Amanda Bynes was arrested last night after reportedly throwing a bong out the window of her midtown apartment. The former child star was charged with reckless endangerment, tampering with evidence and criminal possession of marijuana.
For anyone who’s been tracking Ms. Bynes’s recent activity—especially anyone who’s been following her on Twitter—news of Ms. Bynes’s latest Read More
See the 1986 Tom Cruise popcorn flick Top Gun in the most ideal setting: outdoors at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Seated on a first-come, first-served basis, guests are encouraged to bring their own food and beverages, but leave the booze at home. The screening is the first event in a line-up of Read More
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
Ashton Kutcher is totally over Twitter because we all fucking ruined it. The apparent barometer of what’s “cool” told the CTIA Conference on Thursday that his experience on the site changed for the worst since joining and that we have no one but ourselves to blame for it.
Mr. Kutcher said that the media’s oversharers wrecked the once-personal experience of publicly broadcasting your every thought to everyone with an internet connection. He added that when he first joined Twitter, it was hip and represented the democratization of media, but now that it’s gone lamestream, he’s OVER IT. Read More
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
When former Congressman Anthony Weiner officially launched his mayoral bid yesterday, he took the unprecedented step of releasing an announcement video in the dark of night and only granting phone interviews with the media throughout the day. Some strongly speculated the strategy was designed to dampen the pun-filled tabloid reactions by entering the race after their print deadlines. If so, the plan worked–mostly.
Mr. Weiner was indeed kept off the front pages yesterday and today, but both the New York Post and Daily News managed to slip in some loud sideswipes. The News, in particular, seemed annoyed. On page 12, an insert read, “Here’s one for his scrapbook. Weiner’s midnight declaration prevented him from getting on the front page. Now for a ‘what if’ …” Read More
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
Hundreds gathered for the 17th Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street last night in a ceremony that honored excellence on the Internet–fart jokes, GIF pronunciation debates and all.
Patton Oswalt began by observing, “Look at all these people taping this. By all means, record this shaky iPhone version, because this will never be on the Internet.”
“This whole thing was Kickstarted, but we didn’t quite make our stretch goal, so instead of Louis C.K., you have me as your host,” he added. Read More
There’s a new trend taking off in Williamsburg, but this one’s a little more commercial than its residents would probably like.
Over the space of two days in the past week, both Kanye West and James Franco have taken over walls in the hip neighborhood across the water, joining a fast growing fashion for P.R. Read More
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
