• Weekly World News is folding, which means the only place to read about a bald, umbrella-brandishing freakshow is on Britney Spear's official website.
• Presidential candidates get a little hot under the collar; perspire freely.
• In addition to being a better athlete than you are who gets hotter chicks than you do, QB Tom Brady is also a far snazzier dresser.
• Barry Bonds is officially the new Roger Maris. On 'roids.
• Never one to miss the scoop, Jon Friedman starts asking the big questions about some mysterious mogul man (Rupert whatisface?) who's slowly but surely taking over the media world.
• Fox News discovers it ain't easy being green.
Did you see the morning media blitz today? If not, you're in for a half-boring, half-exciting treat! You see, both the New York Post and WWD had stories on In Style's former accessories editor, Alice Kim.
Except Memo Pad's item was super dull (OMG, Kim's being replaced by the accessories editor from W!) whereas Page Six had the real dirt (Kim, who may be a sneaky clothes thief, is reportedly hitting it with Sandra Oh's ex-hubby).
Which is kind of like apples and oranges, except when one of the fruits is much, much better than the other one.
In journalism, like most other fields, getting a foot in the door often has a whole lot to do with who you know. Whether it's an editorial assistant who can slip your resume to the top of the pile or a columnist for whom you used to fetch coffee (milk, no sugar) it's generally advantageous to have a friend or an ally in the journalistic world.
Of course, as today's Memo Pad points out ad nauseum, it also helps when your father is the owner of a large, successful magazine.
Today, WWD joins the ranks of time-honored publications (such as the world-renowned subway-renowned dailies, Metro New York and amNew York) by allowing its first page to be infiltrated by an annoying corporate sponsor. But, lest you interpret this as a desperate cry for help/money, Daniel Lagani (president of the Fairchild fashion group) is quick to tell you otherwise.
And he knows just how to do it! By reminding us that this isn't "selling out" so much as "moving [WWD] to an entirely new place," and reciting a boring history (stemming back to the 1970's) of the company's ad-sales innovations.
Timing, and not desperation, led Women’s Wear Daily to its decision to introduce a front-page ad, Mr. Lagani of Fairchild said. The paper did run smaller black-and-white ads called tombstones at the bottom of the front page until the 1970s, for companies like Jantzen and Peter Pan Fashions. In 2000, it ran some cover-wraps with ads for Gucci. The new front-page banners will be limited, Mr. Lagani said, to prevent overexposure.
Moreover, says Lagani, who, apparently, was not finished talking, "[i]n the case of Women’s Wear Daily, business has never been better…This is simply a smart business decision."
Sure it is, Dan. Also a smart business move? Not selling advertising space on your front page unless you really, really have to.
Sick and tired about reading about Graydon Carter's uber-exlusive media hotspot? Then you may want to cancel those subscriptions to Vogue and GQ, stop buying Bon Appetit and Gourmet and quit flipping through that months-old issue of Details in your dermatologist's waiting room.
Oh, and while you're at it, steer clear of WWD's Memo Pad. Because, as we've now seen on several occasions, the buck does not stop there.
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We would have so gotten this to you sooner, but WWD's Memopad was blocked behind a pay-wall. So, sorry. But, just in case you happen to have not seen them yet, we think these yearbook editor photos are pretty funny. Especially because the darling Jann Wenner looks so slick and innocent and un-bi-sexual in this one.
The pictures are worth at least a thousands words each … but the written layout was pretty dishy, too.
Revelations along the way were by turns predictable (Seventeen editor in chief Atoosa Rubinstein was voted biggest brown-noser) and surprising (US Weekly's Janice Min is remembered at her alma mater for her focus on hard news and her disdain for features). Elle editor in chief Robbie Myers was denied senior yearbook glory when her high school mistakenly printed in her place the photo of an African-American girl who was not a student there.
Ohh, burn! The rest of the photos are sort of funny … mostly just because it's weird to think of your editor in chief as a person who went to school. However, if anyone has any Adam Moss or Brandon Holley (or better yet Graydon Carter!) yearbook photos, well, you know what to do.
Happy Days [Irin Carmon, WWD]
• Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro split, creating a media frenzy. Star didn't know and Us Weekly didn't tell.
• Mediaweek’s Stephanie Smith gets ready to jump all over Women’s Wear Daily.
• The New York Times goes on a diet.
• Robert De Niro decided the New York Observer wasn’t worth his time.
• It’s hard to find the words to describe how beautiful Suri Cruise is… mainly because her existence is the shadiest thing ever.
• Oprah and Gayle King aren’t gay. For all of you who’ve been dying to know, they just like to swap panties once in awhile.
This just in via the Fishbowl:
Yet to be confirmed, but we're hearing Mediaweek's Stephanie Smith is going to fill the second open slot at Women's Wear Daily's recently-vacated media desk.
Though we had Rachel Sklar and Gabriel Sherman pegged for this spot, it seems as though Stephanie D. Smith (per her Mediaweek byline) will be joining Irin Cameron at the fairest of the Fairstepchildren's desk. More girl media gossips? Hip, hip!
Women's Wear Daily Nabs Mediaweek Reporter To Fill Vacancy #2 [Fishbowl NY]
Ok, people. We spent a solid amount of time and effort putting this poll together, and now we want you to vote in it damn it! According to Janice Min, you care more about gossip than voting in any sort of political election, so we expect your full participation in this. Who do you think should fill the fashionable, gossipy shoes of Jeff Bercovici and Sara James when the move on from WWD? Snap to it, folks … we want to let Gabe Sherman know the results before he starts his vacay.
Breaking news from the Daily News! Peter Braunstein's a total psycho fuck. Doctors looked into his brain and saw the same thing we see when we look into Cindy Adams' crystal ball: nutso.
But it's what did the Riker's Island psychologist cited as the incident that finally put Braunstein over the edge that has us a bit intrigued/worried about our media reporter friends over there.
Kirwin said Braunstein's job as a media reporter at Women's Wear Daily helped push him over the edge.
"Working in the highly competitive, glitzy and sexually charged atmosphere of a celebrity-driven fashion periodical was an extremely toxic and unsuitable environment," Kirwin wrote in her report.
And the fact that Conde Nast (the most competitive, glitzy, and sexually charged towers of them all) owns WWD, we couldn't be more afraid.
Doc looks in Braunstein's brain, sees psycho [Helen Peterson, Daily News]
As Fairchild and Conde Nast continue on the path of corporate mergers, tensions have begun to rise between Fairchild's Women's Wear Daily and Conde's Vogue. Most recently, notes Gabe Sherman, the sparks have been between Anna Wintour and the Fairchild's fashion group editorial director Patrick McCarthy.
It seems Wintour was not too pleased to see her much celebrated Met gala buried in WWD's third page. It was just covered like a "normal" cocktail party, instead of the greatest extravaganza of all time. Unacceptable. The tension, Sherman speculates, could be rooted in rumors that W and WWD may be splitting, sending the high society fashion mag to be Vogue's direct rival at Conde.
Yet, despite all the Wintour vs. McCarthy there is hope yet for the still cafeteria free Fairstepchild.
In one respect, at least, the publications are closer together. For the first time, at Ms. Wintour’s Costume Institute Gala, Fairchild didn’t have its own table. Instead, Fairchild employees were seated at the Condé Nast tables, alongside other Condé staff.
Oh, to sit among the royalty at the grand cocktail party! Who could possibly ask for anything else in the world? Apparently McCarthy could — he opted out of his seat at the party. Lines have been drawn in Midtown, folks, and boa feathers will fly. It's not going to be pretty. But, if it gets bloodier, it will definitely put the Anna on the cover of Radar.
The Devil Goes Gaga: Wintour Blasts WWD [Gabriel Sherman, New York Observer]
What is a spy at Jane magazine supposed to do if she wants to alert the media snobs of a Brandon Holley folly? Normally, she could simply email Jeff Bercovici at WWD, and the item could get planted overnight. But if you've been emailing Jeff, here's what you'd see:
I'm off today, returning Monday, April 3. For anything time-sensitive, please contact Sara James, WWD's other media editor. She can be reached at 212-630-XXXX or XXX@fairchildpub.com.
So you email Sara, natch. But doing so will get you this pleasant auto-responder:
I am out of the office on Monday, April 3, returning Tuesday, April 4. For anything pressing, please contact my fellow media editor Jeff Bercovici at XXX@fairchildpub.com, or 212-630-XXXX.
Now what's a loose lipped staffer to do when there's nobody minding the store? Can you trust stringer Nina Jones with your sensitive gossip that's too gauche for Keith Kelly? Perhaps, but you might as well email us about it at this point.
As our first subject in Jossip's new interview series, we hunted down Women's Wear Daily's Memo Pad reporter Jeff Bercovici and made him our guinea pig. Not only because he totally owed us one for not recognizing us at Jim Kelly's last party, but because we assured him there would be no "hard hitting questions." We're not journalists people.
Among other things, we learned that Jeff makes his own cappuccino with a ghetto $10 stove pot espresso maker, he rides the bus to work, and that people working in media are supposed to read the New Yorker. (Y'know, someone could've told us that sooner.)
Jeff and his partner in magazine gossip crime, Sara James, continue to break insider industry stories daily, and give us all the Atoosa, Bonnie, and Jann a media blogger could ever dream of. Thanks for being such a good sport, JB — we can tell your mama raised you right.
The full interview, including what it means to be a Conde Naster, after the jump.
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• Calvin Klein wants Kate Moss to come back and model for them. Kate said she'd do it, but only if she can take off her shirt and jump around. [Page Six]
• Nick Lachey asks everyone to please stop calling him a loser. Making an infomercial means he's cool again, ok? [People]
• We used to think being something like a firefighter or a miner was the most dangerous profession a person could have. We have now realized that being a hip hop artist's bodyguard is the job with the highest associated death rate. [CNN]
• WWD is one of the Fairstepchild pubs to get screwed by Conde Nast. Case in point, the EIC Ed Nardoza's office, which currently houses the janitor and will be invested with mice any day now. [Page Six]
• Oh, Campbell Robertson. We know that New Yorkers are special, and many of your boldface socialites escape the commoners, but everyone knows who Wilmer Valderrama is. And not because he was on TV — because he dated Lindsay Lohan. [NYT]
Editorial Director
