The Tony Awards managed to pull off a third place finish.

While it failed to crack the top ten, the season premier of HBO's True Blood, put up big numbers for a premium cable channel, finishing in the number twelve spot overall, with 624,000 viewers.

Way to go, sssssSOOKie!

(1) Fox-5....Glee....1,247,000

(2) ABC-7....NBA Finals Game 5....1,192,000

(3) CBS-2....Tony Awards....1,123,000

(4) ABC-7....NBA Finals Game 4....1,012,000

(5) ABC-7....NBA Finals Game 3....998,000

(6) CBS-2....60 Minutes....874,000

(7) Fox-5....So You Can Dance....830,000

(8) CBS-2....The Mentalist....710,000

(9) Fox-5....Hell Kitchen....687,000

(10) CBS-2....NCIS...678,000

(Top 10 shows in New York, June 7 to June 13, according to Nielsen Data (total viewers, time shifting/DVR not included)

On the afternoon of Monday, June 14, a young man in a ski mask, white wig, top hat and Groucho Marx-style fake nose, mustache and glasses stared out over an auditorium of onlookers at the Hilton hotel in midtown. "The first thing you need to do to get big on Twitter is to destroy the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

The crowd laughed.

It was shortly after lunch at TWTRCON, a well-attended conference on the microblogging platform that continues against all reason to enrapture us New York media lemmings. Martha Stewart was the day's headliner. But now the guy in the mask onstage was quickly stealing the show. His name was "Terry," and in recent weeks, he'd emerged as a top Twitter parodist.

His Twitter feed, BPGlobalPR-done in the voice of a bumbling BP flack, (sample Tweet: "Catastrophe is a strong word, let's all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy")-now has more than 160,000 followers.

This was Terry's first major public appearance, and the crowd was loving it. "The reason we started BPGlobalPR is because there's a lot of bad press," said Terry. "A lot of people blaming the whole thing on BP. We thought that was unfair."

"People say, 'Oh, oh, I've just got a picture of a bird covered in oil," said Terry. He paused and held up a photograph. "Here's a picture of a cat wearing a wig and it's not covered in oil."

Cameras flashed. Now and again, the crowd met Terry's one-liners with a round of applause.

With public rage toward BP flowing steadily (the company has its own, sincere Twitter feed, with a mere 14,633 followers), Terry has arguably become the top Twitter parodist of the moment. But he is hardly alone. Whatever else, Twitter might be doing to our brains, it is also proving to be a remarkably rich medium for parody.

As a result, we are now living in a kind of golden age of Twitter parody. Behold the riches.

There are the irregularly but enthusiastically updated Cranky Kaplan ("LOOK AT THIS GENIUS OVER HERE IN THE HAT") and wise_kaplan ("This isn't going to end well for any of us.") And little_graydon ("Oh, crap. Security says David Arquette's in the lobby"). Both parodying Condé Nast editors who were former editors of this newspaper-coincidence?

Also: ones for Apple's Steve Jobs and NBC's Jeff Zucker.

Currently there are not one but two parodies of the annoying World Cup horns. The Vuvuzela Horn ("ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ") and the_vuvuzela ("Bzzz. #bzzz").

There's the original brilliance of the big_ben_clock ("BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG") and the backrub tweeter ("riiiiight THERE").

Think of a public figure you find grating-Dan Snyder? Check-and chances are there will eventually be a Twitter parody.

And then all the tweeting cats!

At some point, inevitably, the Twitter parody will lose its charm and seem derivative and annoying rather than seminal and brilliant. But for the time being, Terry and his ilk are basking in the ascendancy of the form.

On Monday afternoon, Terry, who has not yet been unmasked, fielded questions from admiring fans.

"I'm really enjoying the rainbow-stained oil and the chocolate pelicans and I'm wondering what BP is planning to do to fuck up the world next?" asked a man with goatee and glasses.

"I don't appreciate the insinuation," said Terry. 

"So [what] is your next career move, you think?" another person asked, more sincerely. "Sitcom maybe, or book deal?"

"I'll do whatever," said the fake BP flack. "There's talks about a tour, a series of benefit concerts along the Gulf Coast-a benefit concert for BP, of course."

After spilling a bunch of water onstage, the young Twitter parodist in the top hat hopped off the stage and ran through the back of the crowd toward a taxi.

fgillette@observer.com

Sources at the Post describe Mr. Weiss’ imminent departure as a major loss for the paper.

Mr. Weiss has worked at The Post for roughly 25 years, along the way cranking out countless Page 1 exclusives on subjects ranging from the organized crime to homeland security to high profile crimes.

According to sources, Mr. Weiss is not leaving for another job. He did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Weiss is the author of two books, including The Man Who Warned America: The Life and Death of John O’Neil the FBI’s Embattled Counterterror Warrior, which HarperCollins published in 2004.  

Amid the recent thawing of New York’s media market, a number of notable staffers have recently departed from the Post, including Neal Shah, Maggie Haberman, and Peter Lauria--to name a few.

Mr. Weiss is by far the biggest star to leave the paper.

“He has an encyclopedic grasp of the police department and law enforcement in general,” said his colleague, reporter Philip Messing. “In addition to good sources, he’s an indefatigable worker.”

“He’ll be missed greatly,” he added.

UPDATE: Here's a copy of the resignation letter Mr. Weiss sent to Post editor Col Allan:

Dear Col,
    As you know from recent conversations, I have been dealing with various serious family health issues for some time now. As a result, I regret to inform you that I intend to resign from my employment at the New York Post next Friday June 18.
    It has been a privilege working for The Post and I am proud to have contributed to the great news tradition of The Post.
    On a personal note, I want to thank you for the courtesy you have extended over the many years we have worked together at a newspaper I have called my second home for 24 years.
   I wish you, all of my colleagues and The Post, continued success in the years ahead.
   Sincerely,
   Murray Weiss   

To wit: Executives at the News Corporation announced today that they have purchased a minority share of Journalism Online. Two of the other, significant investors in Journalism Online, Paid Content reported today, are James Ottaway Jr., a former Dow Jones board member, and his brother David.

In 2007, when Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation was bidding to buy The Wall Street Journal, James Ottaway Jr. emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the deal.

Throughout the courtship process, Mr. Ottaway repeatedly criticized Mr. Murdoch. In June, 2007, for instance, shortly after the Bancroft family agreed to meet with their aggressive suitor, here’s what Mr. Ottaway told The Observer:

I'm disappointed that the family is going to meet with Murdoch and am very skeptical that it can write any agreement to guarantee the editorial independence of Dow Jones—independence that Rupert Murdoch would respect.

He's made promises before.  He'll say anything to buy something.

According to Paid Content, Jon Housman, the newly minted president of News Corp.'s  digital journalism initiatives, will be joining Journalism Online's board.

This afternoon, a spokesperson for Journalism Online told The Observer that, sure enough, one of the other seats on the board is currently occupied by the Ottaway family.

Here's how Slate's Troy Patterson described the show in the summer of 2008:

In the course of attempting masochistic physical challenges, its contestants fall down very often, and we watch these plunges in sadistic slow-motion replay, with the whole Telestrator treatment and everything. The sideline reporter makes the cutest little wince whenever a contestant falls off "the Dreadmill" and into a pit of foam and flour. Meanwhile, back in front of a cheap green screen, the hosts snark nonstop about the contestants' athleticism and sweat stains and haircuts and, good post-postmodern wiseasses that they are, also about the slo-mo replays. Wipeout dresses up the usual network idiocy with cable-style snark (think Best Week Ever) and an exuberant lack of decency that's pure Internet—a TMZ-esque disregard for mercy, an anonymous blog commentor's sense of self-restraint.

(1) Fox-5....Glee....1,070,000

(2) ABC-7....NBC Finals: Game 2....985,000

(3) CBS-2....60 Minutes....842,000

(4) ABC-7....NBA Finals: Game 1....798,000

(5) NBC-4....America's Got Talent (TU)....782,000

(6) CBS-2....Two & Half Men....743,000

(7) ABC-7....Wipeout....704,000

(8) Fox-5....So You Think You Can Dance?....686,000

(9) NBC-4....America's Got Talent (WE)....673,000

(10) CBS-2....NCIS....655,000

(Top 10 shows in New York, May 31 to June 6, according to Nielsen Data (total viewers, time shifting/DVR not included)

On Sunday, June 6, CNN aired an interview with James Fallows in which the writer talked on camera about his recent story in The Atlantic, which looked at Google's impact on the news business. Typically, such stories are full of gloom, but this one was hopeful. Having contributed to the many woes of the newspaper business, Mr. Fallows wrote, the engineers at Google were now working on ways to create a new business model to preserve serious journalism in the digital age, advocating "continuous experimentation-learning what does work by seeing all the things that don't."

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During the discussion with CNN's Howard Kurtz, Mr. Fallows mentioned the work of a media theorist whose maxim "nothing will work, but everything might" provided the theoretical framework embraced by the Google empiricists. Traditionally, there has been a place in American public life where you go to find visionaries happy to tout the social benefits of technological advances-namely, Silicon Valley. But Mr. Fallows was referring to the work of an N.Y.U. professor named Clay Shirky.

A few days earlier, Mr. Shirky sat in his office at N.Y.U.'s Interactive Telecommunications Program, on the fourth floor of a building overlooking Broadway, and acknowledged that people don't typically think of New York as a fountain of gushing techno-optimism-but that, perhaps, they should. "I've always been in communities of cultures that make things-artists, theater people, Internet entrepreneurs," said Mr. Shirky, a boyish, bald 46. "No matter now jaded or cynical someone's external demeanor, if you're in a group of people who make things, you're in a group of optimists."

In the hallway outside Mr. Shirky's office, a group of students were assembling a tent. A futuristic light projection that looked like a centipede danced across the floor. On the wall, there was a poster for a student project involving a "sound-walk" across the Brooklyn Bridge that would include video from the perspective of the student's feet.

"During the '90s, I spent countless hours trekking down to Wall Street because the bankers wanted to have a meeting about how do we make New York more like Silicon Valley," Mr. Shirky said. "My answer was always the same. You don't. What you could do is make New York a good place to start a business. The people who move here-they are some driven motherfuckers. They will figure it out."

Some 25 years after first moving to New York himself with an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Yale University and the hope of making it in theater design, Mr. Shirky has emerged, somewhat improbably, as the leading voice of New York's new school of technological pragmatism.

On June 10, Penguin Press will publish his latest book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. It's a wide-ranging essay about how the emerging forms of the Internet will ultimately provide a net benefit for society, in part by helping to free us all from our decades-long habit of over-medicating with television.

People have described Mr. Shirky as a cyber-utopian, but he rejects the term. He said that his greatest philosophical influence is the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. "It's not that the technology is natively good," Mr. Shirky said. "But rather that it gives society the raw material we need to do new, interesting things."

IN THE EARLY '90s, Mr. Shirky made good use of his own cognitive surplus. At the time, he was running an experimental theater group in New York, which staged nonfiction documents (the conversation among air traffic controllers during a plane crash; Ed Meese's pornography report, etc.). One day, Mr. Shirky's mom, a research librarian in Columbia, Mo., where Mr. Shirky grew up, told him about something she was learning about in her library class. It was called the Internet. Mr. Shirky was hooked. Instead of returning to Yale, where he had been accepted into the graduate drama school to study lighting design, he studied programming at night at home online with "a bunch of cranky Unix systems administers who worked at banks."

"I would get home from the theater at 11 p.m. and stay on the Internet until 4," he said. "I thought either I could call myself an addict and get myself to quit. Or I could try and make it my job."

Eventually, Mr. Shirky entered New York's emerging world of interactive design.  "A lot of the people who started the interactive industry in New York came from theater, in part because you have a lot of time on your hands between jobs and, in part, because things you don't understand don't scare you," said Mr. Shirky. "Theater just gets you used to the idea that I have no idea how this is going to go, but let's try it and see what happens."

On the side, Mr. Shirky wrote for various publications about the emerging culture of the Internet, plus a series of technical books for hobbyist publisher Ziff Davis (sample title: The Internet by E-mail). He said he has always been a Web optimist; until recently, he added, this was like being a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. The opposition showed up, but it was mostly an exhibition game. "They weren't really theorists," said Mr. Shirky. "The entire argument was really between people who loved the Internet and people who didn't understand it."

These days, there's much more competition from the naysayers. "What's happened in the last five years is that people who use the Internet and understand it quite well on some axis, whether engineering or social, are nevertheless operating as pessimists," said Mr. Shirky.

In particular, Mr. Shirky has recently found himself mulling over the computer scientist Jaron Lanier's book, You Are Not a Gadget, in which Mr. Lanier criticizes the Internet's propensity for groupthink, shoddy group collaboration and "digital Maoism"; and technology journalist Nicholas Carr's just-published book The Shallows, which argues that as the Internet replaces print, the new medium is rewiring our brains and wrecking our ability to focus deeply.

"What's interesting to me is that I'm reading those books and nodding my head right up until the moment comes for the authors to say, 'Here's what we ought to do about it,'" said Mr. Shirky. "The stuff that Nick says is wrong with the Internet is wrong with the Internet. The distraction is, I think, the biggest problem. But what's interesting about The Shallows is that it doesn't actually propose what to do about it." ("My interest is description, not prescription," retorted Mr. Carr in an email.)

Part of the problem, said Mr. Shirky, is that Mr. Carr is comparing the 500-year-old print culture with an Internet culture that has existed for less than a quarter-century. "The old system has all these robust, well-worked-out institutions," said Mr. Shirky. "The new system, we just got here. He assumes that the new system won't improve."

Mr. Shirky thinks it will. The key, he believes, is to diagnose problems as they arise, and then use trial-and-error experimentation to build up a new set of institutions and cultural habits that will address the Internet's deficiencies while maximizing its freedoms. Even the rise of the insightful Internet pessimists, in Mr. Shirky's eyes, is a good thing, because they are increasingly skilled at calling attention to the most pressing problems with digital culture. "Funnily enough, it may be the pessimists who help us make more progress on the big issues, like anonymity and distractedness," he said. "In part because they have rhetorical clarity."

In the end, however, it will be the pragmatic optimists, Mr. Shirky believes, who will end up fixing those problems, most likely through a gradual and prolonged accumulation of small breakthroughs, solutions and optimizations.

SINCE THE FALL of 2001, Mr. Shirky has worked as an associate teacher at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), part of the school's Tisch School of the Arts. Founded in the 1970s, the program has grown into a lab of digital experimentation where teams of students endlessly tinker with new combinations of art and programming and social interactivity.

Over the years, Mr. Shirky has developed a seminar called Social Facts, whose syllabus progresses from sociological dilemmas facing groups irrespective of technology (tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, etc.) to the specific challenges facing groups online. By the end of the class, students are asked to think like designers-if you wanted to change an existing space, or create a new space, what would you do? Mr. Shirky also teaches a production class in which students develop technology projects in partnership with UNICEF. "If you could get into his class, you took it," said Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Foursquare, who graduated from ITP in 2004. "You sit in his class for an hour, and you feel like a superstar, like you can understand things in a much clearer way."

Mr. Crowley described Mr. Shirky as the program's in-house theorist-the guy who students turn to in order to get a broader perspective on what they're doing and why it's important. In the fall of 2003, Mr. Shirky served as the informal adviser for an independent study taken by Mr. Crowley and one of his fellow students, Alex Rainert, who two years later sold their social networking software company, Dodgeball, to Google. In a program like ITP, said Mr. Crowley, you spend a lot of time engrossed in the minutiae of projects-learning how to write code, how to solder. "He's very good at widening the scope," said Mr. Crowley.

"I don't think we're throwing off the old print culture, and now we'll live in some kind of pure, sacred fusing with human nature as it always really was," said Mr. Shirky. "The source of my optimism is really that young people will find things to do with the medium that will create the kinds of institutions we need around something like the Web, rather than around something like print."

In March of 2009, Mr. Shirky wrote an essay on his personal blog about the root causes that are currently ravaging the newspaper business; it quickly became a must-read among journalists throughout the city. Unlike most pro-Internet media theorists, Mr. Shirky can talk extensively about the problems facing professional journalism without sounding like a scold. It's also possible to listen to him without that nagging suspicion that his real motivation is to selfishly milk old-media companies with a bunch of vapid ideas that will only make things worse.

On May 26, Mr. Shirky spoke at a private event for staff members of The New York Times, hosted by the paper's in-house R&D chief, Michael Zimbalist.

David Carr, the paper's media columnist, was impressed with Mr. Shirky's narrative synthesis. "He storytells in ways that people who are listening to him don't notice that the story ends with their obsolescence," said Mr. Carr. "They're sort of lulled to sleep by the music of his voice and his presentation. He just sort of gently mentions at the end the part about, 'And then you'll all be turned to red mist.'"

Mr. Carr said that these days if he had a half-hour or so to listen to anybody talk about the media business, Mr. Shirky would be at the top of the list. "He's an academic in the clinical sense," said Mr. Carr. "You just can't get to the end of what he knows or what he's interested in."

For the past decade, Mr. Shirky has been in a program for artists and techies, not for journalists. That may soon change. In the fall, he will delve into the journalism-business-model quandary as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. "The thing that I'm interested in is the ways in which journalism can function more like an ecosystem," said Mr. Shirky. "Which is to say that instead of having a whole bunch of institutions that are doing the full end-to-end production of news, that we end up with a bunch of shared resources, the way ProPublica works."

And when he returns to New York in 2011, for the first time, Mr. Shirky will begin working with N.Y.U.'s journalism department (the details of the arrangement have yet to be finalized).

"My interest in the last couple of years has turned especially to the production of nonfiction media, whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism," Mr. Shirky said. "It's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem."

fgillette@observer.com

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From the NBC press release:

North Shore Animal League America is honoring NBC4 New York/New York Nonstop's 'New York Nightly News' anchor Chuck Scarborough’s fearless dog, Oliver, with the Lewyt Humane Scarlett Award for Animal Heroism on Wednesday, June 9 at its 2010 annual Lewyt Luncheon.

Oliver, without regard for himself, saved their cat Stanley from the clutches of a coyote. Oliver stood his ground until Stanley the cat was able to escape to safety. Oliver's act of bravery reflects the very spirit of this heroic award.  

An incredible story of heart, heroism and the exemplification of selflessness for one pet to another. The Animal League believes that the actions of this extraordinary dog to save the life of his sibling, Stanley the cat, reflect the very spirit of this award. We would like to acknowledge Oliver's incredible bravery honoring him at the 2010 Lewyt Luncheon.

 

At the same time, former WNBC G.M. Tom O'Brien will be moving over to a position overseeing NBC's Nonstop Network. 

Both will report to John Wallace, the President of NBC Local Media.

From the release:

Jack, who previously served as President and General Manager of WRC in Washington, D.C., since 2002, will assume responsibility for WNBC.  He will oversee all of the group’s New York-based local media assets, including the broadcast television station, the local website and digital channel.  A replacement for Jack at WRC will be announced shortly.

Said Wallace, “Michael is a tremendous leader who has guided WRC to great success, not only in terms of ratings and revenue growth, but also in helping transition the station from an analog business to a multi-platform local news and information provider.  He has an extremely engaging and motivational style and is always open to new ideas.  He’ll be a great fit to carry on the legacy of our flagship station.”

O’Brien, who previously served as the General Manager of WNBC, will now be responsible for leading the launch of new digital channels across the division. He will build on the successful launch of the NY Nonstop digital channel and apply that model across other television stations in the group.

"I hesitate to call them journalists," CEO Rick Blair tells Mr. Lee. 

Instead, Mr. Blair prefers the term "examiners."

How is the rise of amateur "examiners" impacting journalism?

Mr. Lee checks in with former New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan:

In assessing the recent rise of so many content farms, Mr. Kaplan referenced Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," and perhaps minted a new quote for future observers: "What these sites are producing," he started before a long pause: "You know what it is? It's like sending unchecked meats out to the public."

From the release:

“SB Nation delivers sports news, opinion and analysis to highly-targeted audiences and engages them socially with an approach unlike that of any other sports media company,” said Jim Bankoff, Chairman and CEO of SB Nation.   “We plan to build strong regional communities to complement our team sites and showcase high quality content and intelligent conversation, built on the common interests that define the sports experience in each city.    Alongside our team sites and SB Nation’s flagship national sports site, SBNation.com, our regional sites will offer fans a three-dimensional relationship with their teams, their sports and their city.”

Unlike many traditional media organizations SB Nation’s revolutionary grassroots approach to sports coverage places the fan first, with compelling local content centered around the issues that matter most to the fans in each of its 250-plus team-focused communities.   SB Nation’s regional sites will provide real time sports news by aggregating the highest quality sports coverage from around the web, offer original content, commentary and analysis, and introduce new features, franchises and tools to generate dialogue and debate among sports fans.    The sites will also place special emphasis on showcasing guest contributors, and will provide a forum for long-form commentary by each site’s staff of writers and editors.