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 »
High school can be a tricky social field to navigate. Luckily, we have shows like Gossip Girl, which give viewers a totally realistic account of what it's like to be a hyper-sexualized trust fund baby in New York, and whose characters are the guideposts for America's youth. Based on that thesis, let's count the subtle references to prep school etiquette in the Observer's 2,000 words on 15-year-old starlet Taylor Momsen, who plays the Brooklyn-poor social-climber Jenny Humphry. This exercise guarantees to educate us about tween culture. 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]
As we flipped through the Observer at our corner deli this morning, we had to wonder if said deli's front door was actually not a door at all, but a rip in the space-time continuum that had thrown us back to June 2007. Because what other explanation could there be for the pink paper's stories on gladiator sandals and the, um, up-and-coming neighborhood of Williamsburg?
Seriously—both the Times and the Wall Street Journal had stories mentioning gladiator sandals. The Observer declares them "The Hot Shoe of Summer!", but the Times, in June 2007, anointed as hip in "Another Summer of Love," while the Journal did so the following month in "Strapped." CONTINUED »
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg does not understand blogging and should therefore have his writing privileges taken away. But it's hard to take things from people on the Internet, unless it's music, movies, or porn, so we're helpless. But our argument for it goes like this: He complains about getting bashed on the Internet. After the Observer's Matt Haber blogged about Goldberg's online debut, delivering a very hard slap on the back as a welcome, Goldberg whiningly blogged a reply after talking with colleague Andrew Sullivan about blogging politics, and how Haber uses blogging as a "loose" form of journalism. This, sadly, comes as news to Goldberg, who, while having dipped his feet in online chattering with Slate, does not understand that blog publishing is just an excuse for slander.
When Time.com contributor-of-something Ana Marie Cox told her husband, Congressional Quarterly editor Chris Lehmann, that she'd be reviewing the new book, Right Is Wrong, from Arianna Huffington – a regular on the same party circuit as Cox and with whom Cox had discussed potential contributing to the Huffington Post – "he asked if I thought that might have an impact on our friendship."
And not whether it might impact Cox's ability to write write an objective review of Arianna's book for The Observer.
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.
In addition to launching fifty national politic sites, Jared Kushner is also extending the New York Observer's online brand with Socialite Slaptown, a riff on TMZ's own Star v. Star, that asks visitors to bet which lady opportunist will triumph over the slags. The methodology sorta works like the NCAA's March Madness tournament, but in this version the winner gets a $1,900 Gevril watch. Can your office pool beat that? [Socialite Slapdown]
Might the baby on the way for the New York Observer's Spencer Morgan, with girlfriend Alexis Bryan, of Vanity Fair, explain the party boy's suddenly sober ways? We hear Morgan has been laying off most liquid and powder substances of late, favoring a strict, no-nonsense means of socializing. Some might attribute the healthier lifestyle to him training to be a good dad; others say Bryan has him whipped.
Matt Haber, of LowCulture.com and a byline at an assortment of meaningful publications, is the New York Observer's new media editor, Jossip hears. He replaces Zachary Roth, who quit in January among, it was rumored, tears. Haber began yesterday. John Koblin is terribly excited.
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.
• With the Golden Globes canceled, the city of Los Angeles can expect to lose more than New York ever did during the Broadway strike. [MG]
• Stereohyped visits with the cast of Broadway's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — and gets schooled by Phylicia Rashad. [SH]
• Fox News falsely reports, decides to name Paul Begala to Hillary Clinton's campaign. [HuffPo]
• Terry Bradshaw throws in the broadcasting towel. [NYP]
• Simon Cowell is still pulling for Britney Spears: "I think she's the most searched artist on the Internet at the moment, so she has a head start." But, to be fair, so was Anna Nicole. [People]
• The New York Observer remains a grooming ground for media beat reporters, despite what one frustrated blog mogul thinks. [MM]
• The new ad campaign from Equinox gyms is looking more like a Dieux de Stade calendar. [Queerty (maybe NSFW)]
For all the boys who grow up dreaming of playing for the New York Knicks, there’s a smaller, dorkier contingent of basketball fans who dream of covering the Knicks. And like so many fantasies, this one is better left unrealized.
According to The Observer, the Knicks beat is one of the worst jobs in journalism. (We would have gone with Iraq, but what we do know?) And it’s not just that the Knicks are bad, which they are, it’s that the Knicks organization and the Madison Square Garden are neurotic, micomanagers.
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Which is more reprehensible/awesome: The New York Observer product plugs in Gossip Girl, or last night's showcasing of The Box as fictitious club called Victrola?
Alexis Debat may have pretended to interview Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, but he never screwed ABC on a story.
Last week, ABC cleared their French consultant from any wrongdoing on his reporting for the network. But there are still some questions about when exactly ABC discovered this.
According to an ABC memo, when concerns about Debat came up in May, the network had Chris Isham, then head of their investigative unit, look into Debat’s work.
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 »
Well isn't today's New York Observer just cuuuute! The salmon weekly has given both members of media power couple Ana Marie Cox (Time) and Chris Lehmann (CQ Weekly) a byline this week. And they didn't even have to share an article!
Cox and Lehmann, of course, were most recently seen in the battle with Nation scribe and Media Matters blogger Eric Alterman — with Chris coming to Ana's defense in an open letter after Alterman dared accuse his wife (to simplify things) of not being worthy of a Time staff position. (She's Time.com's political editor. And a party crasher. And innocent party in a legal matter.)
So what are Ana and Chris using their column inches for? To hatchet job Alterman? CONTINUED »
Sometimes you gotta love the New York Observer. 'Why?' you ask. Because their newspaper is an awkward shade of salmon, because their barely legal publisher still gets carded on a regular basis, because you're sneakily addicted to the Transom.
And because just when you thought they've lost a bit of their legendary bite, they go and write an entire article praising Chloe Sevigny, Claire Danes and Parker Posey on becoming has-beens, chiding Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohans for being shoulda-coulda-woulda trainwrecks, and patting boring-but-talented stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hilary Swank on the back for being in bed before midnight…and totally redeem themselves!
(Special bonus points for the artwork, as well as the bold hypothesis that Claire Danes ingeniously reinvented herself by stealing Mary-Louise Parker's boyfriend when the Weeds star was 8 months pregnant).
• 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?
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Editorial Director
