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week in review

The Week of 1,000 Whores


Big Fat Italian Wedding James Gandolfini is now engaged to longtime goomar Deborah Lin. No word yet on when they'll be rattling the windows and tearing the house down in preparation for their separation.

promotions

'Times' PR Queen Catherine Mathis Promoted, Will Now Take Over World

Guess what? New York Times flack Catherine Mathis was totally promoted today! According to a Times press release, the company has made Mathis a senior vice president of corporate communications; she was a lowly old vice president just yesterday! "Catherine is the consummate communications professional. She has a deep understanding of our business and, under her leadership, we have taken a smart, strategic approach to media and investor relations," NYTCo chair Janet Robinson says in the release. We can't really argue with that, seeing as how the release also announces a promotion for the paper's general counsel, but just breezes through his CV. Now that's owning the story. More »

jobs

Gawker.com Is Hiring

Blogs such as Gawker won't be running 5,000-word-long features any time soon, nor giving writers weeks to investigate. But the web—other blogs, search engines and social network sites—increasingly rewards original items. So we're looking for an additional reporter for the team.

At its most basic, the reporting may at times be little more than value-added blogging: a story in the news, put in context with a quick Nexis search, and deconstructed. At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users. Here's the kind of person suited to the position.

More »

diseases

This Holiday Season, Watch Out For Gout

Does the bedsheet touching the top of your foot feel like a hot prod? The season of overeating is almost upon us, and, Dr. Rock Positano warns in his HuffPo blog today, if you don't limit your gravy intake, you're asking for trouble in the form of a burning, swollen toe. More »

exit music

See You At Shark Bar

Mark Twain once suggested that we rejoice at a birth and weep at a funeral because we are not the person involved, and that, along with the cartoon you see here, is about as close to my philosophy of life as you're ever gonna get. So guess what? I'm kind of shockingly sad to be leaving Gawker. There will be tears. Who would have thought? More »

announcements

Please Welcome Alex Pareene

22-year-old N.Y.U. dropout Alex Pareene has been forced to live in Washington, D.C. for more than a year now. He took over at Wonkette in January, 2006. That is sad, because D.C. is no place for the young. (Except for the getting robbed. That's good for kids.) I have rectified this situation. As Alex Balk leaves us, although he may be irreplaceable, at least a new Alex shall rise. He starts Monday after next, and will be back in New York as soon as he and his girlfriend (I know, right?) can work that out. It's not like we pay relocation costs or anything. I'm sure they'll find an apartment somewhere Rockaways-adjacent!

announcements

Hiya From The New Associate Editor

So what the hell happened here last week? A girl can't take a couple weeks off between jobs without all hell breaking loose? And I was so looking forward to tormenting my soon-to-be-former coworker Alex Balk on a daily basis. Moment of silence for The Cock, people. So I'm Maggie, and I'll be your Associate Editor (and apparently Gawker's token Gentile) for the remainder of the flight. As previously mentioned, I sold out to the man for a few years and spent some time shilling for the Village Voice and the New York Sun, but regular paychecks and solid benefits get old fast. Happy to be here. Let the wild rumpus begin!

announcements

Alex Balk To Radar

Alex Balk, the man who drunkenly typed his way through a thousand angry posts on the deficiencies of Radar, has done the unthinkable. He's leaving Gawker to become the executive editor of Radar.com. Do you know what this means? It means he was right about every single thing he said. We claim victory. All sort-of kidding aside, what can we say? We love him and we'll miss him terribly; it's sick. We are taking his fingernails now to clone him. And his last two weeks here should be a wild ride.

announcements

Please Welcome Maggie Shnayerson

A new addition to the gang here will begin work on September 24th. Her name is Maggie Shnayerson, and she has been employed most recently as the PR chick at the Village Voice. (Her official title: publicity director.) Prior to that, she's reported for the Sun, freelanced here and did some stringing there, was an editorial intern at Time and was an editor at The Dartmouth. We were most impressed with Maggie when dealing with her on stories about the Voice: She was a complete hardass. Kind of a bitch, in fact! But a superfun bitch. This is a prime requirement for working here. I also liked that she has experience with how the business side of media things are run—and also a great ear for how PR spin is propagated. What else? She likes a stiff drink, which is key. Also she attended Brearley. Heh. We're so pleased to welcome her back to the other side.

departures on great terms

Doree Shafrir Ankles New Media Sweatshop

Near the end of day yesterday, Gawker's Doree Shafrir handed in her two weeks notice. She'll be leaving us for the New York Observer, where she'll write and report on "ideas." (That role has been, it seems, officially unfilled since the departure of Sheelah Kolhatkar for Portfolio over the winter.) Doree began here as an "associate editor" last October, and early this year transitioned to reporting on the media full-time. She can only be replaced here at Gawker with a terrifying room full of jerry-rigged threshing machines held together with baling wire and lubricated with grain alcohol. We sincerely wish her the best of luck in destroying Jared Kushner from inside his own shop—or, at least, in bringing that paper what the boy publisher may not know it so desperately needs.

Hi, do you use Firefox? We do too! We love it! Unfortunately, our website hates it right now. It crashes for us too! All the time! We're pissed! We'd strike, but we're month-to-month permalancers! Anyway, we hear they're working on it.

We're leaving the Most Annoying Liberal Arts College poll open for another day or so, just because.

The issue of Jane that's on newsstands now (the August issue, with Eva Mendes on the cover) is not the one the staff was working on when the magazine folded. It's the September issue that will never see the light of day.

how your hegemony gets made

Attention, Tinsley Mortimer: Your Frat Is Looking For You

In the constellation of collegiate societies—fraternities, sororities, eating clubs, finals clubs, and the like—few are more exclusive, and WASPy, as St. Anthony Hall, or St. A's as it is commonly known. Founded at Columbia University in 1847, today the organization has merely nine chapters, six of which are co-ed and three of which are all-male. At the university we attended, the St. A's chapter house was an imposing Tudor brick presence in the center of campus, with leaded-glass windows, a large side yard, and a stoop where the blond members would sit outside on nice days, drinking beer out of plastic cups. (They were still a frat, after all.) So perhaps it's not surprising that Tinsley Mortimer would've been a member. More »

public service announcements

How To (Figuratively!) Stalk Celebrities

Ah, springtime in New York City! The time when we all come out of our homes and offices and spend time walking around on the street. Sometimes we run into people we know. Often they're friends from college or former coworkers or people we met in a bar once, but other times, the reason these people look so familiar is because they are famous stars of stage and screen. Here's how to report this latter variety of run-in to us, via email, so that we may later post it on our apparently oh-so-controversial Gawker Stalker Map. More »

gawker

Small Change: Ways Of Seeing

Yes, there's something new going on up top of this here website! The powers that be believe that you, the person of the year, would like to have choices in the ways you look at things. So! Your default view (called, for no known reason, "Picks") will be just as it always was: New stuff at the top, our older blatherings at the bottom. "Popular" means that things will be ranked by what is supposedly most popular. "All" is a little misleading. It does not quite bring the entire internet into this browser window. That would make your head pop like an overripe pumpkin on Halloween night, as Ann Magnuson so famously said. Instead it brings in content from a good number of the sites we read throughout the day. (On that page you'll find some wacky "promote" buttons, which, if pressed enough, bring posts to the front page of Gawker, apparently. NEAT. SUPER. Ah, that turned out to be a management lie! Yay.) Beneath that are some popular categories. And up top on the side there, "summary" is for people who can't be assed to read a full post and "thumbs" is for the entirely post-literate crowd who'd prefer to not have much text disturbing them at all. Please enjoy exploring. And you can totally email us with questions! Except we'll be all, "What the hell do we know?"

gawker

Small Change: Tag, We're It

Because we all like to be warned when something changes—remember when you came home one day in third grade and daddy was gone and mommy was crying and then you had a new apartment to live in every other weekend? Or, say, when your New York Times arts listings were suddenly moved around? (I certainly don't!)—please be apprised that the tech people who actually run this site have installed something cute here. You'll notice more links appearing in posts to our stunningly-organized archives. They appear automatically. Anyway, enjoy, or ignore, and in the future, I'll try to give y'all a warning when little new things are coming. This one took me from behind and by surprise last night. (Yes. That's what he said.)