Malcolm Gladwell responds to the self-plagiarism debate surrounding Jonah Lehrer, who is often referred to as the next Malcolm Gladwell: “The conventions surrounding what is and is not acceptable in magazine writing, books and speaking have been worked out over the past 100 years. The conventions over blogging are being worked out as we speak. Everyone who writes for a living is going to learn from this. I’m just sorry Jonah had to bear the brunt of it.” As for the allegations that Mr. Lehrer over-aggregated  Mr. Gladwell’s work, he thinks they’re “ridiculous.” [WWD]

Vogue Thailand launches, poaches editor-in-chief Kullawit Laosuksri from Elle Thailand. [Press Release]

Stony Brook University is planning an international reporting center to be named for Marie Colvin, who was killed reporting in Syria this year. [Daily News] Read More

SAY Media execs think Jane Pratt‘s xoJane will be just fine without star persona Cat Marnell. But will the next beauty editor get Ms. Pratt’s name tagged downtown? Also, who volunteers to throw up “JONAH LEHRER + DAVID REMNICK?” Eh? Eh? [WWD]

Layoffs hit RollingStone.com (again) because Wenner Media is (finally) integrating its print and digital operations. Managing editor Evie Nagy and associate editor Matthew Perpetua are among those who are leaving. [Poynter]

Former Ethicist Ariel Kaminer is back on Times Metro, covering higher ed. [Capital NY] Read More

Shake up at Dow Jones: Todd Larsen stepped down as president, CEO Lex Fenwick implemented a new management structure. [Capital NY]

Brand new New Yorker hire Jonah Lehrer reused material from his old Wired and Wall Street Journal stories in his Frontal Cortex blog. One neurology-based defense of self-plagiarism coming up? What’s always so confusing to us about this very common phenomenon is why other writers don’t shudder in horror every time they encounter their old writing. [Jim Romenesko]

This weirdly sourced New York Times story is like a logic game: Three anonymous partygoers overheard Mayor Bloomberg talking presidential endorsement. One of them was a New York Times Reporter. Did that New York Times reporter write the article? [NY Times] Read More

Scotland Yard is investigating call records from a set of iPhones issued to top News Corp. brass that were not disclosed in the British government’s ongoing investigation of the company’s ethics. They’re on a different carrier than the company’s Vodaphone Blackberries. “James Murdoch is said to have told 02 that he specifically wanted a “white iPhone” when the smartphone was issued to him in the summer of 2009.” [Indepedent]

CBS built Les Moonves a $500,000 screening room in his home. Pre-recession style! [Crain's]

Another pre-recession gem, Elle Accessories, has relaunched, suggesting it’s not so bad out there for print anymore. [NY Times]

Meanwhile, the magnificent Warren Buffett plans to keep his growing stable of daily newspapers on life support until someone else figures out the digital business model. “The nice thing about it is that somebody can think about the best answer and we can copy him.” Or “her,” Mr. Buffett! [New York Times] Read More

Low ratings-beleaguered CNN has pulled the plug on John King USA, leaving The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to fill a marathon three hours. Mr. King will still be the top political correspondent. [NY Times] Meanwhile, a more timid side of CNN’s combative primetime host Piers Morgan was revealed in documents dating back to his stock tipping scandal in 2000. [Daily Beast] On the plus side, Mr. Morgan scored an interview with Casey Anthony. Flowers for the booker! [CNN]

Lucky magazine invented a quote from a prize winner. [Jezebel] Read More

Rival tabloids the New York Post and the New York Daily News both spent the weekend playing catch-up with Newsweek. The magazine published its very revealing cover story about Mary Kennedy’s last days on Sunday, leaving plenty of time for the dailies to recap it for Monday’s papers. But in the story, which includes a PDF of the sealed affidavit that drove its reporting, Kennedy biographer Laurence Leamer snuck in a small critique tabloids’ early coverage:

“Once they called it Camelot, now they called it the Curse, and the media was having a field day over this latest tragedy to befall one of America’s most storied and dysfunctional clans. Here was the womanizing Bobby, always described as a former heroin addict, leading his innocent wife to her death, yet another victim of an overweening male ego—and he did so while flaunting his affair with actress Cheryl Hines, who played Larry David’s wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was a juicy tale, lacking in nuance. But perhaps Bobby wasn’t guilty. Perhaps nobody was guilty. Perhaps Mary Richardson Kennedy was, and had been for some time, a desperately sick woman.”

True to form, both papers splashed the detail that Mary ran over the family dog.

[Post, Daily News] Read More

Sheherezad Jaafari—the 22-year-old former press coordinator for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad who now tops the media power list in our heart—has been admitted to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. If not because Barbara Walters had Columbia professor Richard Wald put in a good word for her then because she brings unique first-hand experience to the classroom. [NY Times]

BuzzFeed gets a tiny pony, The Daily gets this magnificent predator. [Instagram] Read More

Is it the Los Angeles weather? The laid-off staff of GOOD appears to be suspiciously well-adjusted about its magazine ceasing to exist. The group found out through the grapevine at Thursday’s issue launch party that they would be laid off because the company was pivoting to become a “Reddit for social good,” complete with the kind of buzzy concepts that make most editors’ flesh crawl (“gamified content,” etc.).  Still, they have nothing bad to say about their bosses.

“Mostly, we’re disappointed that this editorial team won’t get to continue working together,” goes a group dispatch on Tumblr. “We think we were pretty good at it. And we know we didn’t get a chance to realize the full potential of our collaboration…So we’d like to make at least one more magazine together.”

They’re calling it Tomorrow and funding it on Kickstarter, like the little orphan Annie of the media world. In the mean time, throw these very magnanimous people some freelance gigs. [CJR, Poynter, Tomorrow, Ann Friedman]

Barbara Walters has apologized for trying to get Sheherazad Jaafari, former aide to Syrian president Bashar al Assad (she advised him to speak with Western media and taught him how to “manipulate the American psyche” [guess how she and Ms. Walters know each other]), an internship with Piers Morgan at CNN. Interns! They get more overqualified every year. [Telegraph] Read More

Glenn Beck thinks that Vogue editor Anna Wintour‘s bundling for President Barack Obama means his administration is “off the rails.” “You can’t go on and say how bad an elitist Mitt Romney is and then stand next to her,” he said. How does Mr. Beck know she’s an elitist? Her “neck scarf,” apparently. In this GBTV clip, he also makes fun of how Ms. Wintour’s accent pronounces “Michelle Obama”—doubting her British heritage!  He says that she is the “devil” in “The Devil Wears Prada” so many times it seems almost blasphemous. [HuffPo]

In These Times labor reporter Mike Elk is pressing charges against the PR goon that roughed him up at the Capitol Hill panel where he asked Honeywell CEO David Cote impertinent questions. [PR Daily] Read More

What is going on at the Deadline Club? The New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is reportedly keeping two sets of books, not filing its IRS forms, and giving only 8% of its proceeds from events and contests to scholarships, which most j-school students don’t even know to apply for. It’s a complicated story, but if you care about old-school journalism clubs and $2500 scholarships, read on. Or just crash their annual awards dinner at the Waldorf tonight! [iMediaEthics]

CLARIFICATION: Deadline Club president J. Alex Tarquinio contacted the Observer to respond. She pointed out that the “two sets of books” are for two separate organizations, the Deadline Club and the Deadline Club Foundation, which have separate bank accounts. She added that the Deadline Club’s tax forms have been up-to-date since December 2010.

Twitter founder Biz Stone sold a book about “creativity and different ways of thinking, as demonstrated through Biz’s fascinating personal stories from his life and career” to Grand Central. It’s called…Things A Little Bird Told Me. Like the Twitter bird. [Press release] Read More