Ha, this is Dan Wasserman's editorial cartoon in the Boston Globe today. Luckily Pinch Sulzberger is enough of a mensch to think this is funny. Until he sees tomorrow's cartoon, which portrays him as Satan, fucking Boston with a pitchfork.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Today is the tenth anniversary of Jonnie Friedman's media column! Yes, we've made fun of Jon on this blog—a fact which takes up the majority of his anniversary column. But here is another totally true fact: you will not find a nicer media reporter in New York than Jon Friedman. Seriously, we are all jerks relative to him!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.News Corp is reportedly close to selling the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol's pet conservative magazine that in some quarters has a reputation for being "smart" (although not in smart quarters). Rupert Murdoch will sell the little mag to billionaire wingnut Phillip Anschultz because, hey, Murdoch already has the WSJ, and Bill Kristol sucks, so why not?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Peter Doocy, the son of smarmy Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy, has been hired as a reporter by Fox News. Don't get it twisted: Peter Doocy was objectively the most qualified applicant named 'Doocy.'

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Mark and Gary Stern, brothers and veteran newspaper publishers, are planning to launch a new daily print newspaper. In Detroit. "'We aren't going to get into a situation that will put us in the red,' Mark Stern said." Does not compute.

New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta sees mixed results: "I suspect that serious felons like Blair have been deterred. But cheating and cutting corners has not been. Declining circulation, falling advertising revenues, and the swooning stock value of traditional news organizations, coupled with expanding consumer choices, prompts slashed newsroom budgets.

"This leaves fewer editors and fact checkers to police newsrooms. Worse, with business declining, the folks who sign our checks push for more sensational stories, more conflict, more sharp opinion — anything — to lift their news stories from the clutter. The business culture imposes itself on the journalistic culture. In the contest between the two cultures, business usually triumphs," Auletta wrote.

Whoa, way to bring us down, Ken! Slate's Jacob Weisberg is more succinct: ""I think the print media's credibility issues have been largely overwhelmed by its economic issues."

And, you know, with the Times culling a hundred reporters today, yeah, we'd have to agree that no one's paying attention to their "credibility" anymore.

Media ethics since the Jayson Blair bombshell [MarketWatch]

Friedman hopes Rosenbaum will "help class up the Internet, which is home to so much nonsense. (For a prime example, check out some bloggers' shameful rumor-mongering about actor Heath Ledger's death this week.)" Ha! Take that, you Mary-Kate Olsen rumor-mongering Internet hooligans at the New York Times city desk!

We do like Rosenbaum's writing, but he's hardly our favorite Internet writer. Has he ever written a sentence as dryly, subtlely hilarious as this? "As Rosenbaum has shown by tackling such unpopular subjects as Hitler, a journalist doesn't have to yell or preen or act like Mike Wallace on steroids to appear courageous." Finally, a writer willing to take on that sorely underreported "Hitler" fellow!

Ron Rosenbaum is Slate's ace in the hole [MarketWatch]

'All the news that's fit to click' at NYTimes.com [MarketWatch]

Also, hi, it's a magazine. Of course people in the "media beltway" are going to be interested in it! Particularly when everyone's got a friend who went to work at Portfolio and is worried about that friend's future, working for a hapless and megalomaniacal editor. And it's more than a little disingenuous, at this point, for Condé Nast to insist that it's so weird for people to be interested in how the magazine's doing. Their publicity campaign for the magazine was really something special.

As these things usually do, it all began with a press release almost exactly two years ago—August 24, 2005. "CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS TO LAUNCH NEW BUSINESS GROUP; JOANNE LIPMAN NAMED EDITOR-IN-CHIEF; DAVID CAREY NAMED PRESIDENT," the release trumpeted. At the time, Lipman said, "Condé Nast is the premier magazine publishing company, and I am delighted to be joining the team."

Things were quiet for a few months. Then, in March 2006, Lipman's BFF from the Journal, Amy Stevens, announced she was quitting the paper to become a deputy editor under Lipman, along with the Times's Jim Impoco. (We all know how that ended.) So, two relatively high-profile hires.

In April 2006, it was reported that David Carey was staffing up the ad-sales side of things; Carey also announced that he expected the mag to be "fully staffed," on both the business and editorial sides, by Thanksgiving of that year.

At this point, also, recall that Condé Nast was still deciding on a name, which in itself was a way to drum up press. So a story was planted in WWD on a Thursday in June 2006 announcing that the magazine was really close to deciding on a name, which would be announced the following Monday. Ah, the suspense!

As promised, on Sunday, June 4, 2006 (in time for Monday deadlines!), Condé sent out a press release announcing that, yes, the magazine had a name! It would be called Portfolio. Also, this:

Condé Nast Portfolio will feature the high caliber of writing, photography, and design that readers of Condé Nast magazines have come to expect. Early circulation efforts will capitalize on the company s newsstand authority, and will also take advantage of Conde Nast's existing relationship with millions of top management readers, as well as the database of American City Business Journals, a unit of Advance Publications.

The next day, there was more coy "we don't know what the magazine will be about" stuff in the Post, except that as we pointed out, "Maybe the tab was tuned to the wrong station? Because the Times, Women's Wear, and Mediaweek somehow manage to get some details on that editorial thrust." Buzz! Let's create some!

Finally, there's the whole thing about other publications perhaps engaging in just a touch of schadenfreude, since Portfolio made so much noise every time the mag stole a reporter or editor. Take the June 23, 2006 announcement about former Time reporter Matt Cooper becoming Portfolio's Washington editor (at the time of his hiring, he was working as a Time.com editor):

Matt Cooper has been named Washington Editor of Conde Nast Portfolio, it was announced today by Joanne Lipman, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. His appointment is effective in September.

"Matt is one of the most brilliant political minds in the business," Ms. Lipman said. "He has also been an inspiration to journalists everywhere and we are delighted to have him as part of our team."

Conde Nast's Portfolio Is Reaching A Point of No Return [Marketwatch]

• After some earlier unpleasantness, Jon has started to read Gawker again. This is probably all because of Doree Fucking Shafrir and her news stories.
  
• Gawker is witty again! This may have something to do with Managing Editor Choire Sicha's outlawing the word "twat." Every day he cuts and pastes a replacement for it, in the form of the more erudite "ladyflower."
  
• Jon "suspects" that we'll say that we hated reading this column. Jon is incredibly astute.

  But onto the good stuff! Julia, Julia, Julia!

• "A touchstone for Gawker is Julia Allison, one of the most media-savvy twentysomethings in New York. As a fixture of the cocktail-party circuit, Allison has developed an intense — if bizarre — following as Gawker's resident 'it girl.'"
  
• One editor - we promise you it wasn't us - calls her "our Paris Hilton."
  
• Gawker readers cannot get enough Julia.
  
• Gawker commenters are mean about Julia, but whatever; she knows that you're all "very frustrated people."
  
• "Allison's goal is make it in New York. How many 25-year-olds you know have two agents at the William Morris Agency?"

  You hear that, you jealous little people? She has two agents. And she's now been profiled in a Dow Jones publication pre-Murdoch. Mark our words, if there's still a nightly news program ten years from now, Julia will be anchoring it. And you know what? Good for her. We like Julia. So what explains the appeal? And the hate? Here's our personal theory:

  Ms. Allison is completely honest about her fame-seeking ways and doesn't pretend to be anyone that she's not. When you interact with the folks you do in this world, it's nice to occasionally deal with someone who has absolutely no pretense. We can see where people might feel like she's trading on — and getting famous from — her looks, rather than her talent, which is, you know, so unusual. She's also attained her level of "fame" in front of your eyes, in real time, so she's somehow easier to criticize. Also, the whole sex columnist thing... welI think it speaks to the fact that we have fucked up attitudes about women and sex — and especially women who write about sex, which means, gasp, they KNOW ABOUT IT — in this country, and that probably colors the reaction. Anyway, as mentioned before, commenters somehow fail to realize that every time they complain about Julia, and add to the pageviews she generates, they are pretty much ensuring more Julia and making her better known. And maybe that's the appeal.

  Or maybe it's just that she has a great ass. Either way.

  Gawker gets respectable — and remains humorous [Marketwatch]