[In response to some vague, inane questions from us]:

Yeah, the book deal is really exciting. I'm not really at liberty to discuss how much the deal was worth (but let's just say I'll finally be able to buy the entire Criterion Collection). "Aggressive" is definitely the right word to describe the negotiations. During our meetings, everyone at St. Martin's Press kept staring at me and telling me to take my shirt off. It was kind of uncomfortable at first, but after a while I caved in. We're together now.

Obviously, I'm pleasantly surprised that this book deal happened. It wasn't my goal when I started the blog a few months ago, but I think it'll be a fun thing to do and I'm sure all the Gawker commenters out there will really like it. Whoops, no they won't.

The book will hopefully be out by Spring 2010. Unless people suddenly stop doing cocaine during the day, in which case it may take a bit longer.

See how graciously he handled your unexpected outpouring of disdain for his blog! Come on now. You know that blog has funny pictures. Come on.

A Bloomberg source passed us an internal Q1 memo. (Click here to read the whole thing.) It says the news division beat all first-quarter targets and increased "its headline speed against the main real-time competition." We have no idea what that means; maybe ask a Scientologist.

We do get this part, though, where Bloomberg clearly brags about nearly tripling the number of stories broken in Q1 and getting double the number of "follows" in competing media:

"Competitors followed Bloomberg News stories more than 2,700 times —

more than twice as often as in all of 2008({NI FOLLOW }. The Wall

Street Journal alone cited us 235 times. The New York Times mentioned

us 135 times. Reuters followed 520 times."



The 1,492 journalists at Bloomberg News broke more than 13,000

stories, almost three times the total for all of 2008. Our speed

increased, too: Bloomberg News beat its main real-time competitor on

more than 70 percent of all major stories, compared with 54 percent at

the beginning of the year."

The trouble with these stats: They're generated by the very Bloomberg staff who stand to earn kudos and bonuses off them, a major conflict of interests. The financial information company is growing more metrics conscious every quarter as it strives toward a long-term goal of $10 billion in annual revenue, our tipster tells us, increasing the incentive to flag stories with internal "FIRST" and "FOLLOW" tags.

Our tipster believes the tags are applied more generously than last year, and Bloomberg's stats bear this out: To triple "FIRSTs," reporters either worked three times harder this year — doubtful, given how intensely competitive Bloomberg's culture has always been — or the tag is being applied more liberally.

But editors who fudged the numbers may have burned themselves: Bloomberg, our tipster claims, will use Q1 2009 as a benchmark for future performance, rather than a period from 2008, as employees previously believed. If that's true, the suspicious Q1 metrics will set a very difficult performance bar going forward.

We've asked Bloomberg for comment and will update the post when we hear back. UPDATE: Bloomberg's response, in full: "The report is accurate." Thank you, comrades.

[Full Memo]

(Pic via)

Johnson, at least, has received a more clear explanation for why his account was summarily deleted with no warning: Heather Champ, Yahoo's VP of customer service, told him he had been "spamming" the White House photostream. (Johnson has said he posted an initial batch of approximately 10 comments, then another 10 or so when those were deleted. Yahoo has declined to address Johnson's case directly with us.)

Champ also told Johnson the image he attached to his second batch of messages was too graphic. The picture, which you can see here, was from the Abu Ghraib prison and was linked over by Johnson from another Flickr account. Johnson, who has attended his share of political protests, was trying to draw attention to Barack Obama's support for a controversial bill that would have suppressed government torture photos.

Champ broke out both the carrot and the stick. She offered Johnson a $25 gift card he could use for a new Flickr Pro account. "She tried to shower me with platitudes like "Oh I know you are passionate about this issue,'" Johnson told us.

But she also told him there was no way to retrieve his old photos; that seems unlikely, as it implies Yahoo has no backups of Flickr's content. Champ also blocked messages from Johnson's new Flickr account on the internal FlickrMail system. Following a phone conversation with Johnson, she had posted a picture indicating her day wasn't going well, and Johnson had commented underneath the picture, "this is like watching a slow train wreck." She then blocked him.

So Johnson turned to Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield (above), seeking help in reaching Champ. Butterfield left Yahoo last year, but he said he could tell what was going on from a distance: Johnson must be in the wrong. Their correspondence:

Yahoo's cuddly new head of PR, Eric Brown, might want to start exercising some message discipline over this situation. Does the company regret its actions (gift card) or stand by them? Does it really have no backups of old pictures? What are the guidelines for commenting on the popular White House photostream? People will inevitably criticize Yahoo's answers to those questions, but at least they'll have them.

(Picture by Dan Farber)

Saylor was keen to point out he has lost about 30 pounds in recent years. We used the most recent picture available on Getty Images, shot at a June 2005 party for Capitol File Magazine. Saylor, a longtime bachelor and almost-as-longtime careful-groomer of his media image, helpfully sent along a more svelte shot, included in the before/after spread above.

Saylor also notes he does not own a Gulfstream G4, the vehicle Six had him taking to Cannes. That makes sense: he fell off Forbes' billionaire's list in 2001, after losing a record $6 billion in one day, and has yet to return, so a plane priced at around $15 million would probably be too rich for his blood. (Although his data-mining software company seems to be awaiting delivery of several planes; it has reserved three registration numbers with the FAA.)

Saylor's full correction follows below. Given his reported penchant for nine-hour indoctrination sermons, we applaud its efficient brevity and are less frightened of future communication.

And here's Saylor in full-length slender glory, just to show we appreciate his new look:

Erin Siegal submitted the same work twice, to two different professors. But she insists she was above board about everything. Both her thesis adviser, Wayne Barrett, and her book seminar professor, Samuel Freedman, knew she would be sharing content between the two projects. The high-achieving scholarship student even made a PowerPoint presentation for Freedman explaining everything!

But now he's saying she took the three-way arrangement too far. Instead of giving him a big ole book and just excerpting 5,000 words for her thesis, she turned in the entire 16,000 words for her thesis at her adviser's urging. This apparently left no exclusive content for the book class, as Freedman had been expecting.

So, in new media terms: Siegal promised her magazine's print editor an exclusive tome teased online, but ended up giving the Web editor everything, at his request, to amplify the buzz (which worked, in academic terms; her thesis passed with honors). Now the print editor is totally pissed and is all, "you're fired," and she's like, "come ON!"

It's a bizarre spat from where we sit, given than Freedman knew there would be some content-sharing going on. Sure, he doesn't have the exclusive. But what he does have is a student who's poised to do quite well in a world where even the traditionalists at Time Inc. have come to believe in the idea of sharing across titles.

Siegal's email (sent to classmates in April — presumably she's "stop[ped] crying" since then):

(Top picture via ErinSiegal.com)

A letter handed out during the ceremonies is reproduced below. It sketches out the barest outlines of the problem (and you call yourselves journalists!), involving a high-performing student who was nevertheless blocked from graduating when a "misunderstanding" with a professor led her to earn an "Incomplete" grade.

The student, photojournalist Erin Siegal, is named in the letter. The professor isn't, but we're told it's former reporter Samuel Freedman (pictured).

We have no idea what went down, or what Siegal's peers mean when they refer to Freedman's "type of behavior", but we assume scholarship-student Siegal isn't about to start fishing in her pockets for the tens of thousands of dollars she would need to re-enroll on her own dime, if that's even possible. If it did come to that, the economics of the industry make it an unlikely bet for such an apparently bright journalist.

Think this will only work on gullible old ladies? Think again. We heard from a would-be-former News subscriber who is gainfully employed at a public relations agency.

That's right: even flacks, who take pride in bending newspapermen to their will, have trouble wriggling out of their News subscriptions.

Our tipster has tried calling, twice, but was put on hold for more than half an hour each time. She tried letters, of a sort, and even emailing the publisher and top editors. No dice. See her account below.

Perhaps the source of her headaches is obvious: the News is owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group. Singleton, presently chairman of the Associated Press, just gave a speech saying he's "mad as hell" at those who would "walk off with our work" online. With that much anger at the top of the organization, maybe it was inevitable some non-customers in the offline world would get burned, as well.

Yesterday I emailed Kari to ask her if she had anything she wanted to say to you, the public. Here's her response:

Hamilton,

Hi there. I have received several "offers" from other websites, and pundits, allowing me to get my side of the story out. I haven't responded to any of them, and honestly, I'm not quite sure why I am emailing you.

Anyway, I am including a paragraph from the email that I have been sending to people who contact me.

I am very sorry for everything I have done, and cannot— and will not—make any bloviated excuses for my actions.

-Kari

Also, as far as Vice Magazine goes, I never once betrayed the trust they bestowed upon me. I had all bank account information and never considered scamming them. We left one another on good terms, and with the understanding that there were no hard feelings. The reason that the initial article was even posted on the website, is because they found out that I had told someone that I still worked for the company. I recognize that that was a bad decision, and that I shouldn't have said that, but I never stole anything from them, or had any intention of doing so.

Apologies for brevity and any blunders in spelling; this was sent from a fucking iPhone.

And then she forwarded this, the standard apology she's been emailing around:

"Yes, I made mistakes and yes, I hurt people who cared for me (and vice versa). However, I have made amends with most of those individuals, and have attempted to rectify my poor decisions by paying them back. I know that it is neither here nor there, but what the article didn't mention is that I haven't done anything of that nature for years. I understand that that, in no way, justifies what I did...but I definitely recognize that what I did was really REALLY shitty, and like to think that I have learned from my mistakes.

Anyway, I didn't mean to barrage you with my...whatever the fuck those preceeding paragraphs are...my sincere apologies."

Apologies for brevity and any blunders in spelling; this was sent from a fucking iPhone.

Textbook crisis PR! Kari Ferrell could go open a communication firm, tomorrow, charging $200 per hour. And be worth it. Although the humble, straightforward nature of her apology loses some of its sheen when you consider the fact that she was sending this weepy email to her closest friends just days ago (reminder: Kari Ferrell does not have cancer):

Friends,

I don't really know how to say this in an eloquent manner, and I apologize for even thinking that telling you in a mass email is acceptable, but I am in a position where this is the best I've got.

As you know, I've been dealing with some rough health issues the past little bit. Tonight, while in the hospital, I was told that the cancer has spread to some of my organs and that major surgery needed to take place.

Anyway, at this point in my life I don't think that I am strong enough to deal with this. I wish that I could be as strong as all of you are, and that I possessed all of the fucking phenomenal attributes that you do, but I don't. I am pathetic and weak. Honestly, I'm surprised that I even made it this far (and the only reason I did is due to you).

I feel like, at this point, I am burning everything down to the ground, because that is all there is left for me to do. I am sorry for being so selfish. I don't deserve any of you, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have you guys in my life. People like you are the only thing that would ever make me consider the existence of a higher power. I don't know how I found you, but I am so lucky that I did.

My course of action may not be what you think is right, and you may resent me for it, but I really do have your best interest in mind.

I promise promise personal emails/phone calls within the next little bit, I just had to get this off of my (AWESOME) chest now.

I love you all dearly.

Without Wax,
K-bay

Apologies for brevity and any blunders in spelling; this was sent from a fucking iPhone.

Our tipster thinks her fucking iPhone was stolen.
[Pic via Maciekjasik.com]

A tipster tells us the magazine had a sales meeting, and it wasn't pretty. According to our tipster: Publisher Kevin O'Malley told the staff that even though Esquire did (very relatively) better than rival GQ last quarter, it wasn't good enough—he wants them to be picking up the market share lost by Portfolio and Best Life. Other complaints: GQ got more National Magazine Award nominations, and some high end advertisers think Esquire is becoming too "gimmicky." Which it is!

Remember the magazine's flashing "E-Ink" cover last year, that was supposed to be the start of a revolution? Supposedly Ford was so upset with the execution of its ad on the inside cover that it wanted credit back. Financially, our tipster characterizes last year as a "disaster," and says this year will be even worse. They say there is huge pressure to deliver a big issue in September (the "video issue"), although no one sounds very optimistic.

There's also a rumor going around among Esquire staffers that Hearst might shutter or sell Esquire and Popular Mechanics and "focus solely on the female demographic." We ran this by a Hearst PR person, who dismissed it as "Blatantly false."

UPDATE: Another Esquire spokesperson sent us this additional statement [in fairness—our tipster may be referring to a compilation of issues at the magazine rather than ones that were specifically discussed in a single meeting]:

"The rumors in your item are patently untrue. There was no such meeting yesterday. A sales meeting took place on Tuesday, but there was no 'chewing out,' and not one thing mentioned in this article was discussed."

UPDATE 2: We also received this email from Jay Ward of Ford's public affairs dept., saying the company was not unhappy with its Esquire ad:

I write to you from Ford Motor Company with regards to the story you ran today regarding Esquire and the E-Ink cover. In the article, you claim that Ford was so upset with the E-Ink execution on the inside cover that we wanted credit back.

I would like to very clearly state on behalf of Ford Motor Company that this was not the case. Indeed, the opposite is true. We were delighted with the E-Ink cover and the huge amount of coverage we got on a worldwide basis for the innovation. The reason we partnered with Esquire in the first place was to do something that had never been done before to promote a car that was a real departure from the norm for Ford. As such, the E-Ink application was exactly what we had in mind when we first planned the advertising campaign, and our partnership with Esquire was one that we were, and still are, delighted with.

On a broader note, we continue to advertise with Esquire and many of the Hearst publications and remain committed to the work that they do - they continue to deliver the audience that we at Ford want to be reaching out to and we see no reason that this stance will change in the future.

[As always, if you'd like to leak some dirt about your magazine, email us.]

Ferrell made the Salt Lake City PD's most wanted list because she has six outstanding warrants for stealing a total of $60,000. And Det. Mark Evans, who is leading the grifter hunt, says he now has an extradition order that allows him to fly out to any state where she's arrested and drag her back to Utah. "Normally, the only times SLC extradites is for rapists and murderers, but since she's left such a large path of victims here, we were able to convince a judge to make her extraditable."

Evans didn't have any new info about her whereabouts, but he said he got a call last week from someone claiming to be Ferrell's friend. "I've never spoken to her, though," he says, "so it could have been her trying to get the details on how extensive our investigation is." It is very extensive, Kari.

If you think you may know where she is, be sure to let us know. Online posses have already formed Myspace and Facebook groups to hunt her down. Victims of her lies are speaking out on their blogs. [Doree Shafrir has started a meme!]

And a few people have emailed us already about their run-ins with Kari. One guy says he thinks he met her at a gallery show in Brooklyn last Saturday and had dinner with her, and that she said she was pregnant. Another tipster says he had the misfortune of living with Kari, just this month:

My roommate and I had the pleasure of Kari living with us for maybe a week this very month.

There's a reason she's made the rounds without being tarred and feathered. She's LIKABLE. We found her via Craigslist and were happy to have found so personable and fun a girl to live with. Then, by luck, I came across Vice Magazine's blog entry about her, titled "Oopsies. We hired a grifter." That evening I told her we quite sadly must part ways.

Among her stories were:
"Someone stole my XBox account number and bought $3,000 of media content with it."
"That check from my last roommate bounced? That bastard! I'll pay you tomorrow."
"What you don't get is that I was the victim in Utah. I was simply trying to protect myself when this all went down."
"I cleared up that little thing in Utah. It's nothing more than a missed court date."

Five warrants for $60,000 and a line of Internet denizens looking for your head on a platter... because of a missed court date?

Oh Kari. We hardly knew ye, and are glad that it stayed at "hardly".

Not as bad as it could have been! But the most detailed tip we got was from a guy who says he knew her back in Utah, and that she hasn't changed a bit. His story is below:

For starters, Kari is a bona fide sociopath. She grew up in South Jordan in one of the many stucco middle to upper-middle class neighborhoods that emerged overnight in the Salt Lake Valley. She was adopted, had a younger brother (also adopted) who lived with their mother in Arizona. I always felt bad for her dad, Terri. He bore much of the brunt of her frequent damage until he finally Pontius Piloted her out of his life, refusing to help or do anything else to enable her.

I knew Kari when I was 19. One of my favorite Kari-tales goes as follows:

She invited me to go to a midnight showing of The Shining at an art house theatre down the street from me. She had told me she lived downtown, but, for some odd reason, she needed to pick her up in South Jordan 20 miles away in the heart of mouth-breathing Mormondom. Not a problem, I thought. I met her in a parking lot and drove back. On the way, she told me a.) she was a vetrinary assistant, b.) while a vetrinary assistant she was the victim of racial prejudice and c.) this racial prejudice resulted in her dog being killed by a co-worker. Uh, what? This was a pretty typical sort of chain-lie that Kari would tell, but should show that Kari lied about EVERYTHING, not just select things. I digress. We went to the movie. It was crowded; packed, even. The lights went down and, almost instantly, her clammy hand made way for the Croatian Coast. Yes, right there, in the middle of a crowded theatre. I had hardly known her a week and was sitting in a crowded theatre so I wasn't having it. I pushed her hand away. We sat in silence the rest of the movie and drove home, largely in silence. When I finally dropped her off, she made an attempt at a kiss. Shudder.

Anyway, it was amusing for a minute, but got old real quick when she staged a fake trip to the hospital complete with maudlin, bathos-ridden texts. I had had enough and cut her off. Completely. Nevertheless, every couple of months I would get unsolicited statements like "I joined the Peace Corps and now I'm off to Mozambique" or "I'm having a book of poems published." Ha, fucking ha. In addition to the texts, Kari would invade different circles of friends, triggering their sympathies through a chain of predictable-albeit-unmanaged lies while tempting them with her cool, fictional connections or professions. The scam always worked, for a while anyway. I'm amazed at how many people I meet around the city in the 18-27 range that have been duped by her. The worst, however, was last summer, when Kari had infiltrated a group of friends, against my advice and common fucking sense. She dated one friend, Brandon; but he dumped her when she wound up in jail for, drum roll, check fraud. After Brandon threw her curbside, she made a move for Brian, who requited. During this time, she still maintained that she worked for TicketMaster and totally had connections to national touring acts. The coup de grace came in July came when she told all of them, again, against mine and everyone elses' adivce, that she could get them backstage all-access passes to the festival and even arrange to meet Sonic Youth after they played Daydream Nation in its entirety. They all bought, pricey tickets and even gave her some money on the side. The day before they are scheduled to leave, Kari outright disappeared, emerging a week later with some lie about a stolen phone or hospital visit. Brian continued to date her ('cause, you know, masochism totally rawks!) and even posted bail the last and final time she was busted before leaving for Brooklyn to work that totally not-fake TicketMaster job. She broke parole, missed court dates and Brian had to eat the entire hat, $6,000 price tag and all.

I'm not surprised that she repeated the same patterns in Brooklyn. I would almost re-lose faith in humanity if she didn't, actually. I just can't believe how quickly it blew up.

I've already been texting people that were either totally boned or, like me, just endlessly annoyed and occasionally entertained by her. Ah, schadenfreude, more enriching than mother's milk.

Good luck finding that blood tic.

[Earlier coverage; Pics via Maciekjasik.com. Anyone with more info, email us]

The "Park Slope Parents" fight is ostensibly about a plan by the listserv moderators to charge the parents $25 to remain on the list. In reality, it's just like all of Park Slope's other epic battles: a contest to see who can be the most shrill and sanctimonious.

Somehow, the moderators continue to "win" this entitled bitchfest. They could have, for example, just let list participant "Joanna's" epic weekend diatribe speak for itself.

Declaring she was done "self-censor[ing],", the mother denounced "self-righteous... earth-destroying" Easter-egg hunt rules, the coverup of a video camera theft (we think?), the environmental slander of kitchen scraps (the methane can be contained!) and, best of all, some jerk-ass French brat who ruined rock climbing in the park for EVERYONE.

Instead of just letting this very entertaining message go out to the list, the moderators decided to block it, on the grounds that Joanna's "heart of hearts" would have blocked it, too. (That's totally our new moderating standard on Gawker, by the way.)

If any other Park Slopers have an urgent rant they need to get past the jackbooted censors at PSP, just send it our way. We'll publish it, provided it is at least this awesome.

Joanna's message is below, followed by her back-and-forth with the moderator.

(Top image via)

From an email to us, from Morgan:

The idea that I'm trying to get back some job I held years ago—which doesn't even exist anymore—is hilarious. I realize this makes me sound like a self-righteous twat, but where do you come up with this nonsense?

Oh, come now: Your Tabloid Wars days were recent enough for you to realize 1> we were Just Asking, a perfect, impenetrable legal and ethical defense for all forms of salacious gossip, always, and 2> we can't tell you that, although we did drop a hint in the original item.

I suppose it's too much to ask that you try and verify it before posting it for eternity on the internets.

Well, we don't make it to Beatrice much, but at least we have your GMail address now. That's a start!

The book, by his son Seth, is about the 1979 NCAA basketball national championship game, between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Hah, there is a metaphor in there, somewhere, right?

The Game itself was a bit anticlimactic - Michigan State, the Big Ten champion, easily handled undefeated Indiana State, which came into the final game 33-0. MSU won 75-69. Larry Bird played poorly: He finished with 19 points on 7-for-21 shooting; he went 5-for-8 from the foul line, committed six turnovers, and had a season-low two assists. The last image of him on national TV was with his face in a towel. He refused to talk to the press after the game.

And then Lanny Davis went on the TV to demand that Magic make Larry his running mate, the end.

No, wait, it gets pretty bad later: not only does Lanny think his son is the world's best writer in history ever, but so does noted literary critic Donald Imus.

Recently, Don Imus interviewed Seth about his book on his nationally syndicated "Imus in the Morning" radio show. After the interview, I emailed Mr. Imus and thanked him for his gentle and positive treatment of my son. This was Mr. Imus' response:

"What a delightful young man. When he talked about you…the look that washed over his face nearly brought tears to my eyes. Charles [Imus' news broadcasting sidekick] and I talked about it later. We both have sons. The respect and love Seth has for you must be a wonderful comfort for you….Lovely kid. Pretty good old man."

Pretty good comment from anyone to a father about his child, I would say.

Yeesh. As if posting this treacly, embarrassing nonsense to a blog was not bad enough, Lanny emailed the entire post to his whole address book, so that everyone in Washington and New York would know that HIS SON IS SO TALENTED, EVEN IMUS THINKS SO.

We all remember Stam, right? New York Magazine introduced us to the kid last year, when he was a senior at the prestigious and completely insufferable prep school. The story was about how all the little shits at that miserable school basically ran the asylum, along with their terrible parents.

The worst of the worst was Stam, an ambitious little jerk who waged his own culture wars against teachers who dared try to make him care about minorities. His self-admitted personal hero: Roy Cohn.

But then he got into Columbia, and one might then assume that he'd be done terrorizing the staff of his high school. Because, seriously kid, get over it. It was high school.

But no! With student body elections coming up, Stam decided to write the aforementioned 2,000 word letter to his high school newspaper, because he's apparently the biggest loser in the world. And when the paper didn't print his letter, he didn't, say, buy some 40s and get drunk and forget about it and maybe have some casual unprotected sex with someone, like a normal college student. No, instead he emailed everyone at Horace Mann, from his Columbia email address in case this was not sad enough already, to complain of censorship. Because when your high school student paper doesn't print a lengthy, rambling, ranty letter sent by a former student, that is what first amendment attorneys call "the censorship."

We'll reprint here like one-quarter of the entire email, just so you get an idea of how amazingly self-involved and hilarious it is:

Preface: This letter was submitted to The Record's editorial board last week. After hearing no reply from them for 30 hours, I phoned the stupub and was informed that they would not be running my letter. At no time did a member of the board inform me of their decision and they refused to discuss their rationale for censoring me. The fact that they did not tell me the grounds for denying the letter can only lead me to think that there was no actual debate over the letter; I can only conclude that there was no vote and that the editorial board never had a say in the matter. Usually when students object to the content of a submitted letter they contact the author with their specific quibbles or provide a reason for the exclusion of the letter. I thus believe that the faculty advisor simply refused to print the letter on principle and the reason I didn't hear a justification was because there was no actual debate on the substance of my submission. Of course the editor denied this, but that is only a measure intended save face and to preserve the illusion that they are real journalists and have say over their content. In addition to being lied to, I was even told that it in the newspaper industry less than 1% of submitted letters are printed; I did not know The Record received such a high volume of letters so at least I feel better about getting shafted. Or perhaps the board did vote (I still doubt this) and they voted in favor of suppressing the truth. If this is the case, the students of the school ought to take the paper to task, as excluding information because it is politically inconvenient to one's agenda is quite subversive and far more disgraceful than being censored by your advisor. It is now clear that the students do not have a forum where they can share openly ideas without censorship and I believe The Record no longer serves its purpose as a student newspaper.

To The Horace Mann Community,
After reading last week's editorial I am compelled to respond and not only defend our current student leaders but also to implore the student body to make an educated decision in the upcoming SBP election. The Record's attack on Rafi and Malik in last week's issue was malicious, polemical, and vindictive. This paper has had it in for our SBP/VP from the second they were elected, as was the case during my presidency when the paper willfully deceived me on multiple occasions in an attempt to sabotage a referendum that was in the best interest of the school. That is because The Record board, not our student leaders, is out of touch with the rest of their classmates; they are elitists, have an inflated view of the importance of their own work, and have contempt for the average student. The members of this paper's editorial board are as ill suited to write about their constituents as Ronald Reagan would be if he were appointed to the staff of Pravda. I am left with no other choice but to conclude that The Record believes the students are unenlightened, having not been vetted/canonized by elders of yore (ie past board members of this august institution), should not be afforded basic rights, and should instead submissively bend down and surrender to the will of an increasingly wild, out of control, and destructive administration which seems bent on taking any positive, student empowering institution at this school and tearing it to shreds.

It goes on like that for like five more lengthy paragraphs. This poor kid. We'd almost feel bad for him if he wasn't everything that's wrong with kids today.

That figure covers copyright claims for past alleged infringement by Google — the search engine had to scan the books to add them to its special book search index — but not revenues authors can hypothetically earn if they opt into special deals with Google. Under the special arrangement, authors would get a cut of revenue from advertising sold next to Google "previews" of their books, and a cut of sales of special editions (e.g. online, library printing, etc.).

Authors have the right to opt out of these moneymaking schemes, and they would be wise to do so: Google Books overlord Ramsey Allington is said to be an unqualified train wreck of a manager, and Google failed at a similar sales effort for online video.

The Authors Guild didn't bother with such details in an email (see below) to members, nor did it explain how a purported $125 million settlement only includes $45 million in author and publisher payments; it offered instead a rosy summation of the lengthy settlement agreement.

If authors had any doubts about the weak and declining economics of their profession, their guild's crowing about such a paltry payout should put them to rest.

After Daily News CEO Marc Kramer issued the memo below, he made his way to the newsroom, where he reportedly joked with a top editor about how much money the editor had lost on the stock market that day. His laughs, a tipster informs us, left the rest of the staff simmering. (Maybe that was his new way of contributing to reporters' retirements.)

Judging from what we've heard, the Maxim model-turned-Harvard grad student has drawn as much notice within the president's circle as she has outside of it. Campoverdi is said to have joined the campaign just this past fall; when she was installed in the West Wing in January, some staffers who count their experience in years rather than months were still waiting to hear about their futures.

So there are no doubt simmering resentments behind the whispers about Campoverdi and her eclectic, highbrow/lowbrow background: That "Ali" became "Alejandra" only after a relatively recent decision to reconnect with her Latina roots and to work with field laborers as part of her job with the California Endowment; that she never earned that MBA from Northwestern; or that she is purportedly "flirtatious" and "fully aware of her sex appeal when seeking jobs."

Perhaps. But even those who dish about the former reality-show contestant acknowledge her strengths, including a "can-do" attitude and fairly undisguised ambition.

Of course, the latter can be as much a negative as a positive. For example:

Why, a tipster asks, did Campoverdi think she could be Michelle Obama's speechwriter? And why, especially, was she perplexed by the inevitable rejection?

If Campoverdi has any speechwriting experience, no one seems to be aware of it. Heck, she apparently hasn't worked on any other campaigns. Was she hoping to crib notes from hottie boyfriend Jon Favreau, the president's 27-year-old speechwriter? Or perhaps liked the symmetry of one set of lovebirds writing speeches for another?

Whatever the case, one must indulge Campoverdi overambitious job-hunting, if only because it has, at the end of the day, served the twentysomething so very well. She's got a power gig in the White House, a resume that leaves Hollywood as a plausible fallback, and one of the most desired young men in the nation as her boyfriend. Does anyone think she got all that without asking?

Previously:
Field Guide / Ali Campoverdi: Obama Hottie, Feminist Paradox;
Obama Speechwriter Dating White House's Maxim Babe  

The missive, which made its way to our inbox, is the inauguration brag to end all inauguration brags, an epic tale of hope and personal glory. Know someone who went an inaugural ball or two and can't stop talking about it? Ayelet Waldman can and will top him. She is determined to one-up any and all inauguration stories, even if it means hiring an email marketing company to do so. The woman brags about the inaugural balls she didn't have time for.

For all the new president's talk about sacrifice, change, equal opportunity and an end to divisiveness and arrogance, he has (as one would expect) plenty of supporters who can act as smug, partisan and plutocratic as the conservative cabal they helped sweep out of power, as isolated and oblivious to the concerns of the rest of the country. Fair or not, Waldman's email could be used as Exhibit A in a tutorial on how best to exude such an image.

Here's the full email, with our commentary, for your enjoyment and education:

[Correction: Waldman took up blogging last September over here.]

Matthew Palevsky, who graduated from Brown University last year, will have help running Off the Bus. Gabriel Beltrone, an NYU senior and former Off The Bus intern, will be his right-hand man. Palevsky's mother Jodie Evans, co-founder of left-wing protest group Code Pink, has long guided her son's activism and will no doubt be happy to lend advice. His billionaire father, the computer entrepreneur Max Palevsky, can provide other means of support.

Then there's his own background, such as it is. In college, Palevsky worked on the urgent issue of drug reform. Since then, he's been a bureau chief at the Real News Network, a nonprofit TV news organization bankrolled by his father, where Palevsky interviewed such luminaries as... Arianna Huffington.

He faces a daunting challenge. Among Off The Bus' more prominent stories were "Bittergate," in which HuffPo's Mayhill Fowler recorded Barack Obama's comments about "bitter" working-class voters "clinging to guns or religion," and a recording of Bill Clinton slamming Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum as a "slimy... scumbag." OTB garnered 12,000 volunteer participants, Arianna Huffington wrote in November, a database of free labor many cash-strapped news organizations would kill for.

But the effort lost momentum. It's been more than two months since Off The Bus updated regularly, and nearly as long since the last post. And young Palevsky has big shoes to fill. He takes over from Amanda Michel, who at Harvard Law formed an institute to organize volunteers over the Web, as she had done for John Kerry and Howard Dean; and Marc Cooper, a Nation editor and longtime magazine writer now teaching journalism at USC. Both were profiled in the Times and thanked by Huffington, but neither appears to be any longer active with HuffPo.

We poked around about Palevsky and Off The Bus after receiving a copy of this email, sent by Huffington to her entire staff yesterday:

Palevsky's name sounded familiar; the questions that could not be answered by Google were easily filled in by the HuffPo grapevine.

It is not lost on that network that Huffington has largely surrounded herself with unseasoned, twentysomething lieutenants who are more easily controlled by the notorious micromanager. The HuffPo front page is controlled by tortured twentysomething screamer Colin Sterling and Katharine Zaleski, like Palevsky the well-kept child of a wealthy family. That Palevsky and Beltrone will shepherd Huffington Post's single greatest strategic asset despite their total lack of management experience is thus not surprising. But it should give the eccentric, breakdown-prone publisher's investors pause, to say nothing of boosters of citizen journalism:

Huffington bragged after the election that the open, volunteer model of Off The Bus was not duplicated "in the national section of any major newspaper covering the 2008 election." The papers practiced journalism "the old way." In the end, though, Huffington was more interested in clinging to the traditional system of nepotism and cloistered favor-trading than in building a new, more democratic media infrastructure.

Prior Huffington coverage: The Huffington Posts