“Search and Destroy,” New Yorker scribe Ben McGrath’s 10,000-word profile of Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton, went live on the magazine’s website around midnight last night. It’s thorough, witty and well-sourced, as it allows quotes from the acid-tongued chorus of former and current Gawker writers to create a somewhat fresh — albeit still Read More
On the latest cover of The Stranger, profile subject Richard Yates author Tao Lin mocks Jonathan Franzen’s appearance on the cover of Time last month by adopting the same self-serious pose assumed by the man who penned Freedom. To complete the parody, The Stranger used the same tagline as the Time cover: “Great American Novelist.”
Gawker Read More
Lit ProfilesliteratureProfiles
Having already published the definitive profile of author Tao Lin by experimenting with his flamboyantly deadpan style, The Observer had a neutral facial expression when it discovered today’s oddly earnest piece about Tao Lin’s new book Richard Yates in none other than the Associated Press. The story does make Tao Lin seem a Read More
Today’s Slate article “Kanye West Has a Goblet” starts with a contradiction. The reporter begins by mentioning he’s been invited to the rapper’s Manhattan apartment, and can describe even the most trifling details, such as the firmness of the pillows and the angles of the walls, despite the fact that Kanye West has Read More
Ed Whitacre, who has led General Motors to a vastly new era or optimism and profit, shocked the business world today when he announced that he’s stepping down in a few weeks. His replacement will be a relatively anonymous director named Dan Akerson, currently at the strange and omnipotent Carlyle Group. As Read More
Daniel Lyons writes for Newsweek this week about Arianna Huffington, who has recently turned 60 and moved to New York City from Beverly Hills to be closer to her business and her daughters, who are in college at Yale. Mr. Lyons opens with a portrait of Ms. Huffington in her offices on Prince Read More
The Post‘s “Dream Job” profile of Playboy photographer Gen Nishino begins with the caveat that, yes, not everyone may think that shooting nude women is the best job in the world. Then it launches into an extremely boring interview that still operates under the assumption that it would be.
Nishino, a heterosexual Read More
A WWD profile of Courtney Love’s newly launched Tumblr reveals that the blog, What Courtney Wore Today, is actually a four-person operation run by Love and three anonymous bloggers known only as T, L and X. Which is actually not a small staff, for a website.
According to Ms. Read More
When Simon Rich was growing up and walking around the streets of New York he was always afraid of an air conditioner falling on his head.
“I still walk closer to the curb because I’m sure that’s going to happen,” the 26-year-old novelist SNL writer said over iced coffee last week.
For Mr. Rich, whose Read More
Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates spoke on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today about the editorial process behind the magazine’s explosive profile of General Stanley McChrystal. Mr. Bates emphasized that the general and his aides knew they were on the record for all of their candid remarks — including a now viral Read More
