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rumormonger
rumormonger
The unspiked files
Trying Out For America's Got Talent
In the latest installment of Gawker's Unspiked Files, Dan Crane auditions for NBC's hit talent contest. (The article follows after the jump.) The Unspiked Files are a repository of pieces commissioned by newspapers and magazines that never made it to the page. Earlier articles on actor Alec Baldwin and a Scientology-related suicide are listed here. If you have an article that deserves to see the light of day, email unspiked@gawker.com.More »
Rants
It is understandable that film makers prefer to set the apocalypse in the only American conurbation that is recognizable—to international cinema-goers at least—as a city. (The original I Am Legend was set in Los Angeles, but the last year's movie was improved with Will Smith, computer-generated imagery and a Manhattan setting.) But New York has been destroyed so often recently that the suspense is draining from these plots. As soon as one sees the familiar profile of the Empire State Building, one knows something bad is going to happen. And one more thing: the city is in a delicate condition right now. We could have done without this trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still, which shows bad things happening to Central Park, the Giants stadium, St. Patrick's Cathedral—and the city as a whole. More stills after the jump.
More »
Leave New York Alone!
It is understandable that film makers prefer to set the apocalypse in the only American conurbation that is recognizable—to international cinema-goers at least—as a city. (The original I Am Legend was set in Los Angeles, but the last year's movie was improved with Will Smith, computer-generated imagery and a Manhattan setting.) But New York has been destroyed so often recently that the suspense is draining from these plots. As soon as one sees the familiar profile of the Empire State Building, one knows something bad is going to happen. And one more thing: the city is in a delicate condition right now. We could have done without this trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still, which shows bad things happening to Central Park, the Giants stadium, St. Patrick's Cathedral—and the city as a whole. More stills after the jump.
More »
About
Gawker Draws Level With New York Magazine
Gawker has had a reasonably friendly rivalry with Bruce Wasserstein's New York magazine. At least three former editors of this site—Elizabeth Spiers, Jesse Oxfeld and Jessica Coen—have found refuge there after their sentence in the blogging mines. This history makes the latest audience numbers from Compete.com particularly satisfying. In September, gawker.com alone—not including any sibling sites—drew level with New York's nymag.com.
History
The Bank Holiday
Immediately after his inauguration as president in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a four-day bank holiday during which insolvent institutions were closed and the survivors were given a federal seal of approval. According to Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the big economies are discussing a similarly drastic move, a closure of world markets, hopefully temporary. There's one big difference. More »
glossary
The 'Bankster'
It is time for an addition to the Gawker glossary. We need an abusive term—a new one—for banker. The financial slang of the last twenty years has been begrudgingly admiring. Big swinging dick carries an undertone of arrogance; but also swaggering status. Any respect has been lost of course in a few months of bank collapses and the last few sickening days on the stockmarket. Bankers now draw the opprobrium they did during the Depression. So it would be timely to revive a word from the 1930s used to describe a hybrid of banker and gangster: the bankster. (After the jump, a passage from Ron Chernow's book, the Death of the Banker.) More »
Daily beast
Bad Buzz
Remember that minor fuss over the curious resemblance of the logo of the Daily Beast, Tina Brown's supposedly pathbreaking news site, to that of the Philadelphia Daily News? It won't go away. The Philly tabloid has now sent a cease-and-desist letter to the one-time Queen of Buzz.
The Fall
America has ended before—in these eight visions of the country's collapse collected by io9. (But those times we woke up and it was a dream.)
MORE »
America has ended before—in these eight visions of the country's collapse collected by io9. (But those times we woke up and it was a dream.)
MORE » 
from the archives
Being There
This isn't the first time that a complete unknown has come so close to the presidency—at least not if one includes Hollywood fantasies. The best of them is Being There, a movie made during the last period of national distress in which a mild-mannered and subnormal gardener played by Peter Sellers stumbles into the political spotlight. His bromides on the seasons are taken as reassuring economic wisdom; his television interviews test off the charts; and in the final scene the party establishment clutches at him as their savior much as the McCain campaign selected Sarah Palin. After the jump, a clip crosscut with moments from this year's campaign; but first, some dialogue. More »
The panic of '08
If I run another illustration of the end of the world, I'm going to shoot myself. So, instead, here's a chart with some perspective. Note how miniscule a bump markets experienced during the supposed "crash" of 1987. Even after the today's drop in the Dow below 9,000 the index is roughly where one would expect it to be if the economy had grown modestly and the two asset bubbles—dot-com stocks last decade and real estate this one—had never happened.
Deep Breath
If I run another illustration of the end of the world, I'm going to shoot myself. So, instead, here's a chart with some perspective. Note how miniscule a bump markets experienced during the supposed "crash" of 1987. Even after the today's drop in the Dow below 9,000 the index is roughly where one would expect it to be if the economy had grown modestly and the two asset bubbles—dot-com stocks last decade and real estate this one—had never happened.
assignment desk
Any amateur document experts want to weigh in on this document which is floating around the web? It purports to represent the high-school grades of one Sarah Heath of Wasilla, Alaska, now the Republican running mate. If the report card is a forgery, it's decent work.
More »
Sarah Palin's High-School Grades?
Any amateur document experts want to weigh in on this document which is floating around the web? It purports to represent the high-school grades of one Sarah Heath of Wasilla, Alaska, now the Republican running mate. If the report card is a forgery, it's decent work.
More »
The unspiked files
Death Of A Nethead
In 1999, Rolling Stone assigned Hollywood reporter Mark Ebner to the story of Philip Gale, an MIT prodigy born into Scientology who killed himself on the birthday of the cult's founder. The organization sent Rolling Stone a damning dossier on Ebner and the story was spiked. Ebner says he was told by his assigning editor that Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner was close to John Travolta, one of the sect's most prominent Hollywood supporters. Since then, the Church of Scientology has softened in its response to critics; and internet outlets have proven less easily browbeaten. So here—after the jump— is Ebner's original piece, Death of a Nethead. More »
The unspiked files
The Reflections Of A Bitter Man
On a recent fall afternoon, the actor Alec Baldwin was tossing a football around on the sidewalk by a Marriott Hotel. While the crew of his TV show ’30 Rock’ were setting up the next shot, Baldwin was clearly the star — the only principal cast member in fact — in this section of Long Island City, Queens. He was light on his feet, laughing and joking with the crew, and happily posing for a photograph with a wandering fan. More »
25 Years Lost
Shares of Ford Motor Company—down nearly 9% today—are now back to their level in April 1983.
MORE »
Shares of Ford Motor Company—down nearly 9% today—are now back to their level in April 1983.
MORE »
today's papers
A few weeks ago, one could still hope that America's financial crisis might be contained. China's economy was robust and countries such as Germany and Japan hadn't experienced the real-estate bubble that blew up the financial system of the United States. If those countries held up, American exports might continue to compensate for the retrenchment of American consumers; and bargain-hunting foreign buyers would support the real-estate markets of cities such as New York and Miami. It was a comforting fantasy—and it's evaporated as the bank failures have spread. The currency of debt-happy Iceland was effectively devalued by half today; nobody wants to accept the krone; the cold little island is likely to be the first entire country to go bankrupt, a catastrophe which warrants a headline even starker than Morgunbladid's in this gallery of international papers. (One can now be terrified by the banner headlines of financial catastrophe in many languages.)
A Global Financial Crisis
A few weeks ago, one could still hope that America's financial crisis might be contained. China's economy was robust and countries such as Germany and Japan hadn't experienced the real-estate bubble that blew up the financial system of the United States. If those countries held up, American exports might continue to compensate for the retrenchment of American consumers; and bargain-hunting foreign buyers would support the real-estate markets of cities such as New York and Miami. It was a comforting fantasy—and it's evaporated as the bank failures have spread. The currency of debt-happy Iceland was effectively devalued by half today; nobody wants to accept the krone; the cold little island is likely to be the first entire country to go bankrupt, a catastrophe which warrants a headline even starker than Morgunbladid's in this gallery of international papers. (One can now be terrified by the banner headlines of financial catastrophe in many languages.)
Assignment Desk
Anyone watching micro-celebrity Julia Allison explain the art of personal branding this evening? There's a Mediabistro seminar on the subject. Please send in a report and any video or stills from the event!
MORE »
Anyone watching micro-celebrity Julia Allison explain the art of personal branding this evening? There's a Mediabistro seminar on the subject. Please send in a report and any video or stills from the event!
MORE » 
Magazines
Introducing The Unspiked Files
The publication of a relatively juicy interview with Jennifer Lopez—rejected by an unnamed fashion magazine—reminds us that magazine articles are often dropped not because they're bad but because they're good. Or—more often—simply because they've been overtaken by events or clash with some other article or because an insecure editor has over-commissioned. (Tina Brown, who published Kevin Sessums' J-Lo profile on her new Daily Beast website, was notorious for assigning three times the articles she ran.) Anyway, here's an alternative for journalists who've spent weeks slaving on an article only to see it spiked: Gawker's unspiked files. More »
Race
How Kenyan Immigration Officials Can Help John McCain
Jerome Corsi's brush with the Kenyan authorities is a gift to the Republican campaign and those who disseminate its talking points. More »
The panic of '08
A Defense Of Wall Street Villains
God knows why Robert Pickel, head of the association of derivatives traders, would want to go on 60 Minutes yesterday to explain credit default swaps. These complex financial instruments—at the center of the credit crisis—are now about as impossible to defend on television as child pornography. Watch this clip from the CBS news show for Pickle's eyebrow-raise when words fail him. It's an enjoyable moment of television but it's time for a defense of Wall Street against their critics in Congress and the media. More »
The panic of '08
In lower Manhattan's financial district a few minutes ago, a man in a bear outfit wandering the streets. iPhone photo from David Galbraith.
Bear On Wall Street
In lower Manhattan's financial district a few minutes ago, a man in a bear outfit wandering the streets. iPhone photo from David Galbraith.
The panic of '08
During the 1990s, Japan's government passed economic stimulus packages with tedious regularity—and depressed consumers and investors equally reliably failed to respond. It was as if the authorities were pushing on a string. A decade later, in the United States, the economic predicament is much the same. Last Friday's gigantic $700bn rescue package for American banks has failed to stop shares plunging this morning. The Dow Jones share index just fell below 10,000 for the first time in four years.
Dow Drops Below 10,000
During the 1990s, Japan's government passed economic stimulus packages with tedious regularity—and depressed consumers and investors equally reliably failed to respond. It was as if the authorities were pushing on a string. A decade later, in the United States, the economic predicament is much the same. Last Friday's gigantic $700bn rescue package for American banks has failed to stop shares plunging this morning. The Dow Jones share index just fell below 10,000 for the first time in four years.
Design
Tina's Homage To Philadelphia
Magazine-turned-web guru Tina Brown has never claimed her design sense was that original. At the stillborn Talk, she opted for a portable format, a magazine published on thin paper that could be rolled up and carried around like a European newsweekly such as Stern. And that same inspiration is shared by her baby news website, the Daily Beast. "I've always loved the look of the European smart tabloids," she says with the sophistication that comes from a media career on both sides of the Atlantic. There's just one problem: the logo of the new IAC-backed website looks more like that of the Philadelphia Daily News, the tabloid paper of New York's rather dowdy southern neighbor.
internal memos
Friday Is Always Black
Yes, it's true: Gawker's sibling sites are laying off 19 people. This site is one of those that will be expanding. The internal memo is after the jump. Gabriel Snyder of W magazine will indeed be replacing me as managing editor and we are hiring two more reporters in short order. But it's generally a miserable day. I'll answer as many questions as I can in the comments.- Gawker Media Cuts Jobs, Suspends Bonuses [Portfolio]
- Denton Shuffles Deck: Hires Snyder as M.E. of Gawker; Moe Tkacik Let Go [New York Observer]
- Black Friday At Gawker Media: 19 Layoffs at Blog Network [Alley Insider]
- April 2008: Nick Denton Shrinking Gawker Media, Ditching Three Sites [Alley Insider]
- July 2006: A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs [New York Times]
