It’s Wednesday morning, and that means The Observer came out on paper today! Here’s a look at this week’s media coverage.
In Off the Record, John Koblin goes inside Newsday as the newsroom sucks in its collective belt and reporters wait for word from up high about how many of them will be laid off.
Koblin also looks at The New York Times’ policy against op-ed columnists endorsing presidential candidates and close reads recent pieces from Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich to figure out who it is they’re (not so) secretly supporting.
In NYTV, Felix Gillette tells the story of bad-boy TV news producer Chez Pazienza, who was recently fired from CNN for criticizing NBC News President Steve Capus’s decision to fire David Shuster. Some of Pazienza’s tattoos are inspired by T. S. Eliot; the one on his forearm says "murder." In his b-item, Felix also reports on recent layoffs at Channel 13.
Over in Brooklyn, meanwhile, Doree Shafrir finds a group of creatively-inclined, ambitious youngsters who, armed with the notion that culture in New York has moved across the river, are trying to grow a new social organization attached to the Brooklyn Public Library modeled after the NYPL’s Young Lions club. They’re calling themselves Brooklyn Vanguard, and according to their leader, Kevin Pemberton, they’re doing things differently: “With the Vanguard, we’re rolling up our sleeves," he tells Shafrir. "We’re not standing on ceremony at an event or just trying to get the best photo op.”
In books, Leon Neyfakh meets 82-year-old Roslyn Targ, the dramatic and irresistible international literary agent who, in her glory days during the 1950s and 60s, helped bring many of America’s most beloved authors into translation abroad.
Oh, and: there’s a bonus this week jumping from page one into the politics section, where former Observer media editor Tom Scocca and the great Choire Sicha team up for a bullet of a piece on Ralph Nader’s announcement to join the presidential race.
