“No, I didn’t win the lottery and I’m not a lucky honeymooner,” she helpfully explained on the site. “I’ve been invited by the Tanzania Tourist Board to go on safari and visit several of the country’s best lodges, including the tented camp that Travel + Leisure has called ‘the best hotel in the world’ for the past two years.”

But was it just a random stroke of good luck that the Tanzanians decided to bestow such good fortune on this scribe? Or did it have something to do with the lovely post Ms. Zeveloff wrote back in July, noting that Singita Grumeti Reserves in Tanzania’s SerengetiNational Park had been named “the best hotel in the world” by Travel + Leisure for the second year in a row.

“Despite its remote location, Singita’s guests are treated to five-star service and accommodations,” she elaborated. “Rooms in the tents and villas start at around $850 per person per night, although private lodges and villas go for several thousands of dollars per night. Rates include daily game drives, food, and drink.”

Ms. Zeveloff even accompanied the breathless good news that Singita was once again the best hotel in the world with an impresively comprehensive slideshow. (And, admittedly, it does look decent.)

How does Business Insider EIC Henry Blodget feel about junkets? Fine, as long as they are fun.

“It’s case-by-case,” he told Off the Record. “We discuss whether the trip or event is likely to help us produce stuff that our readers will enjoy. If the answer is yes, we’re happy to consider it. If it sounds godawfully boring, we’ll pass. (And if we do it, obviously, we’ll disclose it.)”

Well, Ms. Zeveloff did write a disclosure, though she neglected to add the part about sucking up in advance.

As for the Tanzania Tourist Board, it’s certainly getting its money’s worth. Ms. Zeveloff has already written another pre-voyage post, titled “I Can’t Believe How Little Luggage I Can Bring on My Ten-Day Trip to Tanzania,” and promises readers a detailed, blow-by-blow account of her travels. Off the Record hopes she has a lovely trip to the best hotel in the world. And that she never ends up at The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or Travel + Leisure or one of those other publications that tend to be a little pickier about these things.

Spin Cycle: After recently being aquired by BuzzMedia—owner of sites like Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, the esteemed KimKardashian.com, and the zombie version of former Gawker music blog Idolator—the new owners of Spin magazine (which has looked especially great in the last few months) decided it would be in the magazine's best interest to lay off the Spin Editor-in-Chief Steve Kandell, as well as associate editor Melissa Giannini, and news editor Devon Maloney. This raises the question as to whether or not Spin's recent investigation into America's bath salts epidemic was shortsighted, in that it didn't extend to the magazine's new ownership. [Billboard]

Gawker, Three Hours Later: Gawker.com recently scooped up former Good senior editor Cord Jefferson, who has filed some of the site's best pieces as of late, like the one on Black Atheism and a before-the-backlash piece about the unsavory anti-gay practices of Chick-Fil-A. Jefferson—who's been busy freelancing for places like The Nation as well—will be the site's "West Coast editor" and a Gizmodo contributor. He broke the news himself on Twitter on Friday. [@CordJefferson]

The Nu-Baby-Cuddling Nick Denton Cares About Babies: Making good on Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton's promise to care about babies and not eat them force them to write eight posts a day, the company will now start covering "100% of medical insurance, including for spouses & families" notes editorial ringleader somethingorother Scott Kidder. They're hiring, but if you're reading this, you probably have little interest in any of the positions they're hiring for. [@skidder]

Bludgeoned with Blodget: Henry Blodget got profiled by the Wall Street Journal's Keach Hagey. This is two years after Bloomberg Businessweek profiled him (and a few months after the Times profile of B.I. star Joe Wiesenthal). The title of it? "Blodget's Second Act," which is not a reference to his forthcoming Catskills residency with Eliot Spitzer. How many times does this man get a second act? One could suggest that Business Insider is closer to a second act itself, which would make this Blodget's third? Whatever, it's their accounting, not mine. But, worth noting: "The site has yet to turn much of a profit." For what it's worth, Hagey's piece is a quick, concise, good read. [WSJ]

Romenesko Empire: Outside digital director Nicholas Jackson notes that "Romenesko has made the big-time," referring to the giant, ugly skin covering his site right now. That said, cash money is cash money. May the Dread Pirate Ship Romenesko sell those CPMs to his heart's content. [@NBJ914 | Romenesko]

Like Old L.A. Times: A memo/press release recently sent out to the newsroom/media reporter pool from the L.A. Times beams with excitement at the hiring of three new reporters. Three! New! Reporters! They're trying to beef up their entertainment news presence. Romenesko has the full memo up. [Romenesko]'

Oh, Andy: Former Huffington Post contributor, 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' co-creator, National Book Awards host for two years running, and now, New Yorker humor blogger Andy Borowitz is upsetting people who don't get his humor, per the usual. Troll the good fight, sir. [@randlechris]

n+fun: Village Voice music editor Maura Johnston notes a line from the new Alix Kates Shulman book, Menage: "This is the Times, not n+1." This is both as oddly irritating as it is perfectly resonant. [@maura]

This Week, In TinaWeek: Newsweek's cover this week trolls approximately half of America in a move they likely want construed as at least moderately partisan. Having already painted Obama as the Gayest President Ever, they're looking to paint Mitt Romney as the Wimpiest Presidential Candidate Ever. Mother Jones' Adam Serwer noted it as "100 percent pure, unrefined, uncut, #dumbgeist." [@AdamSerwer]

TinaWeek Goes Meta: As if that weren't enough, there's also a feature by former French Vogue Editor-in-Chief Juliet Joan Buck about how she was "duped" by the first lady of Syria when profiling her for Vogue. The profile—which ended up costing her the job at Vogue she's held since she was 23—was written before the world learned about the extent to which Syria's dictatorship is evil, and was removed from Vogue's website three months after it was published. The Newsweek piece ends with the words "Juliet Joan Buck is writing a memoir"—which, you ain't kidding—and a post-script with quotes from Anna Wintour and the PR firm that baited Buck. Lesson: This is what happens when you take evil flacks at their word. [Newsweek]

Know anything more about these items? Know anything more about anything? Please send your tips, Animals-Walking-Into-a-Bar Jokes, legal threats, Nikki Finke fan mail, and Bob Dylan quotes right here.

Happy Monday.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Mr. Blodget.

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget has challenged journalism professor Dan Reimhold to a blog-off against BI's pathologically prolific writer Joe Weisenthal, according to Poynter.

It all started when Mr. Reimhold, who teaches at the University of Tampa, wrote a mild blog post about how he would never teach his students to be like Mr. Weisenthal, presumably because Mr. Reimhold doesn't hate his students. According to a recent Times Magazine profile, Mr. Weisenthal has no personal life, poor journalistic accuracy, and some gastrointestinal issues. Instead, Mr. Reimhold urged his students to be like the late Anthony Shadid. Easier said than done, prof!

So, yes, Mr. Reimhold is clearly a little out of touch with the professional realities of journalism in 2012. (Let's all agree not to tell him about BuzzFeed.) But he is in for a rude awakening that is sure to be documented in painful detail.

Mr. Blodget wrote:

In my initial response to Professor Reimold, I said that Joe Weisenthal's job was much more difficult than he thought and suggested that, if he were to try to do it for a day, he would fail miserably. And now, in a new post, his third installment in this series, the professor is offering to take us up on that challenge! So, we're on, professor! Let us know when you'll be here (we can help with the place to stay). We'll give you a desk right near Joe Weisenthal and you can crank for as long as you like. And we'll also document the whole thing--our readers will love it. Can't wait!

Remind us to forget our Twitter password that day.

For some reason, Blodget has authored a troll-baiting piece on Business Insider asking why people do not like Jews.

The post initially looked like this. Note the slightly conspiratorial Hasidim and the assumption that "people" (non-specifically, in general) hate Jews:

Now it looks like this. Note the beautiful Hollywood Jedi/Jewess Natalie Portman, who is non-threatening and beautiful, and the clarification that only "some" people hate Jews:

Rather than link to it—or even, for that matter, bother reading it—let's just look at the superficial product he's produced here, which is likely to be the majority of what most people engaging in this will give anything resembling serious consideration to (a result partly produced by Blodget's commitment to headlines that write checks the stories below them can only occasionally cash).

Seeing as how Blodget himself is not Jewish, this is an odd question to ask, considering every race, religion, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and so on has been hated by another. If I were to ask, "Why do people hate Thought Catalog writers?" I would expect—and hope—the general population would assume I hate Thought Catalog writers, because I am "people." I am speaking as a "person."

In other words, to have a persecution complex about a religion you are not of might invite one who is of that religion (like the author of this blog post) to ask him:

Why do you think people hate Jews? Is it because you hate Jews?

For the record, I don't think Henry Blodget hates Jews.

I'm pretty sure he even has a few in his employ who he doesn't whip while building his SEO pyramids on a daily basis.

And I don't wonder whether or not Henry Blodget knows this might not be the best way to have a discussion about race and ethnicity and Anti-Semitism. Not that candor isn't appreciated, but The Internet Being What It Is, his post will no doubt invite a slew of nasty comments that will muddy anything that could remotely resemble an intelligible dialogue. And Henry Blodget is intelligent enough to know that this is the case, because he runs a business on the Internet.

Henry Blodget knows this is not the best way to have a discussion about race and ethnicity and Anti-Semitism.

The only possible motivation for writing a headline like that is to attract attention, and pageviews, and it's the kind of attention that will (naturally) only inflame parties on all sides (be they Jews, Jew Haters, Self-Loathing Jews, and so on). You can rest assured that whatever genuine intellectual curiosity Blodget has about this issue—and compassion towards marginalized and/or persecuted peoples, which I don't doubt he has—was made a moot point by that headline.

And as a Jew, I can tell Blodget, this does not necessarily help our cause.

All of which is to say: Blodget does love a juicy headline, and if he found the question at hand worth asking himself, well, it's obviously worth asking of him. Even if it's unfair to assume that Henry Blodget hates Jews.

Again, he probably doesn't.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The ongoing controversy over a Morgan Stanley research analyst who cut his earnings guidance for Facebook in the days ahead of the company's IPO is really about...Henry Blodget?

That's right. In the days leading up to Facebook's IPO, a Morgan Stanley tech analyst cut revenue guidance for the company, which would have been routine, except—Morgan Stanley was the lead underwriter on the offering, and the research was available to the investment bank's institution clients, but not retail investors.

Outrage ensued, and that's where Mr. Blodget came in—not just because Mr. Blodget was among the most outraged.

Morgan Stanley's explanation was that so-called Chinese walls separated the bankers who underwrote the offering from those who provide sell-side investment advice. And those Chinese walls were built after the tech bubble burst to protect investors from banking analysts. If only we knew an infamous banking analyst...

"I was one of the top-ranked Wall Street Internet analysts during the dotcom bubble," Mr. Blodget wrote in his column today.

The top analysts were said to have to "wear two hats," banker and analyst, and have to help investors while also maintaining great relationships with companies. At some firms, analysts were even paid directly for banking deals, though that wasn't the case at my firm (Merrill Lynch).

...

After the market crashed, a new New York Attorney General named Eliot Spitzerdecided to look into the research-banking conflict. And, thanks to my visibility, he started with me.

...

After extending his investigation to many other firms, Spitzer forced an industry-wide settlement in which the involvement of research analysts in IPOs was pared back and the "Chinese Wall" between research and banking was strengthened.

...

If this is an incubator, where's the ping pong table?

“On the West Coast, they call it the Stanford swivel,” said serial entrepreneur Nihal Mehta. “Like when you’re at Stanford, you kind of have to look around to make sure other people aren’t hearing. I find myself doing the Stanford swivel at Soho House, just to make sure that folks aren’t eavesdropping.”

Mr. Mehta, whose latest venture, LocalResponse, helps brands find and reward consumers posting about them on social media, was discussing the downside of talking shop in the recently refurbished sixth-floor drawing room of Soho House. “I was kinda joking around last time I was there that we’d have to sign N.D.A.’s,” said Mr. Mehta.

The notion that members of the tony, $1,800-to-$2,400-a-year private club would have to worry about techies stealing their start-up idea—rather than, say, an I-banker squirreling away a stock tip—has to do with the changing demographics of Soho House. Where a seat at the bar once meant overhearing talk about “taking helicopters to the Hamptons,” as one member told The Observer, these days, depending on the hour, the sixth floor might have more in common with a start-up hub than the lunch crowd at Michael’s or Bull and Bear.

With plans to expand to Brazil, Singapore and India, Soho House is flourishing globally, but in recent years the New York branch has suffered from an image problem. Of late, that is changing: the Meatpacking clubhouse has become a favorite for the tech sector. The building where Soho House resides was recently put up for sale, but far from being at risk of losing the 30-year lease it signed in 2001, the club is being touted by the broker as a selling point. Funnily, enough, it was the nerds who brought back the cool.

In May, Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm behind Facebook, Etsy and Kayak.com, chose to celebrate the launch of its New York outpost at Soho House. In June, OnSwipe held a demo of its software in the club’s fifth-floor library (which for the first several years of the club’s life had book-patterned wallpaper, but no books). This week, it will play host to a panel called “Bridging the Tech Gap.” And that doesn’t take into account the start-ups that treat the drawing room’s new tufted leather armchairs and brass-studded banquettes like a louche co-working space.

Unlike the influx of Wall Street types in the mid-aughts, however, it appears to be a shift “the House” is embracing. “Soho House is a private members club for creative people—digital technology is obviously a major part of doing business, so the two industries overlap in so many ways,” read a recent email from a club representative. “The House is popular for young entrepreneurs.” This emphasis on youth isn’t just talk: the club offers half-off membership to those under 27 if you can get two members to recommend you.

In fact, with the tech crowd, Soho House seems to have found the magic mix of creativity, youth and upward mobility. After all, it’s an industry whose stars are known for being young, innovative, well-capitalized—and, in stark contrast with Wall Street, they tend to build tools to facilitate, rather than provoke, civil disobedience.

“I’ve been looking at some incubators in town and it’s so weird because the Soho House appears to be an incubator and you don’t even have to get accepted!” said Lori Cheek, the founder of Cheek’d, an online dating service. Ms. Cheek, the long-standing mayor of Soho House on Foursquare, who first joined during her previous career as an architect, was referring to the admissions rate at programs like TechStars (where Cheek’d was a finalist), which can rival even Soho House’s exclusivity.

All summer, she used her three-guest-maximum pass to shuttle her business partner and two interns into the drawing room. “You can practically just sit there and somebody overhears your conversation and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’m building an app!’” said Ms. Cheek, a disarming platinum blonde with a fetching Kentucky drawl. “It’s wild, the connections I’ve made.”

“I hear a lot of talk about tech companies, which a few years ago, you wouldn’t have imagined,” said Shakil “Shak” Khan, another longtime member and investor and head of special projects at Spotify, a white-hot music start-up now integrated with Facebook. “Are the Foursquares and the Tumblrs and the Spotifys being started out of Soho House? Probably not,” he said. “But you know a lot of the surrounding support services, whether its P.R., digital P.R., designers, I’m seeing a lot of those there.”

“They kicked out all the ‘banker wankers’—isn’t that the term that everyone uses?” he added with a laugh.

“Actually it’s been a very strange turnover there,” Ms. Cheek also noted. “I don’t know if you knew that they were kind of getting rid of the bankers?”

Indeed, we had heard.

When Soho House founder and restaurateur Nick Jones exported his posh London-based concept to the cobblestoned stretch of the meatpacking district in 2003, the hope was that it would attract the same film and media types as its namesake across the pond. Prelaunch press insisted Lizzie Grubman and Paris Hilton would be left out in the cold, while Graydon Carter and David Bowie warmed themselves by the fire.

But Graydon’s ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting (not to mention the creative underclass) couldn’t necessarily plunk down more than a month’s rent for the privilege of, well, living like they were privileged. So, access to Soho House’s spa, screening room and rooftop pool were left to the usual well-heeled (some would say gauche) crowd. The following year, one disgruntled worker reported that the club was mostly “publicists and wanna-be socialites.”

Meanwhile, the meatpacking district was making its rapid descent into a playground for conspicuous spenders of both the Eurotrash and blue shirt/black suit variety, “which might explain why the joint is overrun with skeezy banker types and not the chic celebs and media darlings who its owner might’ve preferred,” Gawker wrote in 2006.

The great banker purge began in early 2009, on the heels of the financial crisis. First the House excised 500 or so members, then it put the kibosh on suits and ties. “We’ve always wanted the House to feel like a home away from home rather than an extension of the office, so please do keep that in mind,” scolded one memo. “When I went there, it didn’t have the right feel anymore,” Mr. Jones whinged to the New York Post. “It has always been a creative, friendly place with a relaxed feel. If there are too many corporate types around, then that atmosphere doesn’t occur.”

Soho House’s new makeup tends to reflect the city’s shifting power grid. To wit, when the Ace Hotel opened in the Flatiron last year, its lobby quickly became the preferred spot for venture capitalists to host office hours and entrepreneurs to pitch them. The irony is that with the growing number of techies sucking up air, Soho House does sound rather like an extension of the office, albeit in the more laid-back start-up mode that’s equal parts social and networking.

“I think they’ve always been there,” Judith Clegg, a founding member of London’s Soho House told The Observer. Ms. Clegg—whose latest start-up, a consulting firm called Takeout, challenges McKinsey with a rotating roster of techie experts—is also the founder of the British entrepreneurs group Glasshouse and used to host events in both houses. She said the type of techies you’ll find are often international or transatlantic—people who hang out at the club’s Shoreditch House in London and Soho House in Berlin, both burgeoning tech hubs. But she noted, “I would certainly say in the last year, I felt a resurgence in Soho House New York; it’s just got a renewed vibe about it.”

Fellow Brit Nick Denton (who owns Gawker Media, which is, remember, a tech company) also took note. “I haven’t been a member for three years! Though I hear it’s better now. I was thinking of rejoining this fall—mainly because they kicked out the bankers and some of my friends started going again.”

Last week alone, Ms. Clegg said she had meetings there with Harjeet Taggar, a partner at the Silicon Valley incubator, Y Combinator and Bit.ly’s chief scientist Hillary Mason, a well-known figure in the New York tech scene.

Start-ups practically running their companies out of the private club may be a novelty, but perhaps growing one. “Their admissions committee is very selective about bringing in entrepreneurs. People that create and not consume,” said Mr. Mehta. “I have nothing against bankers, but as an entrepreneur, I always tell people to quit their job and go create something that they love.”

Ms. Cheek said it was actually a cheaper option than the co-working space WeWork, where a single desk can run you $500/month or the TechStars accelerator, which takes 6 percent equity. “Once I started my own business, I kind of stopped spending money there, because I was putting money into my business. But I told my interns, ‘You can have one drink a day, whether it be a coffee or a beer or a cocktail.’ And the good thing is that the coffee is refillable, so they often opted for that.”

On a visit to Soho House this week, The Observer noted that the “No Suits” sign we’d been warned about was missing from the entrance to the roof deck. The sixth-floor redesign, which broke the room up into the comfortably luxe seating that makes you forgot you live in a studio in Brooklyn, had the familiar coffee-shop look of an Apple ad with back to back Mac laptops. Indeed, Ms. Cheek reported the same mixed emotions familiar to any frequent coffee-shop-goer. “I do have a little bit of guilt,” she said, noting that $1 candy jar was another popular option for her interns. “But when I sell my company for billions, I’ll be sure to go spend all my money there.”

On the way out, we remarked to Ms. Cheek that the gentleman who had entered the elevator behind us was Henry Blodget—the disgraced former Internet analyst barred from securities trading for fraud charges. Mr. Blodget, who now runs the popular finance and tech blog Business Insider, was at Soho House to speak on a panel about the digital start-up scene in New York. He was wearing a suit.

ntiku@observer.com

It's crappy to see that the hottest companies on the Web are still missing women at the top. But it's hardly a shocker. According to research from the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, women hold between 30 percent to 40 percent of all jobs in the tech sector, but just three to five percent of the high-profile roles at those companies.

Silicon Alley Insider ran with the perennially incendiary story today under the headline OUTRAGEOUS: No Women At The Top Of Web 2.0 Companies.

It's nice to see SAI getting the message, having provoked some outrage of its own recently when it published its "100 Coolest People in Silicon Alley" list, which had just 12 women, in October.

That's "a lotta white boys," as The Wall Street Journal's Katie Rosman noted on Twitter.

"Well, not to start a fight, but who's fault is that?" tweeted SAI's Henry Blodget [sic], who tends to come down on the "get over it" side of the feminist debate.

For a more thoughtful treatment of the no-women-in-tech issue, see Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's TED talk, below.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

Blodget wanted to know if Denton, who recently penned an opus on Gawker's new direction, would be moving away from some of their most successful, but ethically questionable practices, like paying for scoops.

"I love paying for information!" Denton affirmed, estimating that the $12,000 Gawker paid for pictures of Brett Farve's penis have added millions to the value of his sports blog, Deadspin.

"The other thing I love about it is, it gets the traditional media contorted, because they certainly do it themselves, certainly in television... They're envious but dissaproving. It's a beautiful thing to watch."

But according to Bloomberg, a decade later, with tech stocks all the rage, Meeker's research is back in style. "We are trying to invest in the kinds of companies she'll mention in her reports," uber-hip investor Marc Andreessen told Bloomberg.

Meeker's bullish call these days is mobile. She is expected to forecast a $50 billion online advertising boom in an address at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, with mobile commerce the sector she believes will lead the charge.

This is truly a second coming for Meeker. From Bloomberg,

Meeker fared better than analysts such as Henry Blodget, formerly of Merrill Lynch & Co., who was fined and banned for life from the securities industry; the SEC didn't accuse Meeker of wrongdoing. Still, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who led the probe by state and federal authorities, said Morgan Stanley failed to supervise its analysts, including Meeker, and said the company inadequately managed conflicts of interest between its research and investment-banking divisions.

Of course, Blodget isn't doing so bad for himself, having built a small web empire over at Business Insider, which he recently celebrated with a party on the floor of the NYSE.

The irony of a man banned for life from analyzing technology stocks celebrating his booming business blogging about technology companies on the floor of the stock exchange was surely not lost on this once and future Queen.

These two tech pundits also share a particular passion: slide shows. Business Insider is chock full of them. And according to Bloomberg,

This year marks the seventh-straight year Meeker is speaking at the Web 2.0 conference. She packs a lot into her 10- minute presentation, said John Battelle, executive producer of the Web 2.0 Summit. Last year, she plowed through 75 slides in the time most presenters to cover a dozen, he said. "The funny thing about Mary is, every year, she tries to deliver more slides in the same amount of time," Battelle said. "She may have mellowed a little bit over the years, but not much."

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

The qualifications for making this list are pretty thin. "We've put together our annual list of 100 people in the New York tech community who did really cool stuff this year."

SAI seems to define "really cool" as "successful in business." The list focuses on people who have done deals, grown quickly, raised money or sold their companies for a lot of cash.

Out of 100 people, the list included just 12 women, leading The Wall Street Journal's Katie Rosman to tweet, "That's a lotta white boys."

To which the always game Henry Blodget replied, "Plenty of girls too!"

A Twitter battle ensued!

Women certainly comprise more than 12 percent of the world's population, but do they make up more than 12 percent of NYC's tech leaders?

According to research from the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, females hold between 30 percent to 40 percent of all jobs in the tech sector.

But the percentage of women holding high profile roles at those companies is just 3 percent to 5 percent, a figure which has not changed much over the years. 

There's no hard data that shows how well Silicon Alley mirrors the tech industry as a whole. A snapshot of Silicon's Alley's female entrepreneurs can be found here.

But its accurate to say that for a list focusing on "cool types" -- aka the movers and shakers turning big dollar deals -- 12 percent women represents a number well above the industry average.