Allie Compton (Photo via Facebook).

Everyone knows that media is not the most stable industry and that it’s hard to find an affordable apartment in New York. But surely somebody who is gainfully employed at a media organization with a recognizable name would not be denied an apartment just because the whole industry is shaky, right?

Wrong.

“Last week, I was denied an apartment because I have a full-time job in the media industry,” AOL.com frontpage editor Allie Compton wrote on HuffPost earlier this week.

Ms. Compton responded to a "For rent by owner" listing on Craigslist and saw one of those too-good-to-be true Brooklyn apartments. She showed up with all her financial information, W-2s, proof of employment in hand. Unfortunately, the proof of employment proved that she worked in media.

The owner of the apartment had some personal experience with the capricious world—both of her children had worked in the news industry at some point, and both of her children had been laid off from their news industry jobs, Ms. Compton recalled. After the prospective landlady's daughter took a Newsweek buyout and her son’s entire department at The New York Times was eliminated, the sensible children changed their career paths to something more stable. (To what, we are not exactly sure, since while media might not be the most reliable place to bet on long-term employment, we don’t know if anything really is. If you do, shoot us an email!)

The owner of the apartment told Ms. Compton that she “'was ‘lucky’ to be at a media outlet that is ‘doing well.'"

But a subsequent email informed Ms. Compton that her application for the apartment had been denied.

"Your job is too shaky,” said the email. "Media is a low-paying industry."

"After I received her email, in which she said my job was 'shaky' and that the media industry was low-paying, which was more of a fact than a reason, I cried,” Ms. Compton told The Observer. “I guess it hit me in a sore spot. All day long you read story after story about the ever-changing media landscape, the uncertainty of online publishing, and so on.”

But in the end, all worked out. Ms. Compton found a different, better apartment for the same price. And it was a learning experience!

“Needless to say, it came as a real shock, and made me think hard about how others view what I do for a living,” Ms. Compton said. “But never did I think it would be to my disadvantage to have a full-time job at a time like this.”

James Franco, perfect!

Because he's too busy doing all the other things to line edit, actor James Franco posted a very confusing 1,000-word book report on the Huffington Post yesterday. This article plays with form and function, taking the form of a letter that Mr. Franco is writing to a friend, "D_____," (who, we learned in the first edition of this series, is a teacher, but also taking classes--much like Mr. Franco himself!) and functioning as evidence that Mr. Franco read all the way through Ham on Rye.

And it must be a good friend indeed to read all the way through Mr. Franco's musings on the new UCLA class he is teaching (he took them on a press tour for Oz: Th Great and Powerful, which makes sense for a creative writing class), how he is kind of like John Gregory Dunne, how Dunne and the Maysles--which he spells Maysels--didn't have to do any pre-research on their subjects so neither should he, the low-budget Charles Bukowski movie he's making and the one Larry Brown story he's actually read in Big Bad Love. (The fact that this whole paragraph was one long sentence gives you a sense of how Mr. Franco actually writes.)

While we won't subject you to any snippets of the actual essays--go look for yourself if you want to fall down that particular rabbit hole--Jeva Lange at The New York Daily News brought up the commenting threads inspired by this particular series. Now that's a much more interesting rabbit hole, not to mention one with a better grasp of the English language. We're currently taking over/unders on how long it will be before Franco starts putting up sockpuppets complimenting his own writing and fighting with detractors ... if he hasn't already! Let's make the walls shadow-colored, you guys!

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Guys With Kids. (NBC)

Celebrities are really at their best when they get a forum on Huffington Post, don't you think? Whether it's the award-winning James Franco, a huffy Alec Baldwin or a proselytizing Jenny McCarthy.

But usually these stars stay on topic: either promoting a personal cause or giving you their armchair analysis from an "expert's" perspective. (Or just talking about whatever is going on in their lives right now.)

That's why it was so exciting to see NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar weigh in recently on his feelings about Lena Dunham's HBO show, in an article called Girls Just Wants to Have (White) Fun.

Yesssss ...

It's not as if Mr. Abdul-Jabbar breaks any new ground in his article, which rehashes the same arguments about Girls that have been made a million times by less famous people. Like it's "mostly white" and the characters are "too self-conscious" and "not funny," plus "They like to talk about (and sometimes engage in) sex." All valid, if slightly overworn, points!

But then you read into the substance below the basketball legend's talking points, and things just start getting weird:

This season that white ghetto was breached by a black character who is introduced as some jungle fever lover, with just enough screen time to have sex and mutter a couple of lines about wanting more of a relationship. A black dildo would have sufficed and cost less.

As Donald Glover playing a black Republican law student would say, "What?"

Also, did you know that Wonderfalls and Seinfeld were both "braver" and funnier than Girls?

Seinfeld made it a point to ridicule the characters' shallowness and self-involvement, raising it to a level of social commentary. And it was funny. Two other girl-centric shows that reached these same heights to be voices of a generation were My So-Called Life and Wonderfalls. Both funny, yet also insightful and original. Perhaps that's why they both only lasted one season before becoming cult hits. Girls, a safer more mousy voice, has already been renewed for a third season.

In summary, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar loves Girls:

Girls' heart and mind is in the right place. It wants to be more than the sum of its familiar parts. And sometimes it is. Maybe this season its voice will be louder and clearer and have more to say. It's worth listening for.

James Franco: also plays guitar. (Getty Images)

– Ha, James Franco's insane ramblings on HuffPost are now showing strong signs of histrionics:

Oh yeah, I got nominated for a National Entertainment Journalism award for these HuffPost blogs, but no other outlet is going to run that story, right? Hahaha--why would Gawker or The New York Post want to publicize that an actor/Yale doctoral candidate is nominated for an award for something that they are doing themselves? I'm pretty proud of it, but I can see why they must hate me.

Of course we care, actor/Yale doctoral candidate, James Franco! And we don't hate you! We're so glad you wrote a letter to a friend named R______, where you sort of talk about your feelings about Flight and The Sessions, and then decided just to post it on HuffPost, like a real journalist! (Like Celebuzz, who was nominated for six of those awards!)

– It could happen to you: Janeane Garofalo was accidentally married for 20 years without realizing it, she recently told audiences at the New York Comedy Festival. No joke, she thought her Vegas marriage had been a joke, and wouldn't stick in the eyes of the law.

– Here are the videos of 50 Cent trying to sell his line of headphones/kiss the ladies on QVC:

http://youtu.be/Nr9_rEfyWTo
http://youtu.be/_rdvFATwqh0

– The New York Times’s profile on Jennifer Lawrence included a fun fact about the time at the Academy Awards when she didn't win for Winter's Bone:
"She did get her share of mementos, like M&M’s with her photo on them. 'That literally was probably the coolest thing that I saw,' she said. 'I was like: ‘You know what? It’s all worth it’ after I saw those M&M’s.'

"In a nutshell, it appears the emergency backup power did not kick in when Con Ed shut off power," Thomas Plunkett, Gawker's chief technology officer, emailed us last night. Gawker servers are at Datagram on Whitehall Street, which also hosts BuzzFeed and some Huffington Post servers, explained Mr. Plunkett. 

As far as real estate rumors go, "We think it’s a townhouse on E. 80th St." is fairly weak. But there are signs that Ms. Huffington might be in the market. Donald Trump said that he jacked up the rent on an apartment at 502 Park Avenue specifically to keep Ms. Huffington, his sworn enemy, out when she was considering renting there last year. And last we heard she was renting a townhouse in the West Village.

In the event that Ms. Huffington has not bought already, but is seriously considering it, we've prepared a portfolio of available townhouses for her perusal. Our favorite is the Woolworth Mansion, but there are a lot of other strong contenders out there, including one that has suspiciously disappeared from the market.

kvelsey@observer.com

Matt Fisher (via Twitter)

Read: Comedian Matt Fisher Claims Sister’s Progressive Insurance Paid for Her Killer’s Lawyer

The media has picked up the torch of New York comedian Matt Fisher, whose family has been battling Progressive Insurance since his sister was killed in a car crash in 2010. According to Mr. Fisher's Tumblr posting, his sister's insurance company actually got its lawyer to defend the driver at fault for the accident, just so it wouldn't have to pay out her policy to the grieving family.

Yesterday, Progressive responded by auto-tweeting this statement to people who wrote about Progressive on Twitter:

Mr. Fisher, whose family has retained a publicist after his story garnered so much attention, volleyed back with his own "statement" ... an update on his original Tumblr post:

At the beginning of the trial on Monday, August 6th, an attorney identified himself as Jeffrey R. Moffat and stated that he worked for Progressive Advanced Insurance Company. He then sat next to the defendant. During the trial, both in and out of the courtroom, he conferred with the defendant. He gave an opening statement to the jury, in which he proposed the idea that the defendant should not be found negligent in the case. He cross-examined the plaintiff’s witnesses. On direct examination, he questioned all of the defense’s witnesses. He made objections on behalf of the defendant, and he was a party to the argument of all of the objections heard in the case. After all of the witnesses had been called, he stood before the jury and gave a closing argument, in which he argued that my sister was responsible for the accident that killed her, and that the jury should not decide that the defendant was negligent.

I am comfortable characterizing this as a legal defense.

Progressive sent out an email Tuesday, essentially rehashing their robo-tweet statement and adding that Nationwide Insurance paid for the defendant's counsel. The next day they amended that statement. According to the Huffington Post, Progressive confirmed that it retained legal counsel for the trial:

A Progressive rep on Wednesday confirmed to HuffPost that an attorney for Progressive was providing counsel in the trial. However, the rep added, the attorney represented only Progressive, not the defendant. Progressive provided no evidence, he said, but was looking after its interests in the liability aspect of the case.

And let the court documents show that Progressive was given the ability to act as if it was defendant in the case, and to intervene on their part:

It is this 19th day of May, 2011, by the Circuit Court For Baltimore City, hereby ORDERED

1. That Progressive Advance Insurance Company be and is hereby allowed to intervene as a party Defendant.

2. That Progressive Insurance Company is GRANTED all rights to participate in this proceeding as if it were an original party to this case.

(Brown,J)

In addition, the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and ordered Ronald Kevin Hope, III and Progressive Advanced Insurance to pay out in the amount of $760,000.00.

The Fisher family has yet to see that money.

In a press release, Brad Hunstable, CEO and co-founder of Ustream said the partnership will give users access to a “raw and unedited perspective of diverse voices on the world’s most important events.”

“Citizen journalism is increasingly democratizing the internet with live Ustream news events playing an important role,” he said. “Our partnership with Huffington Post will further push forward this trend and our mission to enable anyone, anywhere to share their stories.”

Citizen journalism has come to the forefront recently with tools websites such as Allvoices and GroundReport. CNN iReport also allows the news group to feature live coverage of everything from the recent outbreak of wildfires in the western U.S. by local inhabitants to the Occupy Wall Street by participants and onlookers.

The pair is also calling for citizen journalists to apply for their “Off the Bus 2012” campaign. Huffington Post and Ustream will select one winner from the nominees to cover the 2012 political conventions in Tampa and Charlotte.

"We launched Off The Bus in 2007 to go beyond the one-dimensional horse-race aspect of election coverage and actually respond to the widespread dissatisfaction about the way campaigns are covered," said Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, emphasizing their “commitment to holding politicians accountable and telling the stories that need to be told."

Mr. Hunstable and Ms. Huffington will officially announce the partnership in a live press event at 3:30 p.m. (EST) on Ustream.tv/huffingtonpost. The announcement will be followed by a presentation from Ustream citizen journalist Luke “We Are Change” Rudkowski.

“What people don’t understand is that there is a huge psychological factor to the job,” Huffington Post community manager Justin Isaf told Adweek. “Moderators deal with some horrible stuff and genuinely difficult things every day, and at other sites they are often under-cared for in terms of their own mental health. That is a real shame, because it gets draining.” HuffPo moderators actually get trained on defusing threads about Israel and Palestine.

Meanwhile, all of the ever-expanding BuzzFeed stable has just one community moderator, Ryan Broderick.

“The Trayvon Martin period was a rough couple of weeks,” he said.

But according to Mr. Broderick, the anonymous commenting impulse can't be entirely suppressed.

"There is a social realm where things are rationally sorted and then there’s the anonymous place that brings out a person’s base instincts. It can become a frothing, bubbling cauldron of insanity. [...] Yet, you need that animalistic part of yourself. I think of it almost like your sex drive.”

El HuffPo's editorial director is Montserrat Domínguez, a prominent television journalist and radio host in Spain.

"I met Montserrat (or Montse, as everyone calls her) on a Sunday morning when she interviewed me for two hours on her radio show, A vivir que son dos días," Arianna Huffington wrote in her introductory note. "I loved her right away -- her passion for news and storytelling, her intelligence, her gift for intimacy."

The site's editor-in-chief is Guillermo Rodríguez, former editor of Público (another daily), and he appears to be a quick study. The stories on El Huffington Post's homepage already reflect the flagship brand's signature blend of politics and breasts.