna Wintour on Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter's letters from the editor: "I think Graydon s letters are interesting and informative and opinionated and fun to read." She did not offer her opinion on the shivering wreck that is the rest of his magazine. (Also in today's Sridhar: Former Roseanne-spouse Tom Arnold asks Bonnie Fuller's Enquirer to respect traditional media agreement not to report from inside AA meetings. Like Bonnie's people would care: they'd get a reporter a job inside Betty Ford if they could. And also: NY Post puts up bitchy sign celebrating their circulation outside the dilapidated Daily News office.) [Sridhar Pappu & Noelle Hancock]
· Heavily-challenged Times-defended sex-slave story just won't die. [Paul Colford]
· Playboy and erstwhile Radar publisher Maer Roshan may have Frenchies sniffing around to invest in the magazine. (Also in today's Keith Kelly: the surprising update that everyone who works at the Star is still deeply annoyed by editorial director Bonnie Fuller.) [Keith Kelly]
Ad Age interviews PR man Howard Rubenstein, who used to rep Michael Jackson, regarding Janet's HooterGate: "It has absolutely changed a lot of things about how we do stunts. Right now we are asking ourselves: Can it backfire in any way? Can anyone be injured, will it insult anyone, does it make fun of people with a defect, is it over the edge sexually? Now PR people will have to be very cautious."
· WSJ media reporter Matthew Rose is getting booted upstairs. What the hell is going on in media reporter land? Does it suck that bad? (At the same time, WWD's Jacob Bernstein is going to New York mag, and the Observer's Sridhar Pappu is going off to the sports world.) [Jacob Bernstein]
· But they don't matter anyway, according to Russ Smith: media columnists have no teeth and play insider games because they all have complicated ties. (What? That's nutty talk!) [Russ Smith]
· The NYT's music critic Neil Strauss is reportedly ghost-writing Jenna Jameson's autobiography, and the Times is pissed off about it, although they say "We would not agree that the editors went 'insane,' or ballistic" — certainly one of the most hilarious sentences to come out of the NYT's spokespeople's office. [Rush and Molloy]
You know when you're at a sample sale, and you've snatched those cute pants out of some waifish secretary's hands, but then you try them on and they suck, and when you had walked in everyone was wearing the one dress you really wanted and now there aren't any more like it? But now you're gonna buy something no matter how badly it fits, or how ugly it is?
Neal Pollack, writer and rock star of the people, does something kind of eerie in today's Salon. He's basically blogged the Grammys in the style of a blogger... which is kind of duplicative of the 856 lonely teens who did in fact blog the Grammys. (I'm thinking Salon could have, you know, saved paying Neal his 8 cents a word.) Next up, for sure: the New York Times blogs the blog of the Grammys bloggers.
· Yes, 2003 did suck: tabloid editor Bonnie Fuller named Media Person of 2003. [IWantMedia]
· Jayson Blair's forthcoming book (less than a month away!) begins with confessions; apparently, hundreds of pages follow the opening apologies. [Joe Strupp]
· At the Mall at Short Hills in Jersey, journalists have discovered a new breed of man — a man shopping for himself, who is concerned about looking good. Maybe they'll come up with some catchy name for this elusive fellow! [David Carr]
· Esquire and O show impressive surge of newstand sales. [Matthew Flamm]
· Time, Inc. at work on cheapo English-style women's paper for Walmart. [Keith Kelly]
DEVELOPING...
Black Table interviews Savas Abadsidis, editor of the now defunct gay porn magazine A&F Quarterly, on what went wrong:
It's like New Year's Eve or Anna Wintour's birthday over here at Gawker HQ. The interns are jumping up and down on their barracks cots, their manacles jangling; it's rum and Tab for everyone, who cares if it's only 9 a.m.?!
Lloyd Grove — who evidently still has a newspaper column here in New York? This I did not know — mentioned New Yorker editor David Remnick's recent trip to LA. Apparently Remnick and his writer Ken Auletta did a dog and pony show at the Hammer Museum. (That's different than a donkey show, don't get excited.) Lloyd's source says of the talk that "It was the first time I've heard the word 'hermeneutically' used in Los Angeles," to which I say: you need to spend more time getting stoned on the Chinatown gallery strip.
