A memo from a spy: "There are PETA protesters standing outside the Conde Nast building carrying funny pictures of Anna Wintour. Just thought you would want to know." Oh, please, please, someone get me pictures! Surely someone has a digital camera. Pleeeeeeeease?
A comparison: responses of NYT editor Howell Raines, and (archbishop of Boston) Cardinal Bernard Law, when asked whether they would resign:
The backstory on the VICE correction below: a reader says Jessica Hopper "was a big part of the riot grrrrl movement, has a stick up her feminist arse, and was in the house when Kurt Cobain shot himself...She [also] runs some zine and has frequently been referred to the girl who killed riot ggrrrlll because she was the one who gave all the interviews to the press." Hopper won a settlement against VICE for the correction. VICE co-founder Gavin McInnis's response to a reporter who asked questions about the affair: "Fuck you."
Amy Langfield writes, "reading the fake New York Times corrections at Gawker this morning made me wonder how post-Blair/Bragg sales are doing for Kill Duck Before Serving: Red Faces at The New York Times: A Collection of the Newspaper's Most Interesting, Embarrassing and Off-Beat Corrections. Well, Amy, the Amazon sales rank is 76,057 and that's just not high enough! I don't think this Jayson Blair thing is being covered extensively enough, and I'd like to propose a solution (thought up by an uncredited intern): the NYT should create a special pull-out section titled "A Paper Challenged." All Jayson Blair, all the time. (Or all the Times, as they say.) Yes? No?
Dead ducks [AmyLangfield]
Per yesterday's sighting of Conde Nast editorial director James Truman on the Subway, a reader submits, "I have seen James Truman on the subway dozens of times. He takes it from West 4th (F/V) to 42nd St. Times Square. Not many people recognize him." Well, we'll fix that problem! There's Truman on the right. He can apparently be spotted taking public transportation. Since yesterday's spy indicated that he carries an iPod, I assume he's not a complete technophobe like most print people. Given that I'm going to make a very subtle plea: PLEASE PUT YOUR GODDAMN MAGAZINES ONLINE SO I CAN LINK TO THEM. Thank you.
I've done a little research of my own (with the help of a couple of unnamed interns and stringers who shall remain uncredited, as is standard practice) and I think I've discovered the next NYT reporter to be investigated: AMANDA HESSER. The evidence? In a column dated May 28, 2003, "Cooking Risotto With an Inexpensive and Decent Red Wine," Hesser states that the ingredients for red wine risotto include "one teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves." We've had that exhaustively fact-checked, although it's rather obvious that Hesser just made it up. As everyone knows, red wine risotto requires TWO teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves. Shame on you, Amanda.
The Observer's Bruce Feirstein, reporting from Hollywood (in that Jayson-Blair-and-by-reporting-from-Hollywood-we-mean-making-shit-up sense), intercepts a letter to Mr. Blair's agent from "Transnational Pictures": "Everybody here at Trans-National is really excited that you decided to sell us your life story. And I couldn t agree with you more: Despite the offer of $27 million, a jet, an Oscar and a date with Gwyneth, you made the right choice: At the end of the day, Harvey Weinstein would have probably sold you out for some positive reviews in The Times. Good call, Jayson." Commentary on the script: "The final action sequence is amazing, when you steal the submarine and stop the Al Qaeda attack on Times Square just as the Raines character has climbed on the parapets moaning 'Sanctuary!' and is about to pour cauldrons of molten lead onto the reporters below. Wow."
Blair gets the Hollywood treatment: new developments [Observer]
The Times evidently has a post-Jayson-Blair "tips" email address that readers can use if they spot inaccuracies in a story. The Daily News' Zev Chafets says Maureen Dowd's column is being internally reviewed, which would be big news, but then he explains that he's the one that reported her. Chafets apparently emailed something about Dowd's use of elipses to take a quote out of context and a NYT spokeperson saysof coursethat they'll look into it. I find Dowd's column encouraging on some level because if Maureen Dowd can have a column, anyone can have a column. But I can't read it without desperately wishing I could have those seconds of my life back immediately afterward. That said, Chafets is basically reporting that she's being investigated and insinuating that it's even worse than a Jayson Blair-type offense. The glee is virtually dripping off the page, and I feel dirty just reading it. He might want to try a little harder to thinly veil that agenda.
The Times also has a columnist problem [NY Daily News]
FT's Craig Offman describes his interview with the another disgraced reporter, Stephen Glass, at Cafe Lebowitz in Nolita: "As we leave, he asks me if I've seen this dessert place a few blocks down, Rice to Riches. When we walk in, two blonde girls behind a rice-pudding bar greet him like the Pope in Ireland. The waitress at Leibowitz knows him, and now these girls. You wonder if these service people know about him. He must wonder if they know. Maybe he doesn't care, as long as they accept him. Something he said at lunch came back to me. 'The best thing that could happen is that people think of me as this guy who used to lie but doesn't lie any more.'" Glass's suggestion for Jayson Blair: "Therapy."
Lunch with the FT: Stephen Glass - fabulous faker boy [FT]
The NYT reports that Steve Case is considering spinning off AOL. I'm not sure Case really has the authority to consider spinning off anything, but if it happened, it would be an overt and irrevocable public admission that the AOL/TW deal was a stupid idea in the first place. There's no high-minded contrarian explanation that defends buying high and selling low, and no one believes in the Magical Multimedia Synergy Fairy anymore.
AOL founder said to consider a spinoff [NYT]
"Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," says NYT reporter Rick Bragg. "Anyone with half a brain can see that [but] I'm too mad to whine about it." Bragg says he's being criticized for doing things that are considered industry standardsusing stringers and interns to report and not crediting them and using phone interviews to cobble together a piece then staying in the area of the story just long enough to get the dateline. (Industry standards? That's news to me... Intern!)
NY Times reporter says he'll quit [WaPo]
From a March 2002 NY Mag article on Gennifer Flowers: "...Flowers's recent spate of publicity (the Times even ran a front-page article about her by Rick Bragg, whom she calls 'an angel') coincides with a defamation suit she's filed against James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Hillary Clinton." Given that Rick Bragg wrote the story and that she liked it, we may want to go back and investigate that whole Gennifer Flowers episode. (Lie to me, baby. Oh, wait. I meant lie about me, angel.)
Gennifer does Chelsea [NY Mag]
This is the problem with the omission of articles such as "an" and "the" in newspaper headlines: I see "BLAIR BOOK PROPOSAL LASHES OUT AT PAPER" and I think, "What the hell does Jayson Blair have against a magazine that chronicles the goings and comings of the same 22 hipster trust fund babies and their fabulissimo careers as artist DJs in Williamsburg?" But I digress. It appears that Blair is lashing out at the NYT, to which he refers with all apparent seriousness as "my tormentor, my other drug, my slavemaster." (Now Jayson, don't get melodramatic.) Blair promises stories about parties with drugs and "one editor's affair with an intern." Parties with drugs? In Manhattan? Journalists were involved? An editor had an affair with an intern? This *yawn* will surely *yawn* destroy *yawn* the New York Times.
Blair book proposal lashes out at paper [WaPo]
The New York Times continues to demonstrate an extraordinary appetite for self-flagellation. The probe into journalistic practices at the newspaper is turning up allegations of graft, as well as fabrication; Rick Bragg, subject of an editor's note yesterday, has been suspended; and four journalists targeted by the probe have threatened legal action if their names are leaked, which only fuels media-world speculation. A reminder of the pundit consensus: another departure, and Howell Raines, the NYT's editor, is out.
Alex Kuczynski departure turns sour [New York Post]
NY Times suspends reporter [Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post]
From today's "Memo Pad" column in Women's Wear Daily, on whether Jayson Blair ruined a potential book by talking to the Observer:
Tina Brown: "Blair has blown it in my view...There is nothing left for him now except a reality show costarring with Baghdad Bob."
Janice Min, executive editor of Us Weekly: "When you screw up, the first thing a celebrity is supposed to say is that you're sorry, that you don't understand your own behavior and beg for forgiveness. Jayson Blair did none of those things. It seemed that he had public sympathy on his side, that The New York Times had overcompensated [for what he'd done], but he exhausted any remaining goodwill people who were willing to extend him. Celebrity publicists always say the first thing you do is act contrite. And there was none of that."
Publisher Judith Regan: "Truthfully I don't see it, I don't get it...Jayson Blair is a liar. He's dishonest. Why would I want to publish a nonfiction book by him? I think that memoir is a big 'who cares?'"
The Daily News' Paul Colford reports what's been floating around media circles for a couple of weeks: Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Rick Bragg didn't do all the reporting on a story with his byline. Bragg's part of the Alabama posse favored by NYT editor Howell Raines, and attended Raines' wedding earlier this year.
New woe for brass at Times [NY Daily News]
Wednesday... Checking the tips box...
