Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I'd try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, "This is the end." I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week.

...When I look back on it, I wish I had had more quality time with my children. I remember once taking the two boys on a three- or four-day hike around Aspen Mountain. I remember every minute of it, and they remember every minute of it. I should have done more of that sort of thing.

...My nephew just got back from China. He's been there for two years on a teaching program, teaching English to poor Chinese kids in agricultural areas in the southeast. And I said, "How poor are they? Are they really on only half a bowl of rice a day?" And he said yes. He said that perhaps on holidays or the Chinese New Year, they'll get a ration of meat. He said there are lots of areas like that.

You've got tens of millions of people like that. And then you've also got great economic expansion in these countries, which is causing a huge demand for energy and for food. When people come off the land and go work in a sweatshop and get ten dollars a day or something, the first thing they want is a bit of protein. And that's why, when you go to the supermarket, you're paying 30 percent more for milk or a burger or cheese than you were a year ago.

Rupert Murdoch implicitly criticizing China over human rights violations? Revealing emotional weakness? Admitting he consorts with, and emotionally bonds with, children? It's too much. Next thing you know Bill O'Reilly will be defending a Democratic presidential candidate from a right-wing smear campaign.

[Esquire]

All right, he’s not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he’s retreated a bit). And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins.

Other hints that Murdoch is still an unpolished, rough-and-tumble media mogul: He is a terrible mumbler, has alienated many of his children from his business and likes to personally report dirt on his foes (Wolff observers him trying to nail down gossip about a Hillary Clinton adviser).

But is no longer the unwavering backer of Fox News that he once was. After begging an audience with Barack Obama, Wolff writes, Murdoch arranged a "truce" with the Democratic presidential candidate and Fox News. Also, he's no fan of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly:

Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

And Murdoch would "really like to own" that temple of liberal New York respectability, the Times:

Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never … And then there’s the opprobrium of public opinion.

But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.

Given his history with the Journal, it would be a mistake to write off Murdoch's ambitions for the financially-troubled Times. And given his savvy, it would also be a mistake to assume the mogul walked through his acquisition fantasy with a media reporter for any reason other than to broadcast it to the entire world, in particular the Sulzberger family, whose dividend payouts are crippling the newspaper they supposedly would never relinquish.

[Vanity Fair]

It appears that Violet Blue's works were systematically removed from Boing Boing's archives. This was no mistake. So while BB would seem to be a great symbol of the blog revolution—that dreamy ideal of everyone in the world freely expressing themselves to all, with no corporate filter—they're also just another in an endless line of quirky media startups that found success, and then started acting just like the big establishment players to which they were once opposed. It's only natural. Like growing up and deciding that you'd rather work a nine-to-five than be a dirty Phish-following hippie, media outlets take on the trappings and responsibilities of success and find themselves writing rules and editing severely where once they would congratulate themselves on being outrageous.

This effect is more exaggerated in the media world than elsewhere. There are very few media outlets that will happily and openly stand up for the same scrutiny they routinely apply to others. That's because intense public scrutiny is a pain in the ass! Duh. It's also because people who go into the media tend to have an elevated level of narcissism, combined with a thin skin. We all want to be loved and adored, and fear rejection. Love me! Only me! I'm special!

I was a low-level "media reporter" for a couple years after covering several other beats, and I invariably found that, as a group, media people are the most insanely sensitive sources to deal with. Politicians love to talk—they're equally narcissistic, but with far thicker skins. Corporate people tend to have a cold, well-honed, and practical approach to being covered. But many reporters, editors, and media executives are guarded in interviews, reluctant to answer basic questions, and prone to relentless "follow-ups" with you to make absolutely sure they're quoted the way they want to be.

My theory was always that media people assume the rest of the media are like them. If they're a lazy hack, they're terrified of placing their reputation in the hands of another reporter, who they assume is also a lazy hack. If they're unscrupulous, they assume you are too. And if they're used to bending the rules—well, they better check on those quotes with you one more time.

Maybe a third of media people fall into this group. The rest are fine. And you know who the best of all are, as sources? Media reporters! They feel your pain. And hey, at least we're not in England, where newspaper editors routinely sue each other for libel. Christ.

Before you know it, Boing Boing will have lawyers, offices, corporate policies, a softball team, and everything. Just like Gawker Media and other evil corporations! In Autumn of the Moguls, Michael Wolff summed this whole phenomenon up pretty accurately:

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

1. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, by Tom King

The Gist: A gay Polish-Ukrainian Jew from Borough Park moves to Hollywood and enters the mail room at the William Morris Agency. After forging a letter suggesting he had a college degree when in fact he did not, Geffen rises through the ranks to become an agent, then leaves WMA and founds Asylum Records and produces albums by Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Asylum is sold to Warner Communications, and Geffen becomes Vice Chairman of Warner film studios. He then retires and un-retires after a minor but erroneous health scare, founds Geffen Records, courts John Lennon and Yoko Ono (see below), produces Cats, Risky Business (see below), co-founds Dreamworks SKG, produces Saving Private Ryan, backs Bill Clinton, gives lots of money to AIDS research, falls out with Bill Clinton over one of the sleazeballs he didn't pardon, and now backs Barack Obama. Along the way Geffen throws many temper tantrums and raises his voice to the point where even Steven Spielberg asks him politely to lower it. He also shows a remarkable ability for betraying the confidences of good friends and business associates in order to charm potential clients he’s just met. The night Lennon was shot, Geffen was in bed with a male prostitute and loves to boast about it.

The Pull-Quote: “’What about my music?’ [Yoko Ono] asked. ‘Well, I’ve never heard any of your records.’ ‘Really,’ Ono said. ‘That doesn’t sound like a very good reason for me to make a deal with you.’ ‘I’m a big fan of John’s, and I have a great deal of respect for the two of you, and we do a very good job. We’re a good record company.’ ‘What do you mean you’re a good record company?’ Ono fired back. ‘You haven’t put out a record yet!’”

The Takeaway: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Be enlightened and progressive on your own time, but cunning and ruthless on corporate time. Respect for others’ privacy won't make you rich and powerful. Endear yourself to those you want to impress by gossiping about people you know behind their backs. It'll smack of such poor judgment that would-be clients will assume you're either crazy or brilliant, and guess what? You are.

2. Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power, by Judy Bachrach

The Gist: Gifted writer Tina Brown makes her fellow students feel small at Oxford, dates a host of famous men (including Auberon Waugh, who washes frantically after sex, Martin Amis, whom she adores, and Dudley Moore, whom she does not), deflects charges of arrivisme, and becomes editor of UK tabloid Tatler at age 25. She meets Harold Evans, then married and famously editing the The Times of London and The Sunday Times, which names her Most Promising Female Journalist. Brown and Evans marry in 1981, then move to New York three years later, whereupon Brown revives the moribund Vanity Fair by turning it into the must-read glossy on celebrity doings and the leisure class. She hires true crime reporter Dominick Dunne, photographer Helmut Newton and inaugurates a new wave of magazine journalism, operating under the assumption that "intellectuals should be read and not seen." Meanwhile, Tina and Harry are now East Coast socialites whose fiercely guarded life together aspires to shape headlines, not become them. (Their best friend is British libel law.) Brown takes over The New Yorker in 1992 and remakes that antiquated smart sheet, too, acquiring Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Lane and David Remnick, who later replaces her as editor-in-chief. On a manuscript submitted by Yiddish Nobel laureate, Brown writes, "Beef it up, Singer," which more or less encapsulates her style of feared-but-respected-or-hated tenure. She founds Talk magazine in 1999, which folds after just two years, an over-sensationalized failure from which this unauthorized biography derives all of its rise-and-fall schadenfraude. (Bachrach is a contributing editor at the new VF, edited by Brown’s archnemesis Graydon Carter.)

The Pull-Quote: "We live in a time when infamy sells.... There is no honor, no reticence, no loyalty." Spoken by Maureen Dowd on Brown's New Yorker reign, and quoted by author to make a clichéd point.

The Takeaway: Develop a nose for future A-listers. Sleep with as many as you can all the while adopting an “amused” air about them. Overpaying the talent means you can bully them into submission, so don't be cowed by easily tossed around phrases like "national institution" or "greatest living writer." Fuck 'em if they can't take a kill-fee. Oh, and marry old men.

3. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young

The Gist: Son of highbrow sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term "meritocracy," Toby Young devotes his life to testing how much strain that already weakened concept can take. He writes for the British Times, gets fired from the British Times. He founds celebrated Modern Review, which traffics in "low culture for highbrows," then shuts it down, much to the dismay of everyone else involved. Young moves to New York in the early 90's, gets hired by Graydon Carter as a contributing editor (read: sinecurist) at Vanity Fair, then proceeds overlong tenure as a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Graydon Carter’s shoe (this is G.C.’s description of him, not ours). Young cracks dud jokes to celebrities, refers to doormen who won't let him into parties he'd end up hating anyway as "clipboard Nazis," does blow while on assignment, asks Nathan Lane if he's gay, gets fired from Vanity Fair. Now back in London (this isn't in the book), Young edits The Spectator, a conservative weekly, and boasts of his "negative charisma," probably as a way to boost paperback sales. HTLFAAP, much like Young himself, has been up and down the wicket of sadomasochistic success. A film adaptation is said to be in post-production, starring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst.

The Pull-Quote: “Cool Britannia was a cry of independence, a howl of protest against the all-enveloping cultural hegemony of the United States, yet, paradoxically, it didn’t really mean anything—it hadn’t really happened—until it was noticed by the American media. That explained the schizophrenic attitude of people like Damien Hirst, Keith Allen and Alex James: they wanted to assert their indifference to the attentions of glossy, New York magazines, and yet they wanted to be photographed striking this insouciant pose in Vanity Fair. Like rebellious schoolchildren, their protest wouldn’t have counted unless it was registered by the authorities. Unfortunately, in this scenario I was cast as the toothless substitute teacher.”

The Takeaway: The memoir is a good object lesson in what not to do if you want to hang onto a job or a masthead listing, or cast the impression that deep down you really had high expectations for the world of glamour-besotted New York media. Also, it pays to be obnoxious in a way that only you find ironic.

4. Spy: The Funny Years, by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

The Gist: In 1986, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen found the future of piss-taking journalism in the form of Spy magazine. Épater le bourgeoisie never had it so good, or so the editors – now all dressed up and fixtures of the very culture they once lampooned – are the first ones to remind you. Spy pioneers satire as a clever agglomeration of facts, and specializes in the infographic, the listicle (just like this one!) and the blurb cloud. It attempts to decipher just who, exactly, is on the New Yorker’s indecipherable masthead. It follows Anthony Haden-Guest into the dank reaches of his own nightlife. It refines hatred of Donald Trump into an art form. Features include the Liz Smith Tote Board, Separated at Birth, and Logrolling in Our Time, without which everything from The Onion to Conan O’Brien’s pre-interview fooling would be unimaginable. The self-conscious prose style is a cocktail of H.L. Mencken, A.J. Liebling and Wolcott Gibbs, and its been swigged by every glossy editor in search of a readership ever since. Once G.C. leaves, it all goes to shit. Like Studio 54, the new owners can’t make it work, ergo the justified hubris of the book’s title.

The Pull-Quote: “How easy is it to steal the sour cream?” – in a chart surveying the various Manhattan cafeteria chains.

The Gist: You need only ask yourself if you read Radar to determine whether there’s any pedagogic value to be mined from Spy.

5. Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

The Gist: Nameless 24 year-old fact-checker for elite New York glossy (a thinly veiled New Yorker) moonlights as an aspiring novelist, or wants us to believe he moonlights as that while he’s busy Hoovering coke by the suitcaseful and partying through the vertiginous 80’s club scene with a yuppie twat called Tad Allagash. Tad calls the narrator, who writes annoyingly in the second person, “Coach.” His mother has recently passed away, so we’re shin-kicked into wondering if a life of artifice and glitz is simply an emollient for real pain. Behind the hatred there lies a plundering desire for love. Or something.

The Pull-Quote: “Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you clean up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

The Takeaway: Once Tina Brown takes over Coach’s magazine, he’s fired. Sort your soul out before you move to the metropolis of infinite distractions, otherwise you, too, will wind up a shiftless anonymity with withdrawal symptoms. (Your apartment can still be a mess, however.)

6. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

The Gist: Recent Brown graduate Andrea Sacks wants to write for the New Yorker (sigh) and blankets the media world with her resume hoping to get a dues-paying job somewhere that will eventually allow her to become Larissa MacFarquhar. Whoops. She gets hired by fashion bible Runway’s bitch supreme Miranda Priestly (Anna Wintour, not even thinly veiled) as her junior personal assistant. Next thing Andrea knows, she’s chasing down lattes at Starbucks and sirloins at Smith and Wollensky instead of learning about ledes and nut grafs. Not what she had in mind but she loves the clothes and even develops a knack for being a second-string slave to a subhuman narcissist. Unlike in the film, Andrea doesn’t quit – she gets fired for saying “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.” Ballsy, sure, but she does get to keep some of the Dolce and even snags an interview for a real writing position at another magazine in the same building. (N.B. Author Weisberger was Wintour’s personal assistant, so this novel is a bildungsroman, which is a word Andrea learned at Brown but seldom got to use after graduation.)

The Pull-Quote: “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.”

The Takeaway: How many bright young girls have come to New York hoping to fill these Cinderella slippers, only to discover that not only is Wintour not hiring, but she’s honed her filter for confessional opportunists more interested in publishing advances than making sure her Apple Fritter is extra flaky. If you want to be a bona fide reporter, save yourself the aggro and dashed hopes and apply for an internship at the New York Sun your junior year. Also, while it’s true that some ball-breaking editors respond well to self-assertiveness, telling your boss “Fuck you” isn’t the wisest career decision.

7. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, by John Gregory Dunne

The Gist: The story of Dunne and wife Joan Didion's attempt to transform the life of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch, who died in a car wreck after more or less proving on air in 1983, during a broadcast of NBC News Digest, that she was a drug addict. Instead of a sadder version of Network, the screenplay transforms into the Disneyfied Up Close and Personal, which makes absolutely no mention of Savitch and which even Robert Redford doesn't remember filming.

The Pull-Quote: “The purpose of such a meet-and-greet is to allow the executive to size up the supplicant. [Disney studio chairman Jeffrey] Katzenberg had not read Golden Girl, but he was aware of the less savory details of Jessica Savitch’s life. He liked the ugly-duckling idea; it was the kind of narrative he wanted, and he was also responsive to the television background against which it would be played. He did have reservations, and here I quote Joan’s notes of that first meeting: ‘Wants to know what is going to happen in this picture that will make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something and good about themselves.’”

The Takeaway: Dunne is witty and disarming, especially when he quotes Jack Warner's definition of screenwriters: "schmucks with Underwoods." Interestingly, the "monster" in question is not the industry or any particular studio executive, but rather the money that governs all, including Dunne.

8. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, by Julia Phillips

The Gist: Scandal-sponge Jewish producer reveals the vast corruption, drugs and sexual indiscretions that motor the movie industry. Phillips gets fired by Steven Spielberg on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, accuses Goldie Hawn of body odor, and, on the night she becomes the first woman to win a "Best Picture" Oscar for The Sting, downs three valiums, one upper, one and a half drinks, two joints and a dash of cocaine. The book is a sprayfire indictment of practically everyone Phillips ever met in Hollywood, and it got her banned from Morton's.

The Pull-Quote: "They were really a rogues' gallery of nerds. Marty [Scorsese] was tiny and asthmatic, Steven [Spielberg] had the soft, flabby look of a typical Twinkies kid, and Brian [De Palma] never took his safari jacket off."

The Takeaway: Sour grapes ferment the best, although it's not as if anyone still believes in some West Coast Arcadia where dazzling moving pictures are made. Still, you'll hardly do better for the brutally honest story of a show biz prodigy that had to burn everything before she flamed out.

9. Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media, by Michael Wolff

The Gist: Following up on Burn-Rate (1998), which was about Wolff’s bust foray into the world of online startups, this is the nasty-minded sequel by the former New York media writer who wants badly to be the next Murdoch but can’t and decides to just insult everybody he ever envied instead—especially Fox News President Roger Ailes. Most of the stuff in here consists of Wolff's recycled columns, but it's all in one place and no true mogul ever wasted his time searching through web archives. Harvey Weinstein is obese and grotesque. The media business is "collapsing” like communism. Some of Wolff's axioms should be true even if they aren’t: “The larger and higher-profile the company, the bigger the nutcase who runs it.”

The Pull-Quote: “This was the meta thing. Meta gave both irony and gravitas to what we did. The delicious incongruity between our superficiality and our importance. The joie de vivre of self-referentialism. The stupendous, intoxicating power of being able to create the world we lived in."

Bonus Pull-Quote: “So, as I arrived for my speech, I was thinking of my relationship to the absent but always present [Fox News head Roger] Ailes. He was the greatest, but the Antichrist too.”

The Takeaway: Still fun. Like Young’s book, AOTM is a serviceable monument to failure dressed up as critical thinking. Though most of the wisdom you could just as easily cull by lunching at Michael's. Wolff went on to try and match-make the sale of his old haunt New York (he's now at Vanity Fair) to Mort Zuckerman, who in the event lost out to hedge fund wizard Bruce Wasserstein. That means more meanness is forthcoming in what promises to be the Dance to the Music of Time of inferiority complexes.

Radar reports Tina Brown, 55-year-old former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, is putting together a news "aggregator" with backing from another old media legend, a former studio boss IAC's Barry Diller. The site is to be run by Edward Felsenthal, who was one of the first people forced out when Marcus Brauchli took over the Wall Street Journal and found temporary refuge with his former patron at Joanne Lipman's Portfolio.

The former queen of buzz is presumably inspired by her friend, Arianna Huffington, who's built a forum for middle-aged liberal celebrities to sound off against George Bush and promote their often tedious causes. The Huffington Post, casting for an acquiror while its pre-election traffic holds, has put out word that it's now worth $200m.

But if the half-baked venture ever gets off the ground, Brown will also compete against one of her most irritating critics, Michael Wolff, chronicler of the media industry in his columns for New York Magazine and now Vanity Fair. Wolff is a partner in yet another news aggregator, Newser. (It's not doing nearly as badly as I'd expected!) In an email response to Gawker, he gave a typically caustic evaluation of Tina Brown's chances, and Barry Diller's credibility as a backer.

"I have great admiration for Tina and Barry, but the last time I looked Tina was still having trouble getting her email, and Barry...well I think he has a few things to resolve before he puts his mind to the online news business." Zing!

Wolff, author of one of the greatest chronicles of business failure, Burn Rate, writes: "And he's a man who would be trusted, maybe the man who would be most trusted, by the Times core constituency, the moderate-liberal establishment, to be a proper steward — he, by himself, might bring value to the Times."

The proposal makes superficial sense. Bloomberg, whose wealth is estimated at $11.5bn by Forbes, can afford the New York Times, which has a market capitalization of a mere $2.8bn. He does indeed have political views that mesh with those of the Times' defenders, as Wolff says. And the mayor shows no sign of political ambition after the expiry of his term; ownership of the New York Times would provide a platform, without the stress of national office, or the boredom of Albany.

But the idea that Bloomberg can provide a nurturing environment for great journalism is, despite the mayor's success in building New York's biggest private information company, entirely unproven. Bloomberg LP is of course primarily a financial information business, providing terminals and data to traders in bonds and other financial markets. The company's wire service arm is an adjunct, and a clumsily managed one at that.

To be sure, Bloomberg would never be so crass as to impose his mediocre editorial management on a newspaper as reputed as the Times. But the newspaper's reporters, and supporters, ought to wonder a little more about a proprietor who has allowed petty tyrants like this to rule over an unhappy newsroom for more than a decade. There's only one consolation: at least the meetings are lively. In case you haven't already heard it, here's audio of Bloomberg's pet editor, ghost writer of his autobiography, ranting at disobedient reporters.

Have you ever had anybody leave and not come back? Oh, just one, [former New York magazine columnist, current Vanity Fair writer] Michael Wolff. Remember the writer Michael Wolff?

Uh. Barely. [Laughs.]
One time, he called extremely late, and his table was already sat, because he was at frequently at table five. Loreal said, "I'm awfully sorry, you're table is already sat, but I can give you another table. And he said that that was it, and he never came back.

I don't understand what you're saying. His table was sat?
Sat, in other words, there were already people on it. It already had people there ...

Well, that's ridiculous.
But of course it is! After he stormed off, he started calling on the phone, demanding to know who decided that he should be evicted from his regular table. He kept on screaming, "Tell me who did this. I want names." It was a little sad, really.

Let's start with that rascal king of the New Yorker David Remnick, who seems to know a thing or two about media empires. He has a certain industry reputation to uphold, so it's no surprise to see him assuaging the fears of the children at Princeton: magazines are doing just fine! Totally fine! Seriously! Too bad the kids were too busy looking for ways to sell their voting rights on eBay to believe this bullshit.

(While we're here, am I allowed a non sequitur Tina Brown reference? Tina told the totally-not-made-up-newspaper the Indian Express that The New Yorker needs a redesign. Burn, Remnick, burn!)

Meanwhile, Newser daddy Michael Wolff phoned in his Vanity Fair column this month, hoping that someone would blurb it with trite usage of the word "eviscerating." Like this: Michael Wolff's eviscerating critique of cable companies, record labels, and your mama is enough to leave you with a cold sweaty feeling of media desperation. You're welcome, Michael, consider this an early Festivus present!

Breaking: Tom Brokaw has another book to promote. It's called Boom! Voices of the Sixties. Everyone hold your breath and hope he says something profound by mixing equal bits of nostalgia and futurism. Done: "Ten years from now, will [the Washington Post] be here?' I don't know. Probably ... if you would do a hardcore analysis - probably not. It'll be probably digital 10 years from now." He probably meant it too, probably.

Meanwhile, someone over on 41st Street seemed to cut a virtual ribbon and declare that the new Times building is officially open for business. In an also-totally-not-made-up company video called "The Integrated Newsroom," Digital Editor Jim Roberts exclaims, "Here we have web producers sitting right next [not really my emphasis] to the print news desk." Quickly thereafter, Deputy Editor Jon Landman extols the virtues of shared cubicles: "When something pops into your head, you can very easily assemble the people to do it. When you were five blocks apart, you couldn't do that." Someone needs to show NYT editors this amazing new technology called IM.

And finally, Amazon announced Kindle, its digital portable media reader this week. While Jeff Bezos would tell Charlie Rose that the book reader's name was a reference to igniting the imagination, one couldn't help suspect he was actually invoking the visions of fascism found in Fahrenheit 451. We didn't start the fire. It's been burning since the world's been turning...CUT!

Michael Wolff was talking to lefty media blogger Rory O'Connor at the bar.

We asked him if he'd been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement for Newser.

He laughed. "Never! No NDAs, never," he said. "That's the rule of the road."

So there might very well be a tell-all in his future. Rory laughed and said, "It's inevitable!"

Wolff agreed: "Inevitable."

"It could be called, "I can't believe those idiots gave me money to do it all again!" Rory said.

We asked Wolff about the algorithm that is Newser's kind of main claim to fame. Users can move an indicator on a continuum that runs from hard to soft news. "I have no idea how it works," Wolff said. "The tech guys explained it to me but I zoned out halfway through. Go ask that guy," he said pointing into a web of white-haired bespectacled men. "The one with white hair and the glasses."

Later, Caroline Miller was lingering by the door, ready to escape. Man, why didn't she get an NDA out of Wolff? "Because I'm feckless!" she said. Nice.

"Michael doesn't even have a contract," she said. "This whole thing is all on a handshake."

So what exactly does Wolff do for Newser? Here's what he does not do: "He's not allowed to talk to anyone on the inside," Miller said. "He's not allowed to manage anybody. What he discovered a long time ago about himself is that he likes to fire people. He has the ideas but I make them happen."

So he has ideas. And did he bring the money? No. "It's all Pat's money anyway!" That would be Patrick Spain, the CEO of HighBeam and soon to be the main character of a really harsh book about how the internet sucks.

I'm not atoning for SHIT.

All I wish for this last year gone by is that I'd done more smoking, fucking and reading of science fiction books. And I did a *lot* of two of those three. (Seriously, there's not a Winston Light or a Roger Zelazny that I haven't touched this year. And considering Zelazny, who is by far and away one of the most absolutely bestest fiction writers of our time, died of cancer at 58, that's probably not a great combination.)

Yup, that's it. I guess I'm sorry I wasn't ruder about the incredible hubris of Michael Wolff.

God, why is he such a little slumbitch?

And I wish I'd bought my soon-to-be-former coworker Balk a few more stiff drinks, but I'll get right on that amends first thing next week.

The Newsier Newser [Paid Content]

Crazy for Rudy [VF]

On several occasions, we almost got involved. Aside from her being with my best friend, I sensed, even then, that it was not a good idea to be on the descriptive end of her running commentary (from Judith, I know things about the intimate behavior of other men—when they cried, how they begged, where they like to insert sharp objects—that may have altered my fundamental view of humanity). Years later, she told The Washington Post that I was gay, that I had a thing for her college boyfriend. I got off easy.

Update: We knew the whole "I knew her when she was just Judy" thing sounded familiar. A sharp-eyed tipster reminds us that Michael has tilled this barren patch before, in New York. Sigh.

The Trouble With Judith Regan [VF]

Earlier: Vanessa Grigoriadis's Sliding Doors Moment

Carl Icahn.

the individual in question is obvs David Geffen. See his recent media coverage regarding possible interest in buying LAT from Chandler family. plus that guy is ripped.

Sounds like Ron Perelman. "appropriately larger-than-life character, remarkably fit" - Perelman is certainly larger-than-life, and this pic from 2004 shows that he's pretty damn fit (at least was then), especially for someone who was 61-years old at the time. "He's probably the leading expert in buying businesses he knows nothing about." - Revlon, Marvel Entertainment, Panavision, Coleman, M&F Worldwide Corp., etc., etc., etc., the list goes on, but the man makes money, so who cares if he knows the business? Cuban is not big on going off-the-record, and he conducts virtually all of his media correspondence via email. He's not a serial acquirer either, and the businesses he's involved now he either started or knows something about. The U.S. newspaper business is probably the last thing Richard Branson cares about. The industry doesn't fit his agenda. Diller knows enough about the media business to know that he doesn't want to be in the newspaper business. At least he should. That's my guess. Btw, where does Michael Wolff live? In New York still? He writes that he "was invited the other day to stop in for an off-the-record visit," so it sounds like someone local if he's living/working out of NYC (Perelman is based here, of course).

What the hell? Cuban is kind-of a lard ass. Larry Ellison seems dangerously obvious here?

Earlier: Michael Wolff's Mystery Billionaire: Your Guesses

Can't think of many "remarkably fit" billionaires, as they're usually fairly doughy, what with all the life essence they ingest to keep their bitter bodies working, Skeksis-style ...Could it be [Richard] Branson?

I find it difficult to believe he'd invite someone as douchey as Wolff to chat, but maybe that just means he's serious. I say Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban, December issue of Esquire: "I'd get into places where people are so afraid right now that the economics dominate the common sense. I'd get into a business like newspapers - local newspapers. Newspapers are a perfect example of how economics dominate common sense. Contrary to popular belief, newspapers aren't dying. Newspapers are making tons of money."

What about Mark Cuban? ... He is sort of fit, has a very large character, and bought the Dallas Mavericks (a business he knew nothing about) after he sold broadcast.com.

Wait...is nobody else going with Diller? Wolff in talks with IAC, long history with one another, etc. Seems pretty obvious to me. No?

Earlier: Blind Item Guessing Game: Michael Wolff's Mystery Billionaire

... this billionaire was interested ... in Newsday and The Boston Globe and the L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal ...

... appropriately larger-than-life character, remarkably fit ...

... vast office filled with knickknacks and press coverage and separate seating areas ...

... he knew nothing whatsoever about the newspaper business, or news. Zip. Nada.

"He's probably the leading expert in buying businesses he knows nothing about."

Billionaires and Broadsheets [VF via FishBowlNY]

Earlier: Why Rich Guys Buy Into Media

An excerpt from Burn Rate ran in 1998 account in Wired; here we see Wolff's first meeting with Patricof when the latter's firm invested in the nascent Wolff New Media:

From a distance, there was something appealing about Patricof's eccentricities and cragginess (and crankiness), his rumpled suits (although I suspected those suits were as costly as a car), his fulminating, his deep, penetrating scowls. If the alternative was California and its techno-VCs (homogenized sharpies who spoke the language of engineers), then New York and its worldly, blue-chip financiers, whose perspective went back a tad longer than the advent of personal computers, looked pretty good to me.

Except when you got up close. Then, the senior partner resembled a mental patient.

35 Years [NYM]
Bonfire of the Securities [Wired]

IWM: New York magazine just ran a cover story on "The Blog" —

Wolff: I never read New York magazine. I never let people talk to me about New York magazine. It does not exist in my universe.

IWM: I'm guessing this is because you made a run at buying the magazine that didn't work out.

Wolff: Exactly. It no longer, as I say, exists in my world. It broke my heart. My family is banned from reading it or mentioning it.

IWM: Would you ever consider buying any other magazines?

Wolff: No.

IWM: How about Radar magazine, which is sort of —

Wolff: No.

Alternative universes are delightful.

Michael Wolff [I Want Media via Romenesko]