Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Cyndi Stivers interviewed Lynn Povich, one of the women who sued Newsweek for gender discrimination in 1970. In addition to being sexist, according to Ms. Povich’s account, Newsweek‘s bullpen was a pheromone swamp.

The thing about newsmagazines [in those days] is, you have a class of young women who are coming in, and then you have all these guys: married, single, whatever. It naturally sets up this sort of “office wife” situation, because all these women are checking stories for these guys—the “holy writers,” as one of the women said. It was very tempting, and I must say, whether they were married or single, there was a lot of sex in the office. There just was. And of course, after the sexual revolution of the mid-’60s, even more so. Because there are a lot of people in their twenties, and hormones are raging, and the Pill had come, and the sexual revolution was on, so… [CJR]

Speaking of Newsweek: The New Republic totally Tina Brown-ed Kate Middleton. [The New Republic] Read More

In a particularly lively TimesCast, A.O. Scott and David Carr enjoy a snack and talk journalism movies. Executive editor Jill Abramson weighs in, deeming Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom “a fantasy.”

“It’s an idyllic version of how a modern-day newsroom might operate. [...] There’s been a race to the bottom that has made the public cynical. I worry that the cynicism may undermine the public’s belief in the value of the First Amendment and freedom of the press. The bottom line to me is facts desperately matter and they’re hard to get and that’s what we do. That’s our calling.”

Her favorite journalism movie? His Girl Friday, obviously. [NY Times] Read More

Sheila Heti’s latest novel, How Should a Person Be?, has been subject to lots of extra-ponderous criticism—to say nothing of the lazy comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls—because it does this really radical and experimental thing where it draws from the author’s own life, including transcriptions of real conversations and real emails. Some of the characters even have the same names as their real-life counterparts.

Of course, it’s not actually all that new. Reviewing the novel in The Observer, Emily Witt pointed us to Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station,Tao Lin’s Shoplifting at American Apparel and Keith Gessen’s All The Sad Young Literary Men. Or we could defer to the expert, I Love Dick author Chris Kraus.

“Heti’s use of real art-world names, real events, real conversations and correspondence, owes a large debt to the work of the late Kathy Acker, which, due to our short cultural memory, might be obscured by the tedious arguments for and against the ‘generational narcissism’ of social media,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

At any rate, one of the hazards of this literary choice is that one’s material is also a lot of other people’s material, because, let’s face it, we’re all memoirists here. Take Slate critic Katie Roiphe, who began her review of Ms. Heti’s novel with a whopping and backhanded disclosure. Read More

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are reportedly signed on to executive produce an HBO movie about Roger Ailes, the CEO of their cable rival, Fox News. A la Game Change, it’s an adaptation of a forthcoming book, the one due out in 2013 by Gabriel Sherman. The book’s not even written yet, but Mr. Sherman’s reporting has already prompted Mr. Ailes to expedite a friendlier bio by Zev Chafets and cancel Mr. Sherman’s subscription to his upstate newspaper. Does this mean Julianne Moore can reprise her role as Sarah Palin in a cameo? [UPDATE] Sad news: HBO has pulled the plug already. HBO Films president Len Amato told Nikki Finke: “We recently decided not to pursue the Ailes project. It had become clear to us before even receiving a script that due to our company’s CNN affiliation the film could never be seen as objective.” Since when are films objective? [Deadline]

Oops. NJ.com—the New Jersey news site that Advance Publications swears it’s not beefing up in order to make its print product in that market, The Star-Ledger, obsolete—just tried to hire back former Star-Ledger ace reporter Ginger Gibson, now at Politico. This is the second gaffe from new NJ.com content chief Lamar Graham, who previously posted a hiring memo publicly to Facebook. [Romenesko] Read More

For the first time since launching its probe into British tabloids’ bribery and phonehacking practices more than a year ago, Scotland Yard has arrested a reporter not employed by Rupert Murdoch, reports The Guardian.

The 37-year-old former Daily Mirror reporter under investigation for bribery was not identified but is said to be Greig Box Turnbull, who currently works in communications for Westminster City Council. Two non-journalists were arrested as part of the same probe.  Read More