Bartiromo wrote a Q&A column called FaceTime, which consisted of her asking questions of some business guy each week. She's not a bulldog questioner, but she's not incompetent either. Her strongest point was access: Hank Greenberg, Tim Geithner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg have all sat for her in the past month.

Her downsides: She's perceived as friendly to CEOs, which is part of the reason she gets that access. And whatever they pay her for that column is certainly inflated by her own celebrity, which is hard to justify when Bloomberg's getting ready to lay off a bunch of BW staffers. They'll be able to get good access with a much cheaper columnist, anyhow; who else will CEOs rattle off talking points to, bloggers? LOL!

Don't feel bad, Maria. Gurl U no Wall St luvs U no matta wut. Gurl let Jamie Dimon buy U a drank.

Dobbs would fit much more snugly into the right-wing stable of shouting heads over at Fox than he did at CNN, where he made an awkward lie of the cable network's attempt to position itself as a non-partisan straight-news alternative to MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right. But Dobbs hasn't exactly been a ratings dynamo: He was recently losing not only to Shep Smith at Fox but Chris Matthews at MSNBC and even Jane Velez Mitchell at CNN's HLN (formerly Headline News). Burn.

Maybe once Dobbs is unshackled from his CNN overlords he can finally make a bright future for himself in a foreign TV land, one that believes in true opportunity for downtrodden and wandering émigrés like himself.

UPDATE: Video of the announcement is above. Dobbs' comments have observers speculating he'll make some kind of political move.

UPDATE: Maybe not; a CNN statement says "Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

The UC Santa Cruz job is no accident; it was made possible by a donation from the Dead themselves. And it's not just drug bands spreading counterculture good fortune these days:

• Amid mass journalism layoffs, a new hippie-friendly type of gig has opened up: Pot reviewer. Denver's alt weekly went looking for just such a fellow, to serve the booming local market for "medical" marijuana.
  
• Grungy well-heeled young music fans made this year's Coachella music festival a "super happy" success. Far out for concert organizers who refused to grow up and get a "real job!"
• Vegan animal activist Jane Velez-Mitchell has a hit show over on CNN's Headline News and can now aspire to the even greater level of success attained by left-wing-radio-host-turned-MSNBC-anchor (and fellow lesbian) Rachel Maddow. (Maddow was a Rhodes scholar, putting her on the high achieving side of hippiedom.)
  
• The White House installed an organic garden under lobbying from Alice Waters, delivering a PR victory to the restaurateur derided as a hippie "dreamer" on national television just days earlier.
  
• In San Francisco, the sort of company that holds "naked" meetings and makes decisions through unanimous consensus is now showered with VC cash.
  
• A protest marcher from a hippie college changed his name to the militant "Barack" from the placid "Barry" and was soon elected president of these United States.
  
• If you advocate turning your cat vegan or making men pee while sitting down, for the environment, the New York Times will publish your op-ed, these days.

And all this time you thought "get a job" was the ultimate way to insult a hippie. Who's laughing now, straight edge??

(Pic via)

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky (pictured) is leading the way, according to LA Observed: The politico's website is overseen by former latimes.com editor Joel Sappell; contributors include another former Los Angeles Times editor and a former Newsweek correspondent.

The articles wouldn't be out of place in a local newspaper. You've got your anecdotal ledes; your "quiet" and "bittersweet" response to injustice; a quirky fish-out-of-water character shaking up a local organization; a followup on failed legislation; a listicle.

But said listicle gives the briefest acknowledgment of "critics" of a proposed subway line, and instead rattles off seven arguments in support of the plan, supported by such "proponents" as "Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member." A story on an anti-STD media campaign is sure to mention the "crucial infusion of $700,000... [from] Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky," who elsewhere is busy "warning homeowners to avoid solicitations from" certain con artists.

None of which is particularly scandalous since a politician's website is supposed to be filled with propaganda, and as far as propaganda type content goes, this "experiment" is very light on the dogma, and very readable. So cheer up, imperiled journalists: Dabbling in flackery might not feel so dirty, after all. And it pays!

Here's a rundown of some of the more promising names in child-labor media. Some of the names will probably look familiar to you, since these kids are famous. Far more famous than most media hacks. In other words, they're coming for your job, loudly.

The Dating Advice Kid

Name: Alec Greven

Age: 10

Summary: His dating-advice book How To Talk To Girls is supposed to become a movie; he now reportedly plans How To Talk To Moms, How To Talk To Dads, How To Talk To Santa and How To Talk To Grandparents. Original publisher HarperCollins is presumably working with him on all of the followups.

More: Here's video of young Alec.

British Blog Boy Wonder

Name: Scott Campbell

Age: 14

Summary: Started British news website, contributes to BBC and various newspapers

More: Campbell is CEO of Net News Daily; with co-founder and editor-in-chief Nathan Adam, he claims 100,000 unique visitors per month, and has scored freelance gigs with the BBC (left) and writes a regular column for the newspaper First News. Asked earlier this year in a Guardian profile how the economic downturn was affecting his business, he said, "I'm 13, so therefore don't have a lot to lose in the financial crisis."

The Lil' Food Critic

Name: David Fishman

Age: 12

Summary: Aspiring food critic profiled in the New York Times; his Upper West Side New York tablehopping has been optioned by Lorne Michaels for a movie.

More: "As I left, I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip' places in the city."

(Image via Rachel Ray)

The Pint-Sized Political Pundit

Name: Jonathan Krohn

Age: 13

Summary: Talk-radio regular and self-published author became a smash hit when he spoke at the CPAC right-wing convention.

More: The home-schooled youth practiced public speaking at Christian Youth Theater plays and calling in to Bill Bennett's radio show. Has appeared on CBS News and Today. His endorsement was sought by a Georgia gubernatorial candidate.

Barack Obama's Journalist 'Homeboy'

Name: Damon Weaver

Age: 11

Summary: A successful quest to interview President Barack Obama made him the talk of cable news.

More: After ending an earlier interview with vice presidential contender Joe Biden with, "Senator Biden is now my homeboy," got permission from Obama to also be the president's "homeboy." Has completed such other White House Press Corps rites of passage as attending the inauguration on a media pass and dissing an MSNBC talking head.

The Teenaged Tech Titan

Name: Daniel Brusilovsky

Age: 16

Summary: Founder and CEO, TeensInTech.com; product evangelist for video-casting service Qik; writer for TechCruch; has 120,000 followers on his "Verified" Twitter account.

More: He's an adviser to at least two companies; his parents used to shuttle him to and from tech conferences; says you should be persistent to reach your goals. More here.

(Pic by Randy Stewart)

• Rupert Murdoch is still willing to pour money into the New York newspaper wars, "decline of the newspaper industry" be damned. He will not rest until he can claim superiority over the NYT as a general interest paper in the NYC market. Or he will die trying, literally!
• People most likely to be angry about this: The WSJ's Boston bureau, which was recently closed.
• People who should be most worried about this: New York Post staffers. Every dollar Rupert puts into the WSJ is a dollar that he's not putting into the Post. Which already has very good local coverage, in a vile tabloidy way.
• People who may view this news with keen interest: The 100 New York Times newsroom staffers who have to be gone by the end of the year. "Hiring," you say?

That's according to Peter Norvig (pictured), Google's director of research, former Google director of search quality and former head of the Computational Sciences division at the NASA Ames research center. Here's what Norvig tells Peter Seibel in a Q&A in the new book Coders at Work (emphasis added):

One of the interesting things we've found, when trying to predict how well somebody we've hired is going to perform when we evaluate them a year or two later, is one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews. We rank people from one to four, and if you got a one on one of your interviews, that was a really good indicator of success.

Small suggestion: Maybe Google can take these genius employees and have them, hmmm, we dunno, debug the frickin' broken interview process. Those who demanded they be hired should probably also be enlisted in the debugging effort. Writes Norvig:

Ninety-nine percent of the people who got a one in one of their interviews we didn't hire. But the rest of them, in order for us to hire them somebody else had to be so passionate that they pounded on the table and said, "I have to hire this person because I see something in him..."

Unfortunately, Google's had already done most of its hiring/rejecting and is now has been in layoff mode for much of this year. But, hey, there's always the next bubble.

UPDATE: A Goolge spokesperson disputed that the company was "in layoff mode," as we wrote, and stated: "To the contrary, we have been very explicit... that we are stepping our rate of hiring." Indeed, CEO Eric Schmidt stated in a discussion of Q3 results that "we're going to invest in people. We're already stepping up our hiring." That's in contrast to earlier this year, when Google had three rounds of layoffs from January through the end of March.

(Pic: Norvig, by Mathieu Thouvenin)

The GDP numbers released this morning were better than expected, and were driven by a 3.4% increase in consumer spending. What this means is that everyone's expectations will be higher in the future about the strength and pace of the recovery, according to the Wall Street Journal:

"The data is suggesting that the economy does have some strength behind it, and that growth itself is going to be on the higher end of expectations," said Kent Engelke, chief economic strategist at Capitol Securities Management.

We're very happy for the economy and its excellent quarter. How did American human beings do last quarter? Let's have a look:

• Personal income decreased .5%, or $15.5 billion.
• Personal income taxes withheld increased $4.8 billion.
• Total personal spending increased .7%, or $20.4 billion
• Personal savings dropped 33% from the previous quarter.
• The number of new jobless claims last week was virtually unchanged from the previous week.

To recap: Your income decreased by $15.5 billion while your spending increased by $20.4 billion and your taxes increased by $4.8 billion, resulting in a 33% drop in "savings," which means the amount of money you have. And you still don't have a job. This recovery is going to be awesome.

On the upside, the total number of people on unemployment has dropped to 5.8 million, the lowest number in seven months, according to Bloomberg. That's great until you think of all the people who have dropped off the rolls because their benefits ran out.

Bloomberg also reports that Caterpillar has started rehiring some of its laid-off employees, finally fulfilling a promise that Barack Obama made about the stimulus package eight months ago. These things take time.

Through sophisticated reporting techniques that primarily involve Smokin' Smarties, the WSJ has found that America is "a country in a decidedly negative mood" about the economy, just weeks after we were in a great fucking mood cause the stock market was BACK BABY. Now we're all sad again.

It's called crack cocaine, America. Stop doing it, get some mood stabilizers, and pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That means take your ass to night school until 2:30 a.m. like the other knowledge-crazed poors. Sleep in the closet, then catch your 6 a.m. class before work! It's the American way.

And here's what's not the American way: trains. Spending money on trains! Did Henry Ford make all his money from trains, to make Detroit our greatest city? No, he made cars. Look it up. That's like the opposite of trains. Earlier robber barons did indeed make fortunes on trains, but that has nothing to do with Detroit, or the economic fact we are about to drop on your head from a lofty altitude: "Amtrak loses an average of $32 for every passenger who boards one of its trains." Loses, it says! If you ride Amtrak you are literally costing the taxpayers money. Just hitchhike, like a normal hobo. Print out this post and use it to explain to your night school teacher why you were late to class.

Stop sulking. Go to school. Get off the train and walk. Star in a mawkish music video by Ryan Star that plays your unemployment predicament for sympathy and inspiration. That's been the formula for getting a job in the USA ever since George Washington chopped down a neighbor's cherry tree and then demanded payment, while holding and axe. And it hasn't changed since then. So get with the program.
[Pic via]

The exact numbers of the NYT's departments aren't quite as cloaked in mystery as the New Yorker's masthead, for example, but it is hard to get up-to-date figures. Until now! The striking thing, of course, is just how many people it takes to put this paper out. ("Takes" is the wrong word. How many people they use). Some of the biggies:

Reporters at Metro: 50
Size of Business Desk: 85
Size of Washington Bureau: 45
Total size of Art Department: 113
Size of Metro: 103

The Metro desk appears to be the paper's biggest, as we've always heard. Fifty reporters. More than enough to put out an entire newspaper in a third-tier city. Think about that while also thinking about the meager size of Metro's space in the NYT Some of the paper's sections seem reasonable, or even shoestring—Dining and Week in Review both have staffs of five. So why does the Book Review—also a weekly section largely written by freelancers—need 14 editors?

It's a mystery. But we know 100 people will be gone from the newsroom by the end of the year. And we'll probably never see numbers this high at the NYT again.
[Full list at the NYO. Pic: AP]

In the average major American city, there are hundreds upon hundreds of teenage girls working as prostitutes.

In Los Angeles, two loan modification agents were lured to a house, tied up, and beaten for hours by several people. "The two allegedly sought loan modification assistance from the victims but believed that nothing was being done and wanted their money back," according to the district attorney's office.

In Iceland, you can no longer get McDonald's. The company is pulling out of the entire country after Iceland's currency collapse.

Any one of those facts could make you spend your last $1.37 on a piece of scrap metal that could be fashioned into a suicide implement using a little All-American gumption. But try to put things in perspective. You think teenage prostitutes, torture-charges soon-to-be-evictees, and McNuggetless Icelanders have it bad? It could be worse. You could get a job. Then you'd have to stop maxin and relaxin and going to the gym at noon and playing video games and all that good unemployed shit. People with jobs: the real victims.

When do we get our sympathy?
[Pic: Flickr]

We're hearing from multiple sources that a major round of layoffs will be hitting Forbes next week. So if you work at Forbes...um, just be nervous, I guess. And if you know more details, email us.


Danyel Smith was the editor of Vibe. Then Vibe folded. Then she got a job as editor of TheRoot.com. Now, after just six weeks on the job, she's quitting "because of issues related to her commute." Huh. Well I was coming home late one dark afternoon/ A reporter stopped me for an interview/ She said she heard stories and she heard fables/ That I'm vicious on the mic, and the turntable/ This young reporter I did adore/ So I rocked a vicious rhyme like I never did before/ She said 'Damn fly guy I'm in love with you'/ And the Casanova legend must have been true/ I said: TELECOMMUTE.
Hip hop has a message.


Details from a tipster regarding this week's cutbacks at Conde Nast Traveler: "A majority of the full-time research staff was 'severed.' Although, purportedly, there will be an arrangement in the coming weeks for those let go to remain as freelancers—a mitigating demotion, ostensibly. But the axe also fell on some editorial and copy edit staff, and several other senior editors, while not fully terminated, will see their work weeks shortened to two or three days only." That's marginally better than being laid off!


An 80 year-old man who retired as Baltimore's AP bureau chief in 1991 killed himself last weekend after being charged with molesting two young boys.

I got a lot of impressive applications (I apologize if I haven't been able to respond to you individually yet) and I've asked a few to be guest night editors. There'll be a few more over the next week or two. If you'd like to be one of them, the new #openmicnights tag page (I tried to explain our open forums here) is the place to show off your talents.

So, here's the plan for the #openmicnights forum: First, you need a commenter account. (If you don't have one, register for one and leave a comment below saying you'd like to try out and I'll approve your account.) I'd like to see you write your best example of a Gawker post using the "Share" box on the #openmicnights tag page: a snappy headline, compelling lede and sharply written item. Also, since there are tools to upload images and video, I'm looking for an eye for visuals. Lastly, be sure to include the #openmicnights hashtag so that your post appears on the tag page.

You will be graded based on quality of writing, timeliness, copy editing and ability to follow these instructions. In short, I'm looking for writing polished enough that we could run it on the front page.

The stage is yours. Have a blast.

Image via Thomas Hawk's Flickr

As you will see, The System is working around the clock to make you a productive member of society once again. Need to go out looking for a job? We're slashing subway fares to make it easier for you to do so, at 3 o'clock in the morning. Need some help tracking down the right position? We're making a Match.com for employment, to put the unparalleled success of online dating at landing you your dream date to work landing you your dream job! And if you do find that dream job—defined as "A $13 per hour gig at an Indiana trucking company"—you can be sure that 500 others will be right there with you to apply for the same position, to ensure you get to test yourself against the very best.

We will also enable you to stay in your below-market-rate apartment a bit longer.

Verily, The System is lining everything up in your favor. It's time to do your part. It could be much, much worse for you. You could be on Wall Street. We're capping those guys at $500k, not including stock options. Can you fucking imagine? Appreciate what you have.
[Pic via]

There's been talk of insular Bloomberg gutting BusinessWeek and moving the financial information company's own staff; even if things don't go that far, it's hard to imagine the editor atop the financially troubled magazine finding much of a leadership for himself at Bloomberg.

(Pic: Adler, Getty Images.)

• WIRED: Wired.com laid off two top editors earlier this month. Today, tipsters tell us "at least six people" were canned at Wired—a mix of editorial and ad sales employees, including at least one veteran editor.
• Glamour: At least a half dozen editorial layoffs today. This follows at least seven business side layoffs there earlier this month, including a reality TV star.
• Lucky: At least four editorial layoffs today.

If you don't work at the New Yorker, be nervous.
UPDATE: Then again—a tipster tells us "at least 7 people let go from ad sales and creative services over the past 3 weeks" at the New Yorker. But uh, editorial side should be perfectly safe.
[Pic: AP]

We're changing up Gawker's night shift a bit. Ryan Tate was an expert one-man band when he established night editor position, working from night til dawn, monitoring night-time television and the morning's breaking news. It may be too much to expect one person to duplicate him, so we're going to try splitting the gig into two half-shifts:

Early shift Early is relative, of course, as it'll run from, say, 8pm to midnight EST, Sunday through Thursday. Much of what we post on the site during that time is based on what's happening on TV, so the focus of the gig would be monitoring news and chat shows and finding clips and posting commentary as it airs. Of course, news can happen any time — juicy tips arrive around the clock, old media orgs are still fond of posting their biggest storiess at night — this person needs to be able to handle breaking news.

Late shift This shift would run from around 2am to 6am EST, also Sunday through Thursday. These hours are grueling hours for someone in New York, so it would be particularly well-suited for someone in the U.K., Australia or the West Coast. The main focus is making sure that Gawker has a jump on the major stories of the day by the time we're waking up in NYC. Writing experience is vital, as is a strong voice and news judgment.

If you're interested in either position, please email me at gabriel@gawker.com with a convincing argument for why you're right for the job. Be sure to say which shift you're applying for.

Image via DbS Count Zero's flickr

Who's happiest of all that one huge financial news outlet (Bloomberg) bought another huge financial news outlet (Businessweek)? Flacks. Via Media Decoder:

"I think that News Corp. has reduced their reporting of core financial markets at The Wall Street Journal. and they haven't had a lot of competition, but now they will, which is great for those of us who are working to help companies get their message across," said Paul Taaffe, chief executive of Hill & Knowlton. "This is a big deal for financial news the world over. It is a total game changer for companies trying to release information, because now there is competition, and competition elevates everybody's game."

Huh. What he's actually saying here is "Bloomberg combining with BW means there's less competition and fewer news outlets, which makes the job of PR people easier." Fixed.


Big Think interviewed the New Yorker's Calvin Trillin. What did he have to say? Well, he says that kids these days don't really know shit about journalism, not like they used to, at least; and then in the second clip he says kids these days don't know shit about real journalism, not like they used to, at least. And he's right!


And meanwhile: The New Yorker has hired somebody. That's crazy! Well. They hired Nick Trautwein away from Penguin Press to replace departed senior editor Emily Eakin, who left the mag for medical reasons, according to John Koblin. Still. Hire?? Crazy!


Conde Nast dumped much of the sales staff at Brides and replace them with ex-Cookie staffers. But that might not have been the brightest idea—Keith Kelly says that move has caused "the magazine to hemorrhage ad pages." Well that's a totally unexpected consequence of an otherwise savvy management move. NOT, haha. Zinger.


The Washington Post has hired Katherine Zaleski away from the Huffington Post. Who's she? A well-connected, wealthy young woman with her own El Dorado apartment. Uh, journalism pays!