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Hamilton Nolan · 02/02/09 11:32AMSarah Palin Is Not Following Our Advice
Hamilton Nolan · 01/13/09 03:45PMGreta Van Susteren Leaps to Defense of Her Good Friend Sarah Palin
Hamilton Nolan · 01/07/09 10:12AMYour Tucker Max Movie Update
Hamilton Nolan · 01/06/09 01:28PMFormerly Rich Lady Is Our New Favorite Blogger
Hamilton Nolan · 01/06/09 10:43AM"My handwriting is cryptic and so am I."
Hamilton Nolan · 01/02/09 05:02PMJulia Allison Kicks Off '09 With Emotional Outburst
Hamilton Nolan · 01/02/09 12:17PMDavid Karp
Hamilton Nolan · 12/11/08 12:45PMHappy Birthday, Emily Brill
Hamilton Nolan · 12/11/08 10:02AMToday is Emily Brill's birthday! Take a moment, if you would, to reflect back on what the young media heiress has accomplished in this past year: inspired by a mean Gawker post, she founded her very own blog, triumphed over disease, traveled to distant lands, posed provocatively, wore her pearl necklace, stood resolutely with Sarah Palin, and finally became the Ultimate Narrator. Quite a time. She's celebrating today by going to FAO Schwarz to "pick out two animals," then maybe going to a blowjob party. Click through for one more fun picture of Emily in devilish party mode. We salute you, Ms. Brill:
Julia Allison Wants To Make "Fuck You Money"
Hamilton Nolan · 12/10/08 01:11PMJulia Allison: entrepreneur, feminist, hero of our time. She's publicly announced her desire to go to business school, and when she went to visit Harvard Business School the other day "quite a few people" had read her blog and came at her with all types of questions! So naturally she sat down and made a video about her intentions—not just for her own education, but also for her fake company, Nonsociety, which she would like to sell in 3-5 years. After the jump, watch Julia expound on her well thought-out scheme to make "fuck you [Nick Denton] money":
The Media Twitterati
Hamilton Nolan · 12/08/08 12:02PMWe gratuitously mocked Times columnist Nick Kristof's Twitter feed last week. But the truth is that he's in good company. Lots of big-shot media people—including many Gawker "favorites"!—have Twitters, despite the fact that Twitter is proven to destroy journalism. We haven't been paying enough attention to their various tweets about this and that. After the jump, we condense the offering of five famous media twits into bite-sized packages:
Blogs Beat Print in Free Speech Crackdowns!
Pareene · 12/05/08 04:20PMBack in the day, bloggers who didn't do any reporting like Mickey Kaus and Jeff Jarvis and probably Glenn Reynolds used to spend a great deal of time talking about how the blogs (specifically their blogs) would soon supplant the "Main Stream Media" forever. Well, some years have passed, and the MSM is in dire straits, but blogs have not really made much of a dent in CNN and the New York Times' market share, eyeballs-wise, and the boundary-blurring has manifested itself mainly as old school publications getting a little more "webby" in tone and content. There is one metric, though, that has bloggers pulling ahead of their MSM counterparts: jail time! The Committee to Protect Journalists just released its 2008 prison census, and as you can see in the attached pie chart, internet people finally make up a greater share of the journo prison population than snooty newspaper jerks. Way to go, internet, and Burma! [CPJ]
Tina Brown Is The Media's Last Safety Net
Hamilton Nolan · 12/03/08 10:04AMCan Tina Brown and her newfangled "website" The Daily Beast singlehandedly provide refuge to all of New York's talented laid-off writers? Ha, no, of course not, not even a glimmer of a chance. She'll be lucky to get through the next two years without burning through tens of millions in start-up funds and flaming out like the Talk magazine of the internet. But there's no reason talented laid-off writers can't get a piece of that sweet monetary pie while it's here! The Observer notes that Tina's passing out freelance bylines to many deserving newly unemployed vets of dead publications like Radar and the New York Sun, like a blond Brit Santa with a media fetish. And the pay is not bad! Not by recession standards, at least:
The New Version Of The Two-Source Rule
Hamilton Nolan · 12/02/08 03:54PMWhen the Huffington Post reported last night that David Gregory would be the next host of Meet The Press, all the other online news sites treated it as a rumor. Then today Politico ran the same story, citing anonymous sources, and everyone accepted it as a confirmed fact. Why? It's just the new rules of online sourcing at work. The outsourcing of sourcing!
Huffington Post Raises Incredible Amount Of Money
Hamilton Nolan · 12/01/08 10:55AMWe were impressed last month when it was rumored that the Huffington Post may have raised $15 million in new investment, a big accomplishment for a media company at a time when the media economy is in the trash. Well, those rumors turned out to be false. Actually, HuffPo has raised $25 million from a venture capital firm. Amazing. So what will they do with all this cash?
Dan Abrams Defends Straw Man Version Of His New PR Firm
Hamilton Nolan · 11/26/08 10:51AMFormer MSNBC host Dan Abrams is a popular guy, because it's been rumored that he has jobs to give out. Abrams, you'll recall, is starting a ridiculous, conflict-of-interest-riddled PR firm that will distinguish itself by selling corporate clients (or just moguls) the advice of current journalists, bloggers, and other media types. The Observer spoke to Abrams, and he says he's gotten 650 applications already—"the bulk of whom are freelance journalists, people who are writing books and individuals who have recently been laid off or walked away from jobs in the media industry." Are we missing something here? The whole reason that people got upset about Abrams' business plan in the first place is that he says he's going to offer the consulting services of current, not former, media people. Former journalists work for damn near every PR firm in America. That's nothing new. Here's Abrams' offended quote today:
Arianna Huffington Will Fund More Journalism, Somehow
Hamilton Nolan · 11/18/08 04:36PMArianna Huffington is branching out and branching out some more! Fresh off her adventurous night subbing as the host of Rachel Maddow's show, the accented mogul (and current non-friend to us) announced today that the Huffington Post "is going to raise money to fund investigative journalism projects." How does she plan to come up with the cash for this, the most expensive type of reporting? She won't say! Yet. According to Reuters, she said there won't be any details for three months. Perhaps in that time the economy will improve and donors will look to throw money at investigative journalism? Ha, no. So where will this cash come from? Some guesses:
Twitter Mom Power! Innocuous Ads Successfully Banned
Hamilton Nolan · 11/18/08 11:12AMHaven't we warned you people that Twitter and all of its attendant microtrends are nothing but trouble? That also goes for "the internet" and "bloggers," and especially for "mom bloggers," a particularly virulent and dangerous subset. Corporate America has now learned this lesson the hard way. The outrage of Twitter moms has forced the big bad Motrin corporation to pull its totally innocent ad campaign for aspirin. Power to the people! Detect the horrible offense here for yourself:
Mark Cuban Denies Insider Trading Charges
Hamilton Nolan · 11/17/08 03:51PMBillionaire Maverick(s owner) Mark Cuban has issued a statement proclaiming his innocence on the insider trading charges that the SEC filed against him earlier today. He posted the statement on his beloved blog, appropriately. And when he says "I wish I could say more," you can trust that he's telling the truth. We look forward to an ill-advised outburst from him in the coming weeks. For now, the official denial is after the jump: