The new not normal (CBS)

So we already knew that David Pogue was a little bit...off. The New York Times reporter has a reputation for being both the most famous tech writer in the country as well as the most controversial. He's been accused of shilling for Apple and FoxConn, which produces Apple products, and possibly dating one of their publicists. These are all pretty sketchy things.

But nothing explains this Christmas video he made for CBS Sunday Morning, where he appears as a weekend tech consultant correspondent in a strange, non-conflict of interest arrangement. In the video he plays Techno Claus who for some reason sounds a lot like Mike Myers's Linda Richman in "Coffee Talk." And that's just the beginning.


So just some quick notes here:
a) Although he doesn't blatantly promote any Apple gizmos, Techno Claus does include a $30 Monopoly game which is only different from regular Monopoly because you use your iPad to transfer the fake cash, and appears to be holding an iPhone while plugging the POP Bluetooth handset. And there are about five iPads sitting in the shot where he tries to sell $100 wireless speakers.

b) "You might think I'm hiding some elf puppeteers, but no—these are actually brain-controlled ears!" is something an INSANE person might say.

c) This product also power to control the brains of four high-school-aged girls, who all rush to kiss the 49-year-old in a Santa costume and brain-controlled cat ears.

d) No seriously, why is he talking like that?

e) The part where he suggests a Kindle for a good Christmas gift because it's cheap, and then spends the whole time deriding it for not being more like a tablet.

f) For Techno Claus, these are all pretty shitty presents. Most of them existed last year, and with the exception of the GPS dog tracker, none of them actuallymake your life easier. (Just weirder, and potentially involving a statutory rape conviction.)

Then again, what else can you expect from the guy who started his 2006 TED Talk with a parody of "Sound of Silence" that morphs into a weird confession about how he fantasizes about the guys from tech support dying in motorcycle crashes?

Well, whatever. Who's to judge. We're not the ones with the Emmy or NYT column, after all.

Village Voice Out of the Village Voice Building: Looks like those rumors we previously heard were, in fact, correct: The Village Voice will be moving out of the Village Voice Building at 36 Cooper Square, where it has been since 1992. The Grace Church School will be moving in its place. Voice editor in chief Tony Ortega told The Local: "Thankfully we’ll be leaving this dump in the spring, and we’ll be taking the letters on the outside of the building with us." For what it's worth, when this writer worked at the Voice, he found that building to have its charms, certainly more than the "dump" designation would merit. But different strokes, etc. [NYT/The Local]

Mazel Pogue: New York Times technology columnist David Pogue is engaged to his technology publicist girlfriend (now fiancée), which happened via the magic of technology (Vimeo). To be fair, his kids thought of it, and it's supposedly adorable, but just remember that Mr. Pogue is a living standards exemption to ethics in tech journalism, which is more often than not a casualty of the entire enterprise of tech journalism to begin with. [PR Newser]

Regarding the Deployment of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Sloppy Seconds, and Thirds: The Atlantic is running a cover of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney bruising each other, which New York magazine already did, and which Bloomberg BusinessWeek already spiked. Take a guess who produced the best one.  [Yahoo! News]

Vanity Flair: Vanity Fair blogger extraordinaire Juli Weiner has graciously given the world a peek into the inner workings of Graydon Carter’s media mecca. Academics, Fake Jeff Jarvis, futurists and Jay Rosen, take note: Journalism 9.0 is on the horizon, and so are those with the skills to create it. Get with the times.  [@juliweiner]

Fair Use? The Sun couldn't rip off TMZ's photo of Prince Harry hanging out in Vegas, playing “strip pool,” so it did the next best thing and found a staffer named Harry to pose naked on the cover to recreate the photo. If you're an editor, here's your next great idea. If you're not, sorry for giving your editor her next great idea. [@suttonnick]

Radar 4.0 Possibly Still a Ways Off: Either three-time Radar editor Maer Roshan’s Twitter got hacked, or he's filling out surveys on Facebook for money, and not nearly enough of it. [@MaerRoshan]

GQ Tebowing on Tebow Fans: New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow recently caught some flack for a Jesus-like pose in the magazine he didn't think would go in the rag, which goes to tell you how little his handlers know about magazines. Either way, GQ has taken to making fun of Tebow's fans/their own haters, now, and it is funny, and savvy. They are doing everything correctly here, and any social media expert who argues otherwise should be summarily deleted from this planet. [@GQMagazine]

Morning Jill: New York Times editor Jill Abramson is going to be on Morning Joe tomorrow. Set your DVRs? [@DylanByers]

We, the Bane of Akin (Bakin?) Embattled "legitimate" U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin: "The media is against us." First of all, he should note that when he's referring to this industry conspiratorially, we are capital-M "The Media." Second: We're "against" him like we're "against" a room full of cash (or the riches that One Of The Dumbest Ad-Libs In The History of American Politics can provide) while we have empty pockets. [via @KBAnderson]

The Most Important Thing Published Today That Nobody Will Read: The Neiman Journalism Lab published a piece about how landing-page traffic is going away, not that many media organizations have it to begin with. You know who was ahead of this curve by a long shot? And you know what site has, for most of its very prominent rise, always had consistently solid landing-page traffic? Welcome to the reasoning behind the Gawker redesign that everybody still hates. Nick Denton wins again. Look at a New York Times, a New York Post, or even a New York Observer story you've been driven directly toward. Your options for what you can click on from there are limited: You can move to other verticals, related stories, Outbrain stories or maybe the top-trafficked stories, which you may or may not have interest in. Get linked to a Gawker story? There's the infinite river of news, to the right of every story. Fact: This doesn't make the Gawker redesign any less irritating, and commenters remain eternally stupid.  [Neiman Journalism Lab]

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And we have managed to get through a media roundup without having to get into the aforementioned Twitter beef, helpfully summarized by Fake George Gurley here. Please make tomorrow easier and feed us your stunning media tips, your stunningly insipid media gossip, your stunningly creative media hair tips and your stunningly scandalous media nachos orders.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek  

Pogue's Phone Goes Rogue: New York Times technology columnist and living Times standards exemption David Pogue has lost his iPhone! He is a known fan of Apple products (and has also written some books about how to make the most out of them) but Apple has yet to respond to this crisis in the form of a Black-Ops Phone Recovery Delta Squad. Instead, it is the Gawker Media blog Gizmodo: Nerds With Attitude™ since 2002—that roguish buyer of secondary market iPhones and Apple's Public Enemy #1—that has come to the rescue. Lo and Behold, with the forces of Apple, David Pogue, Gizmodo, and The Police-Surveillance State, this crisis has been resolved amicably. [Gizmodo]

Power Editor Eats Proper: The Editorial Director of Fairchild Publications, Peter W. Kaplan, has a grapefruit—the august King of the Citrus Family—and coffee, black—really, the only way it should be consumed— for breakfast every morning. Someone get this man a serrated spoon. [BonAppetit]

Most Disturbing First Sentence 2012 Nominee: Former xoJane beauty columnist and current VICE columnist Cat Marnell, shine on, you crazy diamond. Shine on. Readers, you've been warned. [VICE]

Televised News Still Not Up To Sorkin Standard: Either cable news networks or their viewers are too stupid to understand the LIBOR scandal. [Huffington Post]

More Than Enuffington: The Huffington Post's tablet magazine went from "$1.99 a month" to "Free-Ninety-Nine a year" in just five issues. [Capital New York]

Local Paper Makes Administrative Changes: Lady and man leave jobs, man to take lady's previous job. Rumors about other man assuming newly-created fake position are thus far unconfirmed. [New York Observer, @George_Gurley]

Peacock Just Don't Give a Care: All your noise about how awful NBC's coverage of the Olympics has been? Your petitions and your blog posts and your Tweets? Sorry, but NBC could care less. They think this thing has just been going gangbusters. [All Things D]

Young People To Eat Old People, Who Will First Eat The Young People's Words: What's the future of the Observer's dining desk look like? How about: Someone trying to figure out what this 17 year-old editor-in-chief of his own food magazine is doing correctly, and shamelessly replicating it so they don't trample us on the way up. [Chicago Reader]

Ever Upstream: Habitual gambler and erstwhile Portfolio blogger Felix Salmon offers his keen-eyed commentary on the events of the day. [Felix Salmon's Tumblr]

Brooks and Robbers: Former Murdoch lieutenant Rebekah Brooks was formally charged with doing scandalous things to produce scandalous news. [BNO News]

New York Post Brass Snubs Hard-Nosed Underling: When the Post's Media Ink columnist Keith Kelly called this writer at his desk this afternoon to discuss various administrative comings and goings, he was helpfully referred to speak with the actual parties about whom he had inquired. We also took the opportunity to learn from Kelly that The Daily's Editor-in-Chief and New York Post executive editor Jesse Angelo sat next to Kelly as a plucky young Post-ie, and yet, Mr. Kelly was not, in fact, invited to Angelo's wedding (but Maury Povich was?!). He had to learn about it from the paper's Administrative Weddings section. [Page Six] 

Local Newspaper Makes Further Administrative Changes: New York Observer managing editor Michael Woodsmall has been rotated out of the local weekly newspaper's softball lineup against The Nation tomorrow night, for which he provided some terrible excuse about having to go watch Ichiro Suzuki play against his former baseball organization, the Seattle Mariners, later in the evening in The Bronx, at Yankee Stadium. Observer alumnus and 2011 Media Power Bachelor Nate Freeman has been rotated into the lineup as his interim replacement, but his fielding position has yet to be decided. De facto Observer softball captain Daniel Edward Rosen declined to comment on the lineup change.

Please send your tips, legal threats, unused Williams-Sonoma Gift Cards, internal memos, nominations for 2012's Media Power Bachelors, and conspiracy theories about the inventor of Formsping.Me right here.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The Sword of Damocles hangs no more for David Pogue.

To refresh your memory, Mr. Pogue—easily one of the most widely-read technology columnists in the country, and a major asset to the Times—was recently found to have spoken at a seminar for communications professionals, something strictly against the New York Times standards.

This is not the first time his compliance with the Times' standards or ethics have been called into question.

Among others:

• June 2009: David Pogue takes a paid speaking gig in California for an industry trade group, theConsumer Electronics Association's "CEO Summit." He was reprimanded by way of—per the Times—being "reminded of the policy provisions barring acceptance of speaking fees or travel expenses from all but educational or other non-profit organizations that do not have lobbying or political activity as a major focus."
• August 2009: David Pogue writes a glowing review of Apple operating system Snow Leopard in the Times. He has also written a book about the operating system, and thus, plainly stood to profit from his own review.
• September 2009: David Pogue's many conflicts merit their own column from the New York Times ombudsman, Clark Hoyt ("He Works For the Times, Too") in which three separate journalism ethicsists conclude unanimously that Mr. Pogue's work outside the Times often stands in strict ethical opposition to the paper. No punishment is doled out; a disclosure is added to his blog. Mr. Pogue's response is that he is "not a reporter."
• October 2009: David Pogue takes a speaking fee from defense contractor Raytheon and a trip to Disney World. As previously mentioned, Times standards prohibit staffers for taking fees from anyone other than non-profits.
• May 2011: It's revealed that David Pogue is dating PR professional Nikki Dugan; the firm she works for represents a number of companies David Pogue has written about. Times technology editor Damon Darlin explains that there were no conflicts; Mr. Pogue told him about the relationship in December, when it started, and that all pitches from Ms. Dugan's company will go through Mr. Darlin from that point forward. (A source tells the Observer that the relationship between Mr. Pogue and Ms. Dugan started as early as April 2010.)
• June 2011: It's revealed that Mr. Pogue took another speaking engagement, this time to a group of communications professionals.

(He's also had some slightly turbulent problems at home involving press, and continues to.)

Given the seriousness with which the Times takes their standards policy—and given the precedent for violations of it: zero-tolerance, whether you understand the rules or not—one would think Mr. Pogue's status with the Times would be called into question.

Not so much. The decision, as handed down for delivery by Arthur Brisbane, the Times' Public Editor:

[An] inquiry into it has led to a Times internal review and, as a consequence, Pogue is barred from making any more speeches like this one to public relations professionals.

Also:

...the speech flagrantly violates the prohibition against giving advice at paid P.R. conferences.

But unlike less lucky (or popular) Times staffers, David Pogue will not be fired, and will only have a fraction of his supplementary income hedged by the Times. If not entirely predictable, it's a lucky break: Mr. Pogue still has issues closer to the chest to concern himself with. Heavy hangs the head onwhich the crown of technology-writing for all of geekdom hangs, or something along those lines.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

If only there were a gadget to fix domestic strife.

Now it seems his estranged wife, Jennifer Pogue, is also getting into the writing game. The couple recently announced they were separating after more than 15 years, following an incident in which both Pogues were arrested in a domestic disturbance. During the incident, Mr. Pogue, reportedly upset that Ms. Pogue was at home during one of his visits with their children, is said to have assaulted her with an iPhone. That detail drew attention due in no small part to repeated accusations of Mr. Pogue being a shill for Apple products; he even once built a page on his website to defend himself against this criticism.

Now, Ms. Pogue has offered up her side of the story in a letter to a local news website, WestportNow, that seeks, as she put it, to “correct the misinformation” in the press.

“I was assaulted with my own iPhone while I was lying on my bed reading a book,” she wrote. “I fought to get my iPhone back because I had an audiophile [sic] from earlier that evening of David treating me horribly in front of my children.” That was when she called 911, she explained, going on to accuse her soon-to-be-ex-husband of lying to police, “telling them that I was not supposed to be in the house and that he was acting in self-defense—not that he assaulted me first.”

The letter goes on to explain that Ms. Pogue considers herself a “victim of the press” and that she is “not happy the way people have spun this story,” though her complaints are not specified. Ms. Pogue also wrote that she has been “bullied by my husband’s divorce lawyer,” who threatened to sue her for “any loss in David’s income if I released the iPhone audiotape” and that the money would come from the alimony he pays her.

Ms. Pogue continued to say that the threat is a “perfect example of how victims’ rights are not fully protected and how bullies continue to be bullies.” Mr. Pogue, the so-called “Oprah of gadgets,” has often been the subject of media scrutiny, including in this paper, for a number of business endeavors that seem to violate New York Times ethics policies. The latest controversy involves Mr. Pogue’s accepting a speakers’ fee to offer advice to a group of corporate communication professionals. The Times is reviewing the matter.

As for the charges by the state against Mr. Pogue and his estranged wife, they were dropped.

Reached by phone on Monday evening, Mr. Pogue’s lawyer, Mark Sherman, assured the Transom he would return to us with a “biting” comment regarding Ms. Pogue’s letter, to be drafted between himself and the divorce lawyer. As of this writing, that comment has yet to materialize, and Mr. Sherman did not return a subsequent follow-up call.

UPDATE: The Transom spoke with Mark Sherman—David Pogue's lawyer—this evening. Mr. Sherman noted: "Mrs. Pogue's accusations regarding David's divorce strategy are pure fiction." Also: "In order to serve the best interests of the Pogue children, it would be inappropriate to comment any further. It is unfortunate that Mrs. Pogue is not exercising the same degree of discretion."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

As we've done for the last week

Via spokeswoman Eileen Murphy, the Times has yet to deliver a decision.

Mr. Pogue's scuffle with the paper's standards isn't notable for any particular degree of heinous behavior—writers speak to P.R. professionals at luncheons and seminars often (the writer of this post has, too, but only once, he didn't get paid for it, and it was nothing short of unpleasant and otherwise, an experience he'd rather not have ever again).

But Mr. Pogue's intense popularity has shielded him from facing serious consequences from his editors at the Times, while less popular writers with fewer scraps with the Times standards'—if any at all—have been summarily dismissed on first instances.

The typically prolific Mr. Pogue has been somewhat quiet on Twitter over the last week (only one Tweet today, for example).

PogueWatch will return on Tuesday.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

As previously mentioned, David Pogue has had entanglements with the Times standards in the past; it's been two days, and still, no answer on the fate of the columnist over the recent revelation that he accepted a paid speaking gig for communications professionals, something strictly against the Times' rules. [Over the last two days, a spokeswoman from the New York Times has told the Observer that the issue is still being discussed with Mr. Pogue's editors. As of this post being published, today's call to said spokeswoman has yet to be returned. We will update if we hear from her. Again.]

Mr. Pogue is arguably one of the most popular personal technology columnists in the country, if not the most popular, and as far as technolgy writers go at the Times, brings to the paper an otherwise unrivaled audience.

Yesterday, we noted Mr. Pogue's Twitter feed had slowed down; last night, he revved the engine, as it were, and even struck out against a critic accusing him of being an Apple "fanboy." Mr. Pogue directed his online assailant to a page on his website specifically tailored to deflect critiques of being an "Apple" fanboy, which come in response to his often unrelenting praise of Apple products (and the fact that he authors a bestselling series on them as well).

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

To recap:

Mr. Pogue was paid to speak for a seminar where he helped instruct publicists how to pitch him. This is not simpatico with the way the New York Times does things; their guidelines strictly forbid such engagements. Precedent? Thomas L. Friedman was once forced to return a $75,000 speaking fee. The Times called it a "misunderstanding." The difference between Messrs. Friedman and Pogue?

Mr. Pogue has something Mr. Friedman didn't at the time he had to return his speaking fee: an extensive laundry list of very public conflicted interests with regard to his writing for the Times, none of which have landed him in any more trouble than a severe ink-lashing from the paper's then-ombudsman. A spokeswoman for the Times told us yesterday that the they have yet to render a verdict on Mr. Pogue's fate, explaining that discussions with Mr. Pogue's editors were still "ongoing." As of this writing, that same spokeswoman told us these discussions were indeed still ongoing.

If the Times were to have to cast Mr. Pogue aside, not only would the loss would be immediately quantifiable—he has more Twitter followers than the entire Times technology reporting staff combined—but would present an opportunity to the paper's competitors (namely: the Wall Street Journal) who have the kinds of standards Mr. Pogue's other engagements wouldn't violate. The Journal, for example, kept former Hillary Clinton advisor Mark Penn on board even after his egregious conflicts-of-interest (drumming up business for his communications firm with advocacy in his columns) were called out by Gawker.com in 2009.

[Trivia: The spokesman who delivered the Journal's stance on Mark Penn's ethical brouhaha is Robert "The Bobster" Christie, who's now at the New York Times as the VP of Corporate Communications, and who has had to deal with more than one ethics question regarding David Pogue since he defected there last March.]

Meanwhile, Mark Ragan, the CEO of Ragan Communications—the company who produced the David Pogue broadcast in question—decided to comment on the matter in yesterday's post. Among other highlights, Mr. Ragan takes the time to note:

Never has the word 'scandal' been more overblown.

What David does that IS useful for PR people is dig out a few pitches that he finds clever. As a tech journalist,  he is forever approached by companies that have launched new gadgets. Most of those pitches are from PR people.  He is in a unique position to tell them how to stop bothering him and other journalists and do their job better.

That unique position, of course, being "poised to profit from doing so," something explicitly against the Times guidelines. For his part, Mr. Pogue has been quiet on the entire matter; outside of it, as well. The typically prolific Tweeter has updated his feed only four times over the last two days.

fkamer@observer.com | On Twitter

“Stand back! I’m here!”

As it turned out, “Doctor” Pogue was there as a representative of the “Industry Rescue Service” and his bedridden patient was “AM/FM.” Mr. Pogue vamped surprise, pieced the situation together out loud—the patient was a metaphor for the dying radio industry—then whipped out a laptop, and “prescribed” his “patient” an online radio site.

The video was typical of Mr. Pogue’s style: folksy and accessible, relentlessly service-oriented and generalized. More than anything, it was goofy and affable.

“We’re talking about a guy who was trained as a pianist and a magician,” said Jeff Yablon, a tech writer who met Mr. Pogue in the early 90’s, when Mr. Yablon was the president of the Computer Press Association and Mr. Pogue’s writing career was still in its earliest stages.

Mr. Pogue’s entertaining tech coverage has conjured a massive and devoted following, but his greatest trick might be convincing the stately Times not to make him disappear—despite raising some of the more thorny conflict-of-interest questions the paper has confronted in recent years.

Mr. Pogue has been accused of being an insidious shill for one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet, Apple, and was reported to be dating a publicist who represents many of the same companies he covers for the Times.

Seven days prior to the video’s release, Mr. Pogue and his estranged wife were each charged with disorderly conduct by police in Westport, Conn., after he allegedly hit her with—what else?—an iPhone.

In the video, the bite mark he reportedly received on his arm during the incident had apparently healed, or was well-concealed. It wasn’t noticeable. Not a single scratch.

If anything, it was classic David Pogue.

An Ohio native, Mr. Pogue graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1985 with a distinction in music. According to the biography on his website, Mr. Pogue moved to New York City after college, and worked a series of jobs in Broadway theater, with an ambition to compose for musicals. He eventually took up teaching at the New School and the Learning Annex, and went on to program and write manuals for various music software programs.

From there, he began teaching composers and Broadway stars how to use their computers, which evolved into—as he put it on his website—“Hollywood and literary celebrities, from Mia Farrow to Harry Connick Jr.”

“The first time I came across David Pogue he was working as Liza Minnelli’s geek-for-hire,” said Mr. Yablon. “He was doing social media marketing before that term existed. The routine was, ‘You know me, I work with these big names, you can trust me, I’ll set you straight on technology.’”

Mr. Pogue has often outlined his entertainment background as a foundation for his current work, once telling a music website that, as the youngest of three children, he is “a natural-born entertainer.” And, after a rare interview with Steve Jobs was criticized for a lack of skepticism, Mr. Pogue defended himself by saying, “I am not a reporter. I’ve been an opinion columnist my entire career … I try to entertain and inform.”

In 1988, Mr. Pogue began a regular column for the Apple fan magazine Macworld. In 1992, he wrote the second book in the “For Dummies” series, Macs for Dummies. He has written more than 50 books, making him, in the words of his own biography, a “ridiculously prolific author.” Only two of the books are fiction: a 1993 “techno-thriller” entitled Hard Drive and a 2010 young-adult book, Abby Carnelia’s One and Only Magical Power. (The Times’s own review noted that “Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for The New York Times and a former magic nerd himself, clearly has a lot of affection for kids.” In the second sentence of the review, the review’s author admits to crying at the end of the book.)

In 2000, Mr. Pogue brought his entertaining brand of explanation to the Times, where he was hired as the Personal Technology Columnist, and, since then, his State of the Art column has appeared regularly on the front page of the Thursday Business section.

He arrived at a crucial moment. Around the time of his hiring, the objects of Mr. Pogue’s affection and study—personal technology—started to transcend their roles as utilitarian aides and objects of geek affection and become fashionable accessories increasingly central to the lives of those who adopted them. When Apple released the iPod in 2001, Mr. Pogue became the go-to layman for the company’s new gadgets, and when the iPhone arrived, he filled his prose with apostlelike praise. (His Times video on the first iPhone is the second-most watched video ever uploaded by the newspaper, with nearly one and half million views.)

Mr. Pogue’s influence metastasized along with Apple’s market share, and his 1.3 million Twitter followers now dwarfs the digital presence of other marquee Times writers such as Thomas L. Friedman and Maureen Dowd. It’s more than four times the number of followers that Jenna Wortham, the Times’s decidedly hip, young tech reporter, has; Mr. Pogue, in fact, has more followers than the entire tech reporting staff of the Times combined.

“He’s like the Oprah of gadget writers,” said Michael Sebastian, the managing editor at PR Daily. “A single tweet from him can put you on the best-seller list.” Earlier this week, the appropriately named Cult of Mac tweeted out: “@Pogue...our servers just melted melted from your sorcery.”

“A review from David Pogue is the holy grail,” said a spokesperson from Open DNS. “After he wrote us up, we experienced the single biggest day of growth in the company’s entire history.” In the 24 hours after Pogue’s review appeared in the Times, Open DNS saw account creation jump 370 percent.

Mr. Pogue’s success has created some ethical entanglements. He has been attacked for taking paid speaking engagements, such as one for the Consumer Electronics Association’s “CEO Summit” near Los Angeles in June 2009. That fall—one month after then-public editor Clark Hoyt used an entire column (entitled “He Works for the Times, Too”) to admonish Mr. Pogue—he spoke at Disney World, in an event hosted by the defense contractor Raytheon Company.

In his column, Mr. Hoyt had challenged three media ethicists with Mr. Pogue’s case; all three agreed that Mr. Pogue’s interests were conflicted. His employment status remained unchanged. That same year, the Times fired a writer named Mike Albo, for taking a paid trip to write about junket travel culture for a separate publication—his first, and last, infraction. “Comparing this situation with one particular instance is not fair,” said Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy when asked to compare Mr. Pogue’s case with that of Mr. Albo. “There are different sets of circumstances involved. They’re handled on a case-by-case basis. We handle these situations in accordance with our policy. We are confident that our standards editor has made the appropriate judgment in each case.”

Jeff Jarvis, a best-selling author and journalism professor known for his strong, loudly broadcast opinions on media and tech, compared Mr. Pogue’s self-styled status an “entertainer” to that of Michael Arrington, owner of the blog TechCrunch, which was recently purchased by AOL. “When Mike Arrington says he’s not a journalist, he is really dismissing the label, because he began as an investor,” Mr. Jarvis explained. “I think Pogue is more specious, more for convenience. He expects us to trust him, but at the same time, he asks not to be held to the same standards.” Mr. Jarvis concluded: “I don’t buy his shtick about being an entertainer, not a journalist.”

Mr. Pogue’s harshest critics have focused on his undying praise of Apple products in the Times, and the potential conflict with his best-selling books on the company. Mr. Pogue has gone to bat for Apple’s products quite often, in his signature over-the-top style. An April post mocked the outrage over revelations that Apple was storing location data in its phones. “Ooh! Apple is spying! Ooh! The government is tracking! Ooh! Big Brother is watching!” he wrote. It also ominously noted: “The one legitimate concern [of Apple’s location tracking] is that someone else with access to your computer could retrieve the information about your travels and see where you’ve been. Your spouse, for example.”

A week after Mr. Pogue’s domestic dispute, Dan Lyons, a longtime press foe of Mr. Pogue’s, claimed an even more personal conflict. Mr. Lyons wrote for The Daily Beast that Mr. Pogue had been dating Nicki Dugan, a public relations executive who works out of San Francisco. A journalist dating a public relations executive is hardly novel, but Ms. Dugan is a vice president at OutCast, which represents some of Silicon Alley’s most prominent tech companies.

The Times responded by saying that Mr. Pogue had approached technology editor Damon Darlin in December with the news of his relationship, and that Ms. Dugan didn’t pitch Mr. Pogue stories. The Daily Beast produced several instances where Mr. Pogue seemed to write glowingly of OutCast clients and disparagingly of OutCast competitors. When speaking with The Observer, Mr. Darlin questioned that reporting, noting that OutCast doesn’t represent Amazon, but an Amazon business-to-business product. Mr. Lyons also cited a review by Mr. Pogue of a competitor to Netflix, which is an OutCast client. “No intelligent person would construe that as a positive review for Netflix,” Mr. Darlin noted. Finally, refuting Mr. Lyons’s argument that Mr. Pogue’s writing about Groupon and Skype was conflicted by another OutCast client, a venture capital firm with investments in both, Mr. Darlin argued that this is “a pretty thin string.”

“I can understand why there’s skepticism,” Mr. Darlin admitted, “and that’s always healthy under an intelligent readership. Because of these other questions that have been raised in the past, it’s very easy for someone to make that charge. In this case, that charge doesn’t stick.” Yet when asked if Mr. Pogue had been given preferential treatment by Times editors during past transgressions, Mr. Darlin noted that he wasn’t familiar with Mr. Albo’s situation, and that the Times has “addressed all of this. We’ve been satisfied that under the rules we’ve set up for [Mr. Pogue], and that there is no conflict.”

Responding to an emailed request to speak, Times executive editor Bill Keller referred The Observer to a spokesperson, noting simply: “We have rules. David followed them.”

An assistant in the office of the Times’s current public editor, Arthur Brisbane, responded: “[W]e dealt with this issue last week after the Daily Beast story” and included Mr. Brisbane’s response to a reader about the issue. In it, Mr. Brisbane noted that he had “spoken with [David Pogue] and Times editors and satisfied myself that Pogue has made the appropriate disclosures about his relationship with Nicki Dugan of OutCast Agency. Any time there is a conflict, it does create complications but I think in this case Pogue and his editor have taken the appropriate steps to comply with the newspaper’s ethics policy.”

Verizon even set aside a limited quantity of iPhones for existing customers, and orders will be shipped to arrive on or before Feb. 10, an interesting PR move since bringing the iPhone to the carrier is expected to attract customers sick of AT&T dropping their calls. Classy, Verizon.

The iPhone 4 will be available for non-Verizon customers on Feb. 10, priced at $199.99 for the 16 GB iPhone 4 or $299.99 for the 32 GB iPhone 4 with a new two-year customer agreement. A data plan is $29.99 a month.

Early reviews of the Verizon iPhone say the call quality is crisp, but the data conntection is much slower and the phone can't handle as much data and voice action at the same time as its AT&T counterpart.

"While it isn't all rainbows and flowers (the data speed issues or the voice / data considerations could be a dealbreaker for some), it does kind of feel like Apple and Verizon did the impossible: they made the best smartphone in America just a little bit better," Engadget's Joshua Topolsky, who lives in Brooklyn, wrote after testing the device. David Pogue at The New York Times ran around New York and other cities with the Verizon and AT&T iPhones and was impressed.

There is still fear that the AT&T diaspora could affect call quality for current Verizon customers. We won't know if that's true for another two weeks.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries