Steve Kornacki discusses House of Cards. (Photo via Salon).

Last week, OTR found ourselves at a “salon” hosted by the pioneering webmag, Salon. The conceit of a “salon” harks back either to French wits gathering to amuse nobility (and one another) or to Viennese coffeehouses where intellectuals would debate philosophy and gossip. In modern-day New York, however, a “salon” is more often a euphemism for “panel discussion.” And Salon’s salon was no exception.

For this particular panel, the soft-spoken Iranian director Ramin Bahrani and Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir sat on stools at the Soho House, the semi-exclusive clubhouse in the Meatpacking District, where a wall of bookshelves and artfully arranged hardbacks whispered rather than screamed “library room.” Sans microphone, the panel members discussed all the recent films about politics. And sure, there have been a few: Lincoln, Argo, Django, Zero Dark Thirty. Steve Kornacki moderated.

Of course, the panel was set against Mr. Kornacki’s recent job announcement. The day before, MSNBC announced that Mr. Kornacki, a co-host on The Cycle and a senior political writer at Salon (not to mention an alum of these salmon-colored pages), would succeed Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s weekend morning show Up, formerly Up With Chris Hayes.

Mr. Kornacki, who looked nerdy rather than nerdy-chic in a sweater over a collared plaid shirt, jeans and sneakers, became particularly enthusiastic when the topic of House of Cards came up. Understandably, a political writer might see more inaccuracies than the rest of us in such a show. Not only are some of the delegate counts and the ways in which state politics actually work not accurately depicted, he explained, but perhaps most egregiously, the details of an education bill is not actually a major scoop.

“I will cover education on the show I have, I will write about education politics, but I guarantee you that you are not going to go from being a 22-year-old junior reporter in Washington to being the next Bob Woodward by getting the details of an education bill,” Mr. Kornacki said.

“The way that movies portray journalism is always so hilarious,” Mr. O’Hehir agreed. And nobody in the room was going to argue with that.

We caught up with Mr. Kornacki to ask him about his new gig. After apologizing profusely for telling us to go through MSNBC’s PR machine, Mr. Kornacki decided to throw caution to the wind, taking pity on a reporter from his old alma mater.

“The idea of getting up that early and changing my weekend routine dramatically will be an adjustment,” Mr. Kornacki said, adding that he had only found out that he had been tapped for hosting duties the week before the announcement. “It was funny. Generally, I’m the one speculating, so it was very interesting being one of the few people who knew. I just kept quiet and didn’t say anything.”

Mr. Kornacki said he had not yet had a tête-à-tête with Mr. Hayes—partly because of how quickly and unexpectedly the announcement came—but was planning to sit down with his predecessor in the coming days.

“They told me that it’s the first time that MSNBC has kept the name and the franchise alive,” he said. “It’s a tribute to what Chris has done and how much MSNBC believes in it. So to me, it’s take the template they created and use it.”

When asked how the show will change, if at all, Mr. Kornacki was vague. “Obviously, Chris is Chris and I’m me. If I try to be exactly like him, it’s going to fail, so inevitably there are going to be differences,” he said.

Some Blogger, as Forgotten By History.

It's raining me...dia items. Hallelujah. With so much to get through today, rather than act out the pretense that people are ever going to click on media news roundups from a landing page, we're just going to skip the obligatory formalities of teasing anything out and just get right into them. Starting now. 

As such, here are your Wednesday Evening Media Briefs. 

TBD's Fate is Now "D." Hyperlocal DC news site TBD.com—which, by all accounts, was halfway decent until it was shut down—has now been shut down for what's likely the last time. Watching former TBD editor Erik Wemple have to eulogize it at the Washington Post is bittersweet, especially since the kind folks at the Post (namely, Paul Farhi) were once so welcoming of their new competition (then again, Wemple, a fine journalist himself, is employed as he should be). [Washington Post]

Snake Eats Own Tail: Speaking of schadenfreude and Paul Farhi—who ESPN's Tony Kornheiser once called a "duplicitous snake"—today, Paul Farhi is being corrected...for his attempt at putting the paddle to currently embattled Washington Post contributor Fareed Zakaria. Farhi wrote a piece on Monday in which he raked Zakaria over the coals, and accused Zakaria of journalistic malfeasance by way of quoting a source without mentioning that the quote appeared somewhere else years earlier. As Politico's Dylan Byers put it: "Farhi apparently did not consult the passages in question." A few hours later, this correction is printed:

The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article. We regret the error and apologize to Fareed Zakaria.

Paul Farhi, as far as we can tell, still works at the Washington Post. [Politico]

Jodie Foster, Faithful Daily Beast Reader and Writer. The Daily Beast sure loves itself some big-name contributors. Take, for example, today's essay by Jodie Foster, in which she laments the frenzied celebrity media culture that surrounds people like Kristen Stewart, whose recent breakup with Robert Pattinson has been extensively documented by what Jodie Foster calls the "gladiator sport of celebrity culture." Thankfully, she is writing for a news outlet that would never stoop that low. [The Daily Beast]

Donald Trump Writes Off Evil Hack Blogger, Who Is Now Obviously Irrelevant: It was suggested that—due to some relation among higher-ups—The Observer wouldn't touch this thing involving Loser Salon™'s own news terrorist, pathological liar, and North Korean-born teenage vampire Alex Pareene attacking the good and unsullied name of thrice-over gajillionare and macro-economic powerhouse/pending MacArthur Genius Grant for Money recipient Donald Trump, chairman and CEO of The Trump Corporation LLC, creative mastermind behind NBC's hit television ratings behemoth The Apprentice, a renowned sportsman-cum-environmentalist who cares about the economic state of all Americans just as much as he does the fact that they take their vitamins. For whom anything from a historic neighborhood that once saw the sun to beautiful rural Scottish moorlands that have been untouched for generations to outer space represents nothing but opportunity for monumentally prosperous, important, and occasionally profitable human endeavor? The Donald Trump who bravely dared question the authenticity of a (in all likelihood, treasonous) anti-American American president's birth certificate in the face of the countless experts who contradicted that claim and The President of the United States presenting the birth certificate himself on national television, not just before all of that, but after it, too? The same Donald Trump appearing at this year's Republican National Convention, where they will salivate for him to run for High Office again, but are obviously unworthy of such refined leadership, so they'll have to settle with simply having their minds blown and hearts won over? That Donald Trump? The fact is, a journalist being smashed off the face of the planet by the withering, blistering, face-melting parenthetical wit that is Donald Trump's is, in fact, news, and worthy of being covered. As such: Alex Pareene wrote a bunch of lies and terrible things about Donald Trump, and—as he's already done to Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner and ProPublica's Justin Elliot before him—Donald Trump wrote him out of history. Forever. The entire thing was pretty funny. [Loser Salon™, @RealDonaldTrump, Loser Salon™]

It's Like His Girl Friday Meets The Departed: Speaking of honorable types, the staunch ethicists at the top of News Corp are taking further action to root out any unsavory journalism practices tainting the high standards to which they hold their profession, and sacred strictures by which they abide. They're launching an "Anti-Corruption Review" which, according to Rupert Murdoch himself, "not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing by any particular business unit or its personnel" and called it a "forward-looking review."  [Guardian UK]

More Like 'State of Lame': On that note, here are newspaper films, ranked by popularity via Netflix. [Romenesko]

Daisey and Confused: Former This American Life contributor Mike Daisey thinks tech writers don't do their jobs, and implores them to not just swallow Apple's press lines. He also recognizes that he's had his own journalism problems, but isn't the entire problem that he tried to pass it off as journalism and that he's not in much of a place to speak to journalism ethics to begin with? You decide. Either way, he's right about at least part of this. [Mike Daisey]

Conde Nast Does Not Have a Company-Wide Policy Regarding Jonah Lehrer: Well, he may not work at The New Yorker anymore, but Jonah Lehrer will possibly continue to write for Wired, reported Buzzfeed's Ben Smith. Wired later posted a statement saying they haven't fully made the decision yet, though the outlook isn't so grim. We're not the gambling types, but we will take odds that if it goes through, Lehrer's next Wired piece written post-Lehrergate will be about what it's like to be at the center of an Internet "Snarkstorm" or somesuch business. [Buzzfeed, Wired]

On The Matter of Piers Morgan's Waning Influence. Well...

[@BBCSporf]

No Sweet Home: Finally, to end on a depressing note, this writer's hometown newspaper just laid off five more staffers. Here's hoping they don't go on to become "International Bestsellers" in their next career. [Romenesko]

Tips, scandal, or effusive praise of great American capitalists? Send it right this way.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Until now!

In what might be the single greatest Salon post of all time, a woman named Abby Mims comes forward as The MFA Fiction Classmate Who Hated And Then We Came To The End author Joshua Ferris, whose first novel was nominated for a National Book Award, which must have really driven her crazy! Anyway: She claims to be Ferris' nemesis from their grad school days. The piece is titled "Joshua Ferris is My Nemisis" (dek: "The classmate I resented in grad school went on to become wildly acclaimed. It's taken years to get over it").

Since we'd like to blockquote almost this entire post, but can't, highlights:

She Won't Call Him By His "Successful Name."

We’ll call my nemesis Josh, since that’s his name. He goes by Joshua now — Joshua Ferris — but calling him that makes me uncomfortable, so for these purposes I’m going with Josh.

When This Story Started, She Didn't Know Life Was Unfair, Maybe Because She Was So Possessed With Talent

We were in the same class at UC Irvine, two of the six they let in. I was 28 at the time, and possessed a shocking naïveté about many things, including: men, professors, academia, workshops, fairness, and life.

And By "Naivete" She Means "Naivete"

I imagined it would be an artist’s utopia of sorts, with lots of cheerleading and gentle suggestions and group hugs. I also believed it would be the place where I met the love of my life.

That's all before the end of the third full paragraph. Then: She cries after her first workshop because her work is torn down.*  She wants to clear up the "falsehood" that attacks on people's work in MFA workshops are impersonal.** And then, she explains the moment she realized Joshua Ferris was her nemesis: A colleague received a scathing critique from their professor, and Ferris responds.

“Well, she needs the criticism,” Josh said earnestly. “I’d love that kind of a workshop. I’d welcome that kind of feedback.”

This from the golden boy whose stories had been universally praised, lauded even, who’d never had one negative thing said about his writing.

What happened next was that I simply lost my shit. Lost it big time, much to the horror of my fellow colleagues. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said. “You have no fucking idea what that is like. NO FUCKING IDEA.”

Two points, here:

1. Who knows what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes? Only someone obsessed with assuming such a thing.

2. Criticism—no matter what it's base ingredient or motivation is—is good for anyone, because even if it is personal, there is still likely some bit of truth worth extrapolating and using to move forward and step on the faces of those who have tried to personally begrudge you for their petty reasons (in this case, the professor, but welcome to the world of Anonymous Internet Comments, too). If anything, it's the further dismantling of ego, which is never—ever—a bad thing.

Anyway, the story continues:

His attitude was never malicious, it was simply maddeningly superior.  Outwardly, he had not a shred of insecurity. It was hard not to hate him for this.  And I will say, too, that he was a man obsessed. While the rest of us were screwing around with our crushes and debating whether or not to use our middle initial when published, he was writing. I mean really writing, all the time, sometimes a rumored fourteen hours a day. (I don’t mean to say the rest of us weren’twriting; we were. If any of my fellow Irvine-ites were also writing fourteen hours a day, my apologies. I, most assuredly, was not.)

What a terrible person this Joshua Ferris is! He works really hard and isn't painfully insecure so as to project negative emotion towards someone else (like the author), who at one point "gets" Ferris and feels vindicated because he writes a bad sentence in a piece written from the perspective of a woman about to have a mastectomy. Hilariously, the criticism is not that he wrote that classically cliche male-penned bad sentence about a woman regarding her breasts; it's that he didn't write that sentence! Woe is Joshua Ferris, who naturally doesn't pay much attention towards this criticism.

You know how this ends: Ferris gets an advance, writes his book, becomes famous, and charms everyone (including Gawker—at that time, untouchable for its then-staff's scabrous eye towards the more boldfaced names of the New York Literati). She seethes at her former classmate's success.

And then, one day, comes to the realization that hating someone who is massively successful is useless and a great impediment to her own success (advice most often given in a brilliant cliche you'd think someone would've said to her by this point: "Swim in your own lane, sister.").

All of that said, Abby Mims deserves to be loudly lauded for her work, here. She wrote the most singularly fascinating thing on the internet today, and possibly for the rest of the week. It is a stark, honest, brutal revelation that this anger exists. It's a thing.

And it's an impediment towards the success of people who could give themselves a better opportunity than one that involves hating decent writers they once knew before they were famous (also, with whom they share an agent, but that's an entirely different and far funnier blog post). It's a sociological and psychological moment that should probably be a reference point for years to come. Especially because, in the end, how self-aware is it? Has anybody truly let go of a "nemesis" who never really regarded them as such when the last paragraph of their tell-all blog post is this?

So I write, even if it’s over here in the almost-dark. At the same time, Josh is out there, really out there, with a second novel that was customarily trashed, working on his third with the kind of pressures and expectations I can’t imagine. I can finally appreciate that difference for what it is, and embrace the beauty in being unknown and for the fact that I am still writing. On my best days, this carries with it a freedom that borders on the infinite.

This is still a conclusion in which one person differentiates themselves from another. At least the entire enterprise is consistent.

Joshua Ferris Is My Nemesis [Salon]

*An emotion yielded from the dismantling of ego, which existed before this story started, but you, the reader, should assume no such subtext.

**Again, an assumption built by the ego of someone who thinks the world is hungry to constructively mold the work of an artist, instead of a craven and competitive place in which self-interest and bottom lines rule all, which—if you've ever spent more than an hour inside of a literary agency, you'd learn very, very, very quickly, but that's a reality many MFA candidates would like to forget exists while honing their craft. Also: She hasn't seen Wonder Boys?!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Amid a media merger whirlwind at the end of his tenure (AOL + HuffPo! Daily Beast + Newsweek!), Mr. Gingras was looking for a buyer for the early adopter online magazine (est. 1995), but took it off the market after talks with Michael Wolff-founded news aggregator Newser disintegrated. With Ms. Jeffers at the helm, Mr. Talbot will stay on in an advisory role.

"Our goal is not only to continue publishing some of the best news and entertainment journalism on the Web, but to reemerge as a technological leader of online media by experimenting with emerging platforms, new data sets and new ways of interacting with stories," communications director Liam O'Donoghue wrote.

The company has also grabbed Wenner Media's Matthew Sussberg to serve as vice president of Salon's advertising.

Just a few days after Gawker introduced their recent and short-lived foray into corporate espionage-cum-pranksterism in the form of The Fox News Mole, one Joe Muto found himself on CNN, speaking with Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources about the week he'd just had. In that interview, he explained that he was "completely blackballed within the cable news industry after working at FOX News," which is to say nothing of how his job prospects might be now ("it’s pretty safe to say my career in cable news is over"). Is it, though?

The paradox the Fox Mole presents is simple: News organizations rely on sources for news stories, but are often taken aback when they, themselves, are news stories. Sources have any number of motivations and incentives to betray the trust of a secret and talk: They could have something to gain from the secret being out there. They could, in their minds, be partaking in an altruistic act for the public good. Or they might just be petty and annoyed. Whatever the case, the news-gathering industry has relied on people telling reporters things they're not always supposed to since the Fourth Estate was established.

Which is why as any media reporter can tell you, it's always interesting to watch the way media companies react when they are the ones subject to leaks. Some are empathetic; others, who would argue that reporting organizations are subject to a higher need for confidentiality than those they report on, become Wrath-Of-God furious. Which, it could also be argued, is rife with laughable naivety, double-standards, and blatant hypocrisy.

We were curious, both about the legitimacy of the motives Muto claimed and about his prospects in media after Life As A Mole:

1. Was Joe Muto truly "completely blackballed within the cable news industry after working at FOX News," as he claimed he was?
2. Assuming he met all qualifications as a hiring prospect, given his now well-documented past, would people working in media hire the Fox Mole?
3. Muto joked that the only place he might be able to get a job now was CurrentTV. Could he?

Network executives at CNN and MSNBC were adamant that both networks had hired and currently employed workers who had once worked at Fox News (naturally, none of them wanted to be quoted or named for this particular story). As for the top brass at these networks:

Ken Jautz (Executive Vice-President, CNN):

"Going to pass on this," through a network spokesperson.

Phil Griffin (President, MSNBC):

"Going to pass," via a network spokesperson.

David Bohrman (President, Current TV):

[Didn't return a request for an interview, after speaking with Mr. Bohrman and a Current TV communications exec.]

We polled some editors to see, given that they work in the news business, what kind of trust they would instill in someone who had publicly gone through the episode Joe Muto just did:

Kerry Lauerman (Editor-in-Chief, Salon):

"I'd need to know more. I certainly wouldn't disqualify him for working at Fox News. And I wouldn't disqualify him for being a mole, if he could convince me it was an act of moral righteousness. But it does bother me that he lied to Fox honchos after they confronted him. Journalists who are comfortable liars should make everyone supremely uncomfortable."

Ben Smith (Editor-in-Chief, Buzzfeed):

"I'd be very leery of hiring someone who had been a disloyal an employee, an obvious contradiction because of course I've long relied on leaks from people acting against their bosses' interests."

Elizabeth Spiers (Editor-in-Chief, The New York Observer):

"I think the whole thing's more of a management lesson: Don't do anything you'd be embarrassed to have leaked by a mole. And assume all internal communications might as well be prefaced with FOR PUBLICATION."

The Fox Mole has not posted since April 12th, the same day Jeff Bercovici at Forbes reported that Joe Muto made $5,000 off of his grand exit from the network and Gawker posted the legal threat Fox sent them. The stunt has earned Gawker over 1.8M pageviews.

That doesn't count the recent Gawker post bylined not by Muto, but staff writer John Cook: a small cache of Roger Ailes' internal network missives sent "to staffers at The O'Reilly Factor in 2008 and 2010," which were "recently obtained" by the site.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

In September, New Yorker television critic Nancy Franklin decided to take a break from writing (hold the occasional pro-bono work for the finer comment sections of the Internet).

So, in January, The New Yorker tapped New York's Emily Nussbaum to be their TV critic.

At the same time, Salon lost TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz to New York.

Now, New York loses their deputy entertainment editor and Vulture scribe Willa Paskin to Salon, to be their TV critic.

Here is a map:

When asked for hyperbolic plaudits about his freshest poaching kill, Salon chief Kerry Lauerman told The Observer over email:

Willa was actually a star intern for us in 2006-2007, and I've followed her writing ever since, especially her terrific work at Vulture. When the position opened up, she was a natural person to approach, and I was thrilled when she accepted. The great thing about Willa is her range -- she's got a wonderfully curious mind, a compelling voice, knows how to report, and is a great interviewer -- and we hope to employ her multiple talents to full effect. Criticism will be a big part of her role, but not the only one.

See! Media internships do get people jobs.

Lauerman also pointed to the inclusion of Paskin—before New York, a Radar and BlackBook editor—on this recent ThinkProgress list via his own Salon blog about women the media should be employing more. See! Making ostensibly frivolous link-baity media lists do get people jobs!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Just before dawn on Oct. 14, Salon reporter Justin Elliott was on Twitter and in Zuccotti Park, awaiting the outcome of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to clear out the Occupy Wall Street protestors for cleaning.

“On scene at Zuccotti, infusion of new protesters just arrived with signs "NYPD protects and serves the rich" | big cheers #ows,” Mr. Elliott tweeted.

A few days later, Nocturnalist columnist and New York Times staff reporter Sarah Maslin Nir kept followers up to date on the latest from her Zuccotti sleepover.

“Getting cold and tired, but every serious protestor has a tarp to block the wind. And I refuse to huddle for warmth #gonnadie,” Ms. Maslin Nir tweeted just before 1 a.m. on Oct. 17.

With freezing rain forecast for Saturday, staying warm is a major concern for Occupy Wall Street protesters and reporters alike. For many journalists, the movement is noteworthy for regularly drawing them out of the newsroom for long periods of time, demanding an on-the-fly mélange of traditional and social media reporting. 

Unlike, say, a political campaign—which can be adequately covered over the phone from the cozy dryness of the office—the demonstrations require hands-on reporting, Mr. Elliott explained.

“Because it’s so de-centralized, I think there’s a real advantage to being on the marches and in the park as much as possible,” he said.

For the same reason, OWS reporters keep one eye on Twitter, one of the main organization tools of the protest, at all times.

“You can’t be omnipresent,” said ANIMAL New York editor Bucky Turco. “So If I’m at Zuccotti and there’s something going on elsewhere in the city, it will usually end up on Twitter first and I can adjust.”

In New York, protesters and demonstrators typically coordinate with police before marches and acts of civil disobedience, explained Mr. Turco. (He had the procedure explained to him by Detective Rick Lee, the so-called “hipster cop.”)

“That’s what kind of makes it intriguing for the media, is that you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Mr. Turco said. “It's organic and it’s not staged.”

With the help of a MiFi, Mr. Turco and other reporters blog, write and file copy directly from the scene or a hospitable fast food restaurant nearby.

“Sometimes I just do my normal routine from Zuccotti,” Mr. Turco said.

As populist uprisings in Iran and Egypt demonstrated, Twitter is more than a reporting tool. Professional reporters, like citizen journalists, treat it as a publishing platform for a complementary narrative, more personal than a newspaper story and delivered in real time.

“A lot of the stuff that’s being put out on social networks is kind of a blow by blow, giving a glimpse into the mechanics of things like the General Assembly,” said Anthony De Rosa, Reuters social media editor.

New York Daily News social media Anjali Mullany said she is increasingly spending more time organizing the paper's live reporting, as well as other forms of non-traditional coverage of Occupy Wall Street.

"Social media is also a great mechanism for reporting details and anecdotes that may not fit or work in a traditional article. So is live coverage and live blogging," Ms. Mullany said in an email to the Observer.

A live tweet can illustrate the excitement and urgency that hooks a reader.

“Tweeting scratches that itch for the reader,” Ms. Maslin Nir said. “Especially when police are about to close in and you’re getting these tweets like, ‘We’re being shoved down 42nd Street, the barricade is crushing us.’ You know, that’s really something that Twitter can do.”

But for others, covering OWS exemplifies one of the major tensions between new and old media. Swept up in the shallow stream of Twitter, do reporters miss the big picture?

“There’s a lot of people tweeting about Occupy Wall Street, but there’s actually very few people, if you start looking around, just on the scene, doing descriptive reportorial stuff,” Mr. Elliott said. He tends to live tweet when he’s on scene, and Salon posts both traditionally reported stories and live tweet feeds for readers.

Although Twitter tells reporters where to be and when, it’s little help once the tape recorder comes out.

"Because there are no leaders in the group, it's difficult to get a really representative statement on what's going on," said a reporter of a widely circulated New York newspaper who was gathering information at an OWS gathering on Oct. 26 in Union Square.

"It ends up being a lot of talking, to a lot of different people, and then, somehow, trying to find the truth between everything that you're told," added the reporter, who asked to remain anonymous for job security purposes.

The reporter's struggles raise an interesting question: Is the plurality of Twitter a more accurate representation of the movement itself than the forced, newspaper-friendly narrative?

Most news outlets are hedging their bet, combining new and old, in hopes of creating the most complete portrait of the movement possible, at the risk of their reporter's social lives.

“You have to devote a lot of time to it,” Mr. Turco said. “I haven’t seen my family and friends as much.”

Illo: Anna Parini

We weren’t three minutes into our pedicure—or two toes—and already The Observer was getting wasted.

The place was Dashing Diva in Greenwich Village, a chain nail salon with 12 locations in the city and two in California. The place’s decor resembles a little like what might happen if Elle Woods met Malibu Barbie. The only part that isn’t either bright pink or white are the racks of multicolored nail polish on the walls. The pedicure station is a banquette of pink pillows, cut off from the rest of the salon by a wall of mini pearly-pink tiles. It’s a nice place to get plastered.

We were there for “Girls Night Out,” a weekly promotion that offers a free Cosmopolitan with any manicure or pedicure on from 6 to 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays. This particular salon touted a one-drink limit (at least that’s what it said on FourSquare), but we knew better. Besides, we were paying $40 for this pedi.

“You want water or Cosmo?” the pedicurist asked, only after enticing us into paying $5 extra for a mandarin orange salt soak. $45. “Cosmo,” we replied.

The Observer sipped. Svedka was our best guess. There was only one other customer, and she was not partaking. We felt like the old man at the dive bar—a lost, lonely soul, slinging back cheap whiskeys and searching for a friend. Except this time there was someone scrubbing dead skin off our feet.

The pedicurist noticed the empty glass. “You want more?” she asked.

As she returned with another, we began asking questions. Who makes these? What ingredients do you use? She didn’t know, she said. She just poured them from a jug in the back.

“You very funny,” she said and kept scrubbing.

It was then that the other customer noticed our beverage. “What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a Cosmo.”

“Oh, like on Sex and the City!”

She ordered one, and we felt better. Looser. Thirstier. We asked for one more.

“Usually customer only get one,” she said. “You drunk?”

“No. Are you kidding? Not at all!”

“You drunk! Your face red!”

Was it? Oh, god.

“Listen, I’m a bartender,” we said. “There’s no way I’m drunk off two Cosmos.”

“Ooooo-kay.” She laughed, then she got us another drink.

It’s not uncommon to walk into a salon—whether hair or nail—and have an alcoholic beverage offered to you while your perm sets or your dye soaks or whatever shellac you might have dries. In fact, it’s quite de riguer.

“I’d say most New York City salons serve wine, at least after 3 o’clock,” said Joe, who’s been a hairdresser at upscale salons in the city for seven years. “I don’t really know about like, New Jersey though.”

For most women, this is not news at all. The Observer was served our first glass of wine at age 20, by Joe himself (one of the few reasons he wanted to withhold his last name).

It a wonderful practice, isn’t it. But is it legal?

According to the New York State Liquor Authority, it isn’t—at least, not without a liquor license. And, though a spokeswoman for NYLA said she was “sure there are a couple” licensed salons in the state, the authority was unable to name any. “We don’t organize them that way,” she said.

The Observer attempted a painstaking, manual search through the list of 30,445 licensed venues in New York county, but we could not find a single licensed hair salon.

Salons in general don’t profit from alcohol. They serve it up gratis—either as a polite gesture, an attempt to allay the anxiety that can accompany a radical haircut, or a marketing tactic. Which is why going through the hassle of procuring a license hardly seems worth the trouble. Especially since, as Joe told us, salons have been serving alcohol without complaint for “as far as I know, forever and ever and ever.”

They just don’t know they’re violating the law.

At the high-profile John Barrett salon above Bergdorf Goodman, Heather, a manager who declined to give her last name, wondered why we were asking if they served wine. After all, what did it matter? “I’m pretty sure it’s legal to serve it, as long as we’re not selling it,” she said.

We told her the truth. We also told her that we had been told that the salon did in fact serve wine—by the receptionist! Like two minutes ago!

She explained that yes, the salon would offer wine, but added that technically customers would be buying it from the restaurant downstairs. “We’re a corporate salon,” she said, “so we have to cover our asses.”

April Barton, owner of the chic, celebrity-attended Suite 303 above the Chelsea Hotel (and former Season 3 contestant on Bravo’s Shear Genius) confirmed that her salon does “occasionally” serve wine. “But it’s not really a big thing,” she said. “We used to do it a lot, but lately its slowed down.”

When we told her it was illegal, she froze up for a moment. “I didn’t know,” she said.

The Observer also spoke with Kerri Lee Ross, an account supervisor for Siren PR, the agency that handles Hollywood stylist Sally Hershberger’s salons in New York. She said it was “a fair assumption” that the salons served wine to their customers, but “to be perfectly honest,” she had never heard that it was illegal.

Severon Dickson, owner of the trendy, hole-in-the-wall Dickson Hairshop on the Lower East Side, says his barbershop stopped serving bourbon a few months ago because of the “Nutcracker Bill” passed in June. That bill threatened to take store licenses—specifically salon licenses—away from any establishment found selling “Nutcrackers”—a potent Kool-Aid-like cocktail found in bodegas and barbershops, sometimes served to minors in a Styrofoam cup or soup container.

Back when they offered booze, did they have a license?

“No, but no salons do,” said Mr. Dickson claimed. “Because you don’t have to have a liquor license to give away alcohol.”

Wrong! We dropped the bomb. “Oh, O.K.,” he said, unfazed. “It’s not worth the liability for me, and I’m definitely not gonna be carding every client. Which is fine, because people don’t come here to drink. They come here for haircuts.”

Even Joe, with all his years in the business, had no idea he was violating the law. “I’m glad you told me,” he said. “I’m planning to open up my own salon, and I was going to serve wine!”

Naive as they all may have been, salon managers tended to go into lock-down mode when asked about serving booze. Diva Salon said a manager might be available to speak in an hour. The Observer returned 15 minutes early to find a dark, abandoned salon, the gate pulled down. The receptionist at the Dashing Diva said no manager would be in for five days. When Ms. Ross called The Observer back, she insisted that she had never said Ms. Hershberger’s salon served wine. At the end of our phone call with Ms. Barton, she said her salon shouldn’t really count. “I’d prefer to say we didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s not our priority here…our salon’s about craft, beauty, music.”

The last thing we want to do is rain on everybody’s parade, but according to the Liquor Authority, there are legitimate health concerns involved. Because any New York establishment with a liquor license is required to serve food of some kind and also pass an inspection by the state or city Health Departments. Think about it: would you chow down in your hair salon?

Leonard Fogelman, a lawyer who has specialized in New York liquor law for 35 years, said he’s never even heard of hair salons applying for licenses.

“What it appears is that these salons are [making] a nice gesture to their guests, but the reality is that it’s violative of New York State liquor law,” he said. “It’s a misdemeanor.”

So for god’s sake, why doesn’t the Liquor Authority act? How can this outrage be allowed to continue?

“We do receive complains once an a while, but believe it or not, we forward them to the NYPD,” said NYLA spokesman William Crowley, who explained that busting an establishment without a license did not fall under it’s jurisdiction.

“We can’t take a license away that doesn’t exist,” he said.

So should the law be enforced—if for no other reason than to bring a little more revenue into state coffers?

“The issue is not the revenue, the issue is the appropriateness of the law,” said Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at SUNY New Paltz and an expert on state policy. “Whether the rationale is sensible in contemporary times, and if it’s not, what should replace it.”

Mr. Benjamin added that it was the first time he’d heard of the issue.

“I am shocked,” he said. “Shocked, shocked, shocked.”

When The Observer woke up in our bed three hours later, toes perfectly soft and glistening lilac, we were pretty shocked too.

Disclosure: The author of this post was previously employed by Salon.com.

Salon.com -- never, ever to be confused with Slate.com -- has brought back former editor in chief/founding father David Talbot as CEO of the online magazine. But in case you think the staff was just feeling nostalgic, Mr. Talbot wasted no time in trumpeting his arrival with news of a complete relaunch of the website as a multimedia platform. The redesign even gets a fancy new name: "American Spring." Let Salon's new CEO tell you all about it:

"Salon is initiating a call for an American spring,” Talbot said, “a national conversation to profoundly renew this country in the same spirit as people in Europe in the streets and throughout the Arab World.”

So what does that actually mean for your daily dose of Alex Pareene? Here's the breakdown on some of "American Spring's" new features (from the PR newswire):

• Recruiting top talent such as Jefferson Morley, formerly of The Washington Post, and Irin Carmon of Jezebel
• Joining forces with media partners such as Alternet, GlobalPost, Grist and Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films;
• Launching a video talk show series with hosts David Talbot and editor in chief Kerry Lauerman, who will interview leading political, business, and cultural personalities and other movers and shakers, about the future of the country. The first interview will be with Bill Moyers, the leading voice of American populism.
• Expanding Salon's cultural selection to showcase illustrated graphic stories and music specials spotlighting the best new and legendary musicians;
• Creating a Salon Studio that will produce unique video programming by artists such as Jennifer Crandall, the Emmy-nominated videographer behind the "onBeing" series
• Holding "Salon To Go" events, beginning with a series of gatherings in barber shops and salons across the country, to discuss what's wrong in America and how to fix it.

With all these changes, the Salon of the future may barely resemble the one we've come to know and love (and worry about). Salon's editor in chief Kerry Lauerman tells us via email:

The editorial staff is incredibly enthusiastic about David's return, and the company's renewed focus. David hired me back in 2000, and has been an informal adviser since I took over here; he's a lodestar. Most importantly, he's helping us find the resources to be as aggressive and ambitious as we've always wanted to be.

Well...okay. So long Salon promises not to threaten the world with the possibility of a Michael Wolff takeover again, we're still fans.

CEO Richard Gringras has no bones about the reality of his company's situation, even if a merger of sorts would hurt Salon's reputation as a renegade.

"I think we'd all like to think you don't have to be a media conglomerate to succeed at doing high-quality journalism," Gingras told the Journal. "Right now, the content economy we have today says you probably have to be."

In a bid for more ad revenue, Salon also plans to develop lifestyle "sub-brands" and focus on "lifestyle" content.

It's not the first time that a cash-strapped Salon has reached out to a larger media company to discuss adoption. Before Talk magazine shuttered in 2002, former CEO Michael O'Donnell said the site entered into talks with Talk's editor, Tina Brown. Perhaps Newsweek and The Daily Beast might add a bookish little brother to the family?

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234