Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account.

Audrey Gelman first appears in season two of Girls—which premiered Sunday night—coming out of the bathroom. She is carrying a tallboy that dwarfs her tiny frame, scolding her clingy boyfriend, Charlie, and looking for some weed. “Hi Audrey,” Marnie Michaels (played by Allison Williams) says, shooting daggers at her rival. Ms. Gelman’s role as Marnie’s headband-wearing foil, however, is an extended inside joke.

In real life, Ms. Gelman, 25, is close friends with newly minted Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham, and, by most accounts, is the model for Marnie herself: driven, serious, tightly wound.

These qualities serve her well by day as the spokesperson for Scott Stringer—Manhattan borough president, former mayoral hopeful and shoo-in for comptroller—as she walks reporters through wonky white papers on everything from Silicon Alley to economic abuse as a form of domestic violence. But she is equally comfortable downtown, where she lives with roguish fashion photographer Terry Richardson, mixes with young Hollywood and is a fixture at Cinema Society screenings and fashion shows.

“She doesn’t get a lot of time off, so the fact she can do all that is really extraordinary,” said Mr. Stringer, noting that Ms. Gelman generally sends him the day’s news, with commentary, by 7 a.m. The night before we spoke with him, she had also been out with him until 9:30. “That’s a hell of a work week,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg once gushed about how Girls might inspire young women to pursue Hannah Horvath’s New York dream, but Ms. Gelman might be a better advertisement: Holly Golightly with a career. “Local politics is a pretty grubby, unglamorous scene, and she is like a bolt of lightning in that scene,” one veteran City Hall reporter told The Observer.

Ms. Gelman, who is a dead ringer for The O.C.’s Rachel Bilson, has large, brown eyes that can turn from sympathetic to sharp in an instant. Reporters who work with her say she can be nitpicky and tenacious on Mr. Stringer’s behalf. A total Marnie, in other words, though unlike Ms. Gelman, Marnie would never have a barrio-style tattoo inside her lower lip that says, “Let’s Go Mets.”

Another of Ms. Gelman’s five tattoos matches one of Ms. Dunham’s: a single word—“staunch” on her left tricep—an homage to Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame. Ms. Gelman and Ms. Dunham have been friends since they first met as high school students in Manhattan, becoming besties when they arrived at Oberlin together. Ms. Dunham told The L Magazine earlier this year that no one other than Ms. Gelman has “a cultural/emotional vocabulary I understand so well.” The accompanying scrapbook shows them in their campus days, a little less poised but not much younger, so quickly have they ascended the ranks of Manhattan’s power players.

Unlike Ms. Dunham—whose parents are both established artists—Ms. Gelman wasn’t born into Manhattan’s creative class. Her father is a microbiologist (and a fourth-generation cantor). Her mother is a psychologist. Raised on the Upper West Side, she attended the public Lab School and Bard High School.

Ms. Gelman dropped out of Oberlin after two years to work inside the high-pressure D.C. press shop for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “In every campaign, there are a few interns and junior staffers who manage to stand out, and she was one of those,” said Howard Wolfson, who ran the Clinton campaign and now serves as deputy mayor. “The staff was impressed with her.” She went to work for Mr. Stringer in May 2010 and quickly rose to lead spokesperson—purportedly the youngest in city government, though this fact is surely cited more frequently than it is checked.

At a recent Stringer presser in Riverside Park on a chilly Sunday afternoon, Ms. Gelman could be found at the borough president’s elbow in a stylish bubble coat and enormous tortoiseshell glasses.

Mr. Stringer has done a lot with his modest post—turning the borough president’s office into a white-paper factory. The topic this Sunday was reform of the city’s animal shelters, and Ms. Gelman hustled armloads of press releases and staple-bound studies through the small crowd amid constant baying from the nearby dog run. Later, she posted an image of the TV coverage of the event to her personal Instagram account, alongside snaps of her cat, Lyle, and her French ombré manicure.

Ms. Gelman serves as a refutation to stiff social media gurus everywhere. Their advice is for outsiders. Use your real name? Her Twitter handle is @grumplstiltskin. Post a representative picture? Her avatar is Cam’ron in pink fur. Don’t post compromising images? She appeared in a light boudoir video for DKNY Intimates. Don’t date Terry Richardson? Well, that’s not social media advice, but her 18-month relationship with the whipping boy of feminist blogs seems to confound all but their intimates. (Complex magazine is in full-blown denial about it, having named Gelman the 21st “most desirable bachelorette in NYC” as recently as September.)

“I think they are actually a very interesting match,” downtown publicist Gina Nanni told The Observer. “People have the wrong impression about Terry, that he’s this guy living this debauched life, but he’s the nicest, sweetest guy. He’s a teddy bear.”

“Having your most public aide dating Terry Richardson, that can’t be great for you,” said one veteran city hall reporter of Mr. Stringer. “It’s distracting.”

But the borough president, who has been photographed with Mr. Richardson on more than one occasion, shrugs off such talk. “I view her differently because of the work she does here,” Mr. Stringer told The Observer. “The focus of her life is to be a government professional. The rest is extracurricular.”

The rules are changing. Can you feel it? Not so long ago, 20-somethings had to choose between promising City Hall careers on the one hand, and tattoos, lingerie ads and dangerous boyfriends on the other. Now “the rest is extracurricular.” Public and private are being renegotiated and Ms. Gelman stands at the frontier.

At last week’s after-party for the season two premiere of Girls, she could be seen agilely policing these shifting borders.

Mr. Stringer had just zipped back from Albany and Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address to arrive at Little Italy’s chic party space Capitale, which was shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities, from ?uestlove to Cindy Sherman. Ms. Gelman waved Steve Buscemi over to meet the beep and his wife, Elyse Buxbaum.

“I live in Brooklyn, so you’re not my borough president,” Mr. Buscemi said winningly as he pumped the pinstriped politician’s hand. “But you’re a very good borough president.” The Boardwalk Empire star pivoted to Mr. Richardson, who stood nearby, and Ms. Gelman snapped a picture of the pair.

Is Gelman, like lightning, a true anomaly, or is she a sign of things to come in a world where social media launders influence between divergent spheres—as long as you speak all the tongues?

“You know you are fluent in a language when you can think in that language and you don’t have to translate from one to the other,” Mr. Wolfson observed. “And that is her ability, to think fluently in social media.” Interestingly, before Ms. Gelman arrived, Mr. Stringer’s office suffered a social media scandal when an aide derided President Obama on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gelman would be too cagey for that, and is canny enough to know that the answer is not to become invisible, but to appear as one wants to appear—professional, connected and recently manicured.

Witness her divide-crossing work with Downtown 4 Democracy, an alliance of creative professionals that formed around Howard Dean in 2003 and raised $1.5 million for John Kerry in 2004. The group had been largely dormant, but was rebooted in support of President Obama under Ms. Gelman’s direction, with a book, events and conspicuous support from Mr. Richardson and Ms. Dunham, who—at times—has also supported Mr. Stringer’s causes.

“The things that are an asset to her now might not have been an asset 10 years ago, when politicians hadn’t figured out how to speak to people like me,” observed Ms. Nanni, a founding member of Downtown 4 Democracy, discussing Ms Gelman’s unique position at the crossroads of many worlds.

After Mr. Stringer and his wife departed the Girls premiere, Ms. Gelman and Mr. Richardson held court before a passing parade of young celebrities like Aziz Ansari and Jonah Hill, whom Ms. Gelman air-kissed as fluently as she had the local TV reporter who’d arrived late to the Stringer presser earlier in the week. She sat and texted as a friend sketched her portrait, which would later appear on Vogue’s website.

A few minutes passed and Ms. Gelman turned to a reporter, whom she had allowed to linger for a moment. “I’m going to go back to my personal world now,” she told The Observer, shutting things down like just another press conference.

]]>

Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account.

Audrey Gelman first appears in season two of Girls—which premiered Sunday night—coming out of the bathroom. She is carrying a tallboy that dwarfs her tiny frame, scolding her clingy boyfriend, Charlie, and looking for some weed. “Hi Audrey,” Marnie Michaels (played by Allison Williams) says, shooting daggers at her rival. Ms. Gelman’s role as Marnie’s headband-wearing foil, however, is an extended inside joke.

In real life, Ms. Gelman, 25, is close friends with newly minted Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham, and, by most accounts, is the model for Marnie herself: driven, serious, tightly wound.

These qualities serve her well by day as the spokesperson for Scott Stringer—Manhattan borough president, former mayoral hopeful and shoo-in for comptroller—as she walks reporters through wonky white papers on everything from Silicon Alley to economic abuse as a form of domestic violence. But she is equally comfortable downtown, where she lives with roguish fashion photographer Terry Richardson, mixes with young Hollywood and is a fixture at Cinema Society screenings and fashion shows.

“She doesn’t get a lot of time off, so the fact she can do all that is really extraordinary,” said Mr. Stringer, noting that Ms. Gelman generally sends him the day’s news, with commentary, by 7 a.m. The night before we spoke with him, she had also been out with him until 9:30. “That’s a hell of a work week,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg once gushed about how Girls might inspire young women to pursue Hannah Horvath’s New York dream, but Ms. Gelman might be a better advertisement: Holly Golightly with a career. “Local politics is a pretty grubby, unglamorous scene, and she is like a bolt of lightning in that scene,” one veteran City Hall reporter told The Observer.

Ms. Gelman, who is a dead ringer for The O.C.’s Rachel Bilson, has large, brown eyes that can turn from sympathetic to sharp in an instant. Reporters who work with her say she can be nitpicky and tenacious on Mr. Stringer’s behalf. A total Marnie, in other words, though unlike Ms. Gelman, Marnie would never have a barrio-style tattoo inside her lower lip that says, “Let’s Go Mets.”

Another of Ms. Gelman’s five tattoos matches one of Ms. Dunham’s: a single word—“staunch” on her left tricep—an homage to Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame. Ms. Gelman and Ms. Dunham have been friends since they first met as high school students in Manhattan, becoming besties when they arrived at Oberlin together. Ms. Dunham told The L Magazine earlier this year that no one other than Ms. Gelman has “a cultural/emotional vocabulary I understand so well.” The accompanying scrapbook shows them in their campus days, a little less poised but not much younger, so quickly have they ascended the ranks of Manhattan’s power players.

Unlike Ms. Dunham—whose parents are both established artists—Ms. Gelman wasn’t born into Manhattan’s creative class. Her father is a microbiologist (and a fourth-generation cantor). Her mother is a psychologist. Raised on the Upper West Side, she attended the public Lab School and Bard High School.

Ms. Gelman dropped out of Oberlin after two years to work inside the high-pressure D.C. press shop for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “In every campaign, there are a few interns and junior staffers who manage to stand out, and she was one of those,” said Howard Wolfson, who ran the Clinton campaign and now serves as deputy mayor. “The staff was impressed with her.” She went to work for Mr. Stringer in May 2010 and quickly rose to lead spokesperson—purportedly the youngest in city government, though this fact is surely cited more frequently than it is checked.

At a recent Stringer presser in Riverside Park on a chilly Sunday afternoon, Ms. Gelman could be found at the borough president’s elbow in a stylish bubble coat and enormous tortoiseshell glasses.

Mr. Stringer has done a lot with his modest post—turning the borough president’s office into a white-paper factory. The topic this Sunday was reform of the city’s animal shelters, and Ms. Gelman hustled armloads of press releases and staple-bound studies through the small crowd amid constant baying from the nearby dog run. Later, she posted an image of the TV coverage of the event to her personal Instagram account, alongside snaps of her cat, Lyle, and her French ombré manicure.

Ms. Gelman serves as a refutation to stiff social media gurus everywhere. Their advice is for outsiders. Use your real name? Her Twitter handle is @grumplstiltskin. Post a representative picture? Her avatar is Cam’ron in pink fur. Don’t post compromising images? She appeared in a light boudoir video for DKNY Intimates. Don’t date Terry Richardson? Well, that’s not social media advice, but her 18-month relationship with the whipping boy of feminist blogs seems to confound all but their intimates. (Complex magazine is in full-blown denial about it, having named Gelman the 21st “most desirable bachelorette in NYC” as recently as September.)

“I think they are actually a very interesting match,” downtown publicist Gina Nanni told The Observer. “People have the wrong impression about Terry, that he’s this guy living this debauched life, but he’s the nicest, sweetest guy. He’s a teddy bear.”

“Having your most public aide dating Terry Richardson, that can’t be great for you,” said one veteran city hall reporter of Mr. Stringer. “It’s distracting.”

But the borough president, who has been photographed with Mr. Richardson on more than one occasion, shrugs off such talk. “I view her differently because of the work she does here,” Mr. Stringer told The Observer. “The focus of her life is to be a government professional. The rest is extracurricular.”

The rules are changing. Can you feel it? Not so long ago, 20-somethings had to choose between promising City Hall careers on the one hand, and tattoos, lingerie ads and dangerous boyfriends on the other. Now “the rest is extracurricular.” Public and private are being renegotiated and Ms. Gelman stands at the frontier.

At last week’s after-party for the season two premiere of Girls, she could be seen agilely policing these shifting borders.

Mr. Stringer had just zipped back from Albany and Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address to arrive at Little Italy’s chic party space Capitale, which was shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities, from ?uestlove to Cindy Sherman. Ms. Gelman waved Steve Buscemi over to meet the beep and his wife, Elyse Buxbaum.

“I live in Brooklyn, so you’re not my borough president,” Mr. Buscemi said winningly as he pumped the pinstriped politician’s hand. “But you’re a very good borough president.” The Boardwalk Empire star pivoted to Mr. Richardson, who stood nearby, and Ms. Gelman snapped a picture of the pair.

Is Gelman, like lightning, a true anomaly, or is she a sign of things to come in a world where social media launders influence between divergent spheres—as long as you speak all the tongues?

“You know you are fluent in a language when you can think in that language and you don’t have to translate from one to the other,” Mr. Wolfson observed. “And that is her ability, to think fluently in social media.” Interestingly, before Ms. Gelman arrived, Mr. Stringer’s office suffered a social media scandal when an aide derided President Obama on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gelman would be too cagey for that, and is canny enough to know that the answer is not to become invisible, but to appear as one wants to appear—professional, connected and recently manicured.

Witness her divide-crossing work with Downtown 4 Democracy, an alliance of creative professionals that formed around Howard Dean in 2003 and raised $1.5 million for John Kerry in 2004. The group had been largely dormant, but was rebooted in support of President Obama under Ms. Gelman’s direction, with a book, events and conspicuous support from Mr. Richardson and Ms. Dunham, who—at times—has also supported Mr. Stringer’s causes.

“The things that are an asset to her now might not have been an asset 10 years ago, when politicians hadn’t figured out how to speak to people like me,” observed Ms. Nanni, a founding member of Downtown 4 Democracy, discussing Ms Gelman’s unique position at the crossroads of many worlds.

After Mr. Stringer and his wife departed the Girls premiere, Ms. Gelman and Mr. Richardson held court before a passing parade of young celebrities like Aziz Ansari and Jonah Hill, whom Ms. Gelman air-kissed as fluently as she had the local TV reporter who’d arrived late to the Stringer presser earlier in the week. She sat and texted as a friend sketched her portrait, which would later appear on Vogue’s website.

A few minutes passed and Ms. Gelman turned to a reporter, whom she had allowed to linger for a moment. “I’m going to go back to my personal world now,” she told The Observer, shutting things down like just another press conference.

]]> http://observer.com/2013/01/meet-audrey-gelman-shes-like-marnie-only-successful/feed/ 0 Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account. http://observer.com/2012/12/load-up-10-observer-longreads-for-your-year-end-travels/#comments Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:26:27 -0400 http://observer.com/2012/12/load-up-10-observer-longreads-for-your-year-end-travels/ Jim Hanas http://observer.com/?p=282714

Illustration for George Gurley's "Jump on the Rand Wagon!" by Drew Friedman.

With the Mayan apocalypse underdelivering (so far), it looks like it will be holiday travel as usual--which can be its own kind of doomsday scenario. You're going to need reading material, and a lot of it. Here are ten of the best longreads that appeared in The Observer this year, all perfect for squirreling away in apps, tablets, and e-readers. You know, just in case.

The Boyfriend Experience: Can Bret Easton Ellis Mainstream Porn Star James Deen?
by Nitasha Tiku
“The first time I met James Deen was in a co-ed bathroom. I couldn’t tell you where. He was in the middle of a foursome, having sex with a sweat-soaked blonde propped up against a porcelain sink who looked like she’d just swallowed all the MDMA in L.A.”

The Broke Broker: He’s Got Keys to the Best Apartments, But Lacks One of His Own
by Lisa Taddeo
“As we descended from the triplex and alighted on Grove, a younger man stopped him, palming some bills against my new real estate broker’s hand. Cawsey winked and said, 'Don’t worry, dearie, nothing illegal. Get in my van.' And I did.”

The Crispy Crimes of Guy Fieri: Junk Food T.V. Star Takes Times Square
by Joshua David Stein
“In January of 1968, the beginning of a year when the world caught on fire, Guy Ferry was born in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And in that moment, though America would not realize it for years to come, she had welcomed into her heartland perhaps her greatest homegrown besmircher, the seed of her undoing.”

Dude (Looks Like a Poet)! Backstage with Aerosmith and Paul Muldoon
by Michael H. Miller
“Unlike in Aerosmith’s younger days, the backstage experience now happens before the show rather than after it because they get tired. Around 7 p.m., we found ourselves in a narrow, white brick-walled, fluorescent-lighted hallway somewhere in the bowels of the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, N.J. We were introduced as “a reporter who works with Jack’s daughter” and “a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet,” a label the very humble Mr. Muldoon continuously blushed at. ‘It’s hard to explain to people that the Pulitzer doesn’t really matter,’ he whispered to me.

Jump on the Rand Wagon! How Ryan Resurrected Ayn
by George Gurley
“A surprising number of people will tell you ‘Ayn Rand changed my life.’ Parents name their kids after her fictional characters. Ronald Reagan, who filled his administration with Rand devotees, claimed he was a fan, as have Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Clarence Thomas, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Ted Turner, Barry Goldwater, Melanie Griffith, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sandra Bullock, Simon Le Bon, Madonna, Rob Lowe, Rush Limbaugh, Sharon Stone, Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Billy Beane, Christina Ricci, Kurt Russell, Jim Carrey, Cal Ripken Jr., Marc Cuban, Eva Mendes, Hugh Hefner and numerous Playboy centerfolds.”

The Mysterious Disappearance of Peter Winston
by Sarah Weinman
“It should have been a cakewalk. On a Saturday afternoon in 1972 in a seedy hotel conference room in Midtown Manhattan, two men faced off across a chessboard. Well, one of them was a man—Walter Browne, a six-time United States champion regarded as perhaps the best American player not named Bobby Fischer. Facing him was a 14-year-old kid only a few years removed from his very first game. Dark, curly hair curtained his eyes. He was slight and a little over medium height, with a notable lack of physical coordination that belied a singular concentration. He was good, sometimes very good, and many observers considered him a future star.”

Meet The Gatsbabies! Preening Prepsters Lure Ladies, Lucre and Limelight in Merry Manhattan
by Daniel Edward Rosen
“The girls, so many girls, dressed in pastel-colored wraps that bared shoulders and the swells of their cleavage, clacked their Louboutin heels up a SoHo staircase one muggy May evening.
At the landing, visibly breathless and sweaty, their eyes lit up. They had entered the penthouse loft of Edward Scott Brady, the boyishly handsome world traveler, former classical cello virtuoso and “retired entrepreneur,” who was throwing a ‘Welcome Back Bash’ to honor his return from his seventh trip around the globe.”

Outward Bound: Celebs Struggle To Keep Sexuality Secret(ish), But Media Make Mischief
by Daniel D’Addario
“At a crowded movie premiere in Midtown recently, The Observer witnessed a young movie and TV star—a dashing young man who’s been involved with several starlets despite whispers about his close relationships with other men—sitting for the entire party in close conversation with a well-groomed gent, even as his co-stars circulated. As we passed, the plus-one stared us down, as if to say, ‘Step off,’ or perhaps, ‘Don’t you dare write about this.’”

The Sickos on the Sofa: Law & Order: SVU’s 13 Years of Bringing Sex Crimes to Prime Time
by Drew Grant
“What’s clear: people love watching Special Victims Unit, especially young women and mothers. In fact, since the show launched 13 years ago, females age 18 to 34 have been its most consistent viewers. ‘Two-thirds of our audience are women,’ Mr. Leight said. ‘I honestly don’t understand why, completely. I don’t get it when parents say they watch the show with their kids, either.’”

Well Huang: How Culinary Enfant Terrible Eddie Huang Dishes it Out
by Foster Kamer
“If Mr. Huang has made a splash with his reinventions of quick-serve, high-end Asian eats, he is perhaps better known for his outspokenness. In a way, he admitted, cooking has always been more of a means than an end for him. ‘I went into the food world because I realized that no other place in America would let me break through and speak the way I speak. They will listen to us’—he pointed to himself, meaning, Asian-Americans—‘because they want Combo Number Five. You know what I mean? We’re cute. We’re Hello Kitty-like.’”

Mission accomplished. (Reanimation Library.)

Earlier today, for the second time in a little more than a year, Andrew Beccone moved his entire library. The Reanimation Library—which consists of hundreds of "outdated and discarded" volumes "culled from thrift stores, stoop sales, and throw-away piles, and given new life as a resource for artists, writers, cultural archeologists, and other interested parties"--is part archive, part art installation. Beccone even opened a "Mid-Manhattan Branch" at MoMa earlier this year.

But the main branch is on the first floor of the Brooklyn art space Proteus Gowanus, yards from the Gowanus Canal. That's Zone A territory, which is why Beccone put out a call again yesterday on Facebook, just as he had for Hurricane Irene. "Another stupid hurricane is threatening my low-lying, toxic canal neighboring library," he wrote. "I'm looking for a handful of volunteers to help me box up books and move them to a higher floor."

Seven people showed up, Beccone told The Observer, and the job of clearing out all the blue shelves and moving the books up one floor took just over three hours.

Signing off after the move, he quipped: "Considering installing the library in a very big elevator."

Diller. (IAC)

"There is real enthusiasm for Newsweek Global as an all-digital product," said Barry Diller today on IAC's quarterly earnings call. "But we do not have stars in our eyes."

IAC's third quarter media revenue almost tripled to $52.7 million, thanks to the inclusion of NewsBeast in the company's consolidated results--following its acquisition of a controlling interest in May--but the media unit's operating loss rose to $13.2 million from $2.8 million a year ago.

Mr. Diller said that the decision to cease print publication of Newsweek "would dramatically decrease those loses," but stressed that the success of an all-digital Newsweek was not critical to future projections. "It's not like we're projecting that this digital product will have x or y subscribers," he said, adding that "the prospects for the enterprise are much improved" by the end of the print edition and its attendant downsizing, a restructuring executives said would cost $5-$10 million.

IAC owns 80% of Newsweek, while the Sidney Harman Trust owns the balance. However, the Harman Trust has ceased investment in the business, leading to a natural dilution of it stake.

Calacanis. (Flickr: ElectricSheep)

As TechCrunch first reported,  Inside.com might once again become a functioning web domain, under the administration of Silicon Alley Reporter and Mahalo.com founder Jason Calacanis. And if that sounds to you like a lede from 2000, you probably remember Inside.com as the late-bubble content play—helmed by Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn—that gave us both David Carr and the Segway.

“For 10-plus years I’ve coveted the Inside.com domain name, and I’ve tried to own it,” Mr. Calacanis told The Observer. “I finally got it.”

Although he wouldn’t be specific about his plans for the domain—or what he paid for it—he did note its illustrious pedigree. The address has passed through the hands of Steven Brill and paidContent founder Rafat Ali since the original site went under. When GigaOm acquired paidContent earlier this year, the Inside.com domain came up for grabs.

Mr. Andersen, for his part, can’t believe it’s taken this long for someone to put it to use. “It’s a good name, Inside.com, and I’ve been baffled (but not unhappy) that it’s gone unused for a decade,” he told The Observer. “I find it entertaining and somehow inevitable that Jason Calacanis is acquiring it.”

Smirnoff and Fitzgerald

If you think New York has a monopoly on toxic media cultures, consider the balmy Petri dish of Conway, Arkansas, home of the Oxford American. The magazine has been in turmoil since early this month, when publisher Warwick Sabin locked employees out of its offices on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). Said lockout was bookended by allegations of sexual harassment leveled at top editors by two employees and a former intern, an internal investigation (conducted with all post-Sandusky haste), and a vote by the magazine’s governing board to dismiss the magazine’s founding editor, Marc Smirnoff, and managing editor Carol Ann Fitzgerald.

It might have ended there, though Mr. Smirnoff didn’t usher the perpetually cash-strapped “Southern magazine of good writing” through two decades, two states, and three National Magazine Awards by not being, well, let’s say tenacious.

Mr. Smirnoff and Ms. Fitzgerald (who are also a couple) appealed, via email, to UCA president Tom Courtway, alleging (in sometimes graphic detail) that they had been railroaded by disgruntled employees and—in Ms. Fitzgerald’s case—that she had been the harassed, not the harasser. According to Jeff Pitchford, the school’s vice president of university and government relations, the emails were forwarded to the UCA Police for further investigation. But according to a statement from Oxford American board chair Rick Massey, referring to OA’s own investigation, “none of the witnesses substantiated Ms. Fitzgerald’s allegations that she had been sexually harassed by the co-worker who complained about her—allegations first made during her interview with the investigators.”

The circumstances under which the emails became public raised eyebrows as well. The first of three requests from local news outlets for emails between Mr. Courtway and Mr. Smirnoff and Ms. Fitzgerald under Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act reached the president’s office an hour and a half after the sensational emails were sent, leading to speculation that Mr. Smirnoff and Ms. Fitzgerald intended the emails to be made public. Mr. Smirnoff denied this, telling Off The Record that he didn’t even know the emails would be subject to public release and that, in any case, their provenance should not impact their claims. “If the letters are legally in the public and no law was broken to put them there, isn’t their veracity the most crucial and only relevant question now?” he asked in an email. (Asked if Mr. Smirnoff or Ms. Fitzgerald prompted her to request the Courtway emails, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Debra Hale-Shelton referred the question to deputy editor Frank Fellone, who declined comment.)

According to department spokesperson Arch Jones, UCA Police determined that the allegations in the emails to Mr. Courtway did not outline any criminal wrongdoing and forwarded the case to UCA’s associate vice president of human resources, Graham Gillis, who is pursuing an administrative investigation. However that investigation pans out, the admissions made in the supposedly exculpatory emails—obtained by Off The Record—do Mr. Smirnoff and Ms. Fitzgerald few favors. Mr. Smirnoff admitted he served alcohol to minors and that he indeed “touched or photographed the feet of an Oxford American intern,” a detail unlikely to benefit from elaboration. Ms. Fitzgerald, meanwhile, admitted to propositioning one of the complainants, according to Mr. Smirnoff’s account. The couple is almost certainly out for good, in other words, though it remains to be seen if they will take others, or perhaps the entire magazine, down with them.

Mr. Smirnoff told Off The Record that reinstatement was not necessarily his goal. Rather, he said, “I may feel that the Oxford American, the magazine that I started in 1992 without lawyers and money, has been consumed by lawyers and money, and I believe they have crushed the spirit that has kept the OA going for so long, and I know I’m going to at least request that they change the name. [They should] start their own magazine.”

Friendly concern about the future of the magazine, meanwhile, is summed up by Roy Blount Jr., a longtime OA columnist and contributor to the magazine’s very first issue, who told Off The Record, “It was Smirnoff’s baby, and nobody else has ever been able to keep such a peculiar and interesting magazine going in the South for anywhere nearly as long.” Mr. Blount said he reached out to Mr. Sabin after Mr. Smirnoff was dismissed, meaning to protest, but was assured that the grounds for dismissal went beyond underage drinking and Mr. Smirnoff’s recent fiery critique of competitor Garden & Gun, where Mr. Blount is now a columnist. “All I know about the workings of the magazine is that they never messed with my copy or tried to talk me out of writing anything that would upset readers,” Mr. Blount continued. “I never visited any of the offices. The few times I ran into Marc or other OA staffers over the years, no one showed any interest in my feet, understandably.”

According to Mr. Sabin—who is serving as interim editor—the next issue, due out September 1, will ship on time and feature a cover story by Pulitzer finalist Chris Rose about recent developments at The Times-Picayune. The magazine has also named Louisiana music journalist Alex Rawls guest editor of its 2012 Southern Music Issue, which comes out in December. Mr. Sabin told Off The Record he has “reached out to several people about the permanent editorial positions” and “received inquiries from several well-known editors,” although he says he may employ guest editors beyond the music issue in order to “not rush the selection of a permanent editor.”

“In the end, one way or other, our version of what happened with these three accusers will come out in the public,” Mr. Smirnoff told Off The Record, vowing to expose “the machinations and the lack of honor of Warwick Sabin and his team.”

For his part, Mr. Sabin said, “I never anticipated that the magazine would ever be edited by anyone other than Marc.” One thing—at least—on which he and Mr. Smirnoff might agree.

Ploughshares Spring 2012: Conflict free?

According to a guest blogger, Emerson College-based literary journal Ploughshares might not be much for spirited debate, despite the story of its creation. ("They argued passionately about the art, politics, and literature of the day," editor in chief Ladette Randolph writes of the magazine's founders on the Ploughshares website.)

Harmony, instead, appears to be policy, based on the experience of Sean Bishop, a poet, editor, and graphic designer who teaches in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the founding editor of the soon-to-be-launched lit magazine Better. Bishop told The Observer he was asked to blog for Ploughshares about the "literary marketplace" in March, agreeing to provide ten posts by August. After writing a ranking of poetry presses by their design sensibility in his seventh post, however, he was cautioned by managing editor Andrea Martucci about being critical of other publications.

"You are certainly welcome to your opinion," Martucci wrote in an e-mail provided by Bishop, "but the Ploughshares blog is not the forum for ones that other presses and lit journals (who are our colleagues) might see as offensive." Bishop responded by singing the virtues of "responses that mix critique and praise," but pledged to comply with Martucci's direction. When Martucci responded to a later blog post with similar criticism, Bishop responded sharply (by his own admission) and Martucci replied by saying his most recent post would run, but then the magazine would "not expect to see any more posts from you."

"It really was best for both of us that I stop blogging," Bishop told The Observer. His final post went up, but after he posted a link to it on his Facebook page, noting that "after some upsetting conversations regarding the nature and tone of the opinions I've expressed over my nine posts, the managing editor has asked me not to blog any longer," the post disappeared. He asked for an explanation from Martucci and Randolph, received no response, then published the essay on the lit site H_NGM_N two week's later.

Reached for comment, Martucci explained Ploughshares' position on the whole affair:  "Over the course of 2.5 years and over 25 guest bloggers we have always been supportive of our writers to pursue a free-range of topics and ideas as long as they're respectful of the literary community. As with each and every blog post, Bishop's posts were reviewed and we had repeated correspondence asking for changes to the tone of his posts. After displaying conduct we felt unbefitting of a Ploughshares representative, we made the editorial decision to remove the post and end our relationship with Bishop. We did this respectfully and with the full support of the editor-in-chief, Ladette Randloph." As for the "unbefitting" conduct? Martucci  confirmed she was referring to "[Bishop's] Facebook posts and his disregard for our editorial guidelines. "

"It upsets me that a magazine with Ploughshares' reputation would be so averse to controversy, yes, but of course that's their editorial prerogative," Bishop told The Observer. "What's inexcusable to me is the decision to 'unpublish' an essay that they had already published, with no acknowledgment that (or explanation for why) they tore it down, while refusing to give even the author any explanation for the retraction. That strikes me as petty, and unprofessional."