I’ll be the bearer of bad news: the press that most publicists chase for clients isn’t really worth anything. There’s a good chance no one will actually see it. Except the client, that is. The flack will make damn sure of that.
But other than that, the assumptions of publicists, clients and journalists—that being featured Read More
Remember Ryan Holiday? He’s the longtime personal PR machine behind American Apparel (and Tucker Max!) whose tell-all book, Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, was bought by Penguin’s imprint Portfolio and came with its own outline for a media campaign that included “Fake Leaked Chapters.” (And it’s on sale as of today!)
We’re not sure if Mr. Holiday’s link-baiting piece on Forbes.com this morning counts as “leaked,” since he put his byline next to it, but it’s definitely designed to blow up the Internet, starting with its craftily designed title “Your Favorite Bloggers are Literally Crazy (And That’s Why They’re Popular).” Almost two hours after appearing, the post has now been deleted from Forbes’ website! How strange! Could this have anything to do with the multiple media outlets that were forced to “correct” articles relating to Mr. Holiday from yesterday’s PR blitzkrieg? Read More
After a spring of heady real estate sales, we’ve been waiting for the traditional summer slump, as buyers opt to spend their weekends in the Hamptons instead of house hunting in the city.
But we’ve started to doubt that such a time will ever arrive. First, the Stanford White-designed mansion on Fifth Avenue closed for $42 million on Friday and now Forbes chief operating officer Timothy C. Forbes has listed his Greenwich Village townhouse for $12.95 million. And we suppose if anyone should know about the market it’s Mr. Forbes, son of the late Malcolm Forbes and co-president of his family’s financial publishing empire? Read More
Thought Catalog is an experimental media company that sells display advertising against millennial eagerness to convert their personal lives into shareable content without any compensation other than the social capital of being liked and followed. Media critics who mistake it for a generational literary manifesto often find themselves mired in irrational hatred of the website when, really, they ought to save their breath for Thought Catalog’s obvious progenitor, Facebook. The true sign that a company’s ambitions are more business-oriented than artistic—insofar as Thought Catalog can be considered such—is coverage in the capitalist bible Forbes. Which it now has. Read More
AAA Rating, affirmed: it would have taken Superman being placed in DC Comics’ batting lineup to overcome The Wall Street Journal last night. Wall Street may have had a rollercoaster week, but the Journal’s softball team was trending upwards – they beat DC’s Bullets 11-4.
News assistant Will Smith—yes, that one—hit three homeruns in three directions, prompting Read More
Randall Lane is leaving Newsweek/The Daily Beast for Forbes, where he will be an Editor, the money mag announced today. Mr. Lane was Editor-at-Large at Newsweek/The Daily Beast.
In the hiring announcement, Steve Forbes cites Mr. Lane’s knowledge of the website side as a reason. “Precisely because Randall knows the print and electronic worlds, he Read More
Although they had a rocky start to the season (and a broken nose), the team’s stats are now giving Tina Brown reason to celebrate the merger (recently christened again by the recent redirect of Newsweek‘s site to the belly of the Beast). Before The Daily Beast and Newsweek merged, they Read More
It’s been a while since we heard from Julia Allison–the hyperconfessional onetime princess of the Gawker-made “fameball” set, whose antics were brought to light, at a granular pace, on Gawker, and comprehensively in Vanessa Grigoriadis’s New York article on web-era cynicism. The social-media socialite, famed for her writing on sex and relationships as Read More
Last weekend was a bad time to be Rupert Murdoch. Not only did he shutter British tabloid News of the World after the phone hacking scandal reached epic proportions, but The Wall Street Journal’s champion softball team lost a highly anticipated game…to a bunch of stoners. Read More
- Behold, a Kevin Bacon statue made out of…BACON! We demand a Mia Hamm statue made out of Hamm. And then a companion Jon Hamm ham statue. And then an entire meat museum built next to Madame Tussaud’s. Lady Gaga’s meat dress needs a new home.
- Times’ columnists before-and-after hot-or-not slideshow. Spoiler warning: Read More
