Television has been distracting people from the written word long before the Internet came along. And while the Internet has been good for reading, it's mostly encourage the consumption of short-form writing.

Print is a much better way to read long chunks of text — fewer distractions, easier on the eyes, portable from room to room, etc. — and to the extent the Kindle replicates these technological advantages, it is basically a crippled laptop.

But Granger imagines an e-reader that advances beyond the "crude" Kindle. He thinks better technology will do the trick:

... as electronic readers improve, as they add graphics and design and, eventually, color, even more people will opt for the more sustained, contemplative experiences more often. And all will be well with the world.

What he forgets: The Kindle has a built-in Web browser, though few people use it because the Web is not particularly attractive in black-and-white. If it adds color, won't people inevitably use it to read websites, and thus fewer books, just like they do on PCs? There goes Granger's theory out the window.

We suspect he has another reason for touting the Kindle, though. Hearst, the owner of Esquire is working on its own e-reader. By paying the Kindle such a backhanded compliment — right idea, wrong device — Granger is carrying water for his publisher's business interests. And not for the first time.

Hearst has invested in E Ink, a Cambridge startup whose low-power screen technology is used in both the Kindle and Hearst's planned reader. E Ink appeared on a splashy, Granger-praised Esquire cover last year. Perhaps this E Ink-stained wretch has even handled the product he envisions killing the Kindle? If so, it's too bad Granger won't tell his readers how much he loves that, too.

The jaunty men's magazine has an ad on its new issue that is under a flap, on the front cover, right underneath Barack Obama's face. Is that even legal? Ha, not only is it legal, it's the future of magazines! Why should all those fractions of millimeters between the fraction of unsellable cover space and the first of 38 ad pages that lead off the magazine go unsold? And the idea for this came not from a marketing person, but straight from Esquire's editor, David Granger.

Including ads with those new types of covers was necessary, Mr. Granger said, because “the reality of the world is that if I want to do things that are adventurous editorially, to pay for them we have to find partners to share costs.”

The revenue that this ad produced will go towards wardrobe costs for Esquire's upcoming cover story, "Men in Adventurous Scarves."

[Story and pic via NYT]

It just means print gets kind of gross after it gets a few complimentary Chambord-sponsored cocktails on it. There are very few magazines I take home from such parties and actually read. Chiefly because I am drunk. But I have, later on, gone back and purchased magazines I got for free at parties. That's just the way it goes. They're on newsstands everywhere. Maybe I would change this policy if you every magazine were $7 on newsstands like Harper's. But I'm with Esquire editor in chief David Granger here, print is not dead, it is just not something tipsy Fashion Week goers who probably already work at magazines and thus get them all for free anyway are going to appreciate when they are busy heaving into the Bryant Park portapotties. [NYT]

He tells FOLIO:

"When I talk to groups I sometimes speak about the days I had when I'd get the new issue of Esquire and go through it and think to myself, ‘Fuck, it's still a magazine'... What I mean is that the medium is so compelling that I and we should all be able to do more with it. The magazine experience is one of the last remaining opportunities to enter a hermetically-sealed world, an edited experience of our culture created by someone else. And, more importantly, it's an experience that encourages you to stay in it rather than constantly bounce in and out of it."

The November issue will be a laptop with no Internet access but plenty of Scarlett Johansson JPEGs.

[Folio]

• "We love the way you smell right after you finish exercising." Mmmm, chilled gym sweat. It should really be bottled.
• "We love it when you argue with us about something — movies, sports, politics — that really doesn't matter." Pointless arguing — it's not just for sexless marriages any more!
• "We love the way you look when you're half-dressed or half-undressed." You can be half naked if you like. Or maybe you prefer half naked. Either way, David Granger is thrilled. And they say men are picky about how their partners look!
• "We love your certainty, even when you're sure we're wrong." Stubborn is especially sexy if you're also argumentative. And sweaty. And refusing to get more than half-naked.

Remember O readers: There's nothing "We" won't say we love about you, especially when "you" are anonymous readers and "we" are thousands of miles away and don't actually have to deal with any of the behaviors we claim are charming. Don't feel slighted — I'm sure the same sort of columns run in men's magazines all the time. Like, say, Esquire!

[WWD (last item)]

We hear the panel planned simply to disqualify New York, and leave four finalists. It was only a last-minute appeal by one of the judges, Rosemary Ellis of Good Housekeeping, that won Esquire a place. And, yup, Good Housekeeping is part of the same magazine group as Esquire, Hearst. It was a generous gesture by Granger's colleague, and her fellow panel members. Esquire is commercially marginal, and Granger seems to have lost the energy he brought to the magazine a decade ago. Hearst tolerates the situation only as long as Esquire, a magazine with a glorious journalistic history, continues to bring prestige to an otherwise humdrum magazine group. There's not much prestige, however, in a single nomination obtained only by such lobbying.

Quick bullet observations:

• Joanne Lipman, Portfolio Editor in Chief, said, "I like my job. Si Newhouse loves the magazine. We're always expanding but I can't give you names." She also, surprisingly, didn't punch us.
  
• We sat at a table with the staff of Hip Hop Weekly. So very nice!
  
• Tavern on the Green is a horrendous aesthetic desecration. The waiters' outfits, though, are top notch.
  
• All of Time magazine left immediately after Rick Stengel accepted their award for Best Reinvention. That category, like everything else, doesn't actually mean anything.
  
• Esquire EIC Dave Granger quoted Zsa Zsa Gabor: "Honey, I haven't learned anything."
  
• The MCs were Jeremy Greenfield (7/23/82) and Courtney Barnes (9/25/84). He's the editor of min's b2b. She's the editor of PR news. Neither was funny, though both tried in a nice way.
  
• Our chicken was not moist.
  
• Is Portfolio so desperate for accolades that both Lipmann AND David Carey could take the whole morning off to sit through crap speeches and bad breakfast? Apparently, yes!

Wait, no, she wasn't!

Bobby Kennedy spoke ardently and raspily of the need to protect our fisheries. He suffers from a vocal disorder called spasmodic dysphonia (just like NPR's Diane Rehm!) which gives his voice an intensely scratchy quality. We watched him on a projection screen though he was a few feet away. A girl wearing gold body paint fluttered her long fake eyelashes as Kennedy spoke about sturgeon.

And then we met the Esquire demographic!

As soon as Kennedy finished, the "World Famous *BoB*" took to a bit of floor in "the Versace room" and took off most of her clothes. It was burlesque. Men smoked cigars that had just been rolled for them, their collars turned up. "It's almost picture time!" one said and whipped out a digital camera. *BoB* made her tassled pasties swing in opposing circles. "Dude, that was fucking awesome," said one, high-fiving another.

After a few more women denuded themselves, Grandmaster Flash took the turn tables. He started off the set with "Rapper's Delight." Drunk Esquire-reading lads in arlequino masks wildly flailed. He asked them to say "ho" and they did. A bit later a wealthy white woman approached two large gay black men. They were wearing crushed velvet suits and dancing to Beyoncé. She held her mask in one hand, the train of her gown in the other. She began to grind against the crotch of one of the men, he shot a glance to his partner. She was being naughty and she knew it! Nearby, Bobby had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He was dancing.

As the night ended, the partygoers grabbed their giftbags. There was: A bottle of Hennessy VS in a tall Lufthansa leather bottle bag, a pair of socks, a copy of Esquire, and the insane booklet produced regarding the apartment and its designers and fellow citizens of Planet Magabrand.

Most folks made a beeline to their waiting Town Cars. On the subway platform though, a few gift bags had been left behind. They had been divested of the Hennessy; the Esquire was left behind.

As we got off the 6 train, we saw not-a-she Style section writer Alex Williams whose piece on the humiliation of living in Brooklyn in a post-Heath world we gently exfoliated earlier this week. "Yeah," he said, "that piece made me kind of a persona non grata in my own neighborhood." Well. "Telling truth to power," we told him, "has consequences."

In the bar itself, a place not as good as its name, a number of flatscreen TVs were playing footage of Jacobs roaming around in a robe and with a massive beard. Truth be told, he looked pretty awesome. He could have easily been in Grizzly Bear or Beirut or Greenpoint. "This is too much," Jacobs said. "It borders on idolatry." But his biblical experiment had ended a year ago and Jacobs was clean shaven. "My wife hated the beard," he said, "but, in general, it wasn't so bad."

Was his book more or less maritally taxing than fellow stunt booker Colin Beavan's No Impact Man? "Less, I think. Of course, there were conflicts between a Biblical wife and a secular wife." Who won out? "Who do you think?" he said. (Um, we think her?) Someone brought over a tray of lamb kebabs.

We fell into conversation with a Jewy looking guy (we were looking for them amongst the sea of white men). "Sup dude?" we asked. "Do you follow the Bible?"

"Well," he said, "I follow many tenets which aren't in the Bible." It turned out this man was John Podhoretz, ben-Norman and a New York Post columnist. We wondered if he was talking about George Tenet, but he said, "You know, like keeping kosher which is in the שולחן ערוך but not necessarily in the Torah." Someone brought over a tray of bruschetta but John didn't take any. "I'm actually looking for some adulterers to stone right now," he said.

Huffpo's Rachel Sklar was there chatting with Daniel Radosh and Galleycat's Ron Hogan. They were chatting with Ryan D'Agostino the Esquire writer. We asked him to name the Ten Commandments. "Do not kill, do not covet they neighbors wife..." he said. Yeah. "But I can name the Supreme Court justices. He named eight before blanking on Alito. Sklar brought over a tray of dates and apples.

We searched for the chrome dome of David Granger, Esquire's editor in chief, but to no avail. He had been there, Jacobs said, but "there's another Esquire party on Central Park North. I think he headed up there." Jacobs headed to the bar, reminding us, "It's okay to drink in moderation, just not in excess. Remember the story of Noah and the Curse of Ham. You don't want your son to see you naked." Well, unless you're some sort of daddyblogger, in which case, it's just fodder for another blog post. But the Good Book will keep the rest of us from doing that.

• There's a lot of backbiting and infighting at the Los Angeles Times, which is completely unusual behavior at a major newspaper. [NYT]
  
• Kurt Eichenwald's "checkbook journalism" controversy may keep him out of the first issue of Portfolio, which should give him plenty of free time to file that lawsuit he keeps talking about. [WWD]
  
• Quick recap of the action in the first week of Conrad Black's fraud trial. [ToTheCenter]
  
• At this point we don't care who buys Tribune, we just want to see an end to this fucking story. Now Ron Burkle and Eli Broad have popped up again. [NYT]
  

• Donald Rumsfeld was asked to guest-edit the LAT's Current section after producer Brian Grazer. Say sources at the paper, "We wanted to find someone responsible for a bigger disaster than Cinderella Man." [DHD]
  
• Those American Media numbers: not so good. [WWD]
  
• Dana Vachon: not a fuckup. Dana Vachon's audience: Easily influenced. [NYM]
  
• Former Voice editor David Blum returns to his old stomping grounds to bemoan the lack of critics willing to take on Joan Didion. There's a lot of unpacking to do on this one. [NYS]
  
• The album is dying. Articles about the death of the album, however, seem to have a healthy future. [NYT]
  
• Esquire EIC David Granger's in-laws promise that he's still pure Tennessee. So sweet! [Thomas P.M. Barnett]

• Wal-Mart is really, really sorry that they taped a Times reporter's calls. They don't want you to think they're Hewlett-Packard or anything. [NYT]
  
• Do not even suggest that Brian Williams' trip to Iraq had anything to do with ratings. NBC is a professional news organization, damn it! Also, they're sorta sensitive. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
  
• Ron Burkle made a $200 million dollar profit on the sale of some supermarkets. Radar may last forever! (Hahaha, we're just kidding, it's three and out.) [NYP]

• Boston Globe sportswriter hit with plagiarism charge. How hard could sportswriting possibly be that you'd need to copy someone else's clich s and bad metaphors? [E&P]
  
• Radio broadcasters, big record labels, will never be bad again. [NYT]
  
• Times chief art critic will be just fine covering art from Europe for the next year. It's not like there's much to see in this country anyway. [Modern Art Notes]
  
• USA Today unveils redesigned website. [AdAge]
  
• Branson to Murdoch: I will sue your ass. [Independent]
  
• Esquire's David Granger: User-generated content is a big load. [Greg Verdino]
  
• Once upon a time, both black people and Asians thrived at the Voice. [Journal-isms , second item]
  
• This article will only be of interest to British politics junkies, but it does represent an important blow for press freedom across the pond. [Guardian]
  
• Mediabistro EIC departs, reminding people that Mediabistro had an EIC. [mediabistro]

  [Image via]
  

[M]any editors profess to hate lists, features that are, at their worst, unoriginal and gushy. (A heavy-breathing essay in this year's Time 100 described George Clooney as "a family heirloom" whose serious bearing makes him "almost worth killing for.")

"Magazines do too many lists," said David Granger, the editor of Esquire, whose new Esquire 100 makes its debut in the October issue.

His is not a ranking of international power players, or Hollywood ing nues, or, as in the Time 100, people who shape our world. Mr. Granger calls it "the anti-list," a mix of thematic essays and items that the editors predict will make news in the coming years.

Which would make last month's Best-Dressed List what, the pro-list?

If a Magazine's List Doubles in Size, Is That Inflation? [NYT]
The Best Dressed Men In The World 2006 [Esquire]