By Drew Grant 5/10 4:23pm

Vice

Shane Smith, Vice founder (Getty Images)

Vice TV on HBO: Bill Maher and Fareed Zakaria Join Mad Media Venture

We shouldn’t be surprised that Vice Media’s stunning transformation over the years– from a dirty Canadian hipster zine founded by anarchists and ex-junkies, to a slick site (thanks, Viacom!) focused on original video  content–has lead to a pot of gold.

Since its inception, Vice has been pitching shows to networks, none of which panned out into anything, as the Vice brand wasn’t exactly TV friendly (no, not even to the audiences of Jackass). But 2.0 Vice (and Vice.TV), with its lack of Gavin McInnes and new-found social consciousness, has landed founder Shane Smith his first network show. Forget Vice.TV…this is Vice TV! Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/05/11 2:00pm

Starchitects

Video

Frank Gehry, you're a genius!

Frank Gehry Really, Really Regrets His Guest Appearance on The Simpsons

Because of his successful style, Frank Gehry sometimes comes under criticism for being a hack whose buildings all look the same—even if in their 50th iteration, those waving bands of metal still look amazing, fresh and different. This sensibility was, like so many other things, immortalized on The Simpsons, in which Mr. Gehry was perhaps the first and only architect to ever make a guest appearance—an appearance that still haunts him to this day. Read More

By John Koblin 8/18/10 9:27pm

Moves

Fareed Zakaria Joins Time

And here’s the latest blow to NewsweeK: Fareed Zakaria is packing his bags and heading over to Time. He represents yet another high profile departue from the magazine, and this move must cement the feeling to the old guard at Newsweek that their era really is over. Mr. Zakaria isn’t going into academica (Evan Thomas is doing that), Read More

By John Koblin 3/24/09 12:22pm

The Reconstruction of Eliot Spitzer: Notes From a Boomlet

Welcome back, Mr. ex-Governor.

This week the Steamroller has been on a roll, writing columns about the financial mess on Slate, appearing to talk about it on national TV and on the radio at WNYC, giving an interview to the Times and floated across a magazine cover as the best next Treasury secretary. That’s all Read More

By Joe Conason 2/24/09 2:30pm

Universal Health Care Foes Pushed to the Margins, Finally

At the brink of global ruin, many Americans suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable, and to reject foolish notions that were once deemed brilliant. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries solved problems that have baffled us for generations.

Nationalizing major banks, temporarily at Read More