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New York, 1:05 AM
Fri Dec 11
60 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/09/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
Julia Allison (btw, Baugher is her last name, not Allison) writes opinion pieces, not articles involving research or interviews with actual human beings. Just because she has been paid to write a series of words in a weekly newsmagazine does not mean she is a journalist. If that's the case, then Anna Quindlen should stop yammering on about her family and start reporting on the goings on in Afghanistan.
Calling her and those like her journalists -- which Gawker does a hell of a lot for no real reason -- is demeaning to people who have actually earned degrees in journalism and have pursued careers in this field.
One more thing: If journalism is now being defined as copying and pasting from Wikipedia, someone had better order a few million press hats for anyone with a Tumblr account.
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
Not to say Winchell didn't do his own items but many were delivered to him whole, not just the facts but the actual words.
Caen, from what I gather, took info and tips from outside and wrote them up himself, right? Or did they come in whole?
Anyway, just goes to show, lazy does not always mean inferior. To the contrary.
12/08/09
I'm curious about the time when the writer becomes the brand and others take over the tedious work of composition for them. Fitzgerald in Hollywood and his cups, it was reported, would call on his gofer, a teenager named Billy Warren (a creator of Gunsmoke in his latter days) to put the mess in order. (Of course, Fitzgerald wasn't around to refute Crazy Sundays so it may have been just another episode of résumé padding.)
One of the Trumpettes was in classic company when she signed a contract to deliver a murder mystery and placed a notice for a writer to do it for her. Most, like Palin, are more discreet.
To the best of my memory, Herb Caen strung out items from contributors, and he made no claims of originality. He reported the charge he was merely taking dictation, and never denied it. Seemed he was on perfect terms with the process, as were we all.
12/08/09
Fitzgerlad is interesting, though I thought his Hollywood period was pretty dark; which Trump was that?
Ya, I read Caen when I first moved up here in 94, though if I recall correctly they were already starting to re-run old columns some day (very confusing). He was great. Still unmatched.
12/09/09
All powerful columnists should have a copy of Ozymandias on their desks. How the mighty have fallen. Back before he was a wideout with the Cowboys, Drew Pearson was a feared muckraker, as became his understudy Jack Anderson. There was a rancid guttersnipe name of Westbrook Pegler who was feared and loathed by presidents. And who remembers him today?
If you're interested in Fitzgerald and have a spare evening, you might want to find Crazy Sundays by Aaron Latham, about the late-stage alcoholism of Fitzgerald. I read it around 1972 and the stories are vivid still.
I came to the west coast in 1972, and Herb Caen was god, or at least the most powerful figure in San Francisco, which may be the same. The Chronicle was the only paper in those days for the Bay Area, and Herb Caen was the cause of it. And just look where the Chronicle is today (although I don't think that can be laid to the account of the passing of Caen).
Thanks for the memories.
11/27/09
11/27/09
You could combine 1, 2, 3 and 4 by yelling "Look, it's Rob Pattinson!" and then pushing through in a tight V-formation in this uniform:
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
11/27/09
Because of hangovers and still being awake, and after a vicious T-giving fest with my family, my manfriend and I decided to check out the 5 a.m. extravaganza at Wallyworld. Incipient brain death was our only excuse, not only for being at Black Friday, but for being at (for fuck's sake) Wal-Mart at all, ever. After pulling up in the car and viewing the inbred, wild-eyed, ravenous crowd huddled together in a seething mass of undulating hell, we said "Fuck, no", and left to go get pancakes.
11/26/09
11/26/09
11/27/09
11/26/09
11/26/09
*golf clap* Excellent.
11/26/09
11/18/09
This is not to say that bad execs and good execs have no effect on engineers, because they do -- particularly the bad ones, who can very easily spoil a development environment. But the factors that determine a "good" or "bad" exec from an engineer's point of view are frequently not the same as the factors that cause the business press to draw conclusions about their quality.
So what did GoogNYCers really think of Armstrong or your other gossip targets? It's astonishing that in a company that employees thousands of engineers, you can't find a single decent tipster. They are out there, I am sure.
11/18/09
- Relentless, robotic corporate culture
- How braindead said culture made her feel
- Higher management pressure to party and be seen with other Googlers
- The fact that so many other Googlers can't understand why a normal person would want to have non-work friends
- Politics and office drama associated with zombie corporate culture and rampant social incest
- How fucking boring it was
11/18/09
Money aside (and it's not an inconsiderable aside), the couple times I've visited friends there (hey, free lunch), it seemed an atrocious place to work. Gave me the creeps.
11/18/09
His supervisor flipped out and questioned his loyalty (?!!?) and then started screwing with him, changing deadlines, etc until my friend quit.
11/18/09
I don't work at Google and I don't make a lot of money. But I have worked at other places like that, where I could have made a lot of money if I had just agreed to play their little games and given up any semblance of my own life as part of the deal. I chose to leave instead too.