Gawker
Discrimination
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Bloggers in peril
Pro-Iranian Blogger Arrested By Iran For Blogging
This would be ironically funny as an Onion article, but in real life it's just awful: Hossein Derakhshan, pictured, is a Toronto-based Iranian blogger who has grown more pro-Iran over the past two years, supporting the country's nuclear program and its three-decade-old Islamic revolution in the press. The dual Iranian-Canadian citizen blogs in both English and Farsi and generally tries to help people understand his home country. PR win for Iran and its blogger-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right? Actually no, because Derakhshan visited Israel last year for a blogging conference, and bogged there to "show the Iranians a more realistic image of this country," so he's been thrown in jail during a visit home, as a spy, reports The Media Line: More » -
Discrimination
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Hope
National Book Awards Has Only Happy People On Wall Street
They say human happiness depends largely on your position (social, economic) relative to those around you, an axiom that would explain why the bunch of struggling New York writers at the National Book Awards on Wall Street seemed so giddy in press reports about the "determined... party." "Our dinner here is larger than it's been in five years... we have an afterparty (with) 300, 400 people coming," the foundation's executive director told GalleyCat (video after the jump). Call it the awards' year of hope, then, particularly with the hopey president-elect getting a shout-out in several speeches and an African American author taking home the nonfiction prize for the first time since 1991. A short (fun!) video and winners after the jump. More » -
Dynasties
What Will Times Scion Do In Gotham?
After two years as a reporter at the Portland Oregonian, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III will return to New York to work at his family's Times, Portland alternative paper Williamette Week is reporting. Sulzberger wouldn't comment for the paper, but his return to New York appears at first glance unrelated to staff cuts at the Oregonian. So what's the 28-year-old son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (pictured) up to? In all likelihood, trying to help to stabilize not only a faltering newspaper company but a ruptured family. More » -
Rumormonger
Time Europe Gutted
We've heard from two sources that the London headquarters of Time Europe laid off just under 20 of the nearly 30 editorial staff, including, one said, Time Europe editor William Green and writer James Graff. Elsewhere, bureau chiefs Andrew Purvis in Berlin and Tim McGirk in Jerusalem are said fired. This has stoked more speculation that the magazine might mimic Newsweek and consolidate to a single international edition — and that London is merely the first in a rolling series of global Thursday layoffs: More » -
Celebrity-industrial complex
Paris Hilton's Breakup Confirmed By Excited AP
Despite her repeated public pronouncements of devotion, it will come as no huge shock to anyone anywhere that Paris Hilton just broke up with her boyfriend of nine months, musician Benji Madden. Even if you weren't up to speed on the latest developments — she was spotted with her Greek, shipping-heir ex and rumored desperately flirty with British princes — you have to figure, well, it's Paris Hilton, whose thirst for attention requires not only the intimate affection of various men but also constant press coverage of how those affections fluctuate. But her breakup is worth noting because the mainstream media seems to buying into her psychodrama like never before! More » -
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adventures in live blogging
Live Blogging Top Chef, Week 2
Welcome to another Wednesday-night cornucopia of commenting goodness. This is the reality show live blog where (starting at 10 Eastern) everyone can join in — even ignorant folks who think a vinaigrette is an emulsion. But while such people are welcome to participate, I think they are sadly misinformed: A vinaigrette is not an emulsion. I know this because Stefan says so. And who am I to argue with Stefan? Last week I picked him to win this whole thing, and so far he's making me look like a genius. More » -
disasters
Everyone From Runway Now Suing Harvey Weinstein
When it moved Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime, Weinstein Company transformed the latter cable network from overearnest television for spinsters into something more chic and cheeky, or so some people said at the time. Weinstein Company was promptly sued by Bravo parent NBC Universal, which won an unexpected victory in court and impounded the show. Lifetime has been stewing, bitterly, and yelling at its cats, like a spurned mistress, and now Lifetime has decided it's going to sue Harvey Weinstein's company, presumably for being a slimy jerk who said the divorce was final when really he wasn't even separated yet. This makes 2008 the year of total meltdown for Weinstein: More » -
Turkeys
World's Worst Publicist Gets Client Tossed From Thanksgiving Day Parade
FROM DEFAMER.COM: Update time! Last week we introduced you to Jonathan Jaxson, the incompetent publicist/Perez-sexing gossip who went spectacularly public with the worst PR strategy in the history of flackdom: More » -
Losers
Bill Kristol Takes on News Legend, Loses
Old-school journo Pete Hamill and Bill Kristol got together for a little argument, filmed by IFC's new Gideon Yago-hosted thing The IFC Media Project. As Bill Kristol is a sad joke and Pete Hamill is a legend, it was not really a fair fight. The topic, thankfully, allowed Bill to shill for his miserable lost war instead of having to defend Sarah Palin again. Hamill still schooled him. Kristol doesn't really think Americans need to see the "blood" and "coffins" that war creates, that way we can all feel much better about ourselves. -
Talk Radio
Meet John Ziegler
So yesterday we showed you "Why Obama Won", the website about how Obama voters are all imbeciles. There was a poll and stuff. 538's Nate Silver had a friendly interview with that site's mastermind, former radio talk show host John Ziegler. By "friendly" we mean it ends with "go fuck yourself" and a click. Related: back in 2005, the late David Foster Wallace wrote a really great profile of a nutty right-wing talk radio host for The Atlantic. Hey, you can read the whole thing online. Who was this host? Why, John Ziegler! Let's peek into his tortured mind! More » -
Gays
Kim Masters Attempts to Lay Out Defamer-Sourced Case for Ben Silverman's Homosexuality
FROM DEFAMER.COM: We consider ourselves connoisseurs of beleaguered (but enthusiastic!) NBC chief Ben Silverman, so we were a little surprised when we heard that Kim Masters had published a rumor roundup on The Daily Beast today that included three whole paragraphs tracking speculation that Silverman might be gay. More » -
Financiapocalypse
Congressman Urges Automaker CEOs To "Jetpool" When Heading To DC Begging For Money
FROM JALOPNIK.COM: New York Congressman Gary Ackerman feasts upon a buffet of "delicious irony" as he asks the CEOs from the Not-So-Big Three to perhaps save some cash and fuel by using a single jet together rather than individual private jets from Detroit to D.C. -
Rumor: Slate Spinoff For Guys?
[Update: We heard from Slate and they say there's no dude site in the works, though Slude is still an awesome name.] From a tipster: "Rumor is that Slate is spinning of another site, this one a counterpart to [new female-oriented spinoff] Double X, but for dudes. It is so far unnamed, but its codename around the office is Slude, and apparently they want Bryan Curtis to come back and run it." Bryan Curtis was always writing for now-dead Play, so he should have time!is now keeping busy as a senior editor for Tina Brown's Daily Beast. Know more? Email us. -
Layoff horror stories
Laid Off for the Holidays
So the Dow closed, terribly, under 8,000 for the first time in five years, Time Inc's chopping more heads, and we're still looking for your layoff stories! (Send them to tips@gawker.com.) Oh, and? Remember the sad layoff story we you told you about earlier—it was a "post-9/11 husband-and-wife double-whammy"? There's more woe: More » -
Flackery
Dan Abrams Tries To Explain Away Obvious Conflicts Of Interest. Fails.
Former MSNBC guy Dan Abrams seems to have noticed that his plan to start a PR firm made up of actively employed members of the media who will sell their consulting services to corporate clients is causing some uproar among people who believe that it would be a blatant conflict of interest for any journalist to be part of it. Which should include you, and anyone else who doesn't think members of the media should take outside pay for PR work. Abrams and his cohort in the project, former HuffPo media critic Rachel Sklar, offered long defenses of the idea to Daily Intel. Let's do some critical analysis, shall we? More » -
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Silly
Suri Cruise Awfully Full Of Herself For A Baby
Yesterday Forbes named Katie Holmes' and Tom Cruise's 2-year-old daughter Suri, a child made of moonbeams and space rock, Hollywood's Hottest Tot. Not in a gross sexy way, but in a she-commands-a-lot-of-attention way. It's true! And she's gotten rather haughty and big of head about it lately. Why just look at the accompanying photograph. Click for larger. More » -
Great magazine die-off
Four Ways To Kill A Magazine
Just because we're in the midst of a Great Magazine Die-Off, you may be under the impression that all magazines die equally. Not true!WeLeading magazine scientists have identified four distinct varieties of magazine death. Each has its own special flavor of despair for all those connected with the deceased publication. Here they are, from most common to least: More » -
rumormonger
Google CEO pulled over for driving with a cell phone
FROM VALLEYWAG.COM: No man is above the law — not even multibillionaire Google CEO Eric Schmidt. At least that's what we hear from a well-placed tipster, who says Schmidt recently confessed to having been pulled over by the cops last month in Los Angeles for talking on his cell phone while driving. More » -
Art
The Fall of the Semen Artist?
This is exactly the kind of thing we're hoping the recession will wipe out: the class of artists like who sell use their personal juices in the art—and sell it for a lot of money! It isn't punk. It isn't Dada. Freud would have a helluva lot to analyze—unless you're just hard-core mercenaries. But! These artists can't do it alone—they need enabling dealer/gallerists like Javier Peres, who's profiled in the New York Observer today. Blame him for Dash Snow's semen/New York Post collage, Terence Koh's Art Basel installation of his own alleged gold-covered poo ($500,000), and a guy who made "super-realist bird droppings." But we're hoping he'll collapse under his own excess: More » -
Foreign Affairs
International Respect Watch
America, as we've learned, has a big PR problem. The rest of the world doesn't like us so much! Our current president is something of a laughingstock, you see, and we have this problem with expecting others to live up to the ideals we espouse as we fail to live up to them ourselves. You can see how that might bug people, right? Thankfully we're done with the Bush administration. Listen to how little Bush is respected by the Russians and French: More » -
Trendwatch
The Media Has Always Loved Pirates!
Pirates are now the most important news in the world! Fox Business News is calling pirates "The New Face of Terrorism." The scary new face! But are they really new? The New York Times has written six dozen stories about Somalian pirates in the past ten years, and they're just picking up steam. We know the Somali pirate crew currently menacing African waters has a good PR man. Maybe he's to thank? We took a look back at a decade of pirate coverage and found that the raggedy scalawags have a long media history: More » -
fatcats
Rahm Warns Wall Street
The Wall Street Journal invited Rahm Emanuel to address some business leaders and invite them to, uh, advise the incoming president about what he needs to do. Because you know who don't get enough input into how the world is run? Corporate executives. It didn't matter, though, because Rahm just said, basically, "fuck it, we'll do it live." Universal health care? Full speed ahead! More »
