This past summer, longtime alt (to the Village Voice)-weekly The New York Press died, a victim of neglect and mismanagement, fated to disappear into its ill-fitting parent company. Sad! But! Now! Joe Pompeo reports that the Press is being relaunched, online-only, by "Tom Allon, the owner of [parent company] Manhattan Media and a 2013 mayoral candidate." What's the plan, Tom?
Crackhead-turned Times reporter success story David Carr is loved by media types for being a cool guy, and is basking in the generally positive public attitude towards his upcoming memoir. But everything is not well in Carr's world. Oh no. Just as Carr has found the strength to open up to the world about his past drug use, an even bigger scandal threatens to overwhelm him: his incurable fondness for potatoes.
The Strand, the humongous New York bookstore by Union Square that is like one of the biggest used book stores ever of all time, has always attracted lots of young workers who take the low pay in exchange for the cool factor of working at the place, and the chance to be around books all day. One negative: the store is run by a despised woman named Nancy Bass Wyden (trivia: she's married to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden). I've known several people who worked at The Strand, and they universally agree on her tyranny. Now, the New York Press has actually done some investigative work on the claims, and it's found evidence for allegations of racial discrimination, callous disregard for pregnant women, and—most terrifyingly—"fungus from rats."
New York Press editor David Blum has some of the worst instincts we've seen when it comes to sex columnists. While at the Village Voice, he fired popular sex columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel. Then he hired two married women to replace her and they were sucktastic and they all got fired. When he got to the Press, Blum sent the sex columnist packing, replaced her with Kelly Kreth, who he fired two months later and replaced with the experienced Claudia Lonow, whose resignation he accepted yesterday, a day after her first column and one hour after Jezebel pointed out she'd lifted material for her column. Interesting tidbit! Lonow was a consulting producer on the ABC drama 'Cashmere Mafia'-guess who else on the show has the exact same job description? Blum's wife, television writer Terri Minsky. Yeah, we need a nap too. But today Blum may have himself a halfway decent idea.
One day after her first column hit the streets, the New York Press has accepted the resignation of its sex columnist, after Jezebel pointed out similarities between Claudia Lonow's column and the work of Village Voice Media sex columnist Dan Savage. Lonow was "unaware that using questions from Savage's column was a breach of journalism ethics," reads the statement from editor David Blum."We apologize to our readers, and to Dan Savage, for this error in judgment." [NYPress]
Claire Danes "feels extremely violated" by this week's 4,000-word New York Press cover story, in which the actress is "stalked" by reporter Rebecca Tucker, according to her agents. So distressed was she, it was conveyed, that ICM chairman Jeff Berg, whose company represents her, called up the Press this afternoon to tell editor David Blum to "redact" online a reference to the street where Danes lives. Blum declined.
