Matt Drudge (Photo: Getty)

Aggregator extraordinaire Matt Drudge briefly linked to Gawker's story that alleged ABC's Robin Roberts "wasn't enthusiastic" about landing her big gay marriage interview with President Obama because she was worried it would call attention to the "near-open secret that Roberts is a lesbian" this afternoon and the site took the opportunity to taunt him with an update.

"Internet behemoth Matt Drudge, who has just directed his readers to this post, is also commonly understood to be gay," the update said.

Mr. Drudge removed his link to Gawker within a matter of minutes. Gawker editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio told The Observer the update was suggested by his senior writer John Cook.

"John Cook had jokingly suggested it. So, I said 'yes, absolutely.' And there you have it," Mr. Daulerio said, adding, "I'm still trying to figure out how to get the Update to blink."

Mr. Drudge's eponymous site, the Drudge Report, draws over 12 million readers per month according to Quantcast. His massive audience mhas made his links highly sought after traffic sources for many web editors. However, Mr. Daulerio said he's not sweating the possible loss of future Drudge-driven traffic.

"Worth it," he told us succinctly.

Mr. Daulerio also said he's not worried about potentially being sued by Mr. Drudge.

"He's going to sue us because he's gay?" Mr. Daulerio asked. "Not our fault. Blame God."

As of this writing, Mr. Drudge has not responded to a request for comment on this story.

Illustration by Zina Saunders

You can still see traces of the Occupy Wall Street encampment that once stood in Zuccotti Park—a contingent of police officers by the plaza’s entrance and an NYPD watchtower standing guard on Zuccotti’s
northern edge. However, the protesters who made this park their home before being evicted by the police last November are largely gone and the news trucks that formerly stationed themselves outside have departed in favor of a Chabad Mitzvah Tank.

On a recent afternoon at Zuccotti, The Observer encountered handful of tourists and businessmen on lunch breaks but there was nary a demonstrator in sight. At nearby Federal Hall, there were about 11 Occupiers holding signs and sitting on the steps. On the street below, workers were seemingly oblivious to the Occupiers in their midst.

“You’re a Republican?” a suited man asked his friend as they briskly passed by. “Good man!”

Seven months into the movement, the Wall Street that protesters are ostensibly trying to occupy has become inured to the spectacle of carnivalesque protests, demonstrators sleeping on sidewalks and mass arrests. And it seems the rest of the city has too. The protesters are in danger of becoming just another discordant note in the daily din that New Yorkers are so adept at tuning out, like panhandlers, street performers, sidewalk preachers and the other distractions of urban life.

“Their entire message, it’s so fragmented that no one hears it,” said Sam Padilla, the owner of a construction firm behind several developments in the financial district. “It becomes a nuisance, it’s like a gnat that you’re just trying to swat away. It’s just another element of the background noise. They want to be heard, but their message is too confusing.”

Daby Carreras, a broker with Spartan Capital, smoked a cigar a half block away from the Federal Hall Occupiers. With their many messages, Mr. Carreras said the protesters concerns just get “mixed up” and don’t grab the attention of Wall Street workers.

“The brokers are thinking about how to make more money than they did last year,” he said.

Wider public interest in the Occupy protest has also waned. Mentions of “Occupy Wall Street” in the news media are down this month by nearly 75 percent from peak in October, according to Google News. During that same period, Google searches for “Occupy Wall Street” dropped by over 80 percent nationally. The decline was even steeper in New York.

On May 1, however, Occupiers hope to jump back to the forefront of the city’s collective consciousness with a massive day of demonstrations that has been termed a “general strike.” The forecast for the day includes civil disobedience, political performance art, flash mobs and a push into Midtown.

As they move toward May Day, the protesters promise the debut of a new, decentralized model for the movement that will fuel a comeback following their eviction from the park. However, their adversaries on Wall Street aren’t the only ones who don’t seem to speak the protesters’ language.

Occupy’s planned spring reawakening is the brainchild of a secretive group of protesters who have proved markedly unfriendly to outsiders. Progressive political types and union leaders who seem like the protesters’ natural allies have had difficult experiences working with them. Even some Occupiers are complaining they’ve been left in the dark and don’t know what’s on the menu for May Day. Amid this handwringing, the insular core planning the “general strike” are more than happy to do their own thing and confident they’re going to change the world.

The May 1 Occupy comeback is currently being planned at small meetings around the city. At one of these gatherings in a Lower East Side church Sunday night, a group of about 30 Occupiers met on folding chairs and a single couch. The crowd was evenly divided between men with shaggy hair and beards and women with edgy haircuts and thick glasses. They were almost all in their 20s. A handful were members of minority groups.

A skinny man with a combination Mohawk/mullet (call it a mullhawk) and striped overalls stood at the front of the room and scrawled a list of scheduled May Day activities on a large piece of paper as they were mentioned by the group’s members. There was a panoply of protest actions planned by different Occupy-affiliated groups—including marches, “choir flash mobs,” union rallies, games of “capture the flag,” a “music dance party” and a demonstration involving “trying to levitate the Goldman sign and throwing pennies at the Federal Reserve.”

Occupy has always prided itself on being a diverse, leaderless movement, but the downside of this structure was on display at the planning meeting. Many of the attendees clearly didn’t know the details of all the events in this smorgasbord of May 1 actions.

“There’s a ‘Shit Has Got to Go’ event posted on a news site,” pointed out a man named Malcolm, who wore a sleeveless shirt, Afro and beaded necklace.

“What does that mean?” a girl asked.

“I don’t know, I just thought people would want to know about it even though it’s vague,” Malcolm said.

At one point, a man named Chris discussed plans for the aftermath of one of the main marches, which was to take protesters from Union Square to Wall Street. The ideas were rather open-ended.

“At that point, some folks from Occupy are going to ask anyone in the crowd who’s willing to, to leave to go to an evening staging area,” Chris outlined. “From there, there’ll be, like, whatever the hell we want to make it. So, some people probably want to do a march. Some people probably want to, like, go sleep out on Wall Street or something.”

In addition to these activities, people at the meeting described even vaguer protests planned for “50 to 70 targets across Midtown.”

Organizers at the strategy session said union workers would be holding “99 pickets” as part of the festivities, but they had scant details about the union element of the protests.

“Some TWU union workers are going to be like, We don’t have a contract or whatever,” Chris said when asked to give details on a transit workers’ rally.

As attendees pressed for more information about union participation, a young woman seated on the couch explained that organizers might not be able to provide more detail about the union portions of the protest because they were being planned separately.

“There’s like 40 different groups plus that are doing this and we have to get confirmation from a bunch of different bureaucracies,” she said.

Another woman with a blond chunk of hair in her otherwise brown bob was clearly unsatisfied with this explanation.

“Talking about bureaucracy in this room makes me cringe and a lot of this info should be worked out already,” she said.

The distance from organized labor was maintained partially because many Occupiers are uncomfortable with the structured nature of established progressive political groups. Because of this, May 1 marches will be facilitated by union marshals but will also include segments solely made up of Occupiers.

“There’s an Occupy Wall Street zone in the march and anyone who doesn’t feel like marching with marshals should go with the Occupy zone,” one of the organizers said at the meeting.

After about two hours of talking, the disagreements over the unknown aspects of various events seemed to have taken their toll on the group.

“Can we do a vibe check? It seems like people are getting really angry,” said a young woman with a plaintive voice. “Can we all just take a moment and take a deep breath? We all want this to be really awesome and we shouldn’t be fighting with each other.”

The meeting concluded soon after.

Despite being branded a general strike, one thing that isn’t on the menu for May 1 is a work stoppage. Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, told The Observer the Occupiers haven’t worked with the unions in “a serious way.”

“They haven’t tried to understand how you create coalitions with established elements of the progressive community,” Mr. Appelbaum said.

Despite the fact he and his union were early supporters of the Occupy movement, Mr. Appelbaum said the protesters made no attempts to communicate with organized labor.

“We’re on the same side, that’s what the Occupy movement doesn’t seem to understand,” Mr. Appelbaum said. “We’re on the same side and we should be talking to each other, not just being talked at.”

Over 20 labor groups, including Mr. Appelbaum’s RWDSU, have endorsed the Occupy protests. However, they have not called on workers to strike. Mr. Appelbaum said Occupiers should have checked with the
unions before proclaiming a strike.

“You’re not going to see workers leave their jobs in large numbers,” Mr. Appelbaum said. “That was what was called for at this time without appropriate discussion and involvement.”

A union official, who didn’t want to be named because his group is endorsing the protest, said “continuing conversations” between Occupiers and unions broke down because the diffuse, leaderless nature of the movement made it difficult to collaborate with.

“With the Occupy movement, it’s not always clear who you’re even supposed to be speaking with,” he said.

The union official also described the culture clash that occurred between labor groups and Occupiers.

“I think that, because the labor movement was established with hierarchy and the like, that it was held up to a little bit of disdain. It didn’t reflect the way the Occupy movement thought that democracy should operate, so I think that there were language barriers because of that,” the official said. “I also think that the labor movement, because it has such a hierarchical structure, has difficulty in understanding a movement without structure like that.”

Mr. Appelbaum believes Occupiers’ inability to partner with unions and other established progressive political groups shows the movement might not be able to grow beyond the cadre of young protesters who have kept the occupation alive after its eviction from the park.

“I think that in order for a movement to be successful, you have to expand beyond your core constituency and that has not happened with Occupy Wall Street,” Mr. Appelbaum said.

None of the May Day festivities planned by the Occupiers are part of the “99% Spring,” a slew of Occupy branded activities hosted by the multimillion-member progressive fund-raising organization MoveOn.org.

Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told The Observer his group got behind the protests almost as soon as they began.

“Economic injustice and inequality had been our top priority and campaign since the beginning of last year,” Mr. Ruben said. “Then, when Occupy happened, we kind of jumped in. It was articulating the exact same concerns that our members were really frustrated about and had been working on all year, but in a really compelling, amazing way. So, we sort of jumped in to connect people with it, to support it.”

MoveOn’s involvement triggered a backlash from Occupiers who abhor the organization’s work on Democratic political campaigns. Last week, AdBusters, the anticorporatist magazine that initially launched the call for a Wall Street occupation, published a scathing online editorial blasting MoveOn for sending Occupy-themed solicitations for donations and calling the organization part of the “dead body of the old left.”

“MoveOn wants to hijack our movement with their 99% Spring,” the AdBusters editorial said. “MoveOn is an existential threat to our movement because they don’t have a revolutionary bone in their body.”

Mr. Ruben vigorously denies the charge his group was trying to co-opt the Occupiers. He also suggested protesters’ intolerance of different approaches may hurt them, especially as the presidential election
nears.

“Many of these groups and strains, who have been fighting together against economic inequality and for the power for the 99 percent, are going to go in different directions around the elections,” Mr. Ruben said. “Some people want to put their energy in different places and, I think, we need to have a notion of a diversity of strategies that we all respect, because we’re doing the work of the 1 percent if we just tear each other down.”
Electoral politics can be a “useful tool,” he added, “and even if that’s not your bag, hopefully we can sort of honor the fact that some folks are going to want to get into that.”

Protesters we spoke to seemed unconcerned what others think of their methodology and confident they’ll blow the city’s collective mind, come May Day. “Ultimately, this will be a catalyst for a lot of people who are in their early 20s and relatively middle class to wake up and recognize their place in the theater of the world and the social struggle,” said one Occupy organizer we spoke to after the planning meeting.

“That brings more people to it. It’s a new context.”

What remains to be seen is whether the Occupiers can continue to make an impact on the larger world by speaking on their own terms. And whether they can regain the attention of a city populated with habitual ignorers. The kids say they’re all right. The rest of us will find out on May 1.

hwalker@observer.com

Police officer and FBI agents in front of the basement at 127B Prince Street. (Photo: Hunter Walker)

FBI and NYPD investigators shut a two-block stretch of Prince Street in SoHo today to dig for remains in the case of a young boy who went missing nearly 33 years ago. Etan Patz, 6, disappeared on May 25, 1979 after leaving his home for a two-block walk to his school bus stop. Despite worldwide attention, the case has never been solved. NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne told The Observer that police and FBI investigators are "executing a search warrant this morning for human remains, clothing or other personal effects that may help us lead to the location of Etan Patz" in the basement of 127B Prince Street. Etan went missing about a half block away from the basement.

"It's about a 15-by-30 basement space," Mr. Browne said. "It's currently unoccupied, we'll be taking down the drywall and excavating the basement."

Mr. Browne said the investigation, which potentially involves a kidnapping case, is a joint operation between the FBI and NYPD. He said the investigation stemmed from a request by District Attorney Cy Vance Jr., who reopened the case in 2010.

"It was not a tip, it was a re-examination of the existing evidence," Mr. Browne said. "I think there was some interest expressed by the District Attorney."

Mr. Browne would not say whether or not there is a suspect in the disappearance. FBI spokesperson Tim Flannelly was similarly tight-lipped.

"I'm not going to comment, it's an ongoing investigation," Mr. Flannelly said when asked if there are other aspects to the investigation apart from the Prince Street dig. "We're here executing a search warrant."

As of this writing, the Patz family could not be reached for comment, but Mr. Flannelly said he believed they were aware of the dig.

Thanks to the efforts of neighbors who plastered Manhattan with posters and pestered the media, Etan's case earned worldwide attention in the weeks following his disappearance. He was among the first missing children to have his photo placed on milk cartons.

Sean Sweeney, director of the SoHo Alliance, lives around the corner from the site of the dig and has been in the neighborhood since 1976. He said the basement was empty today, and was at the time of Etan's disappearance.

"Where they're looking now was a basement, an abandoned basement," Mr. Sweeney said gesturing toward the high-end boutiques that now line the block. "A lot of these stores, believe it or not, were empty. You couldn't rent them, and so, I'm sure there was nothing in the basement at the time.

"So, it would make sense that someone would grab a kid who was walking one-and-a-half blocks from here down to West Broadway just like, 'come here for a second' and just grab him, take him down there," he said.

Illustration: Jason Seiler

“One thing about smart cars, there’s no room for error,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said as he piloted his 99-inch-long convertible along 10th Avenue. “I’m a little person, I like little things,” he said cheerily.

Mr. Boteach took directions from a GPS system as we zipped across Manhattan to the Lincoln Tunnel last week. Our window was at bumper level with the surrounding traffic as the rabbi made the sharp turns and tight maneuvers required for escaping Midtown. Wearing a Bluetooth headset and juggling a pair of cell phones to maximize his multitasking, Mr. Boteach said he often takes calls on the move. When he’s not driving, he opts for a much larger headset that offers better reception.

“It’s military grade,” Mr. Boteach tells us. “It’s like a landline.”

Always a busy man, the rabbi balances his career as a widely published author and Oprah-approved spiritual guru with a family of nine children and the daily demands of religious worship.

Now he’s running for Congress.

Despite the harried schedule, he managed to squeeze in (given the dimensions of his ride, somewhat literally) an interview with The Observer en route from a Torah study session with a friend in Midtown Manhattan to a meeting of the Bergen County Republicans, where he was scheduled to make a speech.

Like the car, Mr. Boteach may be little, but his aspirations—and his public profile—are anything but.

“I feel no matter what I’m doing, it’s not enough,” he said. “I mean, I think my experience of the campaign so far, and maybe it’ll change as I go more deeply into it, I feel, thus far, that a campaign is an experience of permanent inadequacy.”

Some of Mr. Boteach’s anxiety comes from the fact his congressional campaign is an uphill battle against a pair of Democratic incumbents in a district that’s already favorable toward Democrats. The new legislative lines drawn for Mr. Boteach’s district left a pair of veteran congressman, Steve Rothman and Bill Pascrell, battling for the Democratic nomination there.

He reported getting “maybe five” hours of sleep a night these days, but the stress of campaigning as an upstart is keeping him up at least a bit. Mr. Boteach, who manages to make time for worship by scheduling late-night Torah study sessions with his family, described running as an isolating and anxious experience that has deepened his need for a connection with a higher power.

“I feel I need God more, not to win, but just to remain who I am and to feel grounded and centered. I think that the whole process can be very dislocating, I’m studying more Torah, I’m studying with my kids almost everyday—late, a little bit too late, when I finish what I have to do,” Mr. Boteach explained. “If anything, I feel that my religion gives me strength through an arduous process.”

So far, however, Mr. Boteach looks set to grab the Republican nomination in his race. He secured the party’s line on the ballot by earning the backing of local parties in two out of the ninth district’s three counties. In Democratic circles, they’re focused on the heated primary between Mr. Rothman and Mr. Pascrell, but sources speculate Mr. Boteach may earn stronger-than-usual support than conservatives generally do in the district, thanks to his high profile.

Running on the slogan “The Values Voice,” he says his congressional bid is an effort to focus political discourse on core religious values rather than the divisive social issues that have come to characterize religious conservatives in this country. Specifically, he hopes to strengthen the institution of marriage by making family counseling tax deductible.

But unlike many of his fellow Republicans, Mr. Boteach doesn’t believe the institution of marriage can be bolstered by preventing gays from getting married or regulating contraception.

“Everybody wants values in their lives, everybody wants to raise their kids with values, everyone wants a more values-laden nation. But for some reason, we can’t have a serious conversation about the values of religion in America without it being hijacked yet again by contraception, abortion and this stuff never goes away,” Mr. Boteach said. “I mean, you have to say, it’s kind of infantile that we can’t talk about anything else and I think it’s very harmful to the country.”

Though he recognizes the Old Testament admonishments against homosexuality, Mr. Boteach believes there’s no religious reason for vehemently opposing gay rights.

“The Bible definitely refers to gay sex as an abomination and, yet, the word ‘abomination’ appears 103 times in the Hebrew Bible. It appears twice with regards to homosexuality, it appears with eating lobster, it appears with bringing a blemished sacrifice on God’s holy altar,” he went on. “I’m wondering why we chose these two verses to the exclusion of all others as the red line of morality in America.”

He clearly differs from many Republicans on social issues, but Mr. Boteach says the party’s stance on foreign policy attracted him to the GOP.

“What attracted me to the Republican Party, first and foremost, was the foreign policy of George W. Bush,” Mr. Boteach said. “I felt that he was holding tyrants accountable for slaughtering their people. I believe that mankind’s first moral obligation in this era we live in is to stop genocide.”

Bucking the party line has been a theme throughout Mr. Boteach’s career. He got his start at Oxford, where he was sent by Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late leader of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, to serve as a rabbi at the prestigious university. While at Oxford, Mr. Boteach began making a name for himself by founding an organization called the L’Chaim House and booking high-profile speakers to the group’s events including Boy George and Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona. He eventually ran afoul of the Chabad establishment because his group and its big-name speakers attracted a large contingent of non-Jewish members. At one point, he also named a black, Baptist Rhodes scholar from New Jersey to be the group’s president. The final straw came in 1994, when Mr. Boteach invited Yitzhak Rabin to speak to L’Chaim House and he was subsequently relieved of his post by Chabad.

Mr. Boteach’s time at Chabad also included another theme that has become a common element in his career—questions over his charitable fund-raising. After his break with Chabad, L’Chaim House was able to stand on its own thanks to Mr. Boteach’s prodigious fund-raising ability, but questions were raised in 1999 when England’s charity commission investigated the group’s payments for a mortgage on the North London home where he lived. Mr. Boteach says the British investigation was a “simple dispute” over whether donors to his group would have to pay taxes on their contributions to the home.

“What happened in England is a simple thing,” Mr. Boteach said. “It was only a tax question. That was the only question—did they have to pay tax on it or not, people who contributed to the house, did they have to pay tax?” (The issue was subsequently resolved with Mr. Boteach being cleared.)

Another persistent theme throughout Mr. Boteach’s career has been his connections to famous and powerful allies who have propelled his rise. Mr. Boteach’s career in Chabad was advanced with the express personal blessing of Rebbe Schneerson, who is regarded as a messiah by many believers. Once at Oxford, his group rode its roster of high-profile guests to the spotlight. In 1999, Mr. Boteach made his biggest celebrity connection, none other than the “King of Pop” himself, Michael Jackson. Mr. Boteach said they first met at the home of another one of the rabbi’s friends, the star psychic, Uri Geller.

Mr. Boteach worked closely with Mr. Jackson on his Heal the Kids charity and became a spiritual adviser to the singer. Mr. Boteach’s connections to Mr. Jackson went a long way toward raising the rabbi’s profile. Three months after the singer’s death, Mr. Boteach released an account of their conversations together in book form.

His association with Mr. Jackson also led to questions about their work together in 2004, when former Fox News show business reporter Roger Friedman pointed out donations to Mr. Jackson’s charities went through the L’Chaim Society, an organization run by Mr. Boteach. Mr. Friedman questioned whether donors to Jackson, such as Denise Rich, who gave $100,000, realized their money was going to Mr. Boteach rather than to the singer. Through a spokesman, Ms. Rich declined to comment for this article. Mr. Boteach maintains Mr. Friedman, who was fired from Fox News in 2009 for publishing a review based on a leaked copy of the 20th Century Fox film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, criticized his charitable work with Mr. Jackson due to his bias against the singer.

“Roger Friedman is the foremost Michael Jackson hater on planet earth. He was fired by Fox News for being an unscrupulous reporter,” Mr. Boteach said. “There isn’t a character, a scintilla, a letter of what he wrote that is true.”

Though he and Michael Jackson ended their association in the early part of last decade, the notoriety he gained through his work with the singer propelled Mr. Boteach to new heights. He became a regular contributor on Oprah and spent two seasons hosting a TLC reality show focused on his efforts counseling troubled families.

Mr. Boteach currently runs a charity called This World—The Jewish Values Network. According to its website, This World’s mission is to “bring Jewish values to the mainstream culture via the mass media.” Both the New York Daily News and The Forward, a daily paper that’s widely read in religious Jewish circles, have raised questions about This World’s finances. The organization, which is based at Mr. Boteach’s home in Englewood, N.J., spends almost all of its budget on expenses and some of that money goes to Mr. Boteach, who receives a six-figure salary from the organization, and his wife, who also draws a paycheck from This World. According to the most recent numbers publicly available through the State of New Jersey, This World raised $651,121 in 2009 and spent all but $13,766 of that revenue on expenses.

Mr. Boteach insisted he and his wife are paid fairly for their efforts on This World’s behalf.

“I was paid $150,000 last year, my wife gets a salary of 40. She works full time, she does all the books she prepares all the Shabbat dinners, she’s a full-time administrator, full-time secretary,” Mr. Boteach said. “I raise all the organization’s money. I write all of its publications. I publish all of its books. I get world-famous speakers, my friends, constantly to do events for us.”

AS HE HAS IN HIS PAST PURSUITS, Mr. Boteach is hoping his connections to some big names in the political world help his congressional ambitions. Fittingly, for a man who’s campaigning as a nontraditional Republican, his closest political confidantes are unexpectedly bipartisan—Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Republican House Minority Leader Eric Cantor. Mr. Booker, almost inarguably the most visible Democrat in New Jersey, is the former Rhodes scholar Mr. Boteach made president of the L’Chaim Society at Oxford. He also now serves on the board of governors of This World.

Mr. Boteach has reportedly asked Mr. Booker not to make any endorsements in his congressional race. However, Mr. Boteach denies discussing the endorsement issue with Mr. Booker, saying he wouldn’t put his friend in a position “where he was forced to choose between his party … and our friendship.”

“I’m not asking him to stay out. Cory and I have talked a great deal about the race. I would never,” Mr. Boteach said. “It’s more than a friendship, he’s like a brother to me. Ours is an intense, intimate, very unique friendship that has had so much history. I mean Cory, he and I have studied Judaism for thousands of hours together.”

Mr. Boteach got to know Mr. Cantor later in life. He said he met the GOP’s top congressman when they were both in Israel at the same time and Mr. Cantor agreed to speak to a Birthright group Mr. Boteach was touring through the Holy Land. Since then, the rabbi said they regularly meet for Torah study. Mr. Cantor’s political action committee, ERICPAC, which stands for “Every Republican Is Crucial,” gave the maximum $5,000 donation to Mr. Boteach’s campaign. Mr. Boteach said Mr. Cantor’s support for him hasn’t only been monetary.

“Eric Cantor is a man of real humility and friendship. It’s amazing how much time he has given me, how much guidance,” Mr. Boteach said. “I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about life.”

Neither Mr. Booker or Mr. Cantor responded to requests to comment for this story.

Mr. Boteach regularly touts his big-name buddies, but support from lesser known sources—his wife, Debbie, and their nine children (ages 3 to 23)—will likely be even more instrumental to his congressional bid. Mr. Boteach’s campaign is a family affair. At their father’s speech in Bergen County, Mr. Boteach’s oldest son, Mendy, manned a video camera while two of his eldest daughters kept tabs on their younger siblings.

On stage at the event, Mr. Boteach stuck to his theme of focusing on a discussion of traditional values rather than social issues.

“Our party is supposed to be a party that doesn’t bash gays, but that promotes marriage,” Mr. Boteach said. Our party is supposed to be a party that isn’t seen to just deny what a woman’s choice would be, but to encourage the respect of a man toward a woman so she’s never forced into that decision as to whether she’d have an abortion or not, because she’s married to a guy who’ll support her and wants to raise children with her and will create a family with her. Where is the positive articulation of our beliefs?”

After the speech, Mr. Boteach took his wife and children out for a meal. At home, the Boteachs organize their family Torah study sessions and meals by staying in touch on an intercom system that operates throughout their home. On the road, mobilizing the entire clan is a complex endeavor that involves a convoy of three cars and regular cell phone calls back and forth. On the night of the speech, the family ran into a road block because it was past closing time at the first two area kosher restaurants they tried to visit. Eventually, they settled on an agreeable Chinese restaurant.

Before they arrived at their destination, Mr. Boteach saw someone he knew in the street and called for the family motorcade to halt. It was the principal of the Hebrew Day School where his young son, Yosef, is enrolled.

“Yosef says he doesn’t have to do homework, because his dad’s running for Congress,” the principal said.

Shmuley laughed.

“I’ll have to talk with him about that,” the rabbi said earnestly.

hwalker@observer.com

According to the Times, Current management "unanimously" agreed that Mr. Olbermann had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving them the right to give him the boot. After declining to speak to the Times, Mr. Olbermann slammed network executives Mr. Gore and Joel Hyatt on Twitter, saying they had fired him unethically and he would seek legal recourse.

"Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers," the network wrote in a letter to viewers. "Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it."

"I'd like to apologize to my viewers and staff for the failure of Current TV," Mr. Olbermann tweeted Friday afternoon. He went on, 140 characters at a time:

"But for more than a year I have been imploring @AlGore and @JoelHyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I've been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract. It goes almost without saying that the claims against me  in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently.  To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain: http://nyti.ms/HueZsa. In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it."

Mr. Olbermann's exit has been rumored since January, when, due to his dissatisfaction with Current's technical capabilities, he "declined" to cover the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Olbermann left Countdown's previous home, MSNBC, abruptly in January of 2011, after clashing with network executives. With any luck, this pattern of interpersonal problems will be further elucidated by The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's new HBO project based on Mr. Olbermann.

Mr. Spitzer's first foray into TV, CNN's Parker Spitzer, was also plagued by infighting until the network dropped co-host Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer's one-man iteration, In the Arena, was canceled in a line-up shuffle last summer.

Update (6:44 pm): A source with knowledge of the situation told us Mr. Spitzer began talking with Current last November as tensions mounted between Mr. Olbermann and the channel's owners. Mr. Olbermann was reportedly angry about the channel's low production values compared to his former home, MSNBC. Despite these tensions, our source said no deal was made to bring Mr. Spitzer to the network because Mr. Gore, was desperate to keep him.

"Gore just tried to kiss Keith's ass," our source said. "It was like the geek trying to impress the cool kid in high school."

Mr. Gore's attempts to placate Mr. Olbermann were clearly unsuccessful.

Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman watching spring training last year in Tampa. (Photo: Getty)

On Sunday afternoon, Brian Cashman, general manager of the New York Yankees, stood by the dugout at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa watching the team take batting practice prior to a spring training matchup against the Detroit Tigers. A pair of dark glasses shielded Mr. Cashman’s eyes from the bright Florida rays, but his mostly bald crown was exposed. A man walked up to Mr. Cashman and gave him a warm greeting.

“What’s cooking?” the man asked.

“My head,” Mr. Cashman replied tersely.

The 44-year-old GM has plenty of reasons to feel the heat aside from the temperatures in Tampa, which topped 80 degrees nearly every day this month. Mr. Cashman spent much of the offseason dealing with a sex scandal that saw photos of his alleged pajama pants make the blog headlines and found him in court facing an alleged mistress he claims stalked and harassed him.

In addition to his personal problems, his team’s future is far from set. As of this writing, the Yankees are in sixth place in the American League spring training standings and the team’s time in Florida hasn’t yielded a definitive rotation of starting pitchers.

For the past few seasons, the Yankees have earned a reputation as a high-scoring haven for power hitters. Big bats like Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson have helped the team live up to its Bronx Bombers nickname and for the past three years have kept it among the top three run-scoring teams in baseball. Offense looks to be a nonissue for the Yankees again in 2012, but pitching is primed to be problematic.

If Opening Day were tomorrow, the Yankees’ rotation would probably start with ace CC Sabathia, Freddy Garcia and two new acquisitions who compiled losing records last year, Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda. The final spot will be filled by some combination of Ivan Nova, who enjoyed a strong rookie season last year, Phil Hughes, a widely touted prospect who has yet to live up to his promise, and Andy Pettitte, a Yankee legend who was coaxed back from retirement.

Suzyn Waldman, one half of the Yankees radio play-by-play team with John Sterling, dismissed worries about the team’s rotation at a breakfast event with fans Sunday.

“You’ve got seven guys going for five spots. That sounds pretty good to me,” said Ms. Waldman, who along with Mr. Sterling is often accused of rooting a little too hard for the home team.

In Steinbrennerland, however, nothing short of a World Series championship is seen as satisfactory. Having a press corps and fan base accustomed to dynasties doesn’t help. Ms. Waldman described this all-or-nothing ethos on Sunday.

“If you don’t win, the season was a failure. That’s how the mindset is here,” she said.

Spring training, which ends next week, is a brief respite from the media frenzy and rowdy fans that put an unusual amount of pressure on the Yankees once the regular season gets under way. Jon Tillis, a deputy with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department who has worked every Yankees spring training game since the team came to Tampa in 1996, said he could “count the number of people I’ve had to throw out of here on one hand.” When a fan asked him if he would want to try working in the Bronx, Mr. Tillis shook his head and laughed.

“Nope,” he said without hesitation.

Off the field, the players stay at the nearby Westin Hotel, where “No Autographs” and “No Pictures” signs in the lobby keep prying fans at bay. A staffer told us Mr. Sabathia and Mr. Nova have taken to unwinding by renting jet skis on the hotel beach. We asked her if Mr. Nova was any good.

“Not the first time, but he warmed up to it,” she said.

hwalker@observer.com

Andrew Breitbart (Photo: Facebook)

Online publisher and conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart died shortly after midnight at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times has confirmed. He passed "unexpectedly from natural causes," according to one of his websites, BigJournalism.com. He was 43.

Breitbart was born and raised in the upscale West side of Los Angeles. He often described his upbringing in the liberal enclave as having defined his desire to become a conservative media crusader. A Matt Drudge protege, Breitbart's websites--Breitbart.com, BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com--were a home for sting videos and other materials that embarrassed government employees or officials, including the deceptively edited video of a Department of Agriculture official being racist, James O'Keefe's ACORN video and the sexually explicit photographs obtained from former Representative Anthony Weiner's Twitter account.

Minutes before the June press conference where Mr. Weiner rescinded his earlier claim that his Twitter account had been hacked and tearfully admitted to sending the photographs, Breitbart surprised the press corps by taking the podium for fifteen minutes.

"If he's going to come up here and take some form of culpability here, he was party to a campaign for 72 hours that weekend to allow the liberal blogosphere, including the Daily Kos, to accuse me of being the hacker," Breitbart told reporters. "Are there any reprecussions for journalism on the Left, when they falsely claim that I'm the hacker?"

He went on, "Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos will not apologize.  In fact he admitted that he named the girls the underage girls because they had the wrong politics. At what point does Meet the Press say 'We're no longer going to allow Markos Moulitsas on the air'? Why is there no accountability for an entire weekend of false reporting that was based upon what I believe was Congressman Weiner's strategy to blame the messenger?"

Breitbart was currently working on a film about the Occupy Wall Street movement. He saw the protests as a "circus" populated by unsanitary activists and sponsored by unions and other left wing groups eager to create the impression of a grassroots movement. Breitbart, who was always eager to stir up controversy and provoke progressives, had a memorable confrontation where he shouted at occupiers and admonished them to "Stop raping people!" outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. Ever the media provocateur, Breitbart  excitedly talked of his plan to butt heads with the CPAC occupiers for days leading up to their exchange and ensured there were cameras on hand to witness the scene.

The author of Righteous Indignation is survived by his wife, Susannah Bean, and their four children.

Dr. Scott Noren (Photo: Noren For Senate/Thomas Hoebbel Photography)

For the past few weeks, longshot "Occupy" Senate candidate Scott Noren has been at war with the state politics blog and TV show Capital Tonight with angry ads on Albany politics sites and supposedly plans to fly a plane over the capitol. Today, Mr. Noren published a series of emails he claims inspired the feud. Mr. Noren became enraged with Capital Tonight host Liz Benjamin, one of the pre-eminent reporters on the Albany beat, after receiving what he described as a "less than professional" response from her following "several attempts to get media coverage on Capital Tonight."

"You have come across as the most arrogant local newscaster I have ever encountered," Mr. Noren wrote in the missive he released today.

Mr. Noren, who is running as an independent against Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, responded to the exchange by launching an "Occupy Liz Benjamin" website in mid-January that linked to his main campaign page. He also purchased ad space for the "Occupy Liz Benjamin" site on the Albany Times Union's Capital Confidential blog. Time Warner Media owns Capital Tonight and, last Friday, Mr. Noren announced his intention to escalate his campaign by purchasing a plane to fly over Albany for 35 minutes while towing a banner proclaiming "The Occupation of Time Warner Cable." We reached out to Ms. Benjamin to discuss the emails and she declined to comment.

The first email published by Mr. Noren was one he sent to Ms. Benjamin on the evening of Friday, December 2 after she interviewed Ms. Gillibrand's Republican challenger, George Maragos on her show. In the email, Mr. Noren, who is a religious Jew, promised to mount a campaign against Ms. Benjamin when the Sabbath ended the next day.

"You have now really irritated me by slapping me in the face politically. When Shabbos ends, I will fight back so obnoxiously it will surpass your snotty blow off of me as the only Democratic challenger to Gillibrand. This is in response to your Maragos interview," Mr. Noren wrote. "It's the public that suffers when media decides to manhandle who gets covered. ... I will now start the Occupy part of my campaign starting this coming week. Good Shabbos."

It is perhaps worth noting that, by sending a Friday night email, Mr. Noren seems to have violated Jewish Sabbath laws prohibiting the use of electronics during Shabbos.

According to Mr. Noren, Ms. Benjamin responded with an email noting she correctly referred to Mr. Maragos as "the only Republican challenger to Gillibrand. She allegedly went on to blast him for his "anti-woman piece of shit email" and vow to bar him from Capital Tonight until he apologized.

"If you think this is an appropriate way for a would-be senator to speak to anyone, I suggest you re-examine your beliefs," she wrote. "This is, hands down, the most disrespectful, anti-woman piece of shit email I've ever received, doctor, and if you think I will ever have you as a guest or take you seriously until you apologize, you are sorely mistaken. Good shabbos indeed, you don't even begin to comprehend the meaning of this day of rest."

About 45 minutes later, Mr. Noren said Ms. Benjamin sent him a second email promising to forward his "threats to the appropriate authorities."

The next day, Mr. Noren sent another email to Ms. Benjamin

"My threats as you call them can be picketing, writing letters to the editor. ... You have come across as the most arrogant local newscaster I have ever encountered," he wrote. "I have just as much right to campaign and be heard as your rich crony politicians that make it on your show. It just shows how closed the process is when you shut out grassroots politics. Pretty disappointing."

Mr. Noren's campaign has little chance of success. Ms. Gillibrand is currently well ahead of all her potential Republican rivals in the polls. In a recent projection, New York Times pollster Nate Silver put her chances of re-election at 95 percent.

Updated (8:15 pm): The original version of this post said Mr. Noren purchased his ads on Capital Tonight rather than Capital Confidential.

"Heems" Suri of Das Racist.

When one thinks of Queens rappers, one does not think of political redistricting, but all of that is about to change.

Himanshu “Heems” Suri, a member of the idiosyncratic rap group Das Racist, is releasing his hotly anticipated solo mixtape Nehru Jackets in conjunction with SEVA NY, a community organization that’s currently focused on raising awareness about the consequences the citywide redistricting scheduled for later this year will have in the Queens neighborhoods where he grew up. Mr. Suri’s mixtape will be accompanied on several songs by young SEVA members who rap and sing in Punjabi.

The Observer made our way out to Queens to watch Mr. Suri record at SEVA co-founder and executive director Gurpal Singh’s bedroom studio. Mr. Suri was accompanied by a pair of young SEVA rappers—Lovedeep Singh, 21, and Jaspreet Singh, 17 (none of the Singhs are related, it turns out). Lovedeep’s parents don’t know about his rap hobby—he simply told them he was at a SEVA event without mentioning the recording studio. Mr. Suri and Mr. Singh told him they would break the news to his parents before the mixtape’s release party.

“He’s got strict parents, but we’re going to have to tell them,” Mr. Singh said. “He’s going to be on stage in front of the whole community.”

Lovedeep stepped up to the microphone first as Mr. Suri wrote lyrics to the beat on a nearby couch. He wore his headphones over a Sikh turban. A pair of blue boxing gloves hung from the ceiling over his head as he bobbed from leg to leg like a fighter entering the ring and fired off a stream of rapid-fire lyrics in Punjabi.

“I don’t think he needs to record again,” Mr. Suri said after Lovedeep finished his verse.

“He’s good, I’m done with it,” Mr. Singh agreed.

Lovedeep grinned from ear to ear.

Mr. Suri first encountered SEVA through a childhood friend, Ali Najmi, an attorney and former legislative director to Councilman Mark Weprin, who serves as a community organizer with SEVA. About a month ago, Mr. Suri asked Mr. Najmi about getting involved.

“I kind of got jealous of him in a sense of not being on the ground and doing work that helps people in a real-time sense on the ground,” Mr. Suri said. “In reality, there’s a lot more that can be done outside of art, and I saw that my friends were doing it and I wanted to be involved in any way that I can.”

Mr. Najmi introduced Mr. Suri to Mr. Singh, a political veteran who worked as director of constituent affairs and held a variety of positions with the Senate Democrats. At home, Mr. Singh produces music with many of the SEVA youth under the moniker “Mr. Singhularity.”

Mr. Singh was born into a musical family. His father was a Ragi, one of the musicians who sing the scriptures at Sikh prayer services. He discovered many of the SEVA youths had musical talent during the group’s early meetings, which quickly evolved into what he describes as “organic jam sessions.”

“None of them had seen a recording studio before or heard their voice recorded even,” Mr. Singh said of his young protégés.

According to Mr. Singh, Mr. Najmi “insisted” he play some of his material for Mr. Suri. Once Mr. Suri heard the young SEVA rappers he knew he wanted to make music with them.

“We recorded a song that night,” Mr. Singh said.

Mr. Suri started working on Nehru Jackets before he became involved with SEVA, but he said “it just made sense to put it all together.”

“I think it works because maybe he sees himself in a lot of the youth I’m producing,” Mr. Singh added. “He’s touched by their energy and their pushing themselves and being artists, because it’s not like the coolest thing to be in South Asian communities. It’s normally, go to school, be a doctor, shut up. You’re rapping, you don’t get props.”

As the session wore on, Mr. Suri continued to write his lines on a loose-leaf pad in his tall, tight handwriting, Mr. Singh standing in front of his computer making minor adjustments to the track. Once Mr. Suri finished writing, he got behind the microphone. As he prepared to record his verse, the Wesleyan-educated Mr. Suri asked Lovedeep and Jaspreet how they were doing in school. One of the young rappers confessed to sometimes skipping school.

“You’ve got to stop cutting class. Rap shouldn’t be everything you do. I go all over the world, but I don’t make money. My cousin’s a pharmacist, they make money. If it gets popular, then you should give it more thought, but that shouldn’t be all you do, because once it gets big, that’s work.”

After the career advice, Mr. Suri got down to business. He had to leave immediately after recording to get to another studio in Dumbo, where he’s working on more solo material. Mr. Suri’s lines were inflected with Punjabi and Caribbean patois, but somehow still evoked old-school, East Coast hip-hop. He said the mix of global influences and classic rap is a sound reminiscent of his youth in Queens.

“This is a record where, doing it myself and not in Das Racist, I talk more about myself and my experiences being an Indian kid from Queens, and even before I met SEVA that’s in large part what the record was about,” Mr. Suri said. “I also had the record incorporate—in large part the sound is ’90s rap and Indian samples, so even before I met SEVA, you know, it was an album that was in large part about being brown and from Queens.”

The collaboration makes sense musically, but it also makes sense for SEVA’s political goals.

“Redistricting in New York is such an uphill battle for communities that are basically on the outside of the political establishment, so we needed something to raise awareness about the issue and that something is his celebrity status,” Mr. Najmi said of Mr. Suri. “The idea that we could release a mixtape that was attached to a redistricting campaign was just perfect to me.”

Currently, the neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, Bellerose and Floral Park are all subdivided into multiple legislative districts. SEVA wants to see each neighborhood get its own unified district when the new lines are drawn.

“Growing up I didn’t know much about local politics,” Mr. Suri said. “I understood about gerrymandering, but I always understood it in the national context. I always thought about it as related to the Electoral College, in terms of larger elections. But I didn’t fully understand how it worked in my community, and that it affected my people to such an extent.”

Though SEVA is heavily invested in the battle over redistricting in Queens, the group also has plans to develop a community center in the area that will have a recording studio for local youth. That cause is also close to Mr. Suri’s heart.

“There wasn’t something like that in my neighborhood growing up and if there was what SEVA plans to do—a community center that has a recording studio in it—I wouldn’t be the only Indian kid rapping from Queens. There would be many more,” Mr. Suri said.

To that end, Mr. Suri, who recently became a SEVA board member, will debut his mixtape and give his first solo concert at an event hosted by SEVA on Jan. 16 at Villa Russo on 101st Avenue in Richmond Hill. He’s also working with the young SEVA artists to release a mixtape of their own later this year.

In Das Racist, Mr. Suri and his bandmates earned a reputation for peppering their lyrics with cultural references and wry political commentary. While Mr. Suri said Nehru Jackets won’t feature lyrics that directly address the redistricting issue, the subsequent SEVA mixtape will be more overtly political.

“One of the things I think that will be different in the SEVA mixtape than in my mixtape is how straightforward the commentary is,” Mr. Suri said. “So, like, obviously in the music I’ve put out in Das Racist, it won’t be something as direct as me talking about redistricting in a straightforward fashion. I am talking about race, I’m talking in a large part about growing up in Queens and, more than in other Das Racist stuff, I’m talking about being an Indian kid in Queens,” said Mr. Suri.

Mr. Singh, hewing more closely to the issue at hand, turned around and pointed out his window. “You see that house across the street? That’s a different state senate district, the line goes right across the street,” Mr. Singh said. “I’m in the fucking street that’s gerrymandered, I’m on it. This is Richmond Hill and it’s gerrymandered.”

hwalker@observer.com

Illustration by Fred Harper.

One weeknight late last month, TheWrap.com editor in chief Sharon Waxman sent an email to The Hollywood Reporter’s editorial director, Janice Min, shortly before 1 in the morning. Ms. Waxman asked Ms. Min if they could speak in person, privately, about how to improve the relationship between their publications. During the previous two days, Ms. Waxman had feuded with Ms. Min’s web editor, Joseph Kapsch, over a story on TheWrap that said Mr. Kapsch was considering leaving THR as part of an “editorial exodus” that saw three employees depart. Mr. Kapsch, who, as of this writing, remains employed at THR, blasted TheWrap, or, as he called it, “The Crap,” on Twitter and in a 600-word response he sent to the media blog FishbowlLA.

Prior to emailing Ms. Min, Ms. Waxman forwarded copies of Mr. Kapsch’s statements to two executives at THR’s parent company, Prometheus Global Media. She urged one to see how badly his employee was treating her. She told the other to watch his back.

“It’s kind of amusing, these blogger characters out here,” Ms. Min said, ever eager to remain above the fray. “They really enjoy ruminating and obsessing over what we do. It’s just part of the kooky Net landscape out here.”

Hollywood has always felt like a small town, but it may never have felt smaller than it does right now among the members of the city’s Hollywood press. For decades Daily Variety was the sector’s indisputed leader, the prime organ not only for scoops but for wild speculation, backroom smoke signals, trial balloons and brazen displays of wishful thinking as well. The Hollywood Reporter seemed content to take the number-two spot.

Then came Nikki. And Sharon. And Janice. And, never one to miss a party, Bonnie.

Never mind that the ad market is struggling and print is on the slab. Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, which launched online in March 2006, has gradually become a full-scale news operation. In 2009, former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman launched a competing website, TheWrap. Later that year, Bonnie Fuller stepped into the mix with the gossip and lifestyle site Hollywood Life for Deadline’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation.

Ms. Min.

The digital threat led the legacy publications to adopt new strategies. At the end of 2009, Variety erected an online paywall. Last October, THR imported  Janice Min to revamp its website and relaunch the print publication as a weekly with a broader focus.

The result has been an increasingly brutal, fiercely personal competition replete with rampant poaching, vituperative blog posts and threats of legal action.

No one who knows anything worth telling comes without a complex history and connections. Therefore, like all good Tinseltown tales, this story must include a disclosure. For six months last year, this reporter was employed at TheWrap, where we were overworked, underpaid and regularly subjected to Ms. Waxman’s mood swings. The last straw was when Ms. Waxman consistently berated us over the phone on our first day off in ages—Yom Kippur. Ms. Waxman declined to comment on this story.

Ms. Fuller.

There’s more: During our time on the Left Coast, we also extensively reported on the work of Nikki Finke. Ms. Finke does not like this reporter, to the point where she insisted on relaying her comments for this article through an Observer editor. Also: We also had lunch with a THR editor and discussed a hypothetical job that never panned out. That editor is not quoted in this piece. We have friends and former colleagues at all four trades.

Between Ms. Fuller, the famously mercurial, famously successful editor, who displayed a magic touch at Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, before almost singlehandedly reviving the celebrity weekly with US, and the even-tempered Ms. Min, her former No. 2, who took over after Ms. Fuller left the magazine, there’s a natural competition.

More ferocious is the rivalry between Ms. Finke and Ms. Waxman, who were once such good friends, Ms. Finke used to go to Shabbes dinner at Ms. Waxman’s house and still praises the Moroccan tagine. However she told the Observer, “I won’t talk to her anymore.”

Deadline began as a column in LA Weekly penned by Ms. Finke, a former debutante who worked in the Associated Press’s Moscow bureau before covering the Hollywood beat for several publications, including Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and, yes, The New York Observer. Deadline launched online in March of 2006. Since then, Ms. Finke has developed a larger-than-life reputation due to her formidable influence, her highly placed sources, her catch-phrase “Toldja!” and her various eccentricities.

For example, Ms. Finke is never seen in public and has rarely been photographed. The one known image of her is a black-and-white glamour shot taken for a book jacket. “I don’t know why people make such a fuss about this,” she said. “In 2006 I needed a professional photo. I haven’t needed a photo taken of me since then.” Last February, this reporter was involved in an effort to capture a picture of the elusive Ms. Finke for Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper The Daily. We published a photo of a woman leaving the gated underground garage at Ms. Finke’s apartment building that we felt confident was she. “The photo purporting to be me posted by The Daily was not me,” she said. We were unable to definitively prove otherwise.

Ms. Finke edits Deadline by working the phones from her home in Westwood. She is notoriously combative, particularly with certain reporters who write about her. When The Observer reached out to Ms. Finke to get her take on the trade landscape, she responded with a strongly worded email accusing this correspondent of “reckless disregard for the truth.”

Then another email came in purporting to back her claim. And another, copied up and down the masthead. A flurry of phone calls followed. Claiming that this reporter once declared an intent to “destroy” her, she demanded that the story be reassigned.

With an approach some call bullying but Ms. Finke prefers to call “being honest,” she managed to earn a reputation as both a crusading journalist and a bona fide Hollywood power broker. “If someone acts like a moron, I’m going to call them on it,” she said. “If someone lies to me, I’m going to call them on it. But I also take responsibility for my own behavior. Sometimes my passion gets the best of me.” In 2009, she made the leap from mysterious blogger to establishment player with the help of a deep-pocketed backer, a young heir named Jay Penske who purchased Deadline through a deal that gave Ms. Finke what is said to be an eight-figure contract and eight-year term. With Mr. Penske’s backing, in 2010 Ms. Finke was able to poach a pair of marquee talents: 20-year Variety veteran Mike Fleming and THR’s TV editor, Nellie Andreeva.

Ms. Waxman. (Getty)

Ms. Finke and her team have since been able to amass a monthly audience of approximately 1.6 million readers, according to Quantcast, and during Oscar and Emmy seasons even put out a print publication “that made a shitload of money,” she said.

In January 2009, Deadline found itself with a new competitor when Ms. Waxman launched a digital trade of her own, TheWrap. Their relationship quickly soured as Ms. Waxman encroached on what Ms. Finke considered Deadline’s turf. (TheWrap’s traffic was 1.1 million last month, according to Quantcast.)

Still, the THR writer we spoke with said TheWrap isn’t as important to keep up with as Deadline. “I just don’t think they’re breaking stories as much as they used to,” the writer said.

TheWrap’s work has also drawn endless criticism from Deadline. In February, Deadline’s parent company sent a cease and desist letter to Ms. Waxman and members of TheWrap’s board accusing the site of stealing scoops. “It has become apparent that TheWrap.com and its employees have engaged in a continuous pattern of misappropriating content from Deadline.com [and] passing off that information as its own,” the letter said.

Ms. Finke gleefully announced the legal salvo on her site. “I will not, and can not, allow anyone to rip off Team Deadline’s exclusive coverage,” she wrote. “TheWrap.com has had many wholesale staff turnovers...and at present is operating with just a handful of reporters.”

Ms. Finke was correct. From April 2010 until the end of last year, Ms. Waxman lost at least six employees, including two reporters who went to Variety and this reporter, who joined The Daily.

Bert Fields, an entertainment attorney who represented TheWrap, responded with a letter to Deadline’s parent company, PMC (then called MMC). “TheWrap has not engaged in the conduct you claim and has done nothing that violates MMC’s rights,” Mr. Fields wrote. “By contrast, MMC has demonstrably and repeatedly violated my client’s rights, including but not limited to violations of the antitrust laws (giving rise to treble damage claims), as well as unfair competition and trade libel. Indeed, MMC’s attempt to monopolize newsworthy subjects by threatening spurious lawsuits is, in itself, violative of the law, as are its numerous attempts to threaten and coerce others to refrain from supporting or dealing with TheWrap and its repeated publication of false and defamatory statements about TheWrap.”

Seven months later, PMC filed suit against The Hollywood Reporter’s parent company, Prometheus Global Media, alleging that code from the PMC site TVLine.com was used for THR’s website. Prometheus responded by removing the offending code from THR.com.

It’s easy to see why THR’s website would be scrutinized by PMC. In the 13 months since Ms. Min has taken over the reins, her blend of consumer-friendly celebrity news and trade coverage has brought in record traffic. According to Quantcast, THR had a record month in October drawing approximately 6.5 million readers, a much larger audience than either TheWrap or Deadline attracts.

Ms. Min is not a fan of the traditional trade approach. “In some ways, the whole thing had evolved into some echo chamber where 1,000 people were talking to the same 1,000 people,” she said. Conventional wisdom on Ms. Min’s revamp of THR is that she has broadened the focus by adding more consumer friendly celebrity coverage. Ms. Min said her approach isn’t simply about mixing celebrity and trade media, instead, she prefers to think THR has “expanded what is considered to be an entertainment story pertinent to the business.” Still, getting away from inside-baseball trade news, she added, has felt “a little like being the first prospector in California.”

Ms. Finke has staked out the opposite approach. “We’ve always been a celebrity-free zone,” she told us. “And Hollywood tells us it’s grateful for that. We are an entertainment business site and proud of it.”

Meanwhile, Variety, which dealt with the new digital challengers in the trade space by walling off its online content, has largely disappeared from the conversation.

“In Variety’s case, it’s almost that we don’t even know it exists anymore,” a THR writer told us. “We don’t even care.”

According to the web traffic measuring service Quantcast, Variety’s online traffic of approximately 360,000 monthly readers is dwarfed by their competition. Web circulation may be down, but Kimberly Gebbett, Variety’s director of marketing, said the paywall has had other benefits like 6,000 new paid digital subscribers and an increase in paid print circulation.

“We believe our content is absolutely valuable enough to be paid for and our subscribers believe the same,” Ms. Gebbett said. “It’s absolutely profitable.”

Meanwhile, despite Ms. Finke’s success, insiders say all is not well in the House of Penske. Other sites owned by Penske Media Corporation, Hollywood Life, Movieline, Boy Genius Report and OnCars.com, aren’t enjoying similar growth, and the company recently suffered a spate of layoffs due to cash-flow problems. Morale is said to be low.

Focusing on lifestyle and gossip, Hollywood Life was launched by Ms. Fuller in the summer of 2009. Former employees say PMC has repeatedly had to warn the editor about budget overruns exacerbated by her lavish personal expenses.

We reached out to PMC for comment, and Mr. Penske emailed to tell us, “I feel very fortunate to be working with two of the most prolific and successful editors in entertainment journalism. Though Deadline and HollywoodLife are two separate businesses of PMC, and Nikki and Bonnie produce two very different editorial products each day—in their respective fields, there is no equal.”

According to multiple insiders, Ms. Fuller was repeatedly warned to get her budget in line. “They basically told her, between the freelancers and your expenses, it’s not working, so if you go over your budget, it’s coming out of your salary,” a former HollywoodLife employee said. “She spends a ton of money, she expenses every little thing,” our tipster added. “She’ll write ‘two dollars’ on a post-it and then she’ll be like, ‘This is from November, it was a coat check.’”

Our sources also said Ms. Fuller put family and friends on the payroll including one woman who was given a six-figure salary before being fired by PMC for chronic lateness and absenteeism. Sofia Fuller, Ms. Fuller’s college-age daughter, has also worked at HollywoodLife. Another former employee said Sofia also spent freely from her mother’s expense account.

“She said, ‘I went to go hook up with my boyfriend. I was so wasted that I expensed it to my mom’s account,” said our source.

Welcome to Hollywood.

hwalker@observer.com

Additional reporting by Aaron Gell

Update (4:47 p.m.): This story was updated to clarify current traffic statistics for THR.com, TVLine's role in the web code lawsuit and Mr. Kapsch's employment status.