Archives: April 2005

We at FISHBOWL are far too busy bringing you scintillating media commentary to post every little nugget of brilliance we come across – but that’s not to say we wouldn’t like to. So, without further ado we present a round-up of our favorite media moments this week. If we do it regularly, maybe we’ll collect the best and give them special awards called “The Fishies,” which is fun to say. Who knows? Anything can happen with this Internet thing. For now, here are our favorite fishy moments for this fine Friday. Enjoy!

1. Anderson Cooper: “To spank or not to spank?” We almost choked when our sweet Anderson uttered those words straight into the camera on CNN’s 360 this past Wednesday, April 27th (we were already taken with his shimmery purple tie). Yes, it was to tease a segment on spanking and corporal punishment in parenting, but for a brief and blissful moment he was talking just to us.

2. From the Dept. of Faint Praise: In New York‘s travel feature, “The New Yorker’s Guide To The Universe,” “shopper” Alexia Kondylis was described as having “socialite good looks.” Socialite good looks: when “movie star good looks” or “model good looks” is reeeaally overreaching.

3. Does an Olsen dare to eat a peach? We laughed out loud at Campell Robertson’s Boldfaced Names headline this week: “We have heard the Olsens singing, each to each.” Damn, we wish we’d thought of that (instead of just ripping it off for this).

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Earlier this month the NYT whetted our appetites for Radar with a teaser article by Katharine Q. Seelye, who got us excited for Radar’s groundbreaking web campaign:

“Come the end of April, visitors to the Web site (www.radarmagazine.com) will be reintroduced to Radar, which its founders are trying to make irreverent, urban and fun.”

Yay, the end of April is finally here!! Is it ready yet? Can we see it? Is it today or tomorrow? Seriously, we’re excited. We’ve got May 24th written on our calendars too, circled with a heart!

Okay, well, we’ll keep checking back until the site launches. Until then, we’ll enjoy reading your snazzy media kit. Orange is clearly the font color choice of today’s tastemakers.

New York mag* features editor Chris Lehmann is fleeing the city for D.C., and a new gig at Congressional Quarterly—which is not entirely surprising given that wife Ana Cox (a.k.a. The Wonkette) lives in D.C., and one can only be expected to keep Amtrak afloat with round trip tickets for so long.

I was recently informed that D.C. IS THE NATION’S NEW INTELLECTUAL CENTER, and I scoffed—scoffed!—at the notion. (Heresy! New York is the intellectual epicenter! Us! US! It’s all about us!) A couple of days later, I read in a large national newspaper that D.C. IS THE NATION’S NEW INTELLECTUAL CENTER. And if the New York Times says it, it must be true.

Ergo, Chris Lehmann = one more brain drained.

* Full disclosure: I’m a former New York mag employee and the founding editor of Gawker.com, the parent company of which owns Wonkette.com.

Alessandra Stanley’s hatchet job on Katie Couric in Monday’s NYT has been generating ink all week on Katie Couric, her future, her competition, and her legs.

So far, Katie’s diva reputation hasn’t been contested, though Stanley’s comment that “[a]t the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights” has yet to be substantiated (and there has still been no correction in the NYT per the request of Steve Brill)(Myrna Blyth backs up similar claims at TNR, noting that “for years her staff has called her ‘Katie Dearest’”).

But at Good Morning America, fortunes are only rising; according to today’s Page Six, GMA scored a massive scoop by getting a publicist-free interview with Brad Pitt – who brought Angelina Jolie. As USA Today points out, they’ve also got the ABC programming juggernaut (Desperate Housewives, Lost) on their side.

Meanwhile, Katie still has Jeff Zucker on her side (though yesterday’s Post reported a wandering, appreciative eye toward Kelly Ripa).

Page Six’s Couric Legwatch also reported that, since Monday’s NYT invective, her gams have been prudently obscured by pants and plants. Aw. Good thing we can always rely on Sawyer to bust out a micro-mini!

PLANT PROTECTS LEG-SHY KATIE [NYPost]
Curtains for Katie? [TNR]
ABC to NBC: Smell the coffee [USA Today]

If you don’t know that the Cruise/Holmes news came out yesterday, man does this paragraph from today’s Lowdown read creepy:

That was “Batman Begins” starlet Katie Holmes carrying an armload of bikinis to the dressing room at Barneys last Sunday afternoon with a cell phone glued to her head – and returning 15 minutes later to buy one. I wondered if the 26-year-old actress – whose publicity infrastructure has been disseminating the information that she’s dating a famous 42-year-old Scientologist – is getting ready for some island-hopping with her new boyfriend. But her PR rep insisted yesterday that she’s just going on a “one-on-one” vacation with her mom, Kathleen.

Apparently mothers are the new Scientologists – and Katie is the new [redacted by our lawyers].

WAVE OF PUBLICITY [NYDN]

Folio Magazine’s Dylan Stableford uncovers fabricator/journalistic pariah Jayson Blair’s latest gig: a column for “BP Hope” magazine, a publication serving the 2.5 million Americans afflicted with bipolar disorder.

In the column, Blair cops to having the condition and describes the pressures of “trying to accomplish my job” (and, according to Stableford, a recovery that includes “medication and speaking engagements”).

“Like Icarus, I soared like an eagle,” Blair writes, “but fell with a shattered wing.” Actually, Icarus fell to earth with a melted wing but why quibble over details? We know you won’t.

Great news for Sploid shift-memo junkies: Sploid now comes complete with archives! This means that you can find your favorite free-associative, vodka-fueled, crack-laden, shed-clearing, debt-ridden, pig-lauding, Togo-loving, through-the-wildflowers-prancing, Fox-bashing, Pope-Ratzing shift memos right here, free of charge and as ramblingly sleep-deprived as the day we fell for them.

Oh, my goodness. As if the naked man-swimming wasn’t enough, A.J. Daulerio of the Black Table has a no-holds barred interview with infamous Dennis Publishing bad boy Greg Gutfeld former Stuff EIC and current Maxim UK EIC. I’m not even going to attempt to summarize it, if you know Greg Gutfeld (or A.J. Daulerio, for that matter), you’ve got a pretty good idea what you’re in for.

Meanwhile, I feel dirty for despoiling our pretty, wholesome little site with the Black Table’s photo – but if you must, wallow in the filth of a higher-resolution version after the jump.

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Newsweek gets this newfangled web thing: Perhaps taking advice from BusinessWeek, this week Newsweek launched “Street Fighting”, a web-only business column by business scribe Charles Gasparino. In its maiden voyage, Gasparino continues to expound on the Langone NYSE bid, no doubt to the delight of the WSJ.

But, boy, do they know blogs! Speaking of the Langone bid – a tipster points out that “Business Week totally missed out on the NYSE story, even though it happened on its time–just before Wednesday deadline. The magazine’s Wall Street staff is so embarassingly short-handed that they could only rustle up a brief in the “In Business This Week” column–on one of the most important stories to come out of Wall Street in years.” (Ed.- probably from a Forbes editor, but nonetheless…)

The NYT is Koppelicious; Koppel is Murrow-tastic: The NYT reports (presumably gleefully) that they won five Overseas Press Club awards, “the most any media organization has received in a single year.” Ted Koppel, meanwhile, was awarded his 10th award — a record which surpasses CBS legend Edward R. Murrow who had earned nine. Sorry about the heading but this was, like, the driest entry ever and I really just wanted an excuse to write “Koppelicious.”

More on the Brad/Angelina photo kerfuffle! Us Weekly, which paid somewhere between half a mil and a million bucks for the intimate Brad-and-Angelina-just-like-to-hang-in-Kenya pics, is irked at Star Magazine (and former Us EIC) Bonnie Fuller for slapping a composite photo on Star’s cover which makes it look like Brad and Angelina are together on the beach. Tricky Bonnie!

Us Weekly editor Janice Min isn’t so impressed. “Trust for readers is very important,” sniffs Min to Keith Kelly in the New York Post. And then to Mediaweek: “It’s tough when other publications do things your publication would never venture to do.”

Fair enough, Janice – except when your publication did the exact same thing for the April 18, 2005 edition. That cover featured what looked like Brad smiling at Angelina, sized perfectly with a well-matched background. Celebrity magazines – they’re just like each other!

Undoctored photo evidence after the jump.

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