Forgive us for noticing something like this, but we like to stare at shoes (not in a fetishy way, we swear). So we were studying the images of life-threatening platform-stiletto heels featured in today's Times article — and then we realized that one of shoes featured, the Azzedine Ala a Geppetto, is also gracing Jessica Simpson's skanky feet on the cover of today's Post.
• Problem-ridden ABC News hunts for GMA email leaker. This much we know: It wasn't Krucoff. [NYO]
• Howell Raines' new memoir is good. [WP]
• Is Conde considering moving publishers around? Perhaps. [WWD]
• "The Feds yesterday arrested two young Wall Streeters and a mole at a Business Week print shop for running a trans-Atlantic insider trading scam that enlisted investment bank colleagues and a stripper to rack up $6.7 million in ill-gotten gains." It's ledes like this that make it impossible to stay mad at the Post. [NYP]
• NYT names a new real-estate editor; Joyce Cohen has fun with capital letters. [HuntGrunt]
• 'Times' gets new ThuStyles deputy editor; remarkably it's not a gay man. She is, however, a former Observer m.e., which the Observer doesn't mention. [Media Mob/NYO]
Well, hey, with those 10 articles by 13 reporters totaling 10,000 words — plus two more pieces today — the Times has sort of made this thing its own, right?
'Tis the season for manna from heaven, and in a similar fashion comes pictures of Page Six editor and happy newlywed Richard Johnson enjoying his honeymoon at the Delano hotel in South Beach, Miami. (For your reference, the Delano was last referenced in Page Six on April 2, which said the hotel had hosted a "chic" party attended by Jamie Foxx.)
• Will Katie Couric make the evening news relevant again? Color us skeptical. [NYT]
• This week's new New Republic — now less wonky! — spends its cover and nearly 4,000 words analyzing Thursday Styles and its star columnist, Alex Kuczynski. (Turns out, the section and her column are both morally indefensible. Who knew?) The big question, however, is left unanswered: What does it mean for Israel? [TNR]
• Steve Dunleavy is taking all the Page Six stuff hard. "I bleed for the paper, I really do." Poor Steve. [NYer]
• And, shockingly, the News is reveling in the Post's misfortune. [NYT]
What makes the Page Six scandal so interesting isn't that it reveals the machinations of a corrupt column — everyone knows gossip is a dirty business built on favors, even if we hadn't such concrete evidence as we do now. What we love about it, however, is how all of the people involved (even peripherally) are connected. To best explain it for all those visual learners out there, we've put our marginal skills to good use and created a quickie map. Click to enlarge and revel in the payola.
The latest: According to ABC news, the FBI was prepared to arrest Jared Paul Stern at the time of his infamous meeting with billionaire Ron Burkle, but they lacked sufficient evidence. Since then, the bureau is in the early stages of launching an investigation "to determine whether there ever will be enough to bring to a federal grand jury and win an indictment." And, of course, there might not be.
In a phone interview with ABC News' Chris Cuomo, Page Six freelance-y fixture Jared Paul Stern claims that billionaire Ron Burkle set him up, resulting in claims of extortion and an FBI investigation of the gossip column's practices. On the surface, this isn't necessarily untrue — Burkle set up the meetings, videotaped them, and handed them over to the feds. But according to the Daily News, Stern contacted Burkle with an email hinting at a possible deal to be made; Stern, on the other hand, claims Burkle initiated contact over a year ago, through mutual friends, looking to Stern for a way to make his Page Six issues disappear. And even if Burkle set up Stern, Stern lost his mind when he named a price.
And the 7.25 million who are allegedly have no mental distress? They reported lying to people taking surveys.
We're going to take a very quick break from our coverage of Payola Six and Jared Paul Stern's alleged attempt to shake down billionaire Ron Burkle to focus on some other news in the House of Six: P6 editor Richard Johnson and Sessa von Richthofen tied to knot Saturday in Palm Beach. The bride wore on off-white brocade dress (designer, anyone?) and RJ was dapper in a white tux. Guests included Jay McInerney, Silvano Marchetto, Patrick McMullen, and Men's Health editard Dave Zinczenko. Not invited were reporters from Daily News, who questioned Johnson about the scandal as he boarded the SS Matrimony.
• Bonnie's rich AMI contract is up at the end of June, and — as one of her mags gets shut down and another's redesign is more or less undone — negotiations are underway. Great timing, eh? [NYP (second item)]
• Newspapers execs met in Chicago, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons. Sexy Jon Fine enjoys that metaphor, as he should. [BizWeek]
• Who does Spin hire to replenish its now-virtually-empty staff ranks? An alt-porn auteur and star, naturally. [FBNY]
• Injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff sends note to colleagues, releases photo. We're very pleasantly surprised to see that he does, in fact, still look like an anchorman. [AP/USAT]
• Forward politics writer E.J. Kessler to move to New York Post op-ed gig. Because people jump from socialist to conservative papers all the time. [Forward]
• All the standard kvetches about media? Wrong, wrong, and wrong, says Bill Powers. [NJ]
• Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the son of Pinch who we've attempted to saddle with the nickname Prince, to leave the Providence Journal for The Oregonian in Portland. Wonder where he'll end up? [Providence Phoenix]
• NYT Congress reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg to become paper's White House reporter. [Media Mob/NYO]
• The Voice loses another, this time investigative reporter Jennifer Gonnerman. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Are Conde Nast editors being shut out of Devil Wears Prada screenings? Um, no. [WWD]
Thank God for Matt Drudge. Everyone everywhere is amazed and surprised (and yet not really so surprised) and fascinated by the the burgeoning Payola Six scandal. But only Matty could see the thing as a dark cloud looming over the entirety of Manhattan.
As we mentioned early this morning, one of the best parts of the JPS/Payola Six story is that Richard Johnson is that it's breaking as P6 king Richard Johnson is heading off to get married tomorrow, making this the most amazing wedding present ever. And where will Johnson and his consort, Sessa von Richthofen, tie the knot?
Today we've learned that Page Six's Jared Paul Stern has been busted for extortion, trying to wrangle $100K up front plus $10K monthly out of Ron Burkle for a year's "protection" from unflattering items. Surely this is not the first time someone's ponied up to Stern — or Page Six, for that matter — to maintain friendly coverage. So we have to wonder: Who else has paid?
And now today there are reports of more free Wall Street Journals, this time sponsored by MaxJet, the biz-class-only service to London. Which, when we glanced at the calendar, finally made sense: It's March 31, the final day for one of the two annual Audit Bureau of Circulations reporting periods. As we've explained before, the Audit Bureau is the circ-counting police, and the bureau's rules allow free copies to count as paid circulation if someone, somewhere is paying for them. So when you MaxJet pays for a Journal to be handed to you, that's considered real, paid circ — and, as the reporting period draws to a close, newspapers all around town are driving up their daily-paid averages with this sketchy but fully legal gimmick.
The board of directors of American Media — the publishing company that brings you such joys at National Enquirer, Star, Bonnie Fuller, and a CEO named David Pecker — is meeting in New York today, and apparently there's all sorts of financial tension going on: New board members, problems with bondholders, even commercial flights (gasp!) for the execs. Of course, all this we had to learn from Nat Ives' Ad Age story on AMI. In the Post, we got no further than Keith Kelly's subhed:
Ultimately we got reports yesterday of free Journals in all the places you'd expect — down the East Side, through midtown, and to Wall Street — and in one you wouldn't — at the Hoboken PATH station. Today, apparently, it's back to Post time: Murdoch's giving it away at, according to early reports, Penn Station, Union Square, and at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. (It's with Fresh Direct's sponsorship again, we're told.)
Too often, we find that an article doesn't live up to its promise. As journalists are wont to do, they reel us in with a fantastic lede, our panties get in a pleasant twist, and then — nothing. The article peaks with its first sentence, leaving us with little more than a crippling case of desire.
