In your finally Friday media column: Carlos Slim parsed, a Miami reporter has a bad day, Michael Wolff lives on at Adweek, James Murdoch's board seat in jeopardy, and Disney's CEO will peace out in four years.
When Univision got wind of a story about Marco Rubio's family that the senator didn't want broadcast, the network offered to kill it in exchange for an interview.
In your Memorial Friday media column: the Daily Mail is king of all news, nobody watches TV any more, another departure from The Daily, the NYSE's ridiculous trademark battle, and the Miami Herald sells its house.
Indie mag Miller-McCune performed mathematical voodoo on a zillion movie reviews to figure out critics' favorite and least favorite actors, as well as which critics are the nicest and the meanest.
The Miami Herald just laid copy editor Brayden Simms off. Amazingly, he also wrote a blog for them about saving money in this terrible economy. He wrote a depressing column about how they tricked him into taking a full-time job and then outsourced it to India. Now he is blogging-for the Herald!-about meeting with his financial planner to discuss how to survive without an income. This is just sick. Jesus, they're making him dig his own grave after his execution. Please forward this to every journalism student you know.
Talk about coming to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving worst case scenario: a machine-gun wielding man held some Miami Herald employees hostage, forcing others to evacuate. He is now in police custody. The man was identified as Nuevo Herald (the Miami Herald's Spanish-language version) cartoonist Jose Varelas (that's his stellar work on the right), and he is quoted as saying ""You are speaking to the new director of the newspaper and I am going to unmask all of the true conflicts in the newspaper." Unfortunately, we'll never know what those are. Since no one got hurt, we could probably make a Sean Delonas joke guilt-free, but we're too tired.
• The blood will continue to spill at Time; Jon Meacham shakes things up at Newsweek. [NYP]
• In another attempt to emulate Esquire, Radar looks to move into their old space. Up next: A piece on how sexy Scarlett Johansson is. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman met Jimmy Carter once! Also, Jon hates the media. We feel ya, bro. [Marketwatch]
• Are we the only ones getting a little tired of hearing about Roger Ailes? [Romenesko]
• Jes s D az Jr. resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald after a power struggle with columnist Carl Hiaasen. How come no one resigned back when Dave Barry made his 5,000th booger joke? [Miami Herald]
• Jes s D az Jr. resigns as publisher of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald as a result of that whole cash-for-propaganda thing. Hopefully the government will give him some nice parting gifts. [Miami Herald]
• Across the pond, the company responsible for the UK versions of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Country Living decides to get heavy into the Web. Somewhere in England a blogger at a British media gossip site starts thinking about career opportunities. [Guardian]
• More people are actually interested in watching Charlie Gibson than Katie Couric. We can't quite figure that out. [WaPo]
• Enough with the goddamn CGI already. [NYT]
Apparently, the golden age of government-journalist payola didn't end with radio host Armstrong Williams and "marriage expert" Maggie Gallagher taking cash to push political agendas. Ten Miami journos — three from El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language paper run by the Miami Herald's corporate owner — have been paid by the U.S. for appearances and punditry on Radio Mart and TV Mart . Both Mart s are themselves United States government entities created to broadcast pro-American propaganda at Cuba. Icky! The top earner was Cuba columnist Pablo Alfonso, who took home almost $175,000 since 2001 in exchange for his program hosting duties. Alfonso, plus another El Nuevo Herald staffer and a freelancer, were kicked to the curb. Several of the reporters were hardly contrite, such as Channel 41's Juan Manuel Cao ($11,400 this year): ''There is nothing suspect in this ... I would do it for free. But the regulations don't allow it. I charge symbolically, below market prices.'' Way to take a hit for the team, fiscally speaking. Of course, given that El Nuevo Herald has long been regarded with serious hostility by Cuba's government already, it's not like these columnists were deviating much (if at all) from their paper's regular editorial stance. Why not make a little extra dosh on the side for the same material? It's almost patriotic.
A little off our "beat," but pertinent nevertheless: Late yesterday afternoon, suspended Miami Commissioner Art Teele walked into the lobby of the Miami Herald and committed suicide. After instructing a security guard give a message to Jim DeFede (asking the columnist to tell Teele's wife that he loved her), Teele pulled a pistol from his bag and shot himself in the head. Later that night, Jim DeFede was fired from the Herald after he told superiors that he had recorded a phone conversation with Teele without Teele's permission. Interestingly enough, however, it was Miami New Times reporter Francisco Alvarado who wrote the following introduction to a front-page story on Wednesday:
Steve Martin's invitation to Dave Barry to help write Oscar jokes:
