David Blum is sort of a sad bumbling doctor for dying New York City weeklies. It's hard to blame him given the circumstances of the sorry industry, but his recent tenures at the Voice and the Press didn't do much to reinvigorate those much-diminished papers. Now he's thrown his hat in the ring to replace Peter Kaplan at the New York Observer, and sources say his pitch to Observer owner Jared Kushner about how he could run it on the cheap helped convince the boy-king to conduct a blood-bath earlier this month.

Blum presented Kushner with an editorial budget for the money-losing paper—we don't know the number—that was far lower than Kaplan's had been. Kushner didn't hire him (or at least hasn't yet) but was apparently impressed enough by Blum's cheaper vision to instruct interim editor Tom McGeveran to find a way to make it happen. On June 5, McGeveran laid off roughly one-third of the paper's editorial staff. We hear McGeveran negotiated to keep more jobs than Blum's plan would have, but still: Nice work, Blum!

Of course, Blum would not have been the only person in Kushner's orbit to come up with the brilliant idea of cutting costs by firing a bunch of people. And Kushner might have even been able to come up with the notion on his own. But Blum's experience overseeing the ongoing gutting of the Voice and—to a lesser extent, since there was less to gut—the Press would certainly have lent his low-budget vision credibility in the mind of a young publisher trying to figure out what the hell he'd gotten into. If David Blum says he can run this thing for that much less, why can't you?

One of Blum's tricks for running newspapers on the cheap, by the way, is working for virtually no money by Manhattan media standards. Our source says he told Kushner he'd do the job for $50,000 a year, which amounts to a nominal salary for a job of that stature. Blum can afford to forgo the salary because his wife, Terri Minsky, was the creator of Disney's Lizzie McGuire character, which presumably provides a financial cushion for the family.

Kushner confirmed via e-mail that he discussed the job with Blum but denied that Blum's budget played any role in the subsequent lay-offs: "Blum gave me one of many proposals I have gotten. His had zero to do with any decisions made. Your story is wrong, but if you don't care, then I won't either." (We do care, Jared. It's why we ask! We just don't have to believe your answer.) McGeveran and Blum declined to comment for the record.

[Full disclosure: Blum hired the wife of your blogger at the Village Voice—smart move!—where she still works.]

David Blum at the NY Press uncovers a disturbing pattern of ongoing metaphor abuse that makes Carr appear to be a man at the end of his rope. We can only hope that this moment of clarity serves as a wake up call to him and all those who enable his root vegetable comparison habit. Here are Blum's findings, all taken from Carr's own work—starting with his current book and stretching back four long years:

Describing himself:

“Far from clinically handsome, I have a face that looks like it could have been carved out of mashed potatoes, and my idea of exercise was running the length of my body.”

“….with a face made out of potatoes, the Photoshopped picture will have to go a long way to make me any uglier than I actually am.”

“With a face that looks as if it were crafted out of mashed potatoes and a voice that sounds like a trash compactor that needs oil, I’m not a natural for television…”

About Tim Russert:

“He had a face that seemed to be carved out of potatoes, but he worked on television by working harder than your average talking head…”

Describing actors:

“To the Bagger’s eye, [Daniel Craig] has a face made out of potatoes—although the rest of him seems to be made out of titanium…”

“Directors tend to focus on [Steve] Buscemi’s visage, shooting his face so it looks something like what might happen to a bowl of mashed potatoes if it were sculptured [sic] by an ax.”

“And Detective Sipowicz [Dennis Franz], with a face that looks as if it were carved out of potatoes and the body style of a greeter at Home Depot, was an unlikely hero.”

About author Joe McGinniss:

“[McGinniss] had an old cap set against the Sunday morning sun, a handsome Irish face that could have been carved out of potatoes, and a glint of tragedy in his eyes.”

SEEK HELP.

[NY Press; pic via NY Mag]

He gives up. So you pick somebody. From the altweekly's website:

"If we’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s that a vast number of New Yorkers believe they have what it takes to be a sex columnist. And so, rather than picking one from the surprisingly large pool of potential weekly contributors, we’ve chosen instead to open up the process—and, in the end, let the readers decide."

Previously: Kelly Kreth Bares Junk In Trunk For Hunk Paul Janka

"He got very hostile," Blum said, noting that Berg asked, "What are you going to do, print her phone number next?" The story had put Danes "into the gunsights," according to Berg.

We had no idea that people wanted to take out Claire Danes! When we see her around town, we never feel the urge to harm her. Mary-Louise Parker might want to, sure, but that's sort of Angela's own fault, no?

The conversation lasted about ten minutes, "which is about two hours in Hollywood time," Blum said. Ironically (or not!), at one time Blum was represented by ICM.

We did not send an email or make a phone call to Jeff Berg because, uh, if we had that information would we be working here? So we did not get his side of the story, but we think it's kind of silly that Claire Danes has her panties in a bunch over an altweekly story that implied she was worth tracking down. Based on the reception of her performance in Broadway's 'Pygmalion," that's maybe not a reputation you want to turn down so fast, missy!

The meat of the Drudge-worthy news from Kurtz was that Rather said he'd take his items to the Times. But Blum had published that in his book:Kurtz writes, "The night before the story was tentatively scheduled to air, Rather was sitting at the anchor desk, with less than half an hour before the start of the Evening News."

"I'm told that the Rather leak threat was in the paperback edition of David Blum's book, which I never saw," Howie Kurtz told us by email. "(I did look at the hardcover.) Good for him for getting there first. I never saw it picked up anywhere, so when I got the information in an interview with former 60 Minutes II producer Josh Howard, it was the first I'd heard of it. I'm a fanatic about giving credit, which is why my book is filled with footnotes, but you can't do that if you've never seen the information."

Blum's version, which appeared in book's 2005 afterword, goes like this: "On Tuesday, September 7, 2004, Rather was sitting at the anchor desk in Studio 47, minutes away from the start of that night's CBS Evening News. But instead of poring over that night's copy one more time, he reached for the phone to call Howard."

Rather's discussion with Howard was over prime-time promotion of the piece. Both Kurtz and Blum write that Howard told Rather the piece might not even run, considering it hadn't been vetted by CBS lawyers, nor had a call been made to the White House for contact.

Kurtz writes, "That was not the answer Rather wanted to hear."

Blum's own follow-up sentence, written three years previous? "This wasn't what Rather wanted to hear."

The Kurtz excerpt, from Drudge Report:

The Blum excerpt:

Disclosure: I worked with David Blum at the 'Village Voice.'

Q&As, typically allotted about 14 words per piece, require tweaking here and there, in the interest of conserving space and coherence. (We once transcribed a three-hour recording of Kevin Costner mumbling on about how making 'Open Range' had touched his soul, like, his very soul, man. How it got crammed into a "10 Questions For Whatshisface" column that Monday was inexplicable and also the duty of some hapless editor.)

But there's some meat to these complaints. Making adjustments so your subject's point gets across is a bit different from pulling "How immodest of you! Isn't it bad manners to brag?" out of the air, as Solomon did in her Dickinson interview.

"Two million people read the New York Times magazine," said David Blum, the new editor of the New York Press, by phone this morning. (David Blum is the former editor of the Village Voice, also my most recent employer.) "Most of them think 'that's what they said, isn't it just incredible how everyone's so concise....' The real issue is the New York Times response, their handling of our inquiries, was pretty shocking. I was surprised and disappointed that the New York Times did not think enough of our inquiry to either respond to it or provide an editor to respond to the specifics of Matt's reporting. For them to be dismissive of that is a betrayal of the trust between the readers and the newspaper."

The worst part? Now we have no idea whether Ted Kooser was actually asked this question during his interview with Solomon, but we did so like his answer to: "As poet laureate, don't you think you should be better acquainted with European poetry?" Kooser replied: "Think of all the European poetry I could have read if we hadn't spent all this time on this interview."

• "Did anyone besides me catch the recent Lifetime movie 'Write & Wrong,' with Kirstie Alley as a washed-up screenwriter who hires her hunky young nephew to market her work in Hollywood as his own?" No. Get a life.
  
• "What could be crazier [than Antidote Films suing Laura Albert after finding that they'd purchased the rights to document the life of a nonexistent person]?" Um, lots of things. $2 cups of Mud coffee. The cost of healthcare in this country. The way Jay-Z's love has got Beyonce lookin' right now.
  
• "Is there anyone online who uses their own name to make their case?" Yes. Hi there!

• "How many men are pretending to be women on the Internet right now, or women pretending to be men?" Buttloads. Duh.
  
• " It was silly, of course, for [Peter] Hyman to have hidden behind a phony female persona, and in the end Gawker's gotcha moment seemed fair punishment. But can Mr. Hyman be blamed for his attempt at a viral marketing campaign for himself?" Yes. It's possible and often more effective to market oneself without lying (and then, for the record, lying about having lied! Jeez, Peter.)
  
• "Didn't Ms. Albert see that the deception had just as much juice as her phony fiction?" Yes, duh!
  
• "They also offer our culture's moral compasses an opportunity for outrage; who can forget Oprah's sputtering indignity over Mr. Frey's lies?" No one, because pointless flailing columnists will always have column inches to fill by rehashing and randomly mashing together bits of old news into sloppy column-casseroles. Okay?

  The Mother Of Reinvention [NYS]

No, it's also bad Broadway musicals. Legally Blonde is harming our girls by being "a half-baked Broadway show that tacks forgettable songs onto a familiar movie plot." Between that and the Gossip Girls book series turned CW fall pilot that has "inexplicably attracted buzz from all corners" (um, maybe because those books are great guilty pleasure fun?), today's teens are suffering from "a frightening scarcity of strong storytelling and rich, noble characters—never mind movie stars—to serve as positive inspirations for a generation lost in MySpace."

Of course, if David looked further than the end of his own nose for these virtues... well, then he wouldn't be him. But he might stumble across some really great and popular books and tv shows. Oh well!

Tough Times For Teenagers [NYS]

Part of the problem may be that bookstores don't pay close enough attention to reviews. I went to look for Then We Came to the End at the Lincoln Square Barnes & Noble the day after the Times review, and experienced the kind of scenario that leads authors into years of costly psychotherapy. No one knew where to find it. Three clerks and 10 minutes later, I'd bought one of the store's last three copies. At that moment it occurred to me: What if bookstores created sections devoted to that week's best-reviewed books?

Or posted positive reviews alongside the books themselves? That way, book reviews (even those that appeared only online) would be easily accessible to those most likely to buy books — people already browsing in the bookstore. Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists, meaning that prize positions get awarded to those who've already won the horse race. Even movie theaters operate according to more democratic principles than that. Shouldn't good bookstore placement go to good books? Just a thought."

• Book placement in chains like Borders and Barnes and Noble is paid for by publishers. That's right: there is a thing called "co-op," which is part of a book's marketing budget, and it lands books in windows or on front and center tables. Bookstores decide which books they'll accept co-op payments for, of course, but ultimately, prime placement usually goes to whoever wants to shell out the most dough.
• "Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists." No.
• You're more likely to find clueless employees who don't know where to find a book that was on the cover of that week's Times book review at a megachain like B&N. Why not head to an independent bookseller? They're not all out of business yet. And not only do they "pay attention to reviews," some of them even have sections where employees recommend their favorites! Imagine that: book recommendations, accessible to the people most likely to buy books.
• If there were very few copies of Then We Came To The End available, that just might mean that a few people besides David Blum read the New York Times. Maybe these people had the same bright idea he did, and the store ran out of copies and their reorders hadn't come in or maybe hadn't been shelved yet. JUST A THOUGHT. —Emily How Not To Write A Bestseller [NYS]

How can one statement be such a fantastic pineapple upside-down cake of fallacies? It's like some crazy mash-up of an appeal to pity and spite, capped with the world's most anti-democratic and most anti-intellectual irrelevant conclusion. People can say whatever they want about you on the Internet—but it doesn't mean anything, because speech so free is apparently reckless. It's irresponsible to print whatever one believes! Oh, I get it! He means it's not true, somehow, because he deems it irresponsible.

Oh, by the way—you know what my favorite part of n+1 is? The unsigned front-of-book items! Where an anonymous editor, or friend of editor, or someone, can weigh in on whomever and whatever however he wishes. Those are great.

Keith Gessen has a friend in David Blum, our favorite former Village Voice editor, writing in today's NY Sun about the horrors of the internet. (He saved himself some money, by the way, and attended the University of Chicago!)

Eventually, someone's career will be ruined, needlessly and unfairly, by a reckless Web site. Who arbitrates the limits of Internet exposure, or the level of celebrity required to justify it? As it gets easier for Web sites and reporters to pick apart the private behavior of our public figures, what greater public good is being served by these floggings? Meanwhile, we could all probably benefit from ratcheting up our fear of exposure, too—even the best behaved among us. The Internet is out there, and it's an equal-opportunity destroyer.

FM Roundtable: Writing to Live [Crimson mag]
Baldwin Gets Caught In An Odd Parent Trap [NY Sun]

Full-time fatherhood remains a Hollywood fantasy; it's no coincidence that so many movies and series involve dads still learning the basics about connecting with their children. Virtually every character on "Lost" has an unresolved daddy issue about their father who disappeared, or didn't care, or didn't love.