American Media chief David Pecker on why he decided to move the Star to New York: "[Pecker] found himself trying to persuade Columbia University students to work for him in a recruiting jag. After one young man grilled him about what it was like to work at the parent company of supermarket tabloids like The National Enquirer, the Globe and the Star, he asked where the job was located. Mr. Pecker told him it was in Boca Raton, Fla., not New York City. [Pecker says,] 'I'll never forget this student asking, 'Isn't Boca Raton where you end your career and not begin your career?'...And as I m driving back to my office, I thought: 'He's right.'"
Argh! Pecker the pirate [Observer]

Horror writer Stephen King has been hired to write a monthly pop culture column for Entertainment Weekly, replacing humorist Joel Stein, who was recently fired. Stein's reaction: "Wow. Being replaced by Stephen King. I'm honored...Will he write about Britney Spears? I'd like to read that. I think he should have every column end with a gory death." I think anyone who writees about Britney Spears should have the column end with a gory death. In fact, I think I'm going to adopt that rule right now.
The king of pop culture [Keith Kelly - Post]

[This is a June article, but it just popped up on Mediabistro today, and I just saw it, so...] American Journalism Review's Charles Layton defends Times reporter Judith Miller's reporting from Iraqor, more specifically, asks Miller to defend it. Layton spends most of the article laying out the charges then gives Miller space for rebuttal. Her defense, however, seems to be "fuck you; I worked hard." She chronicles the inconveniences of war reporting ("sandstorms blowing, wild dogs howling, sometimes exposed to the elements without rain gear or sleeping gear, with little more than the personal effects she had crammed into her 'little blue backpack from the Gap.' Plus, she says, someone sat on her computer and broke it") and says it was really hard to work her way into military bureaucracy to get the information she got. And I'm sure it was. But that's not a defense. Her second protest is that she "got the story." Getting a story is not the same as getting the story. Layton then declares her the winner in the argument on the basis that the rest of the media did a shitty job of covering the war as well.
Miller brouhaha [AJR]

Alright, not so much a "report" as a series of discursive little observations and bits from NY Mag/The Guardian's "Media at War" conference last Thursday. (I wasn't there for very long.)
1) I'm so disappointed that I missed meeting Conde Nast editorial director James Truman. I could have had my very own James Truman spotting. Goddamnit. I may be forced to sneak into the 4 Times Square building again.
2) Sitting behind lefty columnist Eric Alterman is fun because he spontaneously yells things during panels. It's like the media critic's version of Tourette's. You call it odd; I call it entertainment. ABC reporter John Donvan remarked, during a discussion about embedded reporters and civilian clothing, that some of the embeds "liked dressing up." Alterman: "So did the President!"
3) Media critic Michael Wolff [right] reminds me of someone. (But maybe it's just me.)
4) Highlights from the panel: The Post reporter Jonathan Foreman remarked that several of the journalistseven the experienced oneswould get overly excited and refer to a single bomb being dropped as relentless "carpet bombing." ABC's LeRoy Sievers's response: that happens in stories all the time.

I realize that:
1) Everyone in the New York media world is still sleeping off their post-Jayson Blair hangovers and that no one wants to hear about yet another NYT scandal;
2) The level of interest in a "media" story is directly correlated to its geographic proximity to Manhattan (The Center of All Things Media.)

Disgraced former NYT reporter Jayson Blair is slated to review "Shattered Glass"the film version of fellow fabulist Stephen Glass's story. He's also been given an assignment for Jane, writing about stress in the workplace. Blogger Jim Treacher asks, "in the interest of ensuring the most cynical publicity stunt possible... Should he actually see the movie? Would that be more ethical, or less? For that matter, do we know for sure that there actually is a movie?"
Ex-NYT reporter to write for Esquire, Jane [Newsday]
Jayson Blair to write movie review of Shattered Glass [Jim Treacher]

Work for new American Media editorial director Bonnie Fuller (mentioned in the post below):
· Writers: "Currently seeking experienced writers to work on its weekly magazine publication. Candidates will have a minimum of three years experience in celebrity writing." Unstated: Re: celebrity writing. Fiction or nonfiction. We have no preference.
· Designers: "Must have a minimum of 3 years design experience in magazine publication." Unstated: Preferred candidates will have demonstrably extensive use of "fuschia" and "purple."
· Editor: "Seeking editors to work on its weekly publication. Editors will work closely with creative groups and reporters to best maximize the success of the magazine." Unstated: Jann* didn't make you sign a non-compete, did he?
[*Wenner, head of Wenner Media.]
[Mediabistro]

Useful stats from Women's Wear Daily:
· Number of people at US Weekly who have received calls from [ex-US Weekly editor] Bonnie Fuller's new employer, American Media, and their headhunters, according to Wenner executives: 41.
· Average number of times each of the 41 people were said to have been called: 3.6
· Number of job categories on Mediabistro.com for The Star:reporters in New York and Los Angeles, writers, designers, and editors.
· Number of editors at Wenner offered the top gig at The Star: 1. Janice Min.
[Ed.At what point do we start seeing "number of calls made to AMI by Wenner Media?"]
The numbers game [WWD]

About.com reports that a printing plant in Springfield, Virginia was struck by lightning last night "slowing production of [the] New York Times edition printed there." I guess the Jayson Blair apologies weren't enough.
New York Times under more fire [About.com]

The Observer's Frank DiGiacomo reports that A.A. Gill's eviscerating review of Jean-George Vongerichten's restaurant 66 was vendetta for editor Graydon Carter, who went to the restaurant and "had to wait like five minutes for a table." Graydon was reportedly "pissed." I liked the review. (Of course.) And I don't think it hurt the restaurant in any way. The people who would go to 66 are still going to go to 66. At least once. Maybe pissing off Graydon is a good thing. It certainly makes Vanity Fair a more entertaining read.
Grouchy Graydon sends a hitman to restaurant 66 [Observer]

WSJ "hottie" media reporter Matthew Rose [right] suggests that there may be a tendency on the part of some media reporters to write stories in such a way that they'll get linked on Jim Romenesko's media news site. "you sometimes smell stories that have been written because they're going to get a link on Romenesko. It's again this whole idea that no one reads your stories, they just see it onthere's the great column Simon Dumenco did in New York on how no one actually reads stuff; they just read the links. So you get a sense sometimes. I would be amazed if peoplethey don't necessarily change their stories, but they drop in quotes they wouldn't otherwise use or sentences and phrases that they otherwise wouldn't put in just so they can pique Jim's interest." Maybe. But he probably just said that to get linked on Romenesko.
Meet the Meta-Press: Matthew Rose [MediaBistro]

Ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal is potentially slated to become editor-in-chief of a Guardian-run U.S. magazine, tentatively titled Smarmy Fuck. [Ed.I just made that up. I don't know what the title will be.] This is almost too good to be true. Blumenthal was good Gawker fodder before he had a magazine.
Magazine plan in bloom for ex-Clinton aide [NY Daily News]

CBS chairman Les Moonves suggests that aggressively pursuing Private Jessica Lynch for a movie of the week immediately following her return from Iraq may have been "over the line," and perhaps "failed to respect the sanctity of CBS news." [Read: even the focus groups in Fort Worth thought it was in bad taste.] Moonves' apology follows the leaking of a memo to the NYT in which CBS offered Lynch a movie of the week, a book deal, and potential projects with MTV. Next time, they'll presumably do things a little differently. Like encrypt the deal memo and use focus groups in Tallahassee.
CBS may have erred in pursuit of Lynch interview, CBS executive says [AP via Drudge]

I don't normally read Book magazine because it's partially owned by Barnes & Noble and I always assumed that meant it was basically a catalogue with a higher-than-average text-to-image ratio. So I've walked by the July/August issue several times and not picked it up, but this weekend I noticed that one of the cover stories was about "the Death of Chick Lit," and hoping (hoping!) that it was true, I flipped through it. The primary cover story, however, was much better. Stephen King, artfully posed in the photo shoot against a trailer park backdrop with a Marlboro red and a tv dinner, writes a fictional essay on how the publishing industry rewards serious literaturemonetarily. (It's fictional, remember?) He says he read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, and hated it because of "That maddening New York 'tude that seems to whisper, 'I'm smarter than you, more sophisticated than you, better-read than you, just better than you' at least once on every single page," but says there's "something almost endearing about his nearly constant need to take his own creative temperature. How is Jonathan faring today? he asks himself over and over. Will Jonathan be able to write tomorrow, in spite of the Internet, the decay of artistic sensitivity, and the growing idea that television might just be culturally important?"
America the Literate [Book]

Buried in Lynn Hirschberg's NYT mag profile of Random House CEO Peter Olsonpart of which consists of Olson visiting the Book Expo in LA and gleefully identifying people he has firedis a bit about a book proposal Olson's wife Candice (Carpenter) Olson was shopping around about their relationship. Candice is the ex-CEO of iVillage, and perhaps one of the most notorious dot com-mers of the Silicon (try not to laugh when you say it) Alley heydey. Hirshberg's description of a passage from the proposal: "on their first date 'on the carnival-like streets of the lower East Village,' Candice writes, Olson 'slowly lifted his shirt' and showed her his scars. 'Am I alone in thinking that well-placed scars on a gorgeous guy are among the most erotic things in life?' she goes on. 'Especially when the scars run across washboard abs and involve a closer inspection of the perfect biceps that areI admit it, I admit itmy weakness and fatal attraction.'"
Nothing random [NYT Mag]

Michelle Aranas has a problem with the very white teeth and very white eyes of various couples whose photos appear in the NYT's wedding section. In "an open letter to the New York Times Style Section Photo Retoucher, she writes, "I understand that the computer technology of the day allows you to work wonders...That said, I have to wonder why the couples in your photos look as if they've been eating powdered donuts while gazing into an atomic explosion." "We want to look at those who send in their information to your Style section and see where the bride's and groom's parents work or used to work," she adds. "Like everyone else who reads this section, we have no idea why we are reading it. We read it and wish we were hitting ourselves in the head with a mallet while doing so. There is no reason to read this section."
An open letter to the New York Times Style Section Photo Retoucher [McSweeneys]

Fashion journalist Damion Matthews, in the article below, alleges that [editor] Bonnie Fuller's Star looks a little too much like [ex-editor] Bonnie Fuller's US Weekly. They have same articles covering the same people, in the same format. The soap opera intrigue! Is US Weekly's Albert Lee secretly writing as Star's Brenda You? Will US Weekly have to die so that Star can live?

Which publisher at which major men's magazine just quit?
UPDATE: The official statement is released.

Vanity Fair columnist/career contrarian Christopher Hitchens once told an acquaintance of mine that the "four most overrated things" were "champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics." NY Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams seems to share the Hitch's irrational hatred of picnics (no comments on lobster, champagne or anal sex) and uses the entirety of today's column to rail against the evils of picnics. No gossip. No celebrities. Just picnics. If she writes another column like this, I'd suggest her employer threaten her with a picnic.
Can't take city outta this girl! [NY Post]

The Post ran a story today about a Las Vegas paintball company that supposedly allows participants to hunt naked women in a game called "Hunting for Bambi." The story comes complete with a quote from the head of the New York chapter of N.O.W. (National Organization for Women), who calls the game "sick" and "barbaric." According to Snopes.com, however, the whole thing is probably a hoax. "What woman in her right mind would allow people to shoot at her with paintballs delivered at a muzzle velocity of up to 200 MPH but agree that she couldn't wear so much as protective goggles, protected by nothing but a vague rule that shooters are supposed to hit their targets below the waist only?"
Loaded for bare [NY Post]
Hunting for Bambi [Snopes.com]