By Foster Kamer 6/27/12 4:00pm

In Memoriam

Nora Ephron You've Got Mail

Nora Ephron and The New York Observer: A Footnote

Screenwriter, director, and essayist Nora Ephron died last night; she was 71. Wonderful tributes and memories of Ephron’s legacy keep pouring out (just one example: it turns out the You’ve Got Mail website is very much intact, and itself a wonderful, odd little remnant of one of her more profound tributes to the Upper West Side).

If you haven’t read the New York Times‘ exceptional obituary of Ms. Ephron do so. Meanwhile, we have been relishing our own small piece of Ephron’s legacy: The You’ve Got Mail character Frank Navasky, played by Greg Kinnear. Read More

By Matt Haber 1/26/09 4:42pm

Rosenbaum v. Jarvis Round Four (Five?): Web Guru ‘The Billy Joel of Blog Theorists’

Remember how back in November former Observer ‘Edgy Enthusiast‘ columnist Ron Rosenbaum used his Slate ‘Spectator’ column to call out Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis as "the Sarah Palin of Gurus"?

At the time, Mr. Jarvis—a former magazine editor-turned-digital evangelist—responded by calling Mr. Rosenbaum "a pissy third grader," which sparked an on-going war of Read More

By Staff, Staff 4/02/07 12:00am

Letters

Jay Kennedy Remembered

To the Editor:

I really enjoyed and appreciated David Foxley’s article on my late boss, King Features editor in chief Jay Kennedy [“Jay Kennedy, Editor of Cartoonists, Arts and Newspaper Archivist, 50,” March 26]. It was truly insightful reading about his hobbies, friendships and personal background. He will be sorely missed in Read More

By Staff, Staff, Staff 1/08/07 12:00am

Letters

Hypocrite Pataki

To the Editor:

Your Dec. 18 editorial “Will Pataki Poison Spitzer’s Well?” illustrates the hypocrisy of outgoing Republican Governor George Pataki. After the 1994 elections, as the Governor-elect, Mr. Pataki was critical of the man he defeated, Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo. Arguing that the voters had given him a mandate to serve as Read More

By Staff, Staff 9/18/06 12:00am

Letters

Times They Are a-Booin’

To the Editor:

Thanks for the thoughtful review of Bob Dylan’s new album and current incarnation [“Fix Is In on Dylan: Modern Times Worst Since Self-Portrait,” Ron Rosenbaum, Edgy Enthusiast, Sept. 11]. I don’t agree wholeheartedly, but I appreciate Mr. Rosenbaum’s well-pleaded case that allowed me to think deeper Read More

By Staff, Staff 7/24/06 12:00am

Letters

Standing Up to a Stand-Up Guy

To the Editor:

I like Joe Conason because I think he’s a stand-up guy. He has been an ardent defender of President Clinton and his administration’s accomplishments. So it is with regret that I conclude that he has gotten Joe Lieberman all wrong in his July 17 column [“Read More

By Staff, Staff 6/12/06 12:00am

Letters

He Gets It

To the Editor:

I’m sure you’ve received an onslaught of e-mails regarding Ron Rosenbaum’s article [“Uses of Disenchantment: TV Anchor-Mom Fights Autism and Films It,” Edgy Enthusiast, June 5], but I felt the need to commend Mr. Rosenbaum on his piece, which exposes the real-life issues of the families of Read More

By Staff, Staff 4/17/06 12:00am

Letters

Cashing In

To the Editor:

I really liked Ron Rosenbaum’s Rosanne Cash piece [“I Got Rosanne Cash’s Black Cadillac Album and Barely Survived,” The Edgy Enthusiast, April 10]. It is quite wonderful that father and daughter could be so far from each other’s stance theologically and still have so much love between them—a Read More

By Staff 3/26/06 4:14pm

Nicholas Lemann for Harvard President

Ron Rosenbaum mentions the Columbia Journalism dean favorably—and I’m hoping that the Harvard Board of Overseers thinks of Lemann for the Harvard presidency. For a few reasons (not just that he’s an old friend whom I met when we were undergraduates in Cambridge). He’s brilliant and distinguished, to begin with, and intellectually sophisticated, a Read More