• You can now buy a Prada bag for less than a grand in someplace other than Chinatown.
• Damien Hirst's skull art isn't selling the way it used to.
• Jared Kushner is now handing out free real estate advice in hopes that there are still some buyers left on the market.
No one bothered to inform Jared Kushner that right now was maybe not the best time to launch Observer Style?
Oh well, you can never go wrong with Beyonce for a premiere cover, especially since chances are this will be one of only several before the mag eventually folds, or goes the route of Men's Vogue and becomes just another biyearly supplement. Collectors item, ya'll!
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are finally getting married! Well, once Ivanka converts over to Judaism, which is standard practice for becoming a big name in the media world. Kushner owns the Observer and Ivanka is a Trump, so this wedding should be featured prominently in the Sunday Fashion & Style section of The New York Times.
But not if their Rabbi has anything to say about it.
As we reported in 2001, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun on East 85th led his flock to boycott the Times over "biased and unfair coverage" of Israel and the Mideast, and got 1,000 subscribers to bail.
Is picking a Times-hating Rabbi Kushner's subtle dig at the competition? Lord knows NYT needs those subscribers back now.
Industry hottie Jared Kushner didn't even have the decency to wait one day after his people snarked up a review of WSJ., the new glossy from the Wall Street Journal, before pulling a hat trick and yanking a New York Observer glossy from out of his ass: CONTINUED »
Jared Kusher: "Real estate is like porn for rich people." Funny, 'cause the New York Observer is cultural porn for stupid rich people. [Portfolio]
Newly single Jared Kushner is expected to throw his hat in the Newsday ring, which already includes Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman. But with an asking price of around $500 million, purchasing the Long Island daily will by 50X more expensive than Kusher's New York Observer, which he fetched for a paltry $10 million.
BREAK UPS New York Observer owner Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are no longer building the world's best-looking real estate behemoth you'd like to take behind closed doors and do all sorts of naught things to. [P6]
Jared Kushner is both ingratiating Boy Charmer and serial Tick Off-er. You can't fault the twentysomething for sliding his hands all over Ivanka Trump's pins, but then you hear news that he's launching 50 micro-websites about politics, one for each state, and you tend to think his ambition is crossing the line into shameless flaunting. Because it is.
Under the umbrella Politicker.com, Kushner has so far launched ten state sites, like PolitickerNV.com and PolitickerNH.com, with all 50 expected to go live by the end of 2009. (By Election Day, he expects just 20 sites to be operational, which does voters a whole helluvalotta good.)
Each site will have its own mini news bureau with dedicated reporters, which means the initial cost of the investment – 50 domain names at $9.99 = $499.50 – balloons very quickly; in case you haven't heard, newspapers all over the place are in the middle of a different trend, cutting unaffordable newsroom jobs.
No matter, though: Kushner is loaded from his ethically-questionable father's fortune. (He did lay down $10m for the New York Observer, after all.) Which is why he's been able to hire 30 staffers so far, such as former Boston Globe blogger James Pindell.
But the goal here, indubitably, is to make money. And how to do that? Through the free-for-all that is online advertising. But that will require hoards of readers — readers who have to get over laughing at the little cartoon guy with the Bill Clinton thumb. Who, we can't help but imagine, was fashioned after Kushner. Or at least his boyish charm.
THE 50 STATE SOLUTION The New York Observer is 20% complete with their new project, Politicker. This site is a hub for political news from all 50 sites; ten states have launched so far. The plan is to put a journalist with a laptop and a BlackBerry in the state capital and let them go. We'll be sure to let you know about any openings in the Honolulu bureau. [NYT]
We've never had any particular inclination to crash a NYO bash. Primarily because we always envisioned their ho-hum gatherings as being garish salmon-themed affairs, involving a sherry-toting Jared Kushner, a martini-guzzling Spencer Morgan and impromptu political debates with cerebral media mensch Michael Calderone.
But that, of course, was before we knew about the illegal escorts. [P6]
As we write this, we’re looking out the window and salivating over the picture perfect weather outside, currently being wasted on lazy, unemployed persons and pretentious NYU students. And so, for your sanity and ours, we’ve decided to kick off a glorious new feature called “Comment of the Day,” to provide a transient glimmer of entertainment for all you working stiffs who would much rather be downing margaritas poolside on the Jersey Shore (while fending off advances from married, guidos named Tony) than slaving away in your cubicles.
Today’s “Comment of the Day” comes to us from the New York Observer website, and it pertains to Jared Kushner's bizarre decision to reprint Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" columns (that originally ran back in April of 1995).
But will they stand the test of time? Do people still care about Samantha Jones, Carrie and Mr. Big? And why hasn't Bushnell written anything new in the past ten years?*
Find out, after the jump.
Public relations industry vet Bob Sommer (of consumer and services firm MWW Group) is now known as the president of the Kushner family's Observer Media Group, the corporate umbrella of the New York Observer and some other reddish-ink ventures.
But just because he's now on the news side of the media business doesn't mean he's going to let his passion for spin waste away. "Asked if the Observer is profitable," writes PR Week, "Sommer pauses for a moment and allows a brief smile before rotely reciting the paper's recent promising initiatives."
Sommer also has forthright observations about the new media playground the 26-year-old Jared Kushner bought for himself. CONTINUED »
• Wunderkind publisher Jared Kushner often works on the Lord's Day. Possibly because he's Jewish, definitely because he's "motivated."
• Conrad Black fraud trial to start this week. Which is great, cause we haven't had a media circus since the days of Scooter Libby and Anna Nicole!
• David Carr quietly wonders whether Village Voice might be slightly better off if its editorial director weren't a "hayseed" living in Phoenix.
• Would U.S. News make up fake data in its college rankings? And if so, would it target those "hot artsy chicks" over at Sarah Lawrence?
CONTINUED »
• Next time you think you're having a bad day, just be glad you never had to have your boobs chopped off for no reason. [NYDN]
• Jeanine Pirro should have just put her husband on dontdatehim.com. Much more discreet than wiretapping. [NYT ]
• Anything that has anything to do with Jared Kushner is automatically news. Even if his estranged uncle buys a condo. [NYP]
• The MTA will sell the West Side railyards. They really need the money — just in case workers decide to strike again. [NY1]
Daniel Golden's new book, The Price of Admission, has already been widely discussed in the media — especially among gossips.
Golden spends 323 pages discussing how much the East Coast elite are willing to dish over or donate so their kids to make it into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, with the most notable among his examples being New York Observer owner Jared Kushner.
And in yesterday's Times Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff takes on the pages, interpreting the story as one of the regular folks. Sure, Wolff's kids go to "fancy schools" but that's because he bought them S.A.T tutors, not a new wing for the library. While Wolff is not one of the parents who bought his kid's into school, per se, he does think the fact that Golden wants "some people — people like himself — to have access to elite universities" to be ridiculous. Of course we also have to hear how Wolff could've written this book with more insight and depth than Golden did.
But he’s immune to the greater comedy of manners and so misses a potentially more profound story: the joke may be on us — not just on the rich, but on everybody who’s clawed his way and his kid’s way into big-brand colleges.
"Us?" Well, obviously he doesn't mean us. He means, like, him his fellow VF editors and a few families that have lived on the Upper West Side since 1920.
Show Them the Money [Michael Wolff, New York Times]
Is there anyone who gets into Harvard without paying someone , knowing someone, or being a celeb? Not really. Going to Harvard is like working at Vanity Fair — somewhere along the way, somebody important did you a favor. (If you don't believe us, just look at the fact that Jonathan Taylor Thomas went to Harvard for a year, and Christopher Hitchens writes for VF.)
So why should Jared Kushner, the new New York Observer owner, be any different? According to Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, new New York Observer Kush is among the "pay to play" of Harvard's grounds.
"Jared was certainly not anywhere near the top of his class," said his own high-school college counselor, Margo Krebs. "It was an unusual choice for Harvard to make."
But Jared's admission came on the heels of a $2.5 million pledge to the school from his father, reports Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Daniel Golden.
Surely $2.5 million isn't the largest funding Harvard has seen. Plus, the "Kushner family spokesman" (uh-oh) Howard Rubenstein (uh-oh) claims that Jared is strange and smart …
" …. He graduated Harvard with honors, proving that they were correct in admitting him."
We don't exactly take that as a denial … more of a, "sure he paid off Harvard, but it's not like he failed out or anything." So, he stayed without bribing anyone. We hope.
Getting ahead the old-school way? [Ben Widdicombe, Gatecrasher]
Oh those New York Observer kids are always joshin'. They are so funny! Like, rotfl funny. So, get this.
Peter Kaplan was introducing the esteemed George Gurley to staffers, and brought him by to meet the new 25-year-old owner, Jared Kushner. (Well, not just to meet, but to renegotiate his contract. Minor detail which is not actually the point of the story. But it's interesting.) Anyways, so when Kaplan brought Gurley over, he didn't introduce him to Kushner … he introduced him to the intern! (Cue awkward grandpa-style knee slapping.)
Gurley admits he was nervous about how to handle his youthful new squire.
Except Kaplan was actually introducing him to the intern.
"It was a beautiful prank," Gurley admits. "But I'd still like to meet the real Jared."
Translation: Gurley's not fuckin' around. He wants his damn cash.
Publishing pranksters [Ben Widdicombe, Gatecrasher]
• Brandon Davis sings us a song of the firecrotch. Like we don't all know that one already. Psha. [Page Six]
• No, Jared Kushner does not want his staff to have crabs. No, he is not aware that 40% of them already do. [VV]
• Oh, and speaking of NYO, they're playing softball against New York mag somewhere in Inwood tonight — for all you "journoati stalkerati" out there. (If you can figure out where, it's totally worth it just for the very rare of late David Amsden sighting.)
• Our roommate two months ago: "Hey, have you guys heard of this thing called YouTube?" The news, today: "Hey, have you guys heard of this thing called YouTube?" [AP]
• If only posters could actually vote. And if only they could vote for gays. [FBNY]
We were just going about our day, ho-hum, looking for gossip to spread and ways in which we could better destroy the world. And then, like a gift from our god, Satan, this arrived in our inbox.
Granted, it's no topless Jennifer Aniston or a Colin Farrell sex tap (which we couldn't be more grateful for. No. It's just a picture of one of Tom McGeveran's new bosses.
Remember Little Joshie Kushner? Yeah, he owns like 1/200 of the New York Observer now. We dig the dare shirt. And the fancy smansh bubbly. We're just trying to do the media community a favor. You should all get to know the people of the ruling class.
At least he'll fit in with the alcoholics at the paper, right? With Jared and all his water guzzling, somebody's gotta' keep the party going. After the jump, Joshie hangs out with friends and sits on the couch looking kind of stoned, and keeps our blog filled with random stuff for you to look at.
CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
