Rupert Murdoch didn’t overlook The Wall Street Journal in his publicity blitz to promote News Corp.’s plan to split up into two publicly traded companies, one for newspapers and publishing, one for television and entertainment. Read More
The Observer got a little choked up watching Ann Curry smile through the tears as she bid the Today show farewell this morning. But it must have been some auto-sympathy response from our primitive lizard brain because there is no rational reason for Ms. Curry to feel sad, let alone us.
For one thing, television journalists, even those of her suddenly diminished stature, make a mint. And, second, it’s not like she’s just getting pushed off the Today couch. Ms. Curry is trading a job that’s intellectually beneath her but nonetheless insanely cutthroat for a multiyear contract job that gives her a hand-picked, seven-person team to cover the biggest breaking news stories all over the world. Her segments will end up on NBC Nightly News, Dateline, Rock Center and Today. She gets to be an understudy anchor on Nightly News. She no longer has to wake up at 3:30 a.m.!
But then, who are we to say from whence this well of emotion hath sprung? Maybe it was that thing where you’re super stressed out, tired, or angry—like, say, having just gone through the wringer in the press and at the negotiating table with your bosses—and then someone random asks, “Are you ok?” and you just start crying because you’re so glad someone asked. [HuffPost, USA Today]
In other media news… Read More
In the race to cover the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s health care bill, Fox News and CNN found themselves on the wrong side of the story.
Both cable news networks incorrectly reported that the justices had struck down the individual mandate—the most controversial part of the bill, requiring most Americans to Read More
News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed reports that he will divide the corporation into two companies—one for television and entertainment, one for newspapers and publishing—in a message to employees today.
The lengthy memo, obtained by the The New York Times, touches on everything from the First Amendment to the iPad but does not mention the ongoing phone-hacking and bribery scandal in the UK. Some think the restructuring, on which they’ll reportedly be advised by Goldman Sachs, is an attempt to protect top management from this or future messes. Read More
By now it’s clear that many people felt a sense of personal loss when Nora Ephron died from complications from leukemia at the age of 71 last night. A family of artists lost its beloved matriarch, Hollywood lost a glass ceiling-breaker and the baby boomers lost their witty escort into old age. As a young journalist, I lost living proof that one could be a reporter and still a good person. Read More
Ousted xoJane beauty editor Cat Marnell—whose relentless documentation of her PCP and pill habits alternately captivated and enraged the women’s blogosphere—has landed a column at (where else?) Vice. It’s called Amphetamine Logic and its first installment, “The Aftermath,” went online Thursday.
The title refers to Ms. Marnell’s public falling out with xoJane editor-in-chief Jane Pratt and parent company SAY Media, who asked Ms. Marnell to go to rehab a month before she left. She announced her departure (a mutual decision with Ms. Pratt) in a Page Six item, saying that she couldn’t spend another summer meeting deadlines when she could be on the roof of the Standard Hotel “looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends and writing a book.”
Talk about red flags. Though hardly known for its strict decorum, Vice does have more suits walking around since partnering with big shot TV executives and expanding internationally. Off the Record asked editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro if he had any concerns about the new hire. Read More
“When someone comes into your house and throws shit around, you get pissed,” Anna Holmes told The Observer. She was speaking in metaphor: The house was the Gawker Media women’s interest blog Jezebel, of which she was the founding editor; the someone was the blog’s commenters, a famously undisciplined crowd.
“If you open your front door to people they just act like jerks,” agreed former Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson. Now the managing editor of Animal NY, he favors abolishing comments sections altogether.
Blog proprietor Nick Denton has a different plan—he’s giving them the run of the place. The commenters are creating content, after all, just like the writers. What’s the difference?
“I want to erase this toxic Internet class system,” he told The Observer in a gmail chat.
“Nick has always loved to subtly and not so subtly insult his employees,” said Gawker writer John Cook. “He thinks of us as glorified commenters.” Read More
Two former fashion editors have launched a food magazine that’s artisanal enough for the Brooklyn foodie set. NYLON veterans Fiorella Valdesolo and Michele Outland had long planned on bringing their shared aesthetic to a new style magazine before deciding to tackle something new and unfamiliar. They put together the bi-annual food and recipe journal, called Gather, in less than three months. Read More
Emma Stone made her Vogue debut in July. No surprise there: she’s about to be in a superhero movie, she was also on the cover of New York, it’s her moment, her sh-bam . What’s weird is that in August, she’ll be on the cover of Teen Vogue, along with Spiderman boyfriend Andrew Garfield, a PR coup didn’t even know was possible. She already did Teen Vogue, naturally, back in September, 2011, when she was still a redhead. Read More
Patch Adams, MD, the clown doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 film, has joined several dozen prominent figures of the American Left in asking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum.
“The ‘crime’ that he has committed is that of practicing journalism,” states the letter, delivered to the Embassy of Ecuador in London yesterday by American advocacy group Just Foreign Policy. Read More
