Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries, which we identified last month as the Pentagon information operations contractor that ran an operation against two critical journalists, has admitted playing a role in the subterfuge.
The thing that every "Life" or "Style" or "Pop culture" columnist must keep in mind at all times is that the things they write about are not important. (I include much of Gawker.com's content in this sweeping generalization.) These types of columnists do not write about economic policy, or international relations, or genocide or poverty or war. They just write about the latest bit of eye-catching news-lite distraction, like everybody else on the internet. Because of this, there is absolutely no excuse for these pap columnists not to take a firm stand on the "issues." Because it doesn't matter!
Oh tra la, fiddle dee dee, dance 'round all of the Maypoles, for Verlyn Klinkenborg hath taken pen in hand to scratch out yet another dispatch from the mild climes of rural America, which is mightily preferable to the indignities of the city, where all of Verlyn Klinkenborg's readers live. This week's fascinating topic: lawns. We got our hands on the rough draft, before the cityfied editors ruined Verlyn's vision.
TV networks are pissed about a new DVR that can automatically skip over all ads in recorded content, no fast-forwarding necessary. Ha, fuck them, right? Fuck TV ads, right? Okay, well. I hope you love product placement and want to marry it.
Media General is a chain of small-ish newspapers across America. Not a particularly prestigious or savvy chain of newspapers, and the company's value has been nosediving off a cliff for the past five years along with most of the rest of the newspaper industry. But! Media General has now been purchased by Mr. Warren Buffett. And just like that, this mediocre little newspaper chain becomes the embodiment of the industry's future.
Two years ago today, Salon's Twitter account pressed send on a single, everlasting tweet:
Duane Lester of All American Blogger recently published a hyperlocal post concerning the "serious shortcomings" of the sheriff's department in Holt Country, Missouri — his home state. Of the piece, Lester wrote: "It was significant to me in that it was the first article I wrote utilizing training I received at BlogConCLT and it was very local."
Richard Cohen is (for some reason) employed as a professional opinion columnist by the Washington Post. He is paid to write columns—featuring his own opinions—about the issues of the day. This is the entirety of his job. Yet Richard Cohen has a wondrous talent possessed by few in his rarefied sphere: he can write an entire opinion column with zero actual opinion.
The deliciously slow-falling dominoes of the News Corp phone hacking scandal continue to falllllll: Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor, News International boss, and Rupert Murdoch bestie, is going to be charged with "conspiring to pervert the course of justice" for attempting to conceal documents and data in the hacking case. Brooks' husband and several others are being charged as well. Brooks denies the charges.
It seems unlikely that a story with the accompanying headline, "Girlfriend of '(female genitalia) boy' nabbed in Stuart," would live up to the name it was given. But it does. Let's see if we can break this down bit by bit, shall we:
Last night, Politico published a breakdown of how ABC's Robin Roberts scored the President Obama gay marriage interview yesterday and, through several producers and media analysts, offered up these non-media-related credentials: Black. Christian. 50-year-old. Sports fan. Female.
Naomi Schaefer Riley was a blogger for the Chronicle of Higher Education until this week, when she was fired for writing this blog post, in which she argued for the elimination of university Black Studies departments, by mocking a few dissertation topics in the field.
A CNN investigation has found that a charity called the Disabled Veterans National Foundation suffered from gross mismanagement problems including, among other things, the fact that instead of giving money to veterans, it spent all of its money with a direct marketing firm called Quadriga, "which owns two direct-mail fundraising companies hired by the DVNF to help garner donations."
Last night at 9:42PM EST, Business Insider CEO and internet aggregation revolutionary Henry Blodget aggregated his own article, thereby shorting out the time-space continuum and causing the grave of Walter Benjamin to go ice cold.
The public relations industry is happy to swallow ordinary happy life events, besmirch them, and poop them back out. It is a virtual besmirchment machine. This is PR Dummies. Besmirching the besmirchers, every week.
At the National Magazine Awards ceremony in Manhattan's Marriott Marquis hotel ballroom, famed New York Magazine editor Adam Moss took the stage with chocolate on his face, almost certainly from the Chocolate Pot du Créme dessert course served only minutes before. It had gotten into the stubble under his lower lip in a smear that covered a goodly part of his chin, giving him the appearance of a man casually accepting an award for Best Magazine Section just after being punched repeatedly in the mouth. The three sizable television screens placed at the back of the stage enlarged Moss's chocolatey visage so that it could be clearly seen from the back of the room. Though his cacao calamity was the subject of many whispers amongst the assemblage, its existence did not appear to register in the consciousness of Adam Moss whatsoever. He left the stage without incident.
Tomorrow evening, the cream of our nation’s mainstream media celebrities, political celebrities, and celebrity celebrities will put on tuxedos and evening gowns and gather in a ballroom in Washington, DC to mutually give one another handjobs, in a mostly metaphorical sense. This is because the most powerful elements of our nation’s DC press corps are all “on the same team” as the people they cover (politicians) and the people they idolize (celebrities). This is called the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and it is the single most revolting annual gathering of pseudojournalistic cocksuckery in all the land.
So then, it seems that Rutherford County property assessor Bill Boner finds himself the target of sexual harassment allegations. And yes, right on cue, all of you out there, the peanut gallery, the kindergarten chorus, all chuckle and snicker and make your clever puns about the man's name.
Essence magazine is, like, Glamour for black people. It is a completely bland and inoffensive publication. Still, given the racial politics in America and the general dearth of big black media outlets, Essence's moves are scrutinized through a more sociopolitical lens than Glamour's would be. Which makes everyday office scandals all the more entertaining.
