The New York Times editor Jill Abramson met with James Bennet, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, but he denied that she was trying to woo him back to the paper where he spent 15 years.

The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone heard from unnamed sources that Abramson wanted to gauge Bennet’s interest in returning to the Times, possibly to replace Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren.

Bennet did not immediately respond to an email from FishbowlNY requesting comment.

But he did respond to Calderone, saying he’d rather be left “out of one of these toxic Times gossip stories.”

“You and your sources have me: I met with Jill! Who is an old friend, and a brilliant editor,” Bennet said in an email. “I hope someday to meet with her again. And I have met at times with other people at the NYT, as I meet with people in media all the time who are serious, like us, about doing and sustaining great journalism. It’s useful to compare notes. But they didn’t, and they haven’t, offered me any job. And now I’m going to get back to doing the job that I love.”

Image: [Business Insider]

The 2013 Mirror Awards finalists have been announced. The awards highlight excellence in media reporting. The winners will be announced Wednesday, June 5, at Cipriani. Congrats to all those nominated.

Best Single Article – Traditional/Legacy Media

• Ken Auletta, “Citizens Jain,” The New Yorker
• Jeff Bercovici, “The Next Media Jackpot: The Fight For The $1 Trillion Hispanic Market,” Forbes
• Joe Hagan, “Truth or Consequences,” Texas Monthly
• Tara Murtha, “How Two Photojournalists Are Taking on the City’s Gun Crisis,” Philadelphia Weekly
• Chris Robbins, “An udder mess: How the Atlantic got it all wrong in St. Lawrence County,” Watertown Daily Times
• John Seabrook, “Streaming Dreams,” The New Yorker

Best Single Article – Digital Media

• Michael Calderone, “At The 2012 Conventions, 15,000 Journalists Search For A Story,” Huffington Post
• Joe Eskenazi, “Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!,” SF Weekly
• Hugh Hart, “Fast-Frame Hobbit Dangles Prospect of Superior Cinema, But Will Theaters Bite?,” Wired
• Adrienne LaFrance “How to make your journalism project succeed on Kickstarter,” Nieman Journalism Lab
• Bret Schulte, “‘This is my paper. This is my town‘,” Columbia Journalism Review
• Joe Strupp, “How A Right-Wing Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage,” MediaMatters

TVNewser: Alex Jones (once again) shows why people respect his opinion so much, as he goes on a rant about bathrooms.

FishbowlDC: Michael Calderone, former Politico staffer, has no beef with Politico.

GalleyCat: Publishing projects on Kickstarter raised $15 million last year. Time to dust off that idea for a ‘zine based on Thundercats!

Politico recently published a piece accusing the New York Times and Washington Post of being “blatantly” biased in favor of Barack Obama. The piece was odd/wrong/ridiculous on a number of levels, and the masses have begun to make their opinions known to Politico.

Below are excerpts from some of the best responses. Enjoy the righteous anger.

Devin Gordon, GQ:

Politico published this story the day after one of its targets, The Times, published an astonishing expose about President Obama’s personal oversight of a terrorist ‘kill list.’ In what universe is that not vetting? Part of Politico’s argument is that these two media outlets have spent far too much time on the silly stuff about the Romney family, chasing stories that have no bearing on candidate Mitt’s qualifications for office — but then, in the same breath, they ignore the Times when it focuses, exceptionally, relentlessly, on the truly important stuff like Obama’s record on national security.

Read more

For all of the naysaysers who say The Daily won’t make it: you’ll be saying that for a while, because it’s not giving up anytime soon. Michael Calderone at Huffington Post reports that Rupert Murdoch‘s tablet publication has nabbed Tom Lowry from Variety to be its new Business Editor. Daily editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo said in a staff memo: “Tom comes to us from Variety, where he was a senior editor, and BusinessWeek before that. He is an excellent journalist and a great guy and we’re thrilled to have him aboard.”

Calderone added, “The Daily, which hopes to build a national audience, has always had its sights set beyond the Manhattan media fishbowl.” We’re trying not to take that reference personally.

Michael Calderone at Huffington Post wrote yesterday about the scramble to publish WikiLeaks Guantanamo Bay documents. The curious aspect to the whole tale is that five months had passed since a source told Reuters that Julian Assange had “personal files of every prisoner in GITMO” and the documents still hadn’t emerged.

The documents were finally published when the New York Times obtained them, and decided to share them with NPR and Guardian.  But Times executive editor Bill Keller told The Huffington Post that, “WikiLeaks is not our source. We got the material with no embargo.” This suggests that the source presumably was Wikileaks defector Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

So why did Julian Assange hoard the documents and refuse to publish them? John Cook at Gawker writes that though Assange has claimed he held on to his secrets in order to honor his sources’ desires for “maximum impact,” and also wanted time to review the documents to minimize harm, the real reason is that Assange just wanted to protect himself.

Assange has come to view the unpublished bits of [Bradley] Manning‘s cache as, literally, insurance… With each new disclosure, that insurance file affords him less and less leverage, which explains his reluctance to follow Manning’s wishes and actually disclose information…

And without the threat of more earth-shattering disclosures down the road, will anyone really care whether Assange is extradited to Sweden, or gets convicted of rape, or goes to jail? Not really. Which is why he’s publishing the Gitmo files under duress.

Perhaps WikiLeaks is less an agent for truth than an agent for Julian Assange.

What can’t The Donald do?

Sideshow Trump yesterday accused New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman of “disloyalty” for his paper’s less-than-adoring coverage of his bizarre presidential run, Ben Smith at Politico reports.

“I saved the Daily News,” said Trump, “…I did them a huge favor.” This is supposedly in reference to a difficult financial period the paper went through in the 1980s and 1990s, though the details aren’t clear.

No doubt prompted by Trump’s economic use of actual facts in the past, Smith and his colleague Maggie Haberman checked it out:

But a source close to Zuckerman insisted this is “not true,” adding the fellow developer “never went to him.”

If only his birther claims would die as easily!

Update: Zuckerman told Michael Calderone at Huffington Post that he has “no idea what [Trump's] talking about” and can’t recall ever asking him for help on anything.

Dan Abrams‘ new site Mogulite, which will detail the trials and tribulations of media moguls not unlike Abrams himself, is set to launch April 25th.

We’re very curious about Mogulite, especially since we heard that it aims to “elevate the discourse” on media mogul gossip. We’re not quite sure what that means, so we’ve been keeping our ear to the ground for the latest developments. Now Michael Calderone reports that Peter Lauria, who’s covered media moguls in the past for the New York Post and the Daily Beast, is joining the site as consulting editor.

Lauria won’t be joining the operation full-time, but is “expected to write posts and provide tips and contacts” to recently hired managing editor Amy Tennery. Abrams also said he plans on hiring at least one other full-time staffer for Mogulite.

Lauria quietly left the Daily Beast a few months ago, and the New York Post reported that he left the newsroom amid rumors of tensions with management. We can only hope this means we can expect some “elevated discourse” on Tina Brown.

FishbowlNY has been pretty exicted about the upcoming issue of the Hugo Lindgren guided The New York Times Magazine. We’ve liked all the moves he’s been making, and guessed that the magazine would probably feel – and read – younger (that’s a good thing!).

Now Michael Calderone has backed up our theories with an almost complete unveiling of the upcoming issue. Check his post out for all the particulars  – there are a lot – but here are a few new things that we liked:

• The titles of the sections are much snappier. Letters to the editors is now “Reply All.” “Riff” is a rethinking of On Language.
• A photographer question and answer section.
• A three-page photo essay in the back of the magazine.
• Regular columns from Mark Bittman and Bill Keller.

There’s surely going to be some hate once the new issue hits newsstands this Sunday, but at least people are talking about the mag for the first time in forever. After all, bad press is better than no press.  Just ask Charlie – uh, forget that. Ask someone else.

As Frank Rich departs, Joe Nocera arrives. Michael Calderone at The Cutline is reporting that Nocera is moving from the Business section of the New York Times to its Op-Ed pages, beginning April 1st.

Andy Rosenthal said the following in a memo to Times staffers, regarding Nocera’s new digs:

Our readers have come to rely on his sharp insights into the often opaque world of business and finance. We’re certain he will find a new audience on Op-Ed, where we know he will continue to illuminate difficult issues and expose bad behavior by business and government.