Professional persona non grata Toby Young tells Rebecca Fox why some members of the media will call off their vendettas long before his wife does, and reveals which of his writings should really have his enemies running scared:

mediabistro: You've worked within multiple industries: theater, journalism, books and filmmaking: What's the relative bridge-burning quotient in each? Which industry (or individuals within it) forgives quicker, which forgets, and which will never stop punishing you for prior offenses?

Toby Young The general rule is that success absolves you of any sin. In my first book, for instance, I was pretty heretical about Conde Nast, but I got away with it because the book did quite well. Once it got onto the New York Times bestseller list, Si Newhouse had to call off his assassins. If it had done badly, by contrast, I think I would have disappeared without a trace. (This may be a total fantasy on my part. It could be that Si is completely unaware of the book to this day.)

There is an exception to this rule: actors. Woe betide the writer who dares to criticize an actor—and the better known the writer, the more heinous the foul. For the past five years, I've been the drama critic of the Spectator (Britain's equivalent of the New Yorker) and I don't think a single actor I've given a bad notice to has forgiven me. They have the memory of elephants.

This reminds me of an anecdote related by the Oscar-winning screenwriter Frederic Raphael. It dates back to the 1970s when he was writing plays for British television: "An actor came up to me and asked whether I thought that the hydrogen bomb really represented a threat to the future of the human race. I answered with a lot of on the one hand, and then again on the other. I had given him, he said, a lot to think about. Another actor sidled up to me and said, "May I say something? When an actor asks whether you think that the human race is threatened by atomic weapons, the required answer is, 'I think you're giving an absolutely wonderful performance.'"

Read on here. Also, you can read an excerpt of Toby's book here.

So now that we've solved the mystery of what Harlan Corben does with his earnings, we're ready to move on to another writer and another crime. Sebastian Junger has a new book about the Boston Strangler, and he talked to Heather Marie Graham about it for today's Media Bistro. Here's an excerpt:

mediabistro: The style of your writing in A Death in Belmont is part history lesson, part magazine feature, part novel. Was there a conscious decision on your part to write it like that?

Junger: Yes and no. A good paragraph is a good paragraph. You have to go back and forth. Too much drama is shallow, and too much history can be boring. Powerful journalistic writing simply uses facts in the same dramatic way that novelists use fiction. Dramatic structure is dramatic structure, and whether you build it out of verified facts or things that you think of, it's the same. The plot can follow the rise and fall of dramatic action in nonfiction, too

If you want people to read your journalism, you have to give some thought to how you're going to assemble all these facts. But, you can assemble them artfully and compellingly, and that's the job of someone who wants the public to read his work.

Want to hear more? Junger's speaking on an MB Panel on Wednesday night in New York.

Gil Schwartz, AKA humor writer Stanley Bing, chats with Dorian Benkoil about "what it's like to be corporate cog by day, sharpshooting business humorist by night, weekends and every other spare moment."

Mediabistro: What does writing under a pen name do for you that writing under your own name doesn't?

Schwartz/Bing: Well, for a long while I was hidden completely, and it was really terrific. When I was a kid, I always loved stuff about guys with secret identities. Zorro in particular. Big nerd by day. Guy in a silky black cape at night, flying through windows, saving people, being sort of dangerous and legendary. This was as close as I could get to that. I was younger, and didn't understand at that time how splendid senior management generally is. I settled scores. I reported on people's weirdness without endangering them or betraying them in any way. Nobody knew who I was. People used to send me my own column with a little note at the top saying, "I think you'll enjoy this. It sounds like you." I'd send it back to them with another buckslip on top that said, "Stop bothering me with this crap."

More here.

Aileen Gallagher chats with Janet Ozzard, editor of the "Strategist" section of the magazine:

Mediabistro: As an editor, how do stay on top of all the new and current stuff that's featured in The Strategist? How important are your staff and writers in keeping you abreast of stuff that should go in the section? What role do publicists play?

Janet Ozzard: Like every editor, I read as much as I can; newspapers, magazines, online. But the staff and writers are very important, of course. They're the critical filter. One of the good things about working on a city magazine is that we are the reader. We're not writing about someplace we've never been, or some experience we've never had.

Publicists, I'm sorry to say, generally don't get the Strategist. I get a lot of pitches for stuff that's already been somewhere else, or a trend that's come and gone, or a product whose main claim to fame is that it's new. Just because it's new doesn't make it better.

Mediabistro: There are so many outlets in New York City for info about restaurants and new stores and real estate etc. What do you do editorially do differentiate yourself? How do you stay on top of your competitors?

Janet Ozzard: We're selective. Again, we won't write about something just because it's new. There has to be a compelling reason, or reasons. Our food writers Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, for example, are incredibly diligent, skeptical reporters. If they say they're going to do a food map of Red Hook, they'll go out and spend three days in Red Hook, walking around, eating, interviewing people. Then they'll come back and do research. And they're great writers. Who can beat that?

More here.