Browse FishbowlNY February 2006 archives - FishbowlNY

Fast Company Lives To See Its Second Decade

Greg — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:10:55 +0000

Considering that old saw about nine out of ten magazines folding within their first decade of publishing (just ask the staff of Absolute, which barely made it a year) a magazine’s 10th birthday should carry real resonance. That’s why I’ll be toasting Fast Company tonight, especially in light of how half of its ten years of existence so far were spent in the Babylonian Captivity of being owned by Gruner + Jahr (which it actually managed to outlive, ironically.) Scheduled to be toasting with me are Google poster girl Marissa Mayer (who no doubt flew here on the redeye last night) Fast Company editors, a bushel of ad agency executives, and likely every media reporter in town.

In a sign I’m growing old, it seems that all of the newborn magazines that were most important to me in college are turning ten these days. That, and they’ve grown old and a little tired, too. There’s Wired, born in 1993, which wrote its name in neon inks and used to toss Lacanian psychologists and “zippies” on its covers. These days, any movie which skews predominantly geek or uses a ton of special effects is practically guaranteed a spot. (Exhibit A: this month’s A Scanner Darkly cover, which — considering it’s three months too early — would indicate that V For Vendetta fell through at the last minute.)

Then there’s Wallpaper*, Tyler Brule’s delirious vision of a jet-set existence as seen through the eyes of an imperious control-freak. It’s still handsome these days, but where are the Jordi Labanda illustrations? And finally, there’s Fast Company, which between “The Brand Called You” and “Free Agent Nation” is more or less responsible for where I am today: sitting in my apartment in a t-shirt and jeans, blogging.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Spin‘s Obligatory ‘We Got Sold’ Meeting?

Dylan — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:43:59 +0000

Tracking Spin‘s pending sale today. Editor-in-chief Sia Michel’s out. Andy Pemberton’s in. Meanwhile, we’ve been trying to get insight from some current Spin staffers on the whole thing, but, as you can imagine, they have things other than FishbowlNY on their minds. We’re left with a lone eyewitness account of an alleged staff meeting:

There was just a big staff meeting here at Spin and some folks came out of the corner office looking, well, not so happy. One girl was in tears.

That sucks, particularly when the girl’s Courtney Love, and she doesn’t even work there.

Sia Michel Out, Andy Pemberton In at ‘Spin’ [Gawker]
FROM THE MB ARCHIVES: So What Do You Do, Andy Pemberton?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Media Minutiae: The “After Blogging This For Month, I’m Ready To Switch To PR Myself” Edition

Greg — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:03:39 +0000

More Mailer for your money! Norman and John Buffalo, father and son, legendary blowhard and former High Times great white hope will bound onto the stage together Thursday night at The New York Society for Ethical Culture to discuss their new book with the the Bonnie Fuller-esque title, “The Big Empty: A Dialogue on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America.” In an ideal world, drunken rages and fist-fighting would ensue, but they’ll probably just ramble on for a while.
Is the F train running late? Blame amNew York! In a totally non-self-serving expose, The New York Sun reveals that all the free dailies it just happens to be scrapping with are generating an extra 15 tons of trash per day, most of which is ending up on the tracks and costing the MTA millions in expenses.
Why are an increasing number of journalists switching teams and playing for PR firms? I seem to recall this pearl of wisdom from j-school: follow the money.
Rutgers professors are still pissed that New York Times editor Nancy Sharkey had the gall to tell students to buzz off because of their overly-critical professor. And now the Society of Professional Journalists is condeming the paper as well. “It is surprising that an editor that high up in an organization known for its sophistication would put something like that in an e-mail,” said the chairman of the Society’s ethics committee. “You should know better, even if is is what you’re thinking.” So, the lesson here kids: never leave a paper trail.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Dress Your Kids in Granola

Dorian — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:00:00 +0000

Casting call for a Catherine Zeta-Jones vehicle being shot today in Chelsea. Kids for the “background” (that’s “extras” to you and me), are told, via phone message, how to dress:

Warmly, because it’s winter. (Makes sense.)
No reds or whites or hip hop or logos. (Got it.)
Clothes also should be
    colorful (OK)
    flavorful (um, OK)
    artistic (still OK, I guess)
    new age (like crystals?)
    granola (missed that in the Spring collection)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There the New York Post Goes Again…

Greg — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 08:06:09 +0000

…slapping the EXCLUSIVE tag on anything which advances the story even an inch. Today’s “exclusive:” that Spin is about to be sold. This is old news — like, a month old — and the only bit that seems new is the sudden participation of Nion McEvoy (a member of the clan which once owned the San Francisco Chronicle) and the McEvoy Group alongside Hartle Media. That’s a nice little bit of scooping, to be sure. But the rest of it, ranging from the new editor, Andy Pemberton, and the new publisher, Malcolm Campbell, to the timing of the deal (which Mediaweek reported yesterday) is hardly new news. Hell, even Pemberton’s quotes sound recycled from a launching-of-Blender story from five years ago…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

For Fame, For A Mid-Six-Figure Advance, And For Yale

Greg — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:27:53 +0000

It’s a rare thing when Gawker is unwilling to pierce someone’s over-inflated ego before we are, but today is one of those days. The mystery young Yalie novelist appears to be one Nick Antosca. No one seems willing to confirm that he sent that charming email to the New York Daily News’ Chris Rovzar, but the facts match, and a commenter on Gawker linked to a charming story written by him.)

Current New Republic reporter-researcher Eve Fairbanks recently offered a brief history of Antosca’s nascent literary career in “Every Nation Needs a Tsar” a Wolfean wade through the Atlantic Monthly slush-pile for the Yale Daily News Magazine:

Nick is one of the best undergraduate fiction writers on the scene, according to his former professor, John Crowley, who has taught fiction at Yale for nine years. He is certainly one of the most serious: He has been widely published in online and small press forums, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He took the fall semester off of school to work on his second novel.

“Nick tells me he wrote his first novel in a manic burst of energy, 60,000 words in 11 days. “I was really excited about it,” he says. “Dangerously excited. I went back and read it, and thought I had gone insane.” Nick has long eyelashes that remind me of a camel’s, a five-o’clock shadow, and an aloofly seductive air. His camel eyes droop languidly to where I’ve made note of his words, and he pauses, revises. “I mean, not insane. I was just excited to find out that I could write a novel, you know?”

“…[H]e is restrained when discussing his work. When I ask him, “Why do you write?” he explains that there’s no good answer because the question is reductive and facile: It’s all about finding the balance between storytelling, character and style. His favorite author is Vladimir Nabokov, because “his evocations are so idiosyncratic. He’s just a beautiful writer.” The craft of fiction writing, the manipulation of the raw material of language, thrills him, and he’s excited because he’s beginning to master it.

But Antosca isn’t as generous with all his fellow Yalie first-time novelists as his e-mail pimping of his roommate’s book might suggest. See last year’s Yale Herald reviewof Natalie Krinsky‘s first novel Chloe Does Yale:

“Ultimately, though, what makes the book a grueling read is simply the prose. Whether Chloe is flitting around “in a crazed state of madness” or just amiably abusing her haggard stable of adverbs (“excitedly,” “sternly,” “angrily,” etc.), you can be sure she’s not wasting much thought on how to compose a decent sentence. Virtually every paragraph of Chloe contains either a leaden cliche or a glaring (and oblivious) authorial misstep. The sentences seem to cringe as you read them — they’re understandably humiliated to be seen in such penurious surroundings, dressed in such rags. Chloe, poker-faced, offers up narration like, “I swallow my tongue and smile sweetly.” The reader will be relieved to know that Chloe does not choke to death in the next paragraph, and indeed totters cheerfully off on her heels toward the book’s conclusion.

Remember that karma can be a bitch, Nick.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Value of Rushkoff’s Books

Dorian — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:49:09 +0000

We were lucky enough to sit in today on peripatetic media theorist Douglas Rushkoff‘s graduate seminar at NYU, “Theoretical Perspectives on Interactivity.”

Down the wood-floored halls, past the interactive “Wooden Mirror” sculpture and the laboratory where researchers were re-inventing our media future, Rushkoff held court in a projector equipped corner room for 16 students. Discussing Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin and the concept of “aura” (yes, most of what Rushkoff said was over our heads), the professor said that while the best-selling books he’s written weren’t exactly “loss leaders” they are the “entrée to live engagements, which are the money makers.” In other words, he and others now write books so people will book them for other stuff that ultimately make them more money. It’s the experience, dude, like when you go to a concert with lousy sound instead of buying the $12.99 CD that’s much cleaner and clearer and comfortable to listen to.

Rushkoff also made more pop culture, underground, academic and historical references than we could follow, such as when he held up a T-shirt (above) and talked about James Joyce and a cross and last weekend’s comics convention, and Chinese characters tattooed on basketball players necks that could actually spell out something insulting for the player, and a Greco painting that you have to see in its Spanish museum, and a building in Reykjavik that has a swastika that’s not a Nazi symbol and a few dozen other things that proves he’s as knowledgeable as he is wide-ranging, even if his students sometimes didn’t know what he was talking about, either.

What we really want to know is why his latest book is all about business, and not about the media.

UPDATE: Here’s some explanation of why.

As a media theorist, I’d been called in by dozens of CEO’s asking me to help them “think outside the box” … and help them come with new “branding ideas.” When I’d suggest that rather than rebranding, they might consider innovating from the inside-out by creating better products, they’d invariably stare at me with horror … .

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Media Minutiae: The “They Certainly Have A Degree in B.S” Edition

Greg — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:38:09 +0000

Harvard junior and Crimson managing editor Zachary Seward is suspended from school, then snares a co-byline in The Wall Street Journal thanks to his obsessive coverage of just-ousted Harvard president Lawrence Summers. Asked by New York magazine if it was all worth it, he replies “Isn’t the media a big Ivy League reunion anyway?” (Oh yes, yes it is.) Somewhere, Rachel’s fishterns are kicking themselves for buying her cheery sales pitch over the Journal’s.
More Ivy shenanigans over at Gawker. Photos of Summers playing — what is that, squash? — with the author of the New York item mentioned above, editorial assistant Ben Mathis-Lilley, and scion Ben Wasserstein. In other news, young Yale alumni are shameless name-droppers. Anyone who went to state schools and have made it this far in the media business should, after reading these, give themselves a nice pat on the back. And then they should start saving up for their children.
Revenge Of The Sith, Episode II: A New Denial. After Friday’s revelation that the SEC was now in the habit of subpoena-ing reporters (although it reserves the right to change its mind), this morning brings a statement from Chairman Christopher Cos admitting that neither he, “the General Counsel, the Office of Public Affairs, nor any Commissioner was apprised of or consulted in connection with a decision to take such an extraordinary step.” Apparently, he didn’t hear about it until he read of the subpoenas in The New York Times. “Reassuring, isn’t it?” writes Gary Weiss. “Cox and — well, it seems pretty much everyone else at the SEC, including the spokesman’s office — weren’t aware of two journalists being subpoenaed until…. reading about it this weekend?” Christopher Byron notes in today’s New York Post that “One source in the matter said that once news of the subpoenas hit last week, the SEC’s D.C. headquarters went into something approaching “panic mode” as officials raced about to make sure that the finger of blame didn’t fall upon them.” But if Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is somehow right about the Sith conspiracy, then the next episode will be (you guessed it) “The Empire Strikes Back.”
“Mayor Parsons” has a nice ring to it. But only as long as we’re treated to “Carl Icahn, Public Advocate.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A ‘Bad Boy’ By the Numbers

Dylan — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 07:17:27 +0000

So, to recap Bode Miller’s 2006 Olympic experience:

National Magazines Profiling Miller on Their Covers: 5*
Races Competed In: 5
Races Miller Finished: 2
Number of Variations on ‘Bad Boy’ Employed By Copy Desks: 67
Bars Visited in Torino: 67
Times Miller Evoked ‘Got to Party at an Olympic-level’ in AP Interview: 1
Medals: 0

* est.

When Fame and Talent Collide (Play)
It’s Bode Time (Newsweek)
Rebel on the Edge (Time)
American Flyers (Outside)
Can the Bad Boy of American Skiing Step Up for His Hero Moment? (Men’s Journal)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What Do You Get When You Cross Judy Miller With Enron?

Greg — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 06:44:16 +0000

…A First Amendment scandal set on Wall Street and seemingly directed by David Lynch. Just thinking about all of the issues at play in the still-emergingHerb Greenberg SEC subpoenas/“naked shorting”/”Overstock.com/“Sith Lord” scandal makes my head hurt, but the implications are scary indeed for business reporters. If the SEC had succeeded in forcing Greenberg and one of his colleagues to turn over their notes on unpublished stories, then Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne would have successfully used his paranoia over “naked shorting” and the supposed conspiracy against his company to force the SEC to shakedown reporters in much the same way that evil investors have somehow used Greenberg, et. al as their stalking horse against him. (Like I said, it’s enough to make your head hurt.)

Joe Nocera of The New York Times offered a lucid explanation on Saturday, but as that’s now behind the Times Select wall, I’ll point you to former Businessweek writer Gary Weiss instead.

As for just who-the-hell and what-the-hell Patrick Byrne and his Sith conspiracy are, check out Mark Cuban’s brief introduction to the subject here. It began last summer with a quarterly conference call…

Never before in the history of Wall Street has a single conference call mentioned the following topics: Miscreants, an unnamed Sith Lord he hopes the feds will bury under a prison, gay bath houses, whether he is gay, does cocaine, both or neither, and an obligatory, not that there is anything wrong with that, phone taps, phone lines misdirected to Mexico, arrested reporters, payoffs, conspiracies, crooks, egomaniacs, fools, paranoia, which newspapers are shills and for who, payoffs, money laundering, hisÂ Irish temper, false identities, threats, intimidation, and private investigators. All in 61 minutes.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Off the Media: Dave, Again

Dorian — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 20:30:41 +0000

We always learn a few things from On the Media. This week, we can say: We had this one first. Dave Marash, who’s been making the rounds as Al Jazeera International’s new Washington, D.C., anchor, spoke to us three weeks ago, after taking a ribbing on Stephen Colbert’s show, in part for being Jewish. OTM Co-host Bob Garfield brought up the Jewish angle.

There were a few new-ish angles: Marash says he won’t have difficulty booking guests, and doesn’t fear getting his salary from a goverment entity. Here’s the link to OTM’s mp3 audio. ( If it doesn’t open when you click, paste the link http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm022406e.mp3 into your browser’s address field and hit “enter”.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Malcolm Gladwell Has a Blog

Dorian — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:52:17 +0000

The Blink author spends a lot of his first week talking about an Oct. 10 New Yorker piece.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Media Minutiae: The “You Won’t Find This In The Folio Salary Survey” Edition

Greg — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:08:15 +0000

Read it and weep. Michael Caruso’s contract, that is. Gawker finally managed to get its grubby hands on the complete filing of his lawsuit against Jann Wenner, and inside there are provisions that associate editors can only dream of. And just to prove how rascally Jann can be, Ad Age’s Nat Ives points out that the incentive for being named to the magazine’s “Hot List” will never pay out, since there is no such thing.
Ted Turner to leave Time Warner’s board, ride off into sunset. As he walks away, he once again hums “Don’t Fence Me In…”
Yes, Brad, why do you think Ruper Murdoch was willing to pay it? MySpace co-founder Brad Greenspan suffers a case of seller’s remorse and sues his former company, claiming that the $580 million Murdoch and News Corp. paid for it was criminally low.
“Now the whole world knows he’s clueless.” Like many hapless victims before him, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich fails to realize The Daily Show isn’t real. Although he began to wise up when they suggested he was gay.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Office Pirates a ‘Small Renegade Flower’?

Dylan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:51:09 +0000

If this week’s ocean of coverage for its new Office Pirates project taught us anything, Time Inc. is funny now. Curious, then, why the company’s head PR rock star, Dawn Bridges, told FOLIO: that no Time Inc. execs would be commenting about their foray into comedy until the site “proves itself”:

“We don’t want to put the spotlight on it. It’s much more a small renegade flower that springs to life — or not,” says Dawn Bridges, Time Inc.’s senior vice president of corporate communications who added that Golin and John Squires, recently appointed co-chief operating officer along with Nora McAniff, and head of Time Inc.’s interactive division, will not be available to comment until the site proves itself. “We don’t want to give you a ‘we don’t know,’” she says, referring to the site’s early performance.

Guess we’ll all be waiting for that “renegade flower” to bloom.

Time Inc.’s Officepirates.com Launches with No Comment (FOLIO:)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sometime Correspondent

Laurel — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:27:36 +0000

Very occasionally, I work as a correspondent for Channel 25 (NYC TV) on “New York 360,” a new show specifically about media/entertainment. One aspect of the program showcases the people making media happen in New York. The show works very closely with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting and their main goal is to feature all things “Made In New York” (TV, film, publishing, etc.). NYC TV may sound stuffy (being the official station of the City of New York), but I like to think of it as “The MTV of Local TV” — it’s got 8 mm viewers, to boot. (Hey, that’s what they tell me!).

So, here are a couple of links to my very first appearances:

1) NYC TV FEATURE: mediabistro.com (shameless plug. I’m my own first interview. Not really, but seems like it).

2) NYC TV FEATURE: Us Weekly‘s Janice Min to divulge everything about her anorexia, binge dieting, extra-marital affairs and horrible mistreatment of freelancers.

Check them out. And feel free to give me feedback on my interviewing technique. But don’t be too harsh; I know I have a lot to learn!

Laurel

PS — My next interview is with David Zinczenko, e-i-c of Men’s Health. That should be appearing this Saturday night (Feb 24th) at 8:30 pm EST on NYC TV, Channel 25!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.