blogs

Succeed In Business The Incompetent Superflack Way

Hamilton Nolan · 07/22/08 02:50PM

When we're feeling masochistic, we like to peruse the blog of incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian. It's his own forum for speaking to you, the consumer, without having to go through the filter of a biased media outlet like this one. So in the spirit of fairness and education, we're bringing you five of the 5WPR CEO's thoughts on how to become a successful entrepreneur-all in that inimitable Ronn style. At the end, we submit a bonus tip of our own! Read and learn from a self-made success story:

Steal Ideas From A Lazy Genius

Hamilton Nolan · 07/21/08 01:21PM

Hey, here's an idea: If you're a would-be inventor with more ideas than time or engineering skill or business sense, why not just start a blog with all your wacky ideas? Then if somebody actually takes one and invents it, they can give you a cut of the profits. Why, that's just clever enough to be an entry on "Ideas By Chuck," a blog which has much better ideas than many places that are actually paid to come up with things! Chuck admits "I don't have the resources or passion to make these ideas reality," but he does "hope this blog makes the world a better place." And how could it not? Three of our favorite of ideas from Chuck, below. Office supplies, porn, and fried foods all play a role!

Andrew Krucoff Wins The Culture War

Hamilton Nolan · 07/18/08 10:51AM

Ladies and gentlemen, the proud new owner of the FSU Middlebrow Remix Version of Keith Gessen's All The Sad Young Literary Men is Andrew Krucoff-the former "Gawker Mascot" once fired by Conde Nast for leaking to this website. He was also recently called a "pussy" by the author in question, Keith Gessen! You can see the circle of life turning, turning. So what will become of this coveted and (we daresay) historic volume? All can now be revealed:

Kanye West Does Not Need Any Fools Helping With His Blog

Hamilton Nolan · 07/17/08 12:19PM

Some internet person made the outrageous assertion that hip hop superstar Kanye West might be using some hired help to keep up with the posting on his blog. The rapper has a "ghost blogger" named Marcus Troy, they say. Kanye will be damned if he sits back and allows his fans to believe that he does not personally type every rant and find every photo of oddly shaped foreign water bottles all by himself! Ghost blogger? Psht! Kanye has posted irrefutable evidence that his blog is a one man operation:

Sad Flacks Secretly Edit Their Boss's Own Wikipedia Page

Hamilton Nolan · 07/16/08 09:09AM

An IP address affiliated with America's most inept agency, 5WPR, was used to edit the Wikipedia entry about 5W's CEO, incompetent superflack and bad apologizer Ronn [sic] Torossian. This is the same IP address that the agency was using to leave fake blog comments, which it was busted for last week. Hey 5W, you guys think you could stop doing this stuff? It's really depressing to cover you. After the jump, a look at the major edit of Ronn's page, which is now flagged for sounding "like a news release.":

Bill O'Reilly, Arianna Huffington Brought Together By Death

Hamilton Nolan · 07/15/08 01:56PM

Nonpartisan journalist Bill O'Reilly is a man who calls em how he sees em, and that means that he's not afraid to give credit to the liberal lie-mongering site HuffPo when credit is due. When former Bush flack Tony Snow died last weekend, the AP ran an obit that was not 100% positive. Even worse, "The LA Times website allowed loons to post vile things about Tony Snow." O'Reilly condemns these examples of factual reporting and free speech, respectively; but he actually praises foreign-born socialist Arianna Huffington for scrubbing her site of all Snow smears. Truly a bipartisan lovefest! Watch the clip of what happens when you look up "Fairness" in the dictionary, below:

"Children have become fashion accessories"

Hamilton Nolan · 07/15/08 10:42AM

Times columnist Joe Nocera is a busy man, and he doesn't have time for flackery and foolishness. But he recently got one press release "so brazen, so craven, so mind-bogglingly inane" that he had to put it on his blog for the world to revile. And coincidentally it's from a flack who also blogs at Huffington Post! Do you need to make sure all the other moms in the park are insanely jealous of you and your stylish little drooling brood? Let Amanda Christine Miller tell you how to turn your children into mere fashion accessories!

Costas Cannot Escape The Ghost Of Will Leitch

Hamilton Nolan · 07/15/08 09:01AM

Bob Costas has more than 20 years of experience as a sportscaster. He's done the Olympics six times. But he's most famous on the internet for inviting wild-eyed sportswriter Buzz Bissinger on his talk show in April to rant and project bits of spittle towards absurdly civil former Deadspin editor Will Leitch. Now Costas-one of the most refined and experienced personalities in all of sports broadcasting-is forced to talk about Leitch and Bissinger in every single interview he does. It's his legacy!

Commenters Take Over Internet, Run Bloggers Out on Rails

Pareene · 07/14/08 02:50PM

Internet person Rex Sorgatz put the pieces together-the New York story on the mean Brownstoner commenter, the Times story on commenters running the asylums, and finally last week's Time piece that was kinda-sorta in defense of anonymous nastiness. Commenters are a trend! Everyone is basically terrified of them! And this weekend, former blog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis up and quit the internet. Or, at least, he quit blogging. And started a private email list! Which is basically the definitive proof that the War is Over and the Commenters Won.

Scheme To Blame Intern For PR Fraud Unravels

Ryan Tate · 07/11/08 03:24AM

It's not entirely surprising that the PR firm that misspelled the online signature of the guy they were trying to impersonate has now been busted for ineptly trying to blame an unidentified "intern" for everything. Bumbling disaster of a publicity shop 5WPR posted, in the name of a rabbi, fake blog comments about a sweatshoppy kosher slaughterhouse. When busted, senior vice president Juda Engelmayer blamed an unpaid 5WPR intern who he refused to name. Now, news service JTA is severely undercutting this explanation by reporting it traced one of the fake comments to Engelmayer's home (in part by matching the internet address of a comment to the internet address of an Engelmayer email). Whoops! Hard to blame interns at the office when the stuff is coming from your own pad. How are you going to explain this one, Juda?

5WPR Scares Holy Man With Sock Puppet, Blames Intern

Hamilton Nolan · 07/10/08 12:01PM

Incompetent flackery factory 5WPR has admitted to the internet sock puppetry we covered yesterday-posting fake comments on a blog on behalf of a client. That client, by the way, is a kosher slaughterhouse called Agriprocessors, which has long been under fire for workplace safety and immigration law violations. 5W CEO and paragon of employee satisfaction Ronn [sic] Torossian told The Forward that an investigation is underway to determine who's responsible for the fake comments. But even though Ronn is a friend to Israel, he already has a Rabbi scared for his own safety. Shame! Incompetent shame:

5WPR Flacks Get So Freaking Busted Impersonating People Online

Hamilton Nolan · 07/09/08 04:11PM

We call 5WPR chief Ronn [sic] Torossian an "incompetent superflack" for a reason, people. He and his firm are not just annoying; they are actually incompetent at the practice of public relations. The latest, and sweetest evidence: 5WPR just got stone-cold busted for impersonating people (including a Rabbi!) in a blog comments section on behalf of a (soon-to-be-former, if they're smart) client. We have an email in to Ronn for comment, but this evidence makes a pretty good case that 5W is a bunch of mindless trolls:

Court Victory for Dunne, Reckless Speculation Everywhere

Pareene · 07/09/08 10:39AM

Fantastic news, America-our constitutional right to repeatedly call a man a murderer has been upheld! Former congressmen Gary Condit, who allegedly caused 9/11 (j/k Gary!) sued Vanity Fair scribe Dominick Dunne for defamation, because Dunne kept claiming he knew that Condit knew stuff he wasn't telling about the murder of former Condit intern/paramour Chandra Levy (which Condit is totally responsible for, allegedly). Dunne went on the tee-vee and said "I think he knows more about what did happen than he has ever said," so the judge dismissed the suit becuz "I think" means it was a constitutionally protected statement of opinion, not assertion of fact. Or, as the judge put it, "Dunne does not suggest that his opinion statements are based on any additional facts not known to the public." This is terrible news for everyone, as now we all actually do have to be careful to use those stupid weasel words. Like "allegedly"!

The Media Cool Kids: Never As Cool As You Think

Hamilton Nolan · 06/30/08 02:29PM

Internet freedom advocates—a group that includes just about every blogger—are up in arms at the revelation that Boing Boing, the incredibly popular this-and-that blog, has purged its archives of all the works of Violet Blue, a blogger who also contributes to Gawker sex site Fleshbot. The reason for the disappearance is unclear; but whatever it is, it can't fit in well with Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow's free speech crusading. But you can file it under one of the great universal truths: Media People (of all stripes) Are Touchier Than Anybody.

One Post Wonders: Blogs That Died at Birth

ian spiegelman · 06/28/08 10:24AM

From the hoary old crypts of the most ancient corners of the Internet comes a massively awesome collection of blogs that no one cared about. Like whatever it was that Jakob Lodwick invented, but worse! Each began with one post from some cyber-dreamer, and that one post has been preserved, all on its lonesome, to this day. For instance:

How Will These Blogs Fare as Books?

Sheila · 06/25/08 05:14PM

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? The question applies to blogs (free content) that will soon be turned into books (content you pay for), as well as one-night stands! An as-yet-untitled book by blogger Lizzie Skurnick, based on her Jezebel column about classic children's/young adult literature, just sold to HarperCollins. Which got us thinking: how will the most recent blog-to-book deals sell when they are turned into blogs on paper, bound between two covers? From e-mailing moms to cats doing silly things, we round up some of the recent blog-to-book deals and ask ourselves: want, or do not want?

Kanye West Is Mad Enough To Break His MacBook Air On A Hippie's Head

Hamilton Nolan · 06/25/08 09:42AM

Assorted hippies at the Bonnaroo music festival booed Kanye West last week after his show started eight hours late, at 4:30 in the morning. YOU UNGRATEFUL HIPPIE BASTARDS. Did you think that Kanye West would stand by and allow negative articles about him to appear on Digg without STRIKING BACK on his blog with CAPITAL LETTERS AS WELL AS EXCLAMATION POINTS?!? Shows what you know, SQUID BRAINS!

Sports Bloggers Are Finally Growing Up! (Not Really)

Hamilton Nolan · 06/23/08 03:25PM

Sports blogs might be losing their edge! Back in the good old days they were all bile-spewing, rumormongering perverts who cared about nothing but posting pictures of NFL players cavorting drunkenly with Buzz Bissinger (pictured, ranting). But as time went on, they actually started making money and gaining credibility and—wouldn't you know it—now they're paying more attention to making sure stuff is true! At least that's the theme of the weekend's sort of obvious-day LAT trend piece. The reality is that this entire "These kids are finally maturing, thanks to us" angle is primarily designed to make old school sportswriters feel better about themselves as blogs steal their lunch money.

Who Put These Bloggers In Charge?

Ryan Tate · 06/16/08 11:04PM

As reported previously, the Associated Press is attempting to define "guidelines" to allow bloggers to quote its content, even though substantial quoting is already allowed under federal copyright law. The wire service will arrive at these guidelines after meeting with the Media Bloggers Association. And who are they? It's hard to say, even after reading the group's site and searching for more information elsewhere on the Web.