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Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/23 4:01pm

Hires

Jonathan Martin (Image via Politico).

Jonathan Martin Named Political Correspondent at The New York Times

POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin is going to The New York Times as to be their national political correspondent, Carolyn Ryan, the recently named political editor announced today in a newsroom memo. Mr. Martin, who was a senior political reporter at Politico, was one the site’s earliest hires.

POLITICO, for their part, wrote their own newsroom memo. which was obtained by FishbowlDC, where they tried to frame their loss as a positive and explained that, although Mr. Martin told them he was leaving for the Times today, they were not surprised by the news. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/23 11:21am

Domain Name Drama

A preview of the homepage, which is still under construction. (Via Nicholas Jackson).

The Feature Well vs. Featurewell.com

Last week, we reported that Pacific Standard digital director Nick Jackson is starting a new website called The Feature Well that will be a “smarter version of MediaBistro.” But maybe Mr. Jackson should have done some more research before he bought that domain name-the name, The Feature Well, is remarkably similar to Featurewell.com, a syndication marketplace service that represents writers and publications (including The New York Observer) so that editors can purchase and republish stories.

“I was surprised to see that someone had ripped off our name,” FeatureWell founder and CEO David Wallis told OTR. “Either Nick Jackson is arrogant or stupid. Maybe both.” Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/22 5:35pm

Crowdsourcing

The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

Get Life Advice From AJ Jacobs And His Facebook ‘Friends’

Esquire editor at large AJ Jacobs is starting a new advice column, he announced today in a blog post. But it is not just a regular old advice column. Instead of just getting advice from Mr. Jacobs, the column will include curated advice from his “100,000 Facebook Friends*” with whom he is sharing the byline.

“You will be getting the combined experience of a brigade of Ann Landerses, a stadium full of Dan Savages,” Mr. Jacobs wrote. “As for me, I will be the Nate Silver of this experiment, curating and collating and commenting on the mass’s responses. I will print the best, funniest, and oddest answers (providing full credit, of course). And we will determine the best course together.” Read More

By Warren Levinson 5/21 6:51pm

Editorials

I Like Bike

I ride a bicycle in New York City.

It’s not a political act. It’s transportation.

A lot has changed since I started in 1978, but the inescapable logic of cycling here hasn’t: Things are close together. The place is mainly flat.

It’s not for everyone, which is part of the allure. It demands an attention—to Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/21 6:34pm

The Transom

Ad Man George Lois.

The CLIO Awards: What’s The Big Idea?

The 54th annual CLIO Awards ceremony, held last week, seemed to straddle some kind of line between innovation and industry nostalgia—much like the ads they were celebrating. Instead of The Waldorf Astoria, they were held at the Natural History Museum. Instead of Paul Newman, who gave the keynote speech on a recent episode of Mad Men, the ceremony was hosted by Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet. And instead of dinner, there were hors d’oeuvres during a pre-ceremony cocktail hour.

But some things never change.

“What this night is really about is getting through these awards as fast as we can so we can all go drink again,” Mr. Stonestreet said, to cheers. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/21 5:53pm

Hiring

Photo credit: SNL/NBC

Be The ‘Voice of NPR’

Start practicing that soothing yet knowledgable NPR tone because National Public Radio is looking to hire someone to record all of those announcements that let the people know that they are listening to NPR and not, say, religious programming (we can’t be the only ones who have made that mistake, right?).

“Heard by millions of people each week, you’ll get to say, ‘This is NPR” each day,’” reads the job listing.  Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/21 2:00pm

New Grub Street

20100405_grublogo_190x190

New York Magazine Shuts Non-New York Food Blogs

Grub Street, New York magazine’s food blog, will shut down their local food blogs that cover cities other than New York, they announced in a post this afternoon. The URLs for the local food sites, which covered Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston will be redirected to Grubstreet.com, starting later today.

But foodies located in those other American cities need not worry about going hungry–Grub Street is expanding its scope to become more national.  Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 5/20 4:35pm

Village People

villagevoice

People Still Want to Work at The Village Voice

The Village Voice is going through the latest in a series of rough times–in the past two weeks, following the resignation of their top two editors, the downtown alt-weekly laid off some of their most beloved writers. Today, two more writers resigned. But the fact that it might not seem like the most stable of places to work hasn’t deterred what we can only assume are young writers from sending in their applications.  Read More