Huffington Post tech editor Jose Antonio Vargas was recently hired from the Washington Post and is still getting used to his new, glamorous LA lifestyle. He capped a wild night by apparently losing his BlackBerry to a Twittering thief.

Erica Smith os the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will compromise certain standards in pursuit of a good story.

Actor Rainn Wilson tweets his viral mash-up ideas in real time.

The Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray reported on an altogether different sort of analyst estimate.

A urinary tract infection taught The Awl's Choire Sicha about the glories of America's world-class health care for the uninsured (a/k/a Google and WebMD).

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The Conde Nast cuts are apparently ongoing. After a massacre at Brides yesterday, a tipster today tells us there are "Mass layoffs at Conde Nast in Chicago today (lots of advertising people). Chaos." If you have more details, email us.


Kiki Paris, a former employee of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is suing the company for "forcing her to return to work too soon after a debilitating injury and then firing her soon after." Due to our irrational and sensationalistic one-sided "feud" with Martha Stewart, this doesn't surprise us one bit.


Renee Ferguson, a black TV journalist, discusses how her television employers told her to stop wearing an afro, because it would intimidate white viewers. Yet Lou Dobbs' hair draws no complaints? Astounding.


What is Choire Sicha exercised about today? The FTC's new rules about bloggers being forced to disclose their freebies! It's a pointless and arbitrary rule, he says in an NYT op-ed, and furthermore "Stealth marketing, direct advertisement and product placement work only on the clueless, and our immersive, hippo-like wallowing in the marketplace serves only to make us resistant to these viral contagions." Always with the hippos.

Podcaster Jeff Smith was not nearly as pleased with the autumn wear in Chicago as The Awl's Choire Sicha was with the pullovers in New York.

There must be very few people who blogger Perez Hilton feels comfortable lecturing about ethics. Apparently Kim Kardashian is one of them.

Larry David as a no-doubt carefully calibrated caricature of himself is pure Twitter bait, and celeb-news editor Bonnie Fuller wasn't ashamed to bite the hook.

Irin Carmon of Women's Wear Daily found some feature fodder for the New York Times Magazine. No charge.

Brian Stelter is back from Philly so... what are you waiting for? Get back to work, Twitter followers!

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Kim Kardashian shared some great wisdom, from heaven knows who. She's re-tweeting the universe!

Air America's Ana Marie Cox found Joe Wilson surprisingly defensible.

Duncan "Atrios" Black is all about NBC News.

Choire Sicha spent some time with Kate Hudson and is already bitching about the paparazzi like a pro.

You will laugh at comedian Doug Benson, or he WILL cut you.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The New York Times' David Carr and The Awl's Choire Sicha went to lunch. Inevitably, this involved illicit substances.

Time's Joel Stein found something even better than Facebook.

Gawker contributor Melissa Gira Grant discovered herself at the unhappy intersection of viral marketing and an ex.

Financial writer Lyneka Little felt self-consciously stalky.

Internet music entrepreneur Ian Rogers likes it when the creator of The Wire gets a little cranky.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

In a great piece titled "The Gilded Age of Conde Nast is Over," The Observer's John Koblin reveals a slew of shocking goings-on at Conde that almost makes the purging of the company's receptionists pale in comparison. Below are a few of the choice cuts, starting with the horrifying revelation that Graydon is now being forced to lunch with the peasantry in the Frank Gehry-designed space pictured above.

"I saw Graydon in the cafeteria this week!" said one business-side insider, last Friday. "In all my years here, I've never seen him in my life there. He was behind me in the line at checkout with his little swipe card! He was milling around uncomfortably with the commoners."

Now obviously, if the Conde overlords are being forced to sacrifice some of their luxuries, you just know that the underlings are getting screwed, and they are. On that subject, two words people: tap water.

"When I started, there was this little refrigerator, and it was stocked with amazing drinks!" said one ad-sales source. "Pellegrino, Orangina, Red Bull. And like the water wasn't Poland Spring, it was like Fiji. I remember when I started working here, I emailed everyone I know and I was like, ‘I have to tell you about the drinks!'"

But then in December, a few months after Condé Nast ordered publishers and editors to cut 5 percent from their budgets, the drink supply emptied out. That Fiji water turned into Poland Spring. Worse, instead of the fridge, the water bottles were stowed in a warm closet.

And then: "I just found out today that we are on our last batch of Poland Spring," said the source. "We won't have any more after this. We have to start drinking tap water."

Tap water! At Conde Nast! Are you kidding me?! Among the article's other cutback revelations: no more expensed lunches at Nobu, no more take-out from Balthazar, no more free spa treatments, no more fresh flower deliveries to the offices of top editors — the list goes on and on.

But perhaps the most surprising (Or maybe not) detail in Koblin's piece is the revelation that Conde Nast's claim about there are no untouchables within the company is complete bullshit. The New Yorker is the one sacred cow not to be meddled with.

Two well-placed sources said that Condé Nast's chairman, Si Newhouse, reached out to (Editor David) Remnick shortly after the McKinsey announcement was made and told him not to worry about anything-the magazine would be just fine, and neither McKinsey nor company executives would be mucking with his editorial costs.

Go read this piece, if only because, as Choire Sicha pointed out on his Twitter, the story's punchline is among the best you'll ever read.

In an email sent out to their daily email subscribers, two-time Gawker editor Choire Sicha revealed a backdated post that wouldn't appear on the front page of the site to otherwise uninitiated readers.

So this is a special Weekend Edition Email to thank you for your patronage. Why? Well, this week, on July 30, 2009, a person residing in (or visiting!) the glorious town of Austin, Texas clicked through from somewhere (perhaps from one of your Twitter accounts, dear reader!) to view a post (and then depart for Internet places unknown) and, in doing so, became our millionth visitor:

http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/one-million-served

(That's a backdated secret post, so that it didn't appear on our front page.)

This lucky Windows user, wrapping up the end of his or her workday at 5:30 p.m. local time, or perhaps just waking up, and getting ready for the roller derby, or maybe, well, who knows: who is shim? What time does hermself wake up? We may never know....

Now, Sitemeter is notoriously wacky as a traffic counter, as you probably know, so, don't worry, we don't attach too much significance to this number. But it's a big round number! How exciting! It kinda makes me feel like Ray Kroc.

The Awl launched to much excitement a few months ago: an interview with Vanity Fair's site, and posts from MediaBistro, like this one, in which Choire talks about how he doesn't look at his own traffic!

Has the press' lovefest led to strong traffic?

Sicha, for one, has no idea. "You know, I have actually *never looked* at our traffic," he emailed FishbowlNY.com this morning. "I leave that in David Cho's capable hands; he's our business guy, and that stuff is his problem. I am just trying to have a good time, and that itself is our stated goal."

Balk, Sicha, and their numerous contributors - who count plenty of Gawker Media past and present writers as among their numbers - look to be enjoying themselves, as they recently called this company the "Goldman Sachs of the Internet," (which is funny, because I'm still broke) and reportedly had their site crash due to an overwhelming influx of traffic. In the aforementioned email, they also announced a special new contributor who's "much better" than Ed Koch.

Meanwhile, this blog took note of nearly anti-celebrity-beat site The Awl's Michael Jackson-911-call link in a passive swipe, and before that, Nick Denton once took note of their content layout.

The Awl's now at a million hits and Denton's busy minting his own currency or something, and unlike Sicha, doesn't own any pets. Yet. "Congratulations" to all parties involved.

One Million Served [The Awl]

The untimely death of someone like Jackson, a once in a generation worldwide superstar, is one of the few things that can possibly breathe new life into the balance sheets of a slowly dying tabloid media industry. Remember, not only was Michael Jackson a star of Elvis proportions, but he was an insanely weird star of Elvis proportions, perhaps the weirdest star the world has ever known (Even weirder than Elvis himself!) or will ever know, with a long personal history filled with scandal.

Here's something key to remember on this—In the United States of America, the dead cannot be libeled. Only living individuals can sue for libel. So I can run around all over town saying that Millard Fillmore used to fellate goats in the White House if I chose to and there's absolutely nothing that Millard Fillmore's descendants can do legally to make me stop saying it.

Now just imagine how many sensational Michael Jackson stories are out there waiting to be told that were never told before out of fear of being driven into financial ruin with libel lawsuits tied up for years in the American court system. Surely there will be people looking to sell their stories now, and surely there will be tabloid magazines that will scrape up whatever cash they can muster to buy these stories, even the most marginal, and slap them on their front pages under provocative headlines. They will sell by the millions, even in a down economy, because Western society has an insatiable appetite for celebrity scandal. It makes us feel better about our own wretched lives when the curtain is pulled back on those in the spotlight to reveal souls that are just as dark and tormented as our own, if not more.

But it won't just stop there.

In the days, weeks and months to come we'll be bombarded with more Michael Jackson television specials, print media special issues, commemorative products, re-releases of albums, etc. than most of us can stand. And then of course the more traditional media will recycle some of the stories dug up by the aforementioned tabloids and their reporting of those stories will bring in viewers and sell copies of newspapers/magazines. What you've seen just in the last 12 hours or so, what with the release of Jackson's death photo and the second by second movements of his corpse being reported on live television, is only scratching the surface.

Now to be fair, we at Gawker certainly aren't exempt from any of this. It's no secret that our revenue is generated through advertising dollars based on a rather simple metric—How many eyeballs are seeing the site on a regular basis. We will be covering the coverage of the story, and perhaps adding to the story here and there, as we always do, and stories like this one tend to spark tremendous public interest. Just look at the spike in traffic we experienced yesterday from all of this as evidence. This is all a part of what former Gawker editor Choire Sicha (or maybe it was Emily Gould?) termed, "the celebrity industrial complex," and we as consumers have no one but ourselves to blame for it. If we ignored all of this stuff it would probably go away, but we don't, so it doesn't. In turn, those of who work in media serve it up on a plate for the masses eager to consume it. Then we all medicate ourselves silly so we can get through the days and sleep through the nights and the world spins madly on. It's just the way we live now.

If only we'd all take a moment to step back and listen to the words of this contemplative visionary, perhaps the world would be a better place.

Times Square pic via Animal New York

Finance writer Lyneka Little divulged her history with MC Hammer, so no one could ever use it against her.

Amanda Carpenter revealed she doesn't watch nearly enough L Word (granted, since she works for the Washington Times, this was kind of implied).

The Awl's Choire Sicha provided a glimpse into the process of editing Alex Balk, or at least that's our guess.

Alan Meckler of Web Media Brands concurred with our sources on the future of the Huffington Post.

Marie Claire's Lea Goldman was tied in knots over tubes.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

I don't want to get overly racial-conspiracy-theory about this, but in reading Stuart Jeffries piece on the revival of exclamation marks I had to wonder a few things:

1. I couldn't quite tell if the article is sourced from the wikipedia entry, or vice-versa (I'm guessing the latter), but I think someone needs to hat-tip the other. They pretty much follow the same narrative!

2. The first point is reinforced through their shared omissions as well. No mention of Greasemonkey scripts that scrub away excess excla-pointing!!! Or Slate's profile. Both of those items are over two years old. Also no mention of Choire, who legend has it is the Godfather of exclamation marks!

3. Which brings us to the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes." Ha! It's so true! Also sort of falls under things stuff white people.

I once chimed in the comments with this:

[exclamation points] are an easy way to add energy or personality or whathaveyou to writing, especially if you're churning out posts like some sort of machine that churns out a lot of stuff. But you really don't see it much on black, hip hop, or other ethnic blogs. Knahmean? [ed: I think they/we might do more coding through slanguage. Feel me?]

In any event, since hanging around blogger/bledia types I do more drinking, smoking, and using of exclamation points! So I think it's a grammatical representation of some element of the assimilation process!

Quoting my comments in a new post! Very worth of exclamation points!

But amidst the terror of swine flu and, um, AIDS, have we considered the horror the punctuation-assimilation process can render on those who know nothing of Tom Wolfe? This indoctrination is not unique to my experience. I once remarked to Gawker's own Hamilton Nolan when we were at an underground hip hop show, not particularly concerned about running into any Gawker commenters, and he admitted to being a victim as well. His exclamation mark usage had increased exponentially since joining Gawker!

So I don't know what to think of these smart exclamation points; they're the hipster-Mac to the Period's PC; the itty-bitty stud on the nose of that white girl who likes The Roots; the ironic slash across the throat of earnestness. But how come the usage hasn't really crossed over to hip hop blogs and such?

And will they go extinct when the multiculti hip hop generation becomes the seated majority in 2050?

If you can let me know by next weekend, I won't bring it up again. Promise!

WTAN signing off. See you next Saturday!!!! Holla if you need me!

Right! There are other Gawker Media alum who have been blogging away in other places: The former Defamer crew have resuscitated Movieline and ex-Gawker writer Sheila McClear, is keeping ASSME.org well-stocked with contributors writing about living through this shitty media economy.

People screwed by NYC, in other words. The book, which he hopes to finish in a year, "will follow a group of 20-somethings as they try to make their lives in a city that doesn't work the way it once did."

"For me, what the recession for young working people reminds me of is HIV in the early 90s, when my generation of gay men decided there wasn't much of a future," Mr. Sicha said. "I feel like I hear from people now, and they're like, 'fuck tomorrow!' Which seems completely reasonable to me. And whether that's based on a real understanding of the economy or on what we're getting through the filter of the media, it doesn't matter– it's a completely appropriate response to the moment we're in."

So Choire will be writing the definitive account of broke ass modern New York (and he needs four subjects: fameballs, email him immediately!). Along with the whisperwhisperwhisper alleged secret project with Balk that we cannot stop hearing about these days, this will keep him busy until the recession blows over. Fancy! He tells us, "It was either this or start some stupid new blog for Nick Denton!"

Choire Sicha has always been the smart one. [NYO. Pic: Flickr]

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times was starstruck at TED.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha had a weird dream.

Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Daniel Victor felt too popular for his own good.

Slate political correspondent John Dickerson prepared his daughter for a lifetime of oversharing.

Ashton Kutcher pretended to take a meeting but was really thinking about Demi Moore the whole time.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

It's no surprise Cooper would demur on questions about who he is or is not dating, and what their gender might be. After all, if that were the sort of thing the AC360 host talked about, the world would know by now.

But it is interesting to learn that journalists are routinely and formally held to promises about their questions as a condition for interviewing Cooper. Gawker alum Choire Sicha, who recently sat down with Cooper for the Los Angeles Times, described the screening process in an aside on his personal blog:

Access to Mr. Cooper through the network is dependent on their conditions that no personal questions be asked, whatever that means, and so I agree to their conditions, as stupid as they may be.

One wonders how often Cooper himself makes promises to sources about what kinds of questions he'll ask them on camera  

Wired editor Joe Brown lived large on Si Newhouse's dime.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha gave an actor the hairy eyeball.

Slate columnist John Dickerson got in quality time with the kids.

Attention-seeking omnimedia entrepreneuse Sarah Lacy primped for a fellow pundit.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof even enjoyed a funeral.

Today, The View brings us Tom Cruise; on Monday comes the queen of foaming scandal, the one and only Ann Coulter. (Joy Behar says she's a "bitch"! Whoopi Goldberg says she's gonna beat her up!)

What a daring weekend sandwich. First let us deal with the Cruise. So last night, The View ladies were on stage in the New York Times auditorium, just rappin' with Times TV reporter Jacques Steinberg, who couldn't have been happier to see them. (Literally, he was all, "Put the rumors to rest! They really do like each other!" Um, what do you know, you saw them backstage for eight minutes?) There was an audience of like 795 middle-aged women, 3 unhappy straight guys, and 2 thrilled gay guys.

Anyway, yes, because there is no stopping the promotions for the tepid Valkyrie, because $63 million is NOT ENOUGH for Cruise-Wagner productions, they have taped a show with Tom Cruise to air today... now in fact (if you are on the East Coast). And so Barbara Walters apparently comes at him all sneaky with the Barbara-fu and they bring up the death of poor Jett Travolta, because obviously Tom Cruise and John Travolta are besties because they are in the same sorority.

So The View-ettes were super-teasy about it because they are all thinking, oh let us please still have good ratings now that the election is over, but! Apparently Barbara asks Tom Cruise about how in his religion — and she calls it a religion, not Scientology — they're not supposed to take pills or see doctors and that is why everyone on the Internet is convinced that Xenu killed Jett Travolta.

And Tom Cruise says, she said, "We do go to doctors and we do have medication." And apparently he gets all weepy! Oh God! "He doesn't say anything — it's not what he says," said Whoopi Goldberg. And they were all like, like, "yikes!"

Okay, we might actually have to watch this. Also they said the Tom Cruise was there most "sincere" guest of all time. That is so odd. SO! Ann Coulter!

What are you going to ask Ann on Monday, someone in the audience wanted to know.

Here is what Joy Behar said she is thinking: "'Why are you such a bitch?'"

And: "She just wants the books to sell — she'll say whatever she has to say."

"The real thing is to look bemused at her," said Whoopi.

So the plan was maybe not to give her any scandalous attention. "It would be a coup for her," said Sherri Shepherd.

"I'm going to drink a lot of water so I have to go to the bathroom," said Whoopi. "Then if she comes in? I'll beat her behind."

"We should just ask her the dumbest and silliest questions," said Sherri.

"Like 'are you blonde on the top and the bottom?'" said Whoopi.

Gosh, what else? Elsewise, Barbara talked a little about the news biz in this crazy bloggy modern age of ours. "Everybody screams, everybody gives their opinions — and they're considered journalists and they are," she said. And: "Now you don't want heads of state — you want Britney Spears. I don't want to lament it. This is the way it is."

Also! There was a classic Sherri Shepherd moment about how upset she was over all the hate mail when she came out strongly against gay marriage and in favor of Prop 8. "It's hard to hear people say 'you're a bigot!'" she said. Oh, that is so sad — you gross bigot!

P.S. Tracie was supposed to cover this but allegedly she became ill at the very last moment so I pinch-hitted. (Pinch-hat? Um.) So at one point The View ladies were totally talking about what a disaster Mario Cantone was on The View because you just cannot have a man at a lady-party, even if he is gay (or, as Joy Behar put it, "a gay guy as a sort of intermediary," because, uh, what are we, INTERSEX?), so sorry to bust up the lady-time, I am taking my penis and going home now. Also! I got through this whole thing without mentioning Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who sucks.

Speaking with Choire Sicha, Cooper said he had no plans to follow in Maddow's footsteps. She is, after all, the new Bill O'Reilly. And snark is the new yelling!

Rachel Maddow is an incredible talent — she's funny, and smart, obviously well researched on subjects. I'm just not interested as a viewer in listening to anchors' opinions. It seems like there's an awful lot of yelling, and this year yelling's been replaced by sarcasm and snark- iness.

Cooper isn't the first person to cite Maddow for biting humor; former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum went after the MSNBC host on her own show in October for "heavy sarcasm" and "sneering." Then the man who proudly coined the term "Axis of Evil" to spice up a State of the Union address said that a more civil tone would the nation more rationally decide whether North Korea should be put on the list of terrorist states. Ha! It's all in this clip:

Anyway, Cooper also said he wants to have 20 people over to his house to "wrangle... over polls that don't exist." What, like he doesn't find real polls to examine in his house all the time?

An aging Sidney Falco in a rugby shirt, former gossip henchman—and one-time Press contributor—Doug Dechert took some time out from the low key affair to air some long simmering grievances against the NY gossip establishment. “If Chorey Sit-cha walks through that door,” he said, “I’m going to punch that little prick in his fucking face.”

“Choire Sicha?” I asked him just for the sake of clarity. He took a slug from his bottle of Amstel. “Yeah, whatever the fuck his name is, I hope the prick comes in here so I can hit him.”

Dechert was pissed off at what he perceived as Sicha’s bias when the latter was editing Gawker. Dechert had been mentioned on the site for his very public break up with 19-year-old “Bad Girl” writer Abigail Vona in 2004.

That would be this old item, apparently.

Choire told the Press, “Threatening violence is a particularly disgusting tactic. It's a shame he's taken a page from the book of that other sad New York City thug, Stanley Crouch.”

Needless to say, Doug: don't try it.

[NYPress]