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Wired Ran Rehashed Article In Its Inaugural Issue
Wired magazine is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, with much reflection and self-congratulation. But one strange thing: in its very first issue in 1993, Wired ran an article that had already run under a different byline in a different magazine. A tipster provides evidence that an article in that issue about Japanese computer hackers by Karl Taro Greenfeld ran almost verbatim a year earlier—under a different byline—in Tokyo Journal. Furthermore, Greenfeld ran another article on the same subject in the LA Times Magazine, in which he describes one computer hacker identically to how he had described a different computer hacker in the Wired piece. Something seriously weird is going on here. [UPDATE: We now have a note from Karl Taro Greenfeld, saying that he is the author of all the pieces in question, and explaining the byline discrepancy, which is posted below. An explanation of what happened here—and key portions of all the stories in question—after the jump]. More »
Public relations
Air Conditioning As A Marketing Tool: No Longer Smart
Air conditioning is not just one of the most important summertime problems facing the media. It's a problem facing everyone, because high gas prices are turning air conditioners into machines that burn $100 bills to produce cool air. Stores in high foot traffic areas have always thrown their doors open in the summer and blasted the AC, knowing that sweaty people will come in and browse just to get out of the sun. But now that strategy is not only hugely expensive, but bad PR as well; environmentalist customers will whine and complain and call the city and organize boycotts. An intrepid NYT reporter finds that wanton AC-wasters are centered—like the media—in SoHo: More »
journalismism
Anecdotes Prove Bear Stearns Savior Is A Jerk
The WSJ wraps up its three-part series on the Bear Stearns Wall Street clusterfuck today, and it is a masterpiece of financial journalism that's a lock for a Pulitzer. Uh, not that we care. In the final installment, various cutthroat maneuvers lead to JP Morgan's bitter $2-per-share salvation of the troubled Bear. And it's clear that enemies of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon (such as: formerly wealthy people who work at Bear Stearns!) were very forthcoming sources on this story, because two of the best anecdotes in the piece do nothing but make him look like a snippy asshole: More »
crises
How Spitzer's Hooker Scandal Stymied Bear Stearns' Fightback
The Wall Street Journal is in the midst of a trillion-word ongoing series chronicling the downfall of Wall Street firm Bear Stearns earlier this year. Today's installment looks at the rapid compounding of the firm's financial problems, which builds inexorably into a crisis. That's nice and everything, but the really interesting part comes when the story reveals what threw a wrench into the multibillion-dollar firm's effort to save its public reputation: Eliot Spitzer and his stupid hooker! Not to mention their old card-playing stoner chairman of the board: More »
investigations
A crazy man may be videotaping YOUR crotch. And putting the footage on the internet for all to see! The Post, in what is (trend alert) almost surely another story developed solely by poking around on YouTube, alerts the city to a man known only as "househead7d5." He enjoys taping men's crotches—at a phone booth, on the bus, on the subway—and posting the videos online, with clever comments like, "guy on the phone showin a little......gay sweatpants bulge phonebooth NYC," or, even creepier, "I love it when they fall asleep! not the biggest basket but he was a cutie pie nonetheless!" So who is this penis-peering multimedia madman? After the jump, we will investigate!
More »
Together We Can Stop The Crotch-Cam Madman!
A crazy man may be videotaping YOUR crotch. And putting the footage on the internet for all to see! The Post, in what is (trend alert) almost surely another story developed solely by poking around on YouTube, alerts the city to a man known only as "househead7d5." He enjoys taping men's crotches—at a phone booth, on the bus, on the subway—and posting the videos online, with clever comments like, "guy on the phone showin a little......gay sweatpants bulge phonebooth NYC," or, even creepier, "I love it when they fall asleep! not the biggest basket but he was a cutie pie nonetheless!" So who is this penis-peering multimedia madman? After the jump, we will investigate!
More »
journalismism
Washington Post Reports: Powerful People Are Powerful
David Rothkopf, a highly educated scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, penned an explosive op-ed for the Washington Post that could upend the global power structure and spark revolution across the earth. Because it seems that our world—far from being one in which each of the 6 billion humans shares in an equal portion of the political, economic, and cultural power, as you had believed—is actually run by a "superclass" of people who control everything. Rothkopf reports, in direct contradiction to everything that your third grade social studies teacher promised you, that very powerful people are, in fact, very powerful. Bummer! More »
the strand
Famous Bookstore Run By Jerk
The Strand, the humongous New York bookstore by Union Square that is like one of the biggest used book stores ever of all time, has always attracted lots of young workers who take the low pay in exchange for the cool factor of working at the place, and the chance to be around books all day. One negative: the store is run by a despised woman named Nancy Bass Wyden (trivia: she's married to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden). I've known several people who worked at The Strand, and they universally agree on her tyranny. Now, the New York Press has actually done some investigative work on the claims, and it's found evidence for allegations of racial discrimination, callous disregard for pregnant women, and—most terrifyingly—"fungus from rats." More »
spin
The Pentagon Has Ronn [sic] Torossian's Support
The New York Times' big front page investigative story on Sunday about the tight connections between ex-military "analysts" on news programs and the Pentagon's PR machine was a solid re-affirmation of most people's suspicions that they, along with much of the media at large, were all play-acting in the inevitable march to war. The piece was hugely comprehensive, but it did lack the input of one man: incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian, head of the press-friendly agency 5WPR! Luckily, Ronn has chimed in with his advice to all of you who may have been upset by the story of undercover warmongering propaganda: chill. It's all just PR 101. More »
socialites
Derek Blasberg, Barbara Bush, And Hockey
Page Six's item earlier this week about first daughter Barbara Bush's attendance at a New York Rangers game, and the accompanying wholly unsubstantiated speculation that maybe she's dating a Rangers player, prompted a sports blogger to engage in some journalism (take that, Washington Post!). He dug deep in the photo archives and uncovered the haunting connection between Barbara Bush and the hockey team: Style.com writer, socialite, and Fifth Column Of The Gaydom Derek Blasberg! More »
kevin trudeau
The Con Man That THEY Don't Want You To Know About
Kevin Trudeau is the infomercial star and dressed-up hustler who cons the gullible of America by claiming to sell things that "THEY" don't want you to know. Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About. The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You To Know About. Debt Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About. The Federal Trade Commission (maybe the real "They?") has fined Trudeau millions over the years and tried to ban him from making misleading claims, but he just keeps it up [WBZ TV]. In the olden days, thousands of people who had wasted money on his worthless books would storm his home with pitchforks and torches, and that would be that. Today, though, it has to go through the system. After the jump, a look at Trudeau's scams. More »
jimmy sabatino
LAT's Tupac Source: Serial Con Man
The Smoking Gun has a treasure trove of incriminating information on Jimmy Sabatino, the incarcerated serial con man who the site says forged documents that the LA Times relied on in its (now doubtful) scoop associating Puff Daddy with the 1994 shooting and robbery of Tupac Shakur. Sabatino's shady and unreliable nature was well known; back in 1999, the Miami New Times published a long feature story titled "Con Kid" that detailed Sabatino's history of outrageous scams that he used to hobnob with celebrities and land free stuff. TSG also says that Sabatino's father is a restaurant manager, not a mobster as the LAT reported (and we repeated). The LAT's story today on the launch of its own internal investigations notes that the paper "has not identified the source of the purported FBI reports," but that would presumably change if it turns out Sabatino was the source, and the documents were false. After the jump, a screengrab [via TSG] of Sabatino's MySpace page—the entire "About Me" section is apparently fiction: More »
rap
Puffy Knew In Advance About 1994 Tupac Shooting, Says LAT
An exclusive story in the LA Times today says that P. Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean "Puffy" Combs, the hip hop superstar and head of Bad Boy Records, knew in advance about a 1994 ambush in which rap icon Tupac Shakur was shot five times and robbed in a New York recording studio. According to the story, a promoter and talent manager who were friendly with Puffy set up Tupac because they were angry about his insolent posture towards NYC and its hip hop heavyweights. The key facts: More »
exclusive
The Story Of Ronn Torossian
When Ronn [sic] Torossian, the incompetent superflack and 5WPR CEO who reps characters ranging from softcore porn king Joe Francis to nutty televangelist Benny Hinn Ministries, sued his former HR director Melissa Weiss last week, he was using a classic PR tactic: getting out ahead of the story. Ronn alleged in his suit that Weiss helped an employee leave 5W, thereby violating her contract. But Weiss has her own side of the story: that she was fired because she protested extensive, ongoing labor violations at 5WPR. What we know—because we have the evidence—is that on Friday, Ronn sent Weiss an email threatening, "You will pay for the rest of your life for trying to ruin my business." The subject line read, "YOU STUPID CUNT." More »
investigations
"J.Lo Butt" Scam Threatens NYC Ass Health
WARNING: An unauthorized butt enhancer may be on the loose in Manhattan. The Post breaks an EXCLUSIVE story this morning about Kimberly Smedley, a wanton, unauthorized woman with no medical training who offers black market silicone injections out of an East 39th St. hotel. For $1,600, Smedley promises women "J.Lo butts." But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. More »
heath ledger
Cops Looking At Docs In Heath Ledger Death
Two doctors are being investigated by the feds in connection with actor and Soho resident Heath Ledger's death. The Daily News reports that one doctor in California and one in Texas supplied Ledger with Vicodin and Oxycontin, and the feds want to know if the whole deal was legal. Nothing has been established yet. The two painkillers were among the six drugs in Ledger's system when he died of an overdose in January. [NYDN]
investigations
