Off the Record
Church Cuddles Up to State: Media's Glossy New Reality
In the late 1990s and early part of this decade, a young journalist named Andrew Essex was on the rise in Manhattan. He was a Talk of the Town editor at The New Yorker under Tina Brown; then a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly; then executive editor at Fairchild’s revamped Details. There were also stints at Us Weekly and Salon.
In 2005 things took a turn for Mr. Essex. He was hired to be editor in chief of a magazine called Absolute—one of those shiny luxury publications that straddle the line between advertisements and editorial and leave the reader (flipping through it idly in a shiny luxury condo lobby, perhaps) feeling glazed and hollow, not sure exactly why.
NYTV
David Gregory: NBC's Lame-Duck?
On the morning of Sunday, July 20, NBC News paterfamilias Tom Brokaw was wrapping up Meet the Press, where he has been anchor since the sudden and untimely death of Tim Russert.
The weekly round table had ended, and it was time to say goodbye to his guests, NBC political director Chuck Todd and NBC White House correspondent David Gregory.
When the segment ended, both reporters sat with their hands neatly folded in front of them and awaited the frugally dispensed approval of Mr. Brokaw.
“Thank you very much, David Gregory, our NBC White House correspondent and, of course, star of MSNBC’s The Road to the White House,” said Mr.
Pub Crawl
The Wood Workshop: How Critic Became A One-Man School
Mark Sarvas has read James Wood’s new book three times already. That’s a lot, especially considering Farrar Straus & Giroux, its U.S. publisher, only put it out yesterday. But Mr. Sarvas, a lit blogger (his site is called The Elegant Variation) who recently published his first novel, really, really likes James Wood. He has a Google alert on his name, even, and thinks this new book he’s written, a concise and spirited defense of realism called How Fiction Works, is going to be “a key text of this age.”
“It just feels fundamental to me,” Mr. Sarvas said Monday. “I’m going to urge it on anyone who’s thinking about setting pen to paper to write a novel.
Media
Those 95 New Hires for Dow Jones Aren't Going to The Journal
In the memo in which Dow Jones editor in chief Robert Thomson announced there would be job cuts at The Journal, he also said: "Our new budget includes an ambitious expansion of our web and international operations, both for the Journal and for Newswires, where we are adding 95 journalists over coming months."
So where exactly are those 95 people going? Not to The Wall Street Journal.
A spokesman for The Journal, Bob Christie, told Media Mob that those new hires will all be assigned to Dow Jones news wires, not at The Journal. Mr. Christie reminds us, however, that wire copy can be used, of course, inside the pages of The Journal.
And what's the time frame for these hires? He said they'll start now, and there's no end date in mind. So, conceivably, Mr. Thomson can take as long as he wants to hire.
Mike Francesa Speaks Incoherently About Future of 'Mike and the Mad Dog'
So just what is the future of New York's most famous radio sports-talk show, Mike and the Mad Dog?
We don't really know, either! Newsday reported last month that Mike Francesa and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo were on the verge of splitting up after two decades on the air together. Both Mike and Chris have kept mum about it, and earlier this week Mike finally went on the air to talk about it ... but rather elliptically. As wonderful as Mike Francesa is--and he is wonderful--sometimes the pressure of speaking on the air for six hours a day can make someone sound slightly confused. read more »
Rob Weisbach Is Not an Agent! Brokering Plane-Crash Memoir Was But a Jaunt
This morning we noted that Rob Weisbach, who's been off the grid since leaving Weinstein Books in April, had brokered a book deal for an intruiging memoirist named Norman Ollestad. Mr. Weisbach had never worked as an agent before, and the question on everybody's lips--O.K., the question that would have been on everybody's lips if all of publishing wasn't at the beach today--was whether this deal was Mr. Weisbach's way of telling the world that he was starting a second career as a literary agent.
The answer is no. In a phone interview this afternoon, Mr. Weisbach told Media Mob that the Ollestad book was a one-off project and that he doesn't expect to be selling any more books. read more »
Faced With Lawsuit by NBC and Fox, RedLasso Suspends Service
On Wednesday, the Media Mob reported that NBC Universal, Fox News, and the Fox Television Stations group were filing a joint copyright infringement suit against Redlasso—the privately held company that provides users with a search engine targeting video and audio footage from stations and networks around the country.
Today, Redlasso executives informed their site’s users that because of the suit, they are currently suspending some services.
Redlasso posted a notice on its Web site today alerting its users to the change. read more »
"Unfortunately, due to the legal actions taken against Redlasso by two networks, we are left with no alternative but to suspend access to our video search and clipping Beta site FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE," the notice
Simon & Schuster Sues Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown for Undelivered Books, Coincidentally, on the Same Day
The AP reported this morning that Simon & Schuster is suing rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, both of whom were under contract with the publishing house for books that were due several years ago. The deals were done separately: Foxy Brown got $75,000 in 2005 for what was supposed to be a memoir, and Lil' Kim got $40,000 in 2003 for what was supposed to be a novel.
According to Simon & Schuster's corporate spokesman Adam Rothberg, the lawsuits were not filed simultaneously for any particular reason.
"They're just two cancel-and-collects that happened at the same time," he said, adding that in both cases, Simon & Schuster had just "exhausted all other avenues on recouping the money on a manuscript that wasn't delivered. read more »
CNN's Documentary Black in America: The Black Woman and Family Makes Strong Debut
On Wednesday night, CNN premiered its new documentary Black in America: The Black Woman and Family in which correspondent Soledad O'Brien takes a look at "the varied experiences of black women and families and investigates the disturbing statistics of single parenthood, racial disparities between students and the devastating toll of H.I.V./AIDS."
On its first night, the doc put up big numbers for the cable news channel. According to a release from CNN, over 2.1 million viewers tuned in, including 966,000 in the 25-54 demographic.
More from the release:
According to Nielsen Media Research data, CNN’s two-hour premiere of Black in America: The Black Woman & Family was a resounding success, topping Fox News and MSNBC during the 9-11pm time period. read more »
Wall Street Journal: 'The goal is fewer editors, more reporters'
A story in the North Brunswick Sentinel has some valuable updates on the job cuts that are going down at The Wall Street Journal.
Bob Christie, spokesman for The Journal, tells the Sentinel that The Journal will cut 39 jobs from its South Brunswick office, and relocate 11 people to the paper's office in Manhattan (so the '50' number we were all using is a bit off). The 39 who are getting the ax will have a chance to "apply" for positions in New York. The majority of those people were from "the pagination desk and the copyediting desk," he said.
Mr. Christie also concretely lays out the new philosophy of The Journal that we've all been interpreting for a few months: Who needs editors?
"The goal is fewer editors, more reporters," Christie said. read more »
Four Months After Leaving Top Job at Weinstein Books, Rob Weisbach Is Agenting
Ecco announced this morning that they've acquired a major memoir called Crazy for the Storm, which tells the story of a boy from Southern California named Norman Ollestad who at 11 years old survived a plane crash that killed his father.
Interestingly, the agent who sold the book to Ecco is Rob Weisbach, former publisher of Weinstein Books.
About four months have passed since Mr. Weisbach announced he was leaving Weinstein, and until now, no one really knew what he was up to. At the time, he said he was not quite ready to announce his next move, but confirmed that it would "definitely" be somehow related to the business of literature. read more »
All is Well: No Romenesko Redesign
And exhale, everyone. If you have clicked on Romenesko over the last 20 minutes you were redirected to this site and noticed a frighteningly different-looking page--Jim's Tumblr page, maybe?
It's not a redesign.
"No, that's our default when our damn unreliable servers go down," he wrote in response to a question from Media Mob.
So What Really is the Worst Year in Newspaper History?
It's like 1919 for baseball, or 1929 for the economy. This year is an all-timer for newspapers, so it requires context, revision, and debate. Justin Peters at Columbia Journalism Review is asking a question: is 2008 really the worst year ever for newspapers? (As we argued earlier this week.)
He's got some other candidates. Like!
1963: The production staffers for New York’s daily newspapers waged a 114-day strike, which shut down all of the city’s dailies, cost nearly $200 million and put the New York Mirror out of business. "There was inconvenience for the readers and the merchants lost money—but there was nothing like fear; and that was because citizens, by radio if by no other means, could still discern the broad outline of what was going on," wrote Carl Lindstrom in 1964’s The Fading American Newspaper.
Another Spin on China Reporting
