Archives: December 2008

Nothing like ending the year with your own layoff post. Over at Gawker Sheila McClear is saying good-bye (incidentally leaving Gawker entirely girl-free!).

Still, I accidentally cried when he informed me of the termination of our mutually mercenary arrangement in the see-through glass box of a conference room. I was surprised by how much I cared. I mention this scene not because it is mine, but because it is wholly unremarkable, and it is being played out in workplaces across the country right now. (Two million jobs lost in 2008, says the Wall Street Journal.)

I was lucky to spend a year being a smart-ass for a living, although it would be irrationally hubristic to view Internet news-aggregating and the snark-blogging fishbowl as anything more than a Dadaist experiment. Still, it’s been more fun than most jobs should ever be — and thanks for the shot.

Read the entire thing here.

Former FishbowlNY editor Neal Ungerleider (currently you can find him here) who moved to Israel at the end of July to start a long-planned MA program in Israel writes to say the current hostilities between Israel and Gaza are hitting pretty close to home (literally) but that he is fine.

Sorry for the group email but I wanted to get in touch with everyone just in case.

So it looks like Beersheva is now within range of rockets from Gaza. Two rockets just hit near my apartment — we heard them land audibly and saw the ambulances bringing injured to the hospital.

I’m okay and everyone in the apartment complex is safe. Both rockets (Higher-powered Grad rockets) hit within densely populated areas in central Beersheva. One exploded directly opposite a kindergarten — I’m just happy this happened at night and not at day.

It’s increasingly obvious there will be a ground invasion here — soldiers are being called up and many students at our university have gone on duty this week. Things are a bit quiet and my thoughts are with the soldiers and the civillians on the ground in Gaza. This situation is a mess and… hell… what can I say?

But I’m safe and am getting the real Israel experience, apparently.

There is a certain irony involved in the former head of (the currently very troubled) Random House penning a defense of the New York Times. Nevertheless that’s what Peter Osnos is up to over at The Daily Beast. However, perhaps just as interesting is the fact that a collection of NYT front pages made the best-seller list — perhaps less a measure of the relevance of newspapers than a further sign they are considered by many to be some sort of collectable item. Anyway, here’s a bit of what Osnos, also a former editor at WaPo had to say about The Grey Lady.

Until the rest of the economy went into a tailspin, turning a serious problem for the newspaper industry into a catastrophe, it was fashionable in some financial and journalistic circles to belittle the Times‘ senior management for mistakes.

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Today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu: politicians prefer the late night couch in 2008, which TV news story do you prefer this year (you can still vote here) and advertisers prefer to spend their marketing dollars on the broadcast networks. Today, Matt Van Hoven of AgencySpy fills in as guest host for us because we were in the air, en route home Canada.

Our favorite Beantown publication got a Big Dig-sized face lift with a new design overseen by Patrick Mitchell, the man behind Fast Company‘s new look.

Starting with the January issue — on newsstands today — Boston replaces City Journal with Forecast, a front-of-book section that sounds a lot like New York‘s Intelligencer. Connoisseur combines the City Style and Food and Drink sections, while Examiner details the comings and goings of bigshots in the Boston metro area. The Menu consists of better restaurant listings, changed every month.

“Boston‘s always been in the vanguard of city magazines,” editor James Burnett said in a statement. “We think with this redesign, we’ve broken new ground yet again.” Luckily, this new ground didn’t cost $22 billion.

Some images of the new sections after the jump.

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Probably not, but that didn’t stop candidates from getting the most out of post-prime time shows. According to a survey conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, presidential candidates set a record for number of appearances on late-night shows. The hopefuls appeared 110 times, more than four times the number in 2004. Fifty of these appearances came before the primaries even kicked off. (Of course there was no Republican primary in 2004.)

Ironically, although John McCain led the field with 17 appearances, it was the one he didn’t make that will ultimately be remembered the most. The Republican challenger canceled an interview with David Letterman, claiming that he was suspending his campaign although later that night he submitted to a Q&A with Katie Couric. The Late Show host ripped into his friend, inciting a national controversy.

Bill Clinton started the trend with his saxophone appearance on Arsenio Hall‘s show in 1992.

According to The Media is Dying those of you who were subscribers to the sadly now defunct Radar magazine can now have your choice of…wait for it…Star, Men’s Fitness, or Shape.

You know there was a time not that long ago where this post would have linked you to The Onion.

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Gawker: The Top Ten People Who Should Be Unemployed in a Just 2009

FishbowlDC: WaPo Gags on Deep Throat’s Obit

WSJ: As if Things Weren’t Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.

NYT: David Rampe, Veteran Times Editor, Dies at 60

NYT: 2008 – The Year in Pictures

Over at Portfolio.com Jeff Bercovici points out the today marks the one year anniversary of the Times announcing they’d hired Bill Kristol for their op-ed page. No word yet on whether the Times intends to keep him on (or whether Kristol even wants to stay for that matter — he’s been a bit lukewarm about his employers). It’s hard to imagine them keeping Kristol, though they did hire him in the first place, so stranger things have happened. What say you readers? Should he stay or should he go?

Should NYT Keep Bill Kristol or Bid Him a Fond Farewell
( polls)