Spring Break forever...until you stick a Q-tip in your ear. (THR)

We'd actually go see this film. Wouldn't you?

Mr. Callan is the tweeter behind @TimesPublicEdit, a parody of Mr. Brisbane, whose handle is @thepubliceditor. Mr. Callan began the account in January, shortly after The Times published Mr. Brisbane now-infamous column, “Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” asking if newspapers ought to fact-check all remarks made by newsmakers.

“I was aghast at the sort of sophistry that was on display for that,” Mr. Callan told Off The Record.

The feed began as a place to mock the concept of truth vigilantism (“Should The Times have asked some follow-up questions when Rick Santorum told us he was a vampire?”) but later became a sort of ombudsman-at-large, questioning the fixations of the reporters who hang around on Twitter.

Indeed, Mr. Callan’s parody became so refined that when he wrote “CNN is reporting that Anderson Cooper is straight” (a reference to CNN’s incorrect reporting on the Supreme Court’s health care decision), reporters from other outlets—unable to resist a catty and colorful quote from a Times editor—forgot to be their own Twitter truth vigilantes.

“Awful lot of snark coming from Art ‘Should we check facts?’ Brisbane,” wrote Atlantic associate editor David Graham, before quickly recanting. “Blast, that’s a fake Times Public Editor account. Apologies.”

Reporters for the New York Post’s Page Six and The Hollywood Reporter, were more easily fooled; both attributed to the joke to Mr. Brisbane.

Forty-eight hours, 719 retweets, and some 3,000 “favorites” later, Mr. Callan’s account was shut down by Twitter.

The situation would make a fine topic for a Public Editor column. (In fact, it’s one Craig Silverman, who was reportedly approached to replace Mr. Brisbane, has discussed on Poynter.) As journalists increasingly treat their subjects’ Twitters as a primary source, should the microblogging platform regulate parody Twitters? Or is it the job of a journalist to vet its social media sources?

When Mr. Callan appealed his suspension, Twitter told him it had received a “valid impersonation report regarding your account.”

“Twitter firmly believes in the freedom of expression,” the company wrote to Mr. Callan, “However, impersonation that misleads, confuses, or deceives is against Twitter Rules.”

But Mr. Callan, who writes for the sports blogs The Classical and Amazin’ Avenue, says his intention was parody, not deception.

“Occasionally I would get a retweet or a mention but up until this past week nobody to my knowledge thought that was really him,” he said.

Per the rules, Mr. Callan has added “fake” to his profile and been reinstated. Any confusion will soon be settled, however. Mr. Brisbane, who declined to comment on this story, will abdicate the public editor post in September. The Times has yet to name his replacement but is reportedly circling in on candidates.

Off The Record wondered whom the ombudsman’s ombudsman might like to see take over the position.

“A person of color, a woman, someone out of the mold,” he said. “The New York Times already skews toward the Arthur Brisbane demographic. It should bring something different to a paper that’s already fairly monochromatic.”

It states:

“This very creative enterprise will bring a new sense of energy and fun that’s totally unlike anything anywhere else, honest,” said a CBS spokesperson, who also revealed that the Company has been working with a secret team for several months on the creation of the series, which was completely developed by the people at CBS independent of any other programming on the air. “Given the current creative and legal environment in the reality programming business, we’re sure nobody will have any problem with this title or our upcoming half-hour comedy for primetime, POSTMODERN FAMILY.”

Although a judge denied CBS a restraining order Friday, a lawyer for CBS told The Hollywood Reporter that the network intends to continue its claims against ABC for copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, as well as individual suits against any former Big Brother producer who violated their confidentiality agreement by working for The Glass House. (There are reportedly nineteen of them!)

The release doesn't sound like anything that was supposed to be made public, but then, nor is the network hiding from it.

Full release below:

CBS ANNOUNCES DEVELOPMENT OF “DANCING ON THE STARS,” AN EXCITING AND COMPLETELY ORIGINAL REALITY PROGRAM THAT OWES ITS CONCEPT AND EXECUTION TO NOBODY AT ALL

Conan O'Brien (The Hollywood Reporter)

The Hollywood Reporter is, today, the beneficiary of a recent Conan O'Brien publicity tour that's seen him getting interviewed by fellow NBC jiltee David Letterman--and it seems like his last publicity tour, complete with a documentary, was less than a year ago! Mr. O'Brien, with a TBS program, lacks the platform of contemporaries like Jimmy Kimmel (on ABC), Craig Ferguson (CBS), or Jimmy Fallon (NBC), or the cultural currency of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Mr. O'Brien does, though, have an interesting narrative, one he's able to access by hanging out with other hosts that hate NBC or by commenting on the now more than two-year-old imbroglio that ended his relationship with the network.

On Jay Leno, Mr. O'Brien says: "He certainly isn't calling me. It's not like he's going to sneak up on me in traffic. He's a guy you see coming from a ways off because he's usually driving a car made of copper that runs on manure and has gas lanterns." The shade-throwing continues, though Mr. O'Brien says that he will likely never speak to Mr. Leno again.

Mr. O'Brien's shows ratings have reportedly leveled off after a long period of erosion and Mr. O'Brien has learned, a bit, how not to come off incredibly poorly in an interview, though he still has the streak of self-pity that colored his last publicity tour: "Tall people getting older is funny because they often don't," he says, because tall people... die sooner, it would seem.

Lee Aronsohn's PMS attack (Getty Images)

Lee Aronsohn, showrunner, executive producer, and co-creator of Two and a Half Men, is nobly trying to take up the torch of blatant misogyny in the face of the crisis currently faced in comedy: women and their labia. As we all know, there has been a dearth recently of men yelling about how not funny women are ever since Christopher Hitchens passed away and Eddie Brill was fired from Letterman, but Mr. Aronsohn is obviously up to the challenge. (And should have extra time on his hands after his show dies.)

But Sunday while talking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference, Mr. Aronsohn, who knows comedy when he sees it (which is why Two and a Half Men is the most critically lauded piece of humor writing around and is doing really well these days) just laid it all on the line re: his feelings about the comedic ability of ladies who talk about their gross, disgusting vaginas. He applauds them, but also thinks that it's time to move on, you know?

Remember, he said all this during an event where he was giving the keynote speech:

Aronsohn isn't a fan of the current crop of female-centered comedies such as Whitney and 2 Broke Girls.

"Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods," he said.

Aronsohn applauded women like Whitney Cummings, Chelsea Handler and Tina Fey securing a voice to discuss formerly taboo subjects on TV.

"But we’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation," he said.

The current boom in female-centric TV contrasts with Two and a Half Men mostly portraying women as bimbos, something Aronsohn isn't about to apologize for.

“Screw it,” Aronsohn earlier told the Toronto conference during a keynote address. "We're centering the show on two very damaged men. What makes men damaged? Sorry, it’s women. I never got my heart broken by a man."

Later, he clarified by insisting he was hardly one to take the moral high ground.

"We do far too many fart jokes on Two and a Half Men," he conceded. "I’m the last person to judge."

Whoa, I'm pretty sure the characters on Two and a Half Men were damaged by prolonged alcohol/drug abuse/terrible child-raising? But we guess that's womankind's fault as well. If only we would get back in the kitchen!

Since the outrage from those pesky feminist types on Twitter, Mr. Aronsohn appealed to detractors on the micro-blogging site, tweeting Monday, "Women, please look up ‘irony. "

To which the entire world responded: ???????

He has since taken down the tweet and replaced it with: "Yes, yes - it was a stupid joke. I'm sorry."

To which the entire world responded: ?????!

You know what though? He's totally right. This labial saturation in modern comedy is probably the cause of James Wolcott's Vanity Fair essay on how men in cinema can no longer have strong phalli...just limp dicks.

Illustration by Fred Harper.

One weeknight late last month, TheWrap.com editor in chief Sharon Waxman sent an email to The Hollywood Reporter’s editorial director, Janice Min, shortly before 1 in the morning. Ms. Waxman asked Ms. Min if they could speak in person, privately, about how to improve the relationship between their publications. During the previous two days, Ms. Waxman had feuded with Ms. Min’s web editor, Joseph Kapsch, over a story on TheWrap that said Mr. Kapsch was considering leaving THR as part of an “editorial exodus” that saw three employees depart. Mr. Kapsch, who, as of this writing, remains employed at THR, blasted TheWrap, or, as he called it, “The Crap,” on Twitter and in a 600-word response he sent to the media blog FishbowlLA.

Prior to emailing Ms. Min, Ms. Waxman forwarded copies of Mr. Kapsch’s statements to two executives at THR’s parent company, Prometheus Global Media. She urged one to see how badly his employee was treating her. She told the other to watch his back.

“It’s kind of amusing, these blogger characters out here,” Ms. Min said, ever eager to remain above the fray. “They really enjoy ruminating and obsessing over what we do. It’s just part of the kooky Net landscape out here.”

Hollywood has always felt like a small town, but it may never have felt smaller than it does right now among the members of the city’s Hollywood press. For decades Daily Variety was the sector’s indisputed leader, the prime organ not only for scoops but for wild speculation, backroom smoke signals, trial balloons and brazen displays of wishful thinking as well. The Hollywood Reporter seemed content to take the number-two spot.

Then came Nikki. And Sharon. And Janice. And, never one to miss a party, Bonnie.

Never mind that the ad market is struggling and print is on the slab. Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, which launched online in March 2006, has gradually become a full-scale news operation. In 2009, former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman launched a competing website, TheWrap. Later that year, Bonnie Fuller stepped into the mix with the gossip and lifestyle site Hollywood Life for Deadline’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation.

Ms. Min.

The digital threat led the legacy publications to adopt new strategies. At the end of 2009, Variety erected an online paywall. Last October, THR imported  Janice Min to revamp its website and relaunch the print publication as a weekly with a broader focus.

The result has been an increasingly brutal, fiercely personal competition replete with rampant poaching, vituperative blog posts and threats of legal action.

No one who knows anything worth telling comes without a complex history and connections. Therefore, like all good Tinseltown tales, this story must include a disclosure. For six months last year, this reporter was employed at TheWrap, where we were overworked, underpaid and regularly subjected to Ms. Waxman’s mood swings. The last straw was when Ms. Waxman consistently berated us over the phone on our first day off in ages—Yom Kippur. Ms. Waxman declined to comment on this story.

Ms. Fuller.

There’s more: During our time on the Left Coast, we also extensively reported on the work of Nikki Finke. Ms. Finke does not like this reporter, to the point where she insisted on relaying her comments for this article through an Observer editor. Also: We also had lunch with a THR editor and discussed a hypothetical job that never panned out. That editor is not quoted in this piece. We have friends and former colleagues at all four trades.

Between Ms. Fuller, the famously mercurial, famously successful editor, who displayed a magic touch at Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, before almost singlehandedly reviving the celebrity weekly with US, and the even-tempered Ms. Min, her former No. 2, who took over after Ms. Fuller left the magazine, there’s a natural competition.

More ferocious is the rivalry between Ms. Finke and Ms. Waxman, who were once such good friends, Ms. Finke used to go to Shabbes dinner at Ms. Waxman’s house and still praises the Moroccan tagine. However she told the Observer, “I won’t talk to her anymore.”

Deadline began as a column in LA Weekly penned by Ms. Finke, a former debutante who worked in the Associated Press’s Moscow bureau before covering the Hollywood beat for several publications, including Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and, yes, The New York Observer. Deadline launched online in March of 2006. Since then, Ms. Finke has developed a larger-than-life reputation due to her formidable influence, her highly placed sources, her catch-phrase “Toldja!” and her various eccentricities.

For example, Ms. Finke is never seen in public and has rarely been photographed. The one known image of her is a black-and-white glamour shot taken for a book jacket. “I don’t know why people make such a fuss about this,” she said. “In 2006 I needed a professional photo. I haven’t needed a photo taken of me since then.” Last February, this reporter was involved in an effort to capture a picture of the elusive Ms. Finke for Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper The Daily. We published a photo of a woman leaving the gated underground garage at Ms. Finke’s apartment building that we felt confident was she. “The photo purporting to be me posted by The Daily was not me,” she said. We were unable to definitively prove otherwise.

Ms. Finke edits Deadline by working the phones from her home in Westwood. She is notoriously combative, particularly with certain reporters who write about her. When The Observer reached out to Ms. Finke to get her take on the trade landscape, she responded with a strongly worded email accusing this correspondent of “reckless disregard for the truth.”

Then another email came in purporting to back her claim. And another, copied up and down the masthead. A flurry of phone calls followed. Claiming that this reporter once declared an intent to “destroy” her, she demanded that the story be reassigned.

With an approach some call bullying but Ms. Finke prefers to call “being honest,” she managed to earn a reputation as both a crusading journalist and a bona fide Hollywood power broker. “If someone acts like a moron, I’m going to call them on it,” she said. “If someone lies to me, I’m going to call them on it. But I also take responsibility for my own behavior. Sometimes my passion gets the best of me.” In 2009, she made the leap from mysterious blogger to establishment player with the help of a deep-pocketed backer, a young heir named Jay Penske who purchased Deadline through a deal that gave Ms. Finke what is said to be an eight-figure contract and eight-year term. With Mr. Penske’s backing, in 2010 Ms. Finke was able to poach a pair of marquee talents: 20-year Variety veteran Mike Fleming and THR’s TV editor, Nellie Andreeva.

Ms. Waxman. (Getty)

Ms. Finke and her team have since been able to amass a monthly audience of approximately 1.6 million readers, according to Quantcast, and during Oscar and Emmy seasons even put out a print publication “that made a shitload of money,” she said.

In January 2009, Deadline found itself with a new competitor when Ms. Waxman launched a digital trade of her own, TheWrap. Their relationship quickly soured as Ms. Waxman encroached on what Ms. Finke considered Deadline’s turf. (TheWrap’s traffic was 1.1 million last month, according to Quantcast.)

Still, the THR writer we spoke with said TheWrap isn’t as important to keep up with as Deadline. “I just don’t think they’re breaking stories as much as they used to,” the writer said.

TheWrap’s work has also drawn endless criticism from Deadline. In February, Deadline’s parent company sent a cease and desist letter to Ms. Waxman and members of TheWrap’s board accusing the site of stealing scoops. “It has become apparent that TheWrap.com and its employees have engaged in a continuous pattern of misappropriating content from Deadline.com [and] passing off that information as its own,” the letter said.

Ms. Finke gleefully announced the legal salvo on her site. “I will not, and can not, allow anyone to rip off Team Deadline’s exclusive coverage,” she wrote. “TheWrap.com has had many wholesale staff turnovers...and at present is operating with just a handful of reporters.”

Ms. Finke was correct. From April 2010 until the end of last year, Ms. Waxman lost at least six employees, including two reporters who went to Variety and this reporter, who joined The Daily.

Bert Fields, an entertainment attorney who represented TheWrap, responded with a letter to Deadline’s parent company, PMC (then called MMC). “TheWrap has not engaged in the conduct you claim and has done nothing that violates MMC’s rights,” Mr. Fields wrote. “By contrast, MMC has demonstrably and repeatedly violated my client’s rights, including but not limited to violations of the antitrust laws (giving rise to treble damage claims), as well as unfair competition and trade libel. Indeed, MMC’s attempt to monopolize newsworthy subjects by threatening spurious lawsuits is, in itself, violative of the law, as are its numerous attempts to threaten and coerce others to refrain from supporting or dealing with TheWrap and its repeated publication of false and defamatory statements about TheWrap.”

Seven months later, PMC filed suit against The Hollywood Reporter’s parent company, Prometheus Global Media, alleging that code from the PMC site TVLine.com was used for THR’s website. Prometheus responded by removing the offending code from THR.com.

It’s easy to see why THR’s website would be scrutinized by PMC. In the 13 months since Ms. Min has taken over the reins, her blend of consumer-friendly celebrity news and trade coverage has brought in record traffic. According to Quantcast, THR had a record month in October drawing approximately 6.5 million readers, a much larger audience than either TheWrap or Deadline attracts.

Ms. Min is not a fan of the traditional trade approach. “In some ways, the whole thing had evolved into some echo chamber where 1,000 people were talking to the same 1,000 people,” she said. Conventional wisdom on Ms. Min’s revamp of THR is that she has broadened the focus by adding more consumer friendly celebrity coverage. Ms. Min said her approach isn’t simply about mixing celebrity and trade media, instead, she prefers to think THR has “expanded what is considered to be an entertainment story pertinent to the business.” Still, getting away from inside-baseball trade news, she added, has felt “a little like being the first prospector in California.”

Ms. Finke has staked out the opposite approach. “We’ve always been a celebrity-free zone,” she told us. “And Hollywood tells us it’s grateful for that. We are an entertainment business site and proud of it.”

Meanwhile, Variety, which dealt with the new digital challengers in the trade space by walling off its online content, has largely disappeared from the conversation.

“In Variety’s case, it’s almost that we don’t even know it exists anymore,” a THR writer told us. “We don’t even care.”

According to the web traffic measuring service Quantcast, Variety’s online traffic of approximately 360,000 monthly readers is dwarfed by their competition. Web circulation may be down, but Kimberly Gebbett, Variety’s director of marketing, said the paywall has had other benefits like 6,000 new paid digital subscribers and an increase in paid print circulation.

“We believe our content is absolutely valuable enough to be paid for and our subscribers believe the same,” Ms. Gebbett said. “It’s absolutely profitable.”

Meanwhile, despite Ms. Finke’s success, insiders say all is not well in the House of Penske. Other sites owned by Penske Media Corporation, Hollywood Life, Movieline, Boy Genius Report and OnCars.com, aren’t enjoying similar growth, and the company recently suffered a spate of layoffs due to cash-flow problems. Morale is said to be low.

Focusing on lifestyle and gossip, Hollywood Life was launched by Ms. Fuller in the summer of 2009. Former employees say PMC has repeatedly had to warn the editor about budget overruns exacerbated by her lavish personal expenses.

We reached out to PMC for comment, and Mr. Penske emailed to tell us, “I feel very fortunate to be working with two of the most prolific and successful editors in entertainment journalism. Though Deadline and HollywoodLife are two separate businesses of PMC, and Nikki and Bonnie produce two very different editorial products each day—in their respective fields, there is no equal.”

According to multiple insiders, Ms. Fuller was repeatedly warned to get her budget in line. “They basically told her, between the freelancers and your expenses, it’s not working, so if you go over your budget, it’s coming out of your salary,” a former HollywoodLife employee said. “She spends a ton of money, she expenses every little thing,” our tipster added. “She’ll write ‘two dollars’ on a post-it and then she’ll be like, ‘This is from November, it was a coat check.’”

Our sources also said Ms. Fuller put family and friends on the payroll including one woman who was given a six-figure salary before being fired by PMC for chronic lateness and absenteeism. Sofia Fuller, Ms. Fuller’s college-age daughter, has also worked at HollywoodLife. Another former employee said Sofia also spent freely from her mother’s expense account.

“She said, ‘I went to go hook up with my boyfriend. I was so wasted that I expensed it to my mom’s account,” said our source.

Welcome to Hollywood.

hwalker@observer.com

Additional reporting by Aaron Gell

Update (4:47 p.m.): This story was updated to clarify current traffic statistics for THR.com, TVLine's role in the web code lawsuit and Mr. Kapsch's employment status.

via NYPost.com

Back when Janice Min was editor of US Weekly, she seemed like a general in the celebrity-industrial complex's war on culture.

Now that she's editor of Prometheus' glossy L.A. trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, she says she was always more of a mercenary.

“I found growing the business interesting, but I didn’t find the actual content interesting,” she told Nick Axelrod in an Elle profile this month (that doubles as  great media business read). “I didn’t want to be the Us Weekly lady for the rest of my life.”

Like any self-respecting overachiever, she gave it her all anyway. Mr. Axelrod writes:

Min’s commitment to the job was all-consuming, as evidenced by the tale of her spending the entire weekend before giving birth to her first child [...] negotiating coverage of the surprise wedding of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. The cover story on the nuptials closed in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and by 7:50 a.m., Min was dishing withToday’s Matt Lauer about J.Lo’s intimate, 40-person reception in the backyard of her Beverly Hills home—“absolutely the anti-Bennifer wedding,” she noted. (Though, of course, J.Lo and Anthony announced their very Bennifer breakup this summer.) Afterward, Min left Rocke­feller Center to see her doctor, who told her that her water was breaking. She went to the hospital that afternoon and gave birth to her son, Will, two days later. The issue sold 1,009,217 copies on newsstands. It was Min’s first million-plus seller.

And she did it all while looking out for number one, of course. Elle reports she brought in $2 million a year thanks to her "politely relentless negotiating prowess."

We were happy to learn that her years in celebrity wrangling weren't for naught. Industry execs are just as press-hungry and vain.

The Reporter, is more Chaucer, less Dante, busy chronicling (and in part creating) characters who, while they may make dumb, even craven, moves, are never villains. It’s all for one and one for all in the magical world of Min’s Hollywood. And playing nice, or at least nicer—certainly the Reporter’s glossy cover, now coveted promotional real estate, is an appeal to the town’s vanity—is not without tangible benefits. Last November, the producer of ABC’s hit Two and a Half Men, Chuck Lorre, shone on the front of the Reporter, and a few months later the website broke the story that Ashton Kutcher would take over Charlie Sheen’s role on the show. In July, a January cover boy, Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy, called the Reporter with this nugget: He was replacing the show’s three biggest stars—Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, and Chris Colfer—after the fourth season. Coincidence, or good old-fashioned reporting, combined with the clout that comes with fulfilling peoples’ narcissistic needs? Does it matter?

Long story short: Hollywood Reporter formally accused Ms. Finke of "a concerted and unlawful attempt to disrupt THR’s business" that includes telling advertisers that the Reporter has financial problems and harassing THR staff. Nikki Finke responded as Nikki Finke would:

To: Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, NYC

You can stick this letter up your asses if you think you can intimidate me as a journalist who has spent months now reporting and preparing an article about The Hollywood Reporter which I plan to publish very soon. If anything I have been very circumspect about informing Hollywood about the truth regarding THR. Because the truth hurts:

– This week THR laid off/fired more staffers in addition to the other staffers laid off/fired this summer alone.

– I have contacted THR staffers only when they claim ‘exclusives’ that aren’t (because Deadline had the true earlier ‘exclusive’) or when THR staffers steal Deadline content (our exclusives with no reference or link). [See cease and desist letter which Deadline sent to THR on February 25th, 2011.] I have been warning other reporters and other media outlets about this as well. Which is why I plan to start “naming names” of reporters who slap their bylines on Deadline’s exclusive information. They deserve humiliation for it.

Rather than be named by Ms. Finke, we'll let you read the rest of the letter here. There is so much more to enjoy. In the Legend of Nikki Finke, this is kind of a classic chapter.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

'The Hollywood Reporter' Loves 'American Idol.'

The Hollywood Reporter has posted a gallery of its covers since its reinvention as a glossy. Of the thirty covers included, three feature Ryan Seacrest (two of those with his American Idol castmates). One features the cast of the Idol-alike reality show The Voice. Two feature the cast of Glee. In thirty issues, these six represent twenty percent of cover real estate devoted to television shows about singing. (Four covers, of Transformers director Michael Bay, Pirates of the Caribbean star Penélope Cruz, the cast and director of Thor, and The Beaver director Jodie Foster, could be said to be promoting new or upcoming film projects; five were tied to the traditional province of Hollywood trade rags, the Oscars.)

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

--How did Tina Fey acquit herself as a tertiary character in a fake Bravo reality show?

--...and how does Mel Gibson do in Jodie Foster's new dip into directing?

--Speaking of which! How did the husky-voiced directress--scandalously!--finagle her way onto the cover of The Hollywood Reporter?

--But surely THR has no greater problems at the moment?

--What's the "coke of the art world"? (It isn't coke? It isn't coke!)

--What player lured Lindsay Lohan to the Knicks game last night (away from hangouts in "the art world"--she heard their priorities had shifted!)?

--No Lohan he, which Vogue reporter "wasn’t exactly sure what a Knick was"?

--Extra credit: What is a Knick?

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_