Oh happy day! Public Eye, the new non-opinionated, non-ombudsman, non-blog ombudsman blog from CBS News, launched this morning. Providing "unprecedented transparency" into the workings of a broadcast news organization, Public Eye will serve as a team of independent reporters, getting CBS correspondents, producers, and executives to talk about how editorial decisions are made within the organization, and it will also examine larger media issues.
New on Poynter, your one-stop source for one-note journalism.
• Gawker Media pooped out yet another baby: Introducing Deadspin, our heterosexual attempt at sports blogging!
• Seventeen forced us to learn about the vagina.
• Fox's The O.C. returned to our lonely lives, but not without the Daily News ruining it for us first.
• We wondered if the New York Press' Matt Taibbi had set sail with Sean Penn. You said yes, and the man himself confirmed.
• Martha Stewart kicked off her press tour with a thoughtful stop by the Today show.
• Gay blog Queerty made its debut, sponsored by the equally gay Navy.
• Radar finally found its home.
• We confirmed that, as we suspected, Anna Wintour wears the pants around Men's Vogue — that is, when she's able to stay on her feet.
• We lost our innocence regarding taxicops.
• We asked for your help in selling out.
So we've been perusing the content over at our media gossip cousin Jossip's house lately, and we couldn't help but notice a fixation with Wenner Media that may, truthfully, put our Conde Nastiness to shame. Not that Wenner's Us Weekly and Rolling Stone aren't worthy of obsession, but, uh, they're not. It's Men's Journal that's the real gem of Jann Wenner's crown. But that isn't what's the problem, anyhow.
We've already conclusively determined that erstwhile New York Presser Matt Taibbi went boating with Sean Penn in New Orleans last week. But sometimes — believe it or not — plebiscite isn't the best methodology for determining an individual's whereabouts. Thanks to the reader, then, who located this comment on a Blogcritics.org item:
The intriguing and amusing newspaper-corrections blog Regret The Error today kicks off its new interview series by talking with Seth "Mr. Accuracy" Mnookin and his shirt.
• Victoria Gotti is going to start a celeb mag, she says. Then again, she also said she had breast cancer. [NYP]
• The beauty job that Nadine Haobsh didn't get at Seventeen has finally been filled — by a boy. [WWD]
• Hey, so it turns out Martha Stewart is going to have some new TV shows. [WP]
• Goodbye, Dali: Penthouse's new owners are suing the Gooch for $4 million over unreturned company property, including two paintings by Salvador Dali. [NYP]
• Mediabistro's Elizabeth Spiers — who doesn't like party reporting — checks in from vacation to let us know that TV networks lust for ratings. [MB]
Fran Drescher? Tom Green? Using blogs to fight cancer?
Talking among ourselves this morning, we wondering if it's perhaps difficult to be named Katrina on a day like today. There are those Hitler relatives on Long Island who, The New Yorker reported several years ago, were forced to change their family name. Maybe there was some effect like that for well-known Katrinas, we speculated. What did this mean for, say, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? We emailed to find out.
The publicity blitz is starting for CBS News's soon-to-come "nonbudsman" blog, the non-opinionated, non-media critical, non-house organ publication that, in wake of Memogate, seems designed to serve as a toothless CBS equivilent of the Times's post-Blair Okrentification.
Everyone loves Brian at TVNewser, and there are many reasons for this. For us, it's days like today. (Confession: Half of us, several lifetimes ago, hired Brian for his TVNewswer job.) Without him, we would have missed the one good part of all catastrophic hurricanes: The ritualistic, fantasy-inspiring screenshot of a wet, tousled Anderson Cooper.
CNN American Morning co-anchor Miles O'Brien has been live-blogging Hurricane Katrina. No, that's not a punchline. Our favorite excerpts:
In this week's Publishers Lunch deal report:
Big news across the top front of today's Times Arts section: NBC anchor Brian Williams has a blog. The paper is very excited about this, particularly about the window it opens on the inner workings of Nightly and the occasional self-criticism Williams delivers.
You have to hand it to those little troopers at CBS News. After a year filled with what we'll delicately call, uh, crap, they're doing their best to make a precious little bounce back towards respectibility. How, you might ask, can CBS win back its audience? Why, with the internet, of course.
Jessica Pressler, who wrote the strange Philadelphia-is- the-sixth-borough piece in the Times last weekend, talks to the blog Philebirty today and, between admitting that the whole thing was just a PR gimmick for the city and dropping a few too many f-bombs, basically ensures she'll never write for the Times again. Also, she manages to insult all Times-reading New Yorkers:
Speaking of The New York Sun, that preferred small-circulation newspaper of New York's wealthy right-wing Zionists has recently (and somewhat unofficially) joined our little bloggy corner of the world. We present: It Shines For All, the Sun's new blog, which isn't actually linked from any obvious spot on the Sun's homepage.
• CNN's American Morning moving from street-level studio to CNN newsroom, leaving Midwestern tourists with a mere four street-level morning shows in Midtown to flock to. [NYDN]
• Finally, a prosecutor decides against subpoenaing a Times reporter. [Miami Herald]
• The Wen Ho Lee case against the Times and others, however, continues. And could be much worse for journalists. [Boston Phoenix]
• Rumor has it a Times reporter is skulking around Philadelphia, looking for sources on a "sixth borough" story. Anyone know Jenny 8.'s whereabouts? [Philebrity, third item]
• Now Trump's blogging, too. Is the shark finally jumped? [TechWeb]
• Apparently we're not making sweet love to anyone at Page Six. (We're not? That was all so long ago that at this point, we've forgotten the details.) In other breaking news, it seems we work in our pajamas and like cheap drinks. Who knew? [RS]
