You know it's a slow news day when the Daily News decides to run a nine-page photo gallery of a naked rugby match on a beach in New Zealand. In the "News" section, no less. Or maybe an intern just got confused. "Oh you said you wanted a NEWS gallery? Uh, actually, nevermind, that's not gone live yet." NSFW, obviously. [Daily News]
Thank you, everyone who is awake right now, for emailing us about the nytimes.com headline pictured at left. I hope you don't feel bad when I tell you that it's not a "major fuck up," as one tipster put it. The headline is, in fact, "[headline about unlikely broadway musical]", which is kind of meta, un-Times-ian joke title for a story about a real play called "[title of show]." Even one Gawker editor, who IMed me, hysterical, was briefly fooled. Please, Times, it unnerves and confuses everyone when you put on these airs. It's like an old person trying to talk like a teenager. [additional point about Times trading onetime air of unimpeachability for presumption of error!] [Times]
Patti Smith; who doesn't love her? (Even though the last time I saw her show, she forgot half her lyrics onstage and appeared totally stoned. Rock and roll!) Thing is, however, is that the media has been tremendously unimaginative in the last twenty or so years when writing about a lady who is equal parts artist, rock star, and stay-at-home mom. "Punk poet" and "godmother of punk" are the standard descriptors that have been in use since 1977. Deb Solomon mostly sidesteps that trap in this week's New York Times Magazine, asking instead: What's up with her hair?
This... is odd. UK newspaper company Guardian Media Group just bought a blog! For more than $30 million! (To be fair, that's like 10 million quid now probably, but still.) The blog is paidContent; it covers dry internet media news and chronicles lots of important business-y stuff involving "digital media." It's a very nice site, but $30 million? While media stocks tank? For a site whose revenue comes from, like, bankers making money off media deals? Ok, Guardian! It's your money! But there's more good news: this deal will annoy Jason Calacanis!
Did you hear? The Reverend Jesse Jackson made reference recently to the testicles of Barack Obama. Only he called them "nuts." Nuts! A funny, elementary school word, isn't it? Totally harmless. But of course you'd have no idea what the hell Jackson said if you only read the Times piece on the story. Because the New York Times apparently won't print the word "nuts." Which is ridiculous. We understand that the Times, like most major publications, has a self-censorship policy that almost always forbids it from using genuine expletives (unless the president says them!), but to elide the harmless word "nuts" actually misleads the reader into thinking Jesse Jackson said something far filthier and more obscene. This is not the first example of the Times censoring such harmless bullshit, either. The most egregious examples, after the jump.
Iran has tested missiles! Not just one or two or even three missiles, but four missiles! Our crack intelligence agencies know this, because the Iranian military's propaganda arm helpfully provided the media with a photo showing-count 'em-four whole missiles blasting off into the sky. You'll regret the decision to build only three missile shelters, Israel! The scary, quadri-missiled photo of terror was splashed across front pages nationwide. Too bad it's a big phony!
Since the start of this decade, stock of the company that holds the New York Times has fallen by 72%. The latest tumble came yesterday, when an analyst for Lehman Brothers said the newspaper group was still more expensive than its peers and advised it to stop paying out so much to shareholders. Well that might at last shake up the stoic Sulzberger family, which controls the Times and depends on those dividend payouts. Times watchers have long speculated on the rivalry between hapless publisher Arthur 'Pinch' Sulzberger and his cousin, this man. If now's not the time for Michael Golden to make his bid to restore the family's fortunes, then when?
Someone started an aptly-named site called "One Person Trend Stories," which does a pretty fantastic job of skewering the thinly-sourced, heavily-caveated features familiar to readers (and writers!) of pretty much every major newspaper and newsmagazine out there. It's not clear if the anonymous author — J-school student? Disgruntled intern? — intended the site as a parody, or as more straightforward humor. But it's pretty obvious that bloggers everywhere love the site and are linking to it. To be sure, the only example I have is the post you're now reading. Ahem. One of the better posts is after the jump.
Is the Fox News PR machine trying to get back in the good graces of the New York Times-and slyly drive a wedge between reporters there at the same time? The network's famously vicious media relations operation was ravaged in a David Carr column in the Times on Monday. But now that they've let Bill O'Reilly take his obligatory on-air shot at the paper, the network seems to have decided to play nice with Times reporters-at least, with some of them.
"The Irena Briganti that I know is funny, hard-working and always willing to help out a colleague-no matter how busy she is," wrote Fox Television flack Erica Keane yesterday, in response to our "smear" of Briganti, Fox News boss Roger Ailes' PR attack-dog-in-chief. But Keane is in the minority in her assessment of Briganti's charm. Our post on her generated perhaps the biggest outpouring of responses we've had since Bloomberg staffers got the chance to vent about horrid boss Matthew Winkler. There was a wellspring of resentment against the Fox News flack just waiting to come out-and much of it came to us unsolicited. Everyone from journalists to Briganti's fellow News Corp. employees weighed in. "She-devil" is among the more middle-of-the-road descriptions. After the jump, all you'll need to know about Briganti's reputation-and her handful of obligatory defenders:
The Washington Post tonight named former Wall Street Journal editor Marcus Brauchli its new executive editor, replacing Leonard Downie Jr. after 17 years. The transition comes thanks to a new publisher, Katherine Weymouth, who wants to put her own stamp on the paper. With Brauchli, it will be hard to avoid doing just that. While the Post has remade itself over the past decade as a local paper with a focus on national politics, Brauchli is basically a foreign news reporter who, prior to a replacing Paul Steiger atop the Journal masthead, edited global and national news. Then again, we hear Brauchli is prepared to sacrifice much of what he has accumulated at the Journal to take the Post gig - and not just the wealth of his experience.
So, David Carr has gone and pulled the curtain back a bit on Fox PR-the single most vicious PR operation in all the media. Good for him. So let's do our part by zeroing in on the one flack who is the face of Fox's feared, vengeful media relations operation. Her name is Irena Briganti. She's the female alter ego and mouthpiece of Fox boss Roger Ailes (pictured). She's been described as bubbly and charming in person. But she's the one holding the bloody hatchet that Fox regularly brings down right on reporters' heads. Here's everything you need to know about the scariest flack in mediadom:
The L.A. Times is cutting 250 jobs, the Tampa-Tribune is cutting 21, the New York Times is now available only on Kindle during a lunar eclipse, but all is well in dead-tree medialand — in Korea. An anti-Communist group in Seoul plans to distribute 100,000 free copies of its newspaper to North Korean readers via balloons. The so-called Free North Korea Shinmun "will expose and condemn human rights violations in the communist country with articles written by North Korean defectors living in the South." The good news? The paper's made of plastic, so less atmospheric wear and tear. The bad? There's no food supplement made of real food to actually be use to North Koreans.
We will begin by thanking Emily Gould-former Gawker editor, recent NYT Magazine cover story, and recently-sold book-writer-for providing us with content on a slow news day before a holiday weekend. She's chosen the perfect time to publish a long screed on her blog, titled "How Your Emily Gould Gossip Sausage Gets Made." Whoa! Everyone gets called out. We're all crazy from the heat this week!
A couple months ago we brought you the elegiac newsroom photography of Martin Gee, a designer at the San Jose Mercury News who picked up a camera one day and documented the ghostly quality atmosphere inside a newspaper dessicated by layoffs. Well, guess what: Gee has now been laid off! With no warning. While he was on vacation. Sucks. He's pissed, but he never put down his camera. After the jump, three photos that express his feelings towards his old employer:
Two years ago, two of the Washington Post's political reporters urged the paper to start a separate political website. The paper turned them down, and those two guys-John Harris and Jim Vandehei-left the Post and launched Politico.com. Now, the Post has decided it does want to launch a separate political site. But! There was a SLIGHT PROBLEM.
I've long wondered why the New York Times, perhaps the world's most sophisticated news-gathering operation, writes articles about fitness that would be an embarrassment to a fifth-grade PE class. Really now. Times readers were certainly grateful that the paper of record brought its unparalleled resources to bear to answer imponderables like "Does Weight Lifting Make A Better Athlete?", or "Should we stretch?" But perhaps such questions would better be left to, you know, the sense god gave a rock. I know the media wants us all fat and broke so we consume more media, but come on. Well, fuck it. I give up. Today they reveal that sweat cools you off:
A deliciously bitter ex-NYT reporter named John Darnton, who worked at the paper for more than 30 years, has a book coming out called Black and White and Dead All Over, which is murder mystery set at a thinly veiled version of the Times. The terribly-titled (but maybe well-written!) volume features a bunch of obvious allusions to real Times people, including a standards editor who gets murdered (take that, standards). Droopy-faced News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch figures prominently as an ominous character named "Lester Moloch." But this isn't the first time Murdoch has been flogged in fictional works. Oh no!
Tribune Company's Los Angeles Times is one of the most hard-pressed big-city newspapers: the parent company is over-leveraged; the local market reeling from a real estate crash; and like all papers the LAT is suffering from competition from the internet. Even so, the 150 newsroom layoffs announced today are shockingly swingeing. Together with buyouts announced at the start of the year, the latest cuts will leave the Los Angeles Times-once one of the fattest papers in the country-with 20% fewer editorial positions than last year and 42% fewer than a decade ago.
Hey, what's the new Robert Crais novel, Chasing Darkness, about? According to a full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times, it concerns a man linked to a "series of grizzly deaths." No, grizzly bears aren't being murdered left and right—we think they meant "grisly deaths." (Click to see.)
