As part of my penance for attending a journalism school in the hinterlands and for occasionally trashing the entire enterprise, I do my best to show the j-school young'uns a good time during their annual trip to the Big Apple. Last year's group included a lad named Acton Gorton, who made such an impression on me that I had no recollection whatsoever that he was in the group at all. But, as it turns out, he may have been the most likely to succeed out of all of them, at least in this particular media fishbowl.

Gorton, you see, was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Illini who unilaterally decided, along with his Opinions editor, to publish several of the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad which major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post wouldn't touch. Their decision touched off campus demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, and landed the pair in very hot water. They've been suspended without pay, Gorton has hired a lawyer, and he's told the Chicago Tribune that he expects to be fired when what he implied was a kangaroo court was finished with him.

While all of this would appear on the surface to be a case of political correctness run amok, DI alumni (I'm not ashamed to say I helped launch its Website a decade ago) received an update this afternoon from publisher Mary Cory, who accused Gorton of behavior not terribly unlike, say, Judy Miller's:

"The problem we're addressing is the inability of the editor in chief to be honest with his staff and with me. His actions and statements over these past weeks (his tenure began Jan. 1) demonstrated a lack of respect for his colleagues and a total disregard for the need to collaborate or communicate honestly in the newsroom. His focus, as expressed directly to his staff and myself, is for the media attention he is receiving personally for his courageous move in being first (second/third?) to run the cartoons in his paper, not for the need to publish an excellent newspaper worthy of its reputation.

"The night editor (shift position responsible for final page approval on deadline) who approved the Feb. 9 opinions page on Wednesday night recounts how the cartoons made it to press (full account available on his blog: thenextfrontier.net): "I was alerted by both the Editor in Chief and the Opinions Editor about the content that would be published for Thursday. I was told the very few people knew about it. I was told to keep it quiet and ensure that it got printed, and if complications arose, to contact them immediately."

"The editor in chief intentionally kept knowledge of his plan to publish the cartoons from his executive team and editorial board, and had no plans in place to deal with any reader reactions once they were published. He was unable to involve his other editors in any type of response or coverage of the situation, because he purposefully kept them out of the communication loop on this issue. The chaos that has ensued here since then because of his reckless actions has been damaging to the paper's reputation and unworkable for the staff."

You can guess what happened next. There were staff meetings with the publisher present; a "cooling-off period" before anyone was ousted, and a "task force" has been assigned to figure out who knew what, and when they knew it. Gorton has quite a bright future ahead of him.

[UPDATE:] Gorton and his lawyer have apparently issued a press release claiming that Cory and the Illini Media Co. have defamed him. (And based on what I posted and the rest of the letter, that isn't much of a stretch.) From the release: "Publisher Mary Cory and the management of the Illini Media Company are waging a concerted campaign to defame and malign Acton Gorton, the Editor in Chief of the Daily Illini. This is taking place at a time when Gorton has been restrained by the Illini Media Company from speaking out about the events prior to, during and immediately after the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons on 2/9/06... Gorton's attorney, Junaid Afeef, has submitted a letter to the Illini Media Company's board of directors demanding that the defamatory statements cease immediately and that policy and procedure materials of the Daily Illini be turned over as well."

We left you yesterday, dear reader, with tidings of Noah Tall, the dashing, mysterious, not at all diminutive author of Blink parody Blank. Turns out that Noah Tall is, in fact, ESPN Books editor/former Premiere editor Michael Solomon and AdWeek columnist Lewis Grossberger. One could be forgiven for assuming that they sounded somewhat shorter than their pseudonym implied.

But everyone knows what happens when you assume - especially when you do so in a split-second movement of the eyelid down over the eyeball and back again. But really, it's not your opinion we're interested in right now. To that end, we asked Malcolm Gladwell what he thought of the revelation, especially since he had earlier professed to being "slightly terrified" to meet Tall. His split-second verdict? Menschly as always:

i'm slightly gratified that it took two writers to parody me. i'd hate to think i could be parodied by just one. :-)

He's a man, baby! Actually, two of them: The secret identity of Noah Tall [FishbowlNY]
FISHBOWL EXCLUSIVE: Don't think about reading this book [FishbowlNY]

It's Literary Unmasking Week! Yesterday, JT Leroy; today, Noah Tall, the mysterious and shadowy author of Blink parody Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking At All, first brought to you a month ago by Fishbowl.

Apparently, Noah Tall is more man than any of us expected - because he's two men! Today's Page Six broke the news that the Blank authors are none other than AdWeek's longtime Media Person columnist Lewis Grossberger and former Premiere EIC and current ESPN Books editor (and occasional Michael's luncher) Michael Solomon. Page Six notes that Solomon and Grossberger worked together at Esquire in the '90s, under then-editor David Hirshey, who is now-executive editor of Blank publisher HarperCollins (and also a frequent luncher). Look to your left, look to your right - you may be writing a book with that person in a decade or so under a fake name!

We know we claimed to know the true identity of Noah Tall, but we're as surprised as you are by this revelation. We totally thought it was JT Leroy.

A 2-in-1 SENDUP [NYP]
FISHBOWL EXCLUSIVE: Don't think about reading this book [FishbowlNY]

Earlier this week Fishbowl brought you an exclusive report on the upcoming parody of parody of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking called Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking At All.

Blank isn't even out yet, but it's already gotten its most important review: that of Blink author Malcolm Gladwell.

Fishbowl asked Gladwell for his thinly-sliced thoughts on Blank: Did he like it? Was he flattered? Did he know who the heck was behind it? This was his emailed response:

"Blank is completely hilarious. I have no idea who Noah Tall is, although I'm slightly terrified to meet him. He obviously knows me or at least my writing a bit too well at this point. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the parody is the most flattering form of imitation (or something like that)."

FISHBOWL EXCLUSIVE: Don't think about reading this book [FishbowlNY]

Congratulations, Malcolm Gladwell! Your book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and is ranked #32 on Amazon.com. You recently sold the movie rights for $1 million, starring Leo DiCaprio. Never mind that your hair is abundant and joyous. But what really matters at the end of the day is whether people care about you enough to make fun of you.

Fortunately for Gladwell, they do -- enough to publish a full-length, hilarious parody of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking called Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking At All, coming out in a few weeks from HarperCollins. No doubt it will delight Blink's million-plus readers as well those who have been waiting impatiently for the Gladwell backlash to begin.

Blank spoofs Blink in minute detail, starting with the cover (which, let's face it, is all that matters) and through Blink's now-infamous theories, like "thin-slice thinking" (the natural forerunner to the vastly superior "extra-lean deli-slicing"). Author Noah Tall, who is as real a person as JT LeRoy and no less employable, explains the wisdom behind Blank*:

The third and most important task of this book is to convince you that the power of knowing without thinking is not some wild, untamable force of nature like the sex drive of Colin Farrell but a talent that can be nurtured, managed, and utilized in normal, everyday situations that will enable you to destroy your enemies, shove the slow and witless out of the way, and dominate your spouse. It is an ability that we all must cultivate if we are to achieve the important goal of making me America's all-time best-selling author.

Blank also includes the "non-cognitive thinking" of such diverse sources as General Custer, Roy Rogers and the New York City Police Department, plus a stirring reference to a priapic pony (not to be confused with Custer's "Little Big Horn").

Read the book or just make a snap judgment about it based on the cover, but either way: cheap folks, it's as close as you're gonna get to Blink in paperback in the forseeable future.

The upshot? When HarperCollins decides to tell a joke, it really, really commits. Blank is all Blink is and less -- plus so much less.

NB: In case you're wondering, yes, we really do know who Noah Tall is, though we're not sure that knowledge is worth going to jail for 85 days, even to get really skinny.

Now, we should rush to explain that op-ed icon and nautical nestor of the right William F. Buckley, Jr, is no doubt a sensible man who only wants the best for the obviously ill Holy Father. We just wondered what his more conservative readership - not to mention the magazine he founded and handed off recently - might think of his exhortation to wish the Pontiff a, ahem, speedy entry into Heaven, rather than praying for his recovery. But, then again, hasn't everyone seen Million Dollar Baby by now? It's clearly not Vatican II any more, boys and girls.

Sy Hersh has been Frigthener-in-Chief of Black Ops journalism at the New Yorker for ages, and nobody (save, perhaps, the angry but still under-wraps Pentagon flacks) dare question his most recent screed; that the neocons inside the Pentagon have snatched up every camouflaged Special Forces operative to use them for not one war, but several. Plural. Except there's a detail everyone's missing.

continued...