Ed Hayes, the lawyer, is among those asked by New York Magazine for his advice for Martha Stewart. "Usually the best thing you can do if people think you're greedy is give away money," he says.
The Living Isn't Easy

There's a report that Redbook has again spliced together its front cover photo. This time, it's a composite photo of Julia Roberts; last month, it was Jennifer Aniston, whose left hand came from one photo, her right arm from another, and her head from a third. The shirt was painted on. The issue isn't so much Redbook's failure to disclose the pastejob frankly, it would only be a story if a magazine revealed its cover image was an unmodified original. What's remarkable is the crude execution of the Photoshop work.

BREAKING: Art Cooper, editor-in-chief of GQ for twenty years, died this afternoon. Cooper, who retired in late April, was having lunch last Thursday at the Four Seasons when he collapsed. He was with David Zinczenko, editor of Men's Health, and one of the candidates to replace him at GQ. The two were at Cooper's usual booth.
Former 'GQ' Editor Art Cooper Dead at 65 [Mediaweek]

Matt Drudge, the online linkmeister, has been called a rumormonger, and much worse besides. In an interview with Radar Magazine, he says can take any insult but one. "In the end I really don't care what I'm called, as long as it's not blogger." Later in the Q&A, he also drops that Ann Coulter, the ultra-con author and talking head, is moving from New York to Miami. Florida, Drudge explains, has no state income tax.
Drudge Match [Radar Magazine]

An advertisement for the New York Times, from 1869. "Its EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT will be conducted in a spirit of fairness and impartiality, free alike from personal rancor or undue favoritism; and will be the production of the ablest and most experienced writers upon all the subjects treated." [Ftrain via Anil Dash]

It is perfectly acceptable to for a writer to make for Los Angeles, particularly if you have a script to complete, and a new fianc e to support. But try to leave a decent interval between the ritual denunciation of West Coast anomie, and an accomodation to the economics of writing. Rob Siegel, editor of The Onion, the satirical weekly, is said to be mulling a cross-country move. He must have been satirical when he said, a couple of years back: "We hate L.A. We're not really an L.A. bunch."
Robert Siegel's engagement [NYT]
Interview [OJR]
CORRECTION: Rob Siegel says he has no plans to move to LA.

Michael Wolff, the New York Magazine media columnist, is surprisingly gentle with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the embattled publisher of the New York Times. 'Pinch' Sulzberger has a blunt charm, mogul-like qualities, and good hair. But Wolff always throws in a But Sulzberger isn't very Timesian. "He isn t earnest. He may be smart, but he isn t thoughtful. He isn t highbrow, or obviously culturally minded, or even recognizably a Jewish liberal indeed, he gets annoyed when people assume that just because he s from one of the great New York Jewish families, he is Jewish (he was raised as an Episcopalian)."
Pinch, Power, and the Paper [Michael Wolff]

No news yet this morning on Art Cooper, the just-retired editor of GQ, the men's magazine, who suffered a serious stroke last week. But Peter Johnson of Media Mix reported yesterday, ominously: "Cooper was taken off life support over the weekend and was said to be in grave condition."
Media Mix [USA Today]

The New Yorker discovers the Gessmanns, two brothers who supply newspapers with bulletins on the latest crimes and fires. The Gessmanns maintain a network of insomniacs, who scan police radios at night, and send in reports. For some reason okay, because Manhattan has something called nightlife a disproportionate number of these insomniac scanner buffs live in Brooklyn. So much so that the Gessmanns refer to the borough as the buff capital, which must be the first time that Brooklyn has been described so flatteringly.
Calling all cars [Talk of the Town]

Conde Nast Editorial Director and Famed Public Transportation Taker James Truman was spotted at Whole Foods buying his own groceries, a reader reports. "James Truman, looking sullen in line at the Wholefoods in Chelseakicking his grocery backet along, wearing a casually elegant navy suit. He glanced only fleetingly at the magazine racks, which bore no copies of Conde Nast magazines. Discernible items: a head of lettuce and a large round of sourdough, sprinkled with poppy...and, perhaps, sesame."

UPDATE: Ex-GQ editor Art Cooper is still on life support. [I apologize for the false alarm.] Ad Age reports that Cooper, who resigned 6 weeks ago, had a stroke yesterday.
GQ's Art Cooper on life support [AdAge]

The Village Voice has a handy "Make up your own NYT story" that simplifies the process of writing for the Gray Lady via multiple choice:

Breaking: NYT editor Howell Raines and NYT managing editor Gerald Boyd just resigned. Lelyveld is back.

NYT gossip columnist Joyce Wadler (or since it's the NYT, one of her minions) attended the book party for Page Six reporter Ian Spiegelman's Everyone's Burning at strip club Privilege on Tuesday. Whither strip club? "My personality really isn't Elaine's," says Ian. "It's more Privilege." (Possibly related: The book is, if I remember correctly, a quasi-erotic novel with some S&M elements. The dominatrixes would have perhaps been a bit awkward at the Harvard Club.) Wadler/minion reports that she/he spotted...here come the boldface names!...a shitload of media people. Oooh! Ahhh! Non-media person (the only one, I think) MOBY was also there, as was Page Six reporter CHRIS WILSON WHO COMPLAINS THAT I NEVER WRITE ABOUT HIM IN MY COLUMN. (To be fair, he never writes about me in his, either.) It was basically your generic literary event, but with more strippers.
Lap dancers: would Proust have done that? [NYT]

Apropos of nothing, a correction for a Sunday Styles article in the NYT: "A headline on May 18 about people who have had multiple plastic surgery procedures misspelled the name of a substance used for breast implants. It is silicone, not silicon."
Corrections [NYT]

We've apparently reached the final stages of the Jayson Blair scandal. The Times has admitted that it Has A Problem. It has made a Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory of itself. It has admitted the Exact Nature of Its Wrongs. Okay, we're skipping a few steps, but you get the idea. So now what? According to the Observer, NYT editor Howell Raines is in the office occasionally, but only functioning as a sort of physical fixture. (Other uses for Raines: doorstop, excessively large paperweight...) No one seems to know how the paper gets published on a daily basis. The Observer makes some reference to a "b-team" that is, I suppose, the media equivalent of a "shadow government," but it's not quite so interesting as to provoke any creative conspiracy theories. Since we traffic in conspiracy theories, this is a bit disappointing. (But as usual, we have a solution. Submit conspiracy theories to tips@gawker.com.)
Baby, will Raines fall? [Observer]

If you haven't heard the name, Salam Pax is an Iraqi blogger whose identity has been the subject of varied and sundry conspiracy theories (Salam's a CIA mole, an Iraqi interrogator, a defense department creation, etc.), and several articles. One of the articles was a piece in the New Yorker that revealed a few personal details, and when Salam stopped blogging for a week, he was feared deadthe victim, perhaps, of one of Saddam's henchmen. War reporter Peter Maass (NYT Mag), upon returning from Baghdad last Wednesday, read an article about Salam and realized that the Baghdad blogger had been his interpreter. Coincidentally, he had brought a couple of issues of the New Yorker with him to Iraq, which Salam, who had been trained as an architect, devoured with great interestparticularly the pieces on Libeskind's WTC design. Salam says what everyone's thinking about New Yorker stories: "They go on and on. They start in one place, go somewhere else, then to another place. They are, like, endless."
Salam Pax Is Real - How do I know Baghdad's famous blogger exists? He worked for me. [Slate]

BullyMag takes a swipe at Gawker (which, being a narcissist, I find flattering) in an article entitled, "Blahg, blahg, blahg: the Times picks up on a Bully story six months late." Says Tim Hall, "It is not the typical blogger's self-absorption that bothers me so much as the completely earnest, unironic way in which they go about saying the same goddamn things everybody else does." [Ed.Oh. My. God. Did we switch to "earnest" and "unironic" and I didn't get the memo? That's going to, like, totally fuck up the site.] Because I'm "new to town" ("new to town" meaning "lived here for four years") and "have no idea how full of shit" I am, Bully helpfully provides a timeline of Gawker's existence for the next 36 months. For example, in "18 to 24" months, I'll be writing for Radar. (Which is just sillyI'll sell out much quicker than that.) And it's probably all true, but I really have to take issue with the "24 to 25 months" prediction that states that I will have a "growing discomfort with the callow sort of backstabbing hyper-competitive nobodies you now deal with on a daily basis." No, no, no. I will never tire of the callow sort of backstabbing hyper-competitive nobodies I now deal with on a daily basis. Ever.
Blahg, blahg, blahg [<</p>

The PETA kids spent yesterday harrassing Vogue editor Anna Wintour from the sidewalk in front of 4 Times Square. Protesters wearing fur and tossing red Gatorade all over each other, chanting "Trapped by greed, fur is murder." Several of the tourists watching the demonstration thought a movie was being filmed. Several of the New Yorkers watching the demonstration yawned and kept walking. (FWD has pictures.)
Red letter day: PETA paints the Conde Nast tower [FWD]

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago about Jen Bekman, who runs an art gallery in Nolita and keeps a photolog about it. I have since managed to co-opt Jen as a Gawker spy and she reports that she saw the public-transportation-loving Conde Nast editorial director James Truman at a book signing and even convinced a friend to take a picture. Why is this significant? Because last week someone mentioned that Truman takes public transportation all the time, but no one recognizes him. Well, that's just not fair. Just because Truman doesn't demand that fat people be removed from his line of vision or publicly blow smoke in the mayor's face (literally and figuratively) doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve as much attention on Gawker as other Conde Nast executives. So here's a lovely picture of Mr. Truman for all to enjoy and use as a reference when scanning faces on the subway.