Have you seen Hugo Lindgren in those New York Times Magazine commercials on TaxiTV? We saw a really charming one a few weeks ago, advertising “The Money Issue.” The sound was off, but it looked like Mr. Lindgren was selling an Emmy statuette to a sketchy-looking guy outside The New York Times building on 8th Avenue. Read More
Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who resigned over phone hacking allegations (and resigned from his subsequent post as head of communications for David Cameron over the same), is being detained by police for alleged perjury, reports The Guardian. Read More
Last Tuesday, Slate DoubleX founding editor Hanna Rosin and New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins sat down before a packed house at the New America Foundation to discuss Ms. Rosin’s long-anticipated book, The End of Men, due out September 11 from Riverhead.
As the two journalists tried to explain the persistent wage and power gap between men and women in America, their conversation returned again and again to our more progressive friends in California and Scandinavia. Read More
The New York Post attributed the very photogenic Memorial Day car crash on its cover—a red Mercedes crashed into a Long island home and clear out the back without hurting anyone—to “drunk” “Brooklyn hipster Sophia Anderson.” While the Observer generally agrees that hipsters are the most perfect scapegoat to emerge in the course of human history, we’re not sure Ms. Anderson qualifies simply because she’s 21 years old, white, and lives in Bushwick. Read More
During lunch on Mother’s Day, my own mom had some exciting news to announce: “I’m reading the best book!” she declared, taking a sip from her sweating water glass in the building May heat. “It’s called How To Be Black. It’s excellent–hilarious, but also serious,” she insisted.
I had heard of it only in passing–on Twitter, and in scant Facebook posts. It was written by The Onion‘s Director of Digital and Internet Man About Town Baratunde Thurston, and had received almost five stars–a perfect score–from users on Amazon.
“There were like 56 reviews last time I checked,” Mr. Thurston told Betabeat by phone this morning. “And I’m like, ‘Who’s the asshole that didn’t put five stars?’ Clearly it’s a five-star book.” Read More
Technically, Scripps-Howard isn’t a network so much as a series of networks, but the point is: Anthony Bourdain is taking his act on the road, away from the Travel Channel and to CNN. There are no more No Reservations to be had. The ratings-troubled cable news network probably ponied up some decent cash for Bourdain (and Reservations‘ production company, Zero Point Zero) to come their way. Something that also may have helped? The fact that the Travel Channel was purchased by Scripps-Howard in 2009, and Bourdain has never been one to mince words about the Scripps’ networks stable of culinary stars.
For example… Read More
Earlier this month, an Irish newspaper licensing body sent a cease and desist letter to a domestic violence charity for the crime of linking to a newspaper article without paying a license fee.
In the letter, Newspaper Licensing Irish Limited (come and get us!), which has a contract with 16 national newspapers and 90 regional publications, writes that “a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website.” Read More
Glamour senior online fashion and beauty editor Danica Lo has been named executive editor of Stylebistro.com.
Starting June 1, she will oversee daily operations of Stylebistro.com, a style blog from the same parent company as celebrity photo cache Zimbio.com. And it sounds like they’re expanding. According to a press release, Ms. Lo’s duties include “building Read More
Last week, Fox News chief Roger Ailes came under fire for characteristically incendiary remarks he made about The New York Times (“cesspool of bias,” “a bunch lying scum”) and other media organizations during a lecture at Ohio University.
The event was woefully underreported, but an unnamed “senior Fox executive” told Howard Kurtz that Mr. Ailes thought he had gone too far in the lecture. He respects Jill Abramson, the source said, and thinks the Times has been fair under her. At that lecture, he was speaking exclusively about Russ Buettner, who reported that Mr. Ailes had pressured Judith Regan to lie to federal investigators about her relationship with Bernie Kerik.
The full transcript of Mr. Ailes’s May 21 lecture at Ohio University is now online (via Romenesko), and it reveals plenty more original Times commentary. Mr. Ailes said former executive editor Bill Keller was fired for publishing biased news (it went down a little differently in the Ken Auletta version) and that Mr. Keller’s stated opinion of Fox News amounts to sour grapes because the newspaper industry is dying and Fox is thriving. He also said that the two of them are getting a drink.
[UPDATE: That rendez-vous hasn't happened...yet. Mr. Keller told The Observer in an e-mail: “After my column identifying Fox as a satanist front, he sent me a light-hearted email. I offered to buy him a drink. He hasn’t taken me up on it yet. Stay tuned.”
Below, an excerpt of his conversation with moderator Andy Alexander.
