While it may very much seem that we are only capable of distate and disgust, we love the Observer. We also love much of their staff, a smartypants bunch of devilkins who are known to randomly appear at events in inappropriately dapper suits. So we raise the following issue with nothing but the utmost concern:
• Today's speculation on the next World News Tonight anchor: Charlie Gibson. Because Diane wants him to. [NYO]
• That Times Mag Mark-Warner-Looks-Nothing-Like-His-Photo correction? It's all thanks to the Observer. [NYO]
• Howell Raines' latest memoir TK on May 9. In case 20,000 words in The Atlantic wasn't enough for you. [E&P]
• Kent Brownridge is gone from Wenner Media. Again. For real. We think. [NYP]
• And Jann startes hunting for a new Kent. Mary Berner, maybe? [WWD]
• The Times thinks Hillary's running for president, too: She'll now be covered through the Washburo instead of the Metro desk. [NYO]
We never quite bought Keith Kelly's claim that rich guy, investment banker, Carl Icahn ally, and New York owner Bruce Wasserstein was seriously considering buying the New York Observer. (If you already owned one publication that covers media and politics and business and Manhattan society, we wondered, why would you buy a second one?) But now it's moot: Today Kelly is reporting that Wasserstein is no longer interested — if he ever was.
The problem with political events today — and especially the problem with Hillary Clinton's political events these days — is that they're just too loose. Too freeform, too unscripted, too let-it-all-hang-out. You know what would solve the problem? If only we could have a wax-figure political rally. Then finally wild-n-crazy Hillary would be as stiff and scripted as we all wish she could be.
We don't know what it is about this day in particular, but apparently today, Wednesday the 15th of February, is the preferred day for respectable newspapers to launch blogs. Perhaps it's the hangover from Valentine's Day self-loathing — we've found that depression and emotional darkness tend to lead to blogging. Whatever the case, both the Times and the Observer have launched new blogs today: Frank Bruni's Diner's Journal and the appropriately pink Bridal Blog, respectively.
"Bush Shifts on Muslim Protests," by Jim VandeHei," The Washington Post, A1:
• Maxim, Sports Illustrated, and Playboy to spend up to $1 million each to host dueling pre-Super Bowl parties. Maybe some of those recently laid off from Time Inc. and Dennis Publishing will be invited. [NYP]
• Brandon Holley digs 20-something smart chicks. [NYT]
• Daily News TV guy Richard Huff still doesn't like Jon Stewart. [NYDN]
• The Observer redesigns its blogs, which now look thoroughly swell (if, sadly, less pink). [The Real Estate/NYO]
• Missed In Style: Celebrity Weddings on ABC Monday night? Then you missed your chance to see highlights from Details editor Dan Peres' wedding. We're sure you're as sad as we are. [WWD]
• Now, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson will take turns joining Elizabeth Vargas on World News Tonight. We really hope they can work George Stephanopoulos into that rotation, too. [NYT]
• CBS Newser John Roberts decamps for CNN. If your bosses told you they had no idea who'll be the next anchor but they're sure it won't be you, you'd leave too. [Public Eye]
• High-ranking laddie Andy Clerkson grows up and moves out. The Dennis Publishing editorial director will leave his job, summer in Montauk, have a kid, and move back to England. [WWD]
• One of the many companies that isn't buying the Observer: Reed Elsevier. [NYP (last item)]
• NYO on NYT: Ric Burns to produce docu on the Gray Lady, and war gets in the way of Jill Abramson and Maureen Dowd's planned trip to Iraq. [NYO (second and third items)]
It's been a long, long time since an Observer profile inspired us to pants-soaking rage (Cheban nostalgia runs deep), but today the pretty pink paper has served us a new object worthy of our ire: Italian Baron Cody Franchetti, who currently resides in Manhattan, leaving a trail of snot wherever he goes. Some of his better quotables:
So we're hearing that the Observer's website has been infected with some sort of particularly malignant virus or spyware or somesuch. Apparently simply visiting the site — on a PC; Mac people, as always, are miraculously inoculated — will infect your computer with something we're told is called "Icyfox," which will, we're further told, send data "to Korea." (We presume that's North Korea; this seems the sort of dastardly subversion the Dear Leader would dream up.)
• James Risen wouldn't show Times editors his spying book until a week before it came out — and even then only after they signed an NDA. We can't imagine Denton even stifling a laugh if we tried the same thing. [NYO]
• MPA chief "regrets" making donation to conservative group Abramoff suggested. Just as we're sure Bob Ney regrets taking all those perks Abramoff offered. And Abramoff, we're equally sure, regrets offering them. [Ad Age]
• It's a dorky thing to be excited about, but, still, we're dorks: The Observer website finally gives each article its own URL, and our long national nightmare is over. [Jossip]
• Now only TimesSelect subscribers can email the paper's op-ed columnists. We hope, for Maureen's sake, that Aaron Sorkin's a TimesSelecter. [E&P]
• Jon Friedman misses Walter Cronkite. [MW]
The introduction to film critic Andrew Sarris's best-films list for 2005, published in The New York Observer on January 11, 2006:
The Observer's lead media story this morning was Lizzy Ratner's shocking — shocking! — expose on the near-uniform lily-white-ness of the magazine business. Confronted with such an important topic — race, America's original sin — and with such a lengthy look at it — 2,500 words — we knew this was an article we must address. But, still getting our minds around the simple idea of gentiles in publishing (a shonda!), we also knew that we're not at all the right people to address it.
Please don't get us wrong: We're incredibly fond of the Observer generally and of its "NYTV" column specifically. We just wish anyone over there had ever, you know, watched an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show before selecting this particular hed/dek combo:
Under any circumstances, it would be difficult for us to ignore the Observer engagement announcement of pending nuptials between a high-powered newsweekly writer and a high-powered arts-world flack. (It's also difficult to ignore an announcement in which half of the couple spent about six years sharing an apartment with half of us.)
• Lindsay Lohan admits to Vanity Fair that she's used drugs and struggled with bulimia. When we blow rails and boot our brunch, we usually go to Graydon Carter for confessional, too.
• Zeta Graff sues Paris Hilton for being a big, fat liar — but, as it turns out, her paid liar/publicist Rob Shuter might be just as bad.
• Peter Braunstein pleads not guilty to charges of sexual assault; guilty on all charges of looking incredibly frightening.
• Left befuddled by the state of the odd-amounted Metrocard, we fall victim to the strange intricacies of the card machine, only to find eventual redemption.
• Jon Stewart attempts to save the Oscars from total irrelevance.
• Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann and his wife, Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliot House, leave the company, but not without a handsome payoff.
• Marc Kramer is hired as CEO of the Daily News. Les who?
• Observer editor Peter Kaplan looks to save the precious pink paper with the power of Bruce Wasserstein.
• West Virginian miners die in tragic explosion; media runs inaccurate, opposite story in tragic miscommunication.
• And in more bad news: the health of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is not looking good .
• But cheer up, because Real Simple will soon suck on a tv near you!
Spencer Morgan — a gossip reporter around town who's worked on New York's Intelligencer and Rush & Molloy at the News, among other venues — published a delightful essay in Wednesday's Observer. "My New Year's Rez: How to Play Hooky and Not Get Fired," it was called, and it provided charmingly dastardly strategies for availing oneself of sick days when not actually sick. His suggestions, in brief:
Post media stalker Keith Kelly has an interesting item this morning regarding the fate of our much beloved New York Observer (#15 on our 123 reasons for loving this godforsaken town): After years in the red and a circulation plateauing at about 45k, the pretty pink paper is being "quietly shopped around" to prospective buyers. Specifically, editor Peter Kaplan, who very much wants to save his baby, has hit London to meet with New York moneybags Bruce Wasserstein.
Mazel tov to the indefatigable Jason Binn, whose usually content-free Gotham magazine has apparently scored the local-news scoop of the year: an exclusive interview with Rudy Giuliani.
