The snafu happened yesterday on Happening Now: Fox showed footage of Palin at campaign rallies that happened last year while anchor Gregg Jarrett claimed that Palin is "continuing to draw huge crowds while she's promoting her brand new book," citing "pictures just coming into us" as evidence. Sean Hannity was caught pulling the identical trick last week, showing old tea party footage while talking about the huge crowds drawn to a recent anti-healthcare protest.

But Fox News doesn't take these things lightly! The Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva reports that "news executives there consider this to have been a sloppy and unnecessary error," and intend to discipline whoever is responsible. Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente told Silva that it was a "production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn't alert the control room to update the video."

OK, then. Pack up your office, everybody who works at Fox News. You're fired.

The conspiracy theory when he stepped down was that the lover/aide who outed him, Golan Cipel, a "special adviser to the governor" on $110,000, had been pushed to do so to allow a run by Jon Corzine. Which worked out spectacularly.

McGreevey, according to the Post, has now turned to God. Here's how they sum it up:

The former New Jersey love gov has gone from Turnpike rest stops to the church rostrum as part of his training to become an Episcopal priest, working each weekend at All Saints Church in Hoboken.

To be fair, if any profession understands sex scandals it's the priesthood.

UPDATE: Choire Sicha points out that this very site broke the above news, via his fair hand, two-and-a-half years ago.

One might say the hotel's guests are really getting into the spirit of the place! The Standard did everything it could to encourage its reputation as a $400 a night orgy den. Let's look back at this nice NY Post story from September 2:

Even hotel staffers and managers get in on the act, workers said, stripping down and posing provocatively in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows to draw attention to the hotel, which straddles the city's new High Line Park.

"We don't discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it," a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

Fucking in front of the assembled crowds below was actually the basis of the hotel's marketing policy, in a very thinly veiled way. Well, now we can officially dub that a "miscalculation;" last weekend, a hotel guest decided to help himself to the cleaning lady. She came in his room; he started chatting her up, asked if she had a boyfriend, asked if she thought he was handsome, then went ahead and jumped on her. (He was unsuccessful).

Could have happened anywhere, of course. But it's probably a much smaller mental leap for a horny hotel guest to decide that the cleaning lady must be interested in a quick fuck if he's staying in a place that's already been all over the tabloids for running ads saying "We'll put up with your banging if you'll put up with ours." Orgies are included with the room rate, right?

Hard to believe that not one marketing person, at any point, said, "These ads are edgy and all, but it sure would suck for us if any sex crimes happened in this place. Ya know?" Anyhow, expect the Standard Hotel to come up with some new taglines soon. It is very convenient to transportation!
[Pic: Ed Yourdon]

EPIC, a new luxury lifestyle, waterfront boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown Miami, is offering special rates for those visiting Miami to enjoy White Party Week events and festivities from November 25-30, 2009. Rates start from $119 - $249 per night, proceeds from each room booked will be donated to Care Resource.

To book, guests can visit www.epichotel.com and enter the rate code "WHITE."

Enter the rate code "WHITE." All the conspiracy theories are true.

[Thanks, M!]

On Friday morning, Goldman announced on CNBC's air that Microsoft was reducing its revenue guidance by $200,000,000. Because sophisticated investors know that means that Microsoft was making less money, they dumped the stock—volume spiked instantly from 1.3 million shares traded to 6.9 million, and the price dropped by about 1%. In the words of the network's own Mark Haines, "the Microsoft news just bombed the NASDAQ." The rapid drop on the left-hand side of this chart of Microsoft's performance Friday just before 11 a.m. coincides with Goldman's announcement.

Unfortunately, he got it precisely backward: Microsoft was cutting its operating expenses by $200,000,000. Goldman never corrected or apologized for the error, though he did offer a "clarification" shortly after and reported the guidance accurately in order to "make sure we all understand." Business Insider asked CNBC if that was it, or if an apology was in order:

Given the damage the report caused, we were surprised by this. We asked CNBC whether it planned to issue an apology. The answer was no. The network rep said, simply, "We corrected [the mistake] on air."

Frankly, we share CNBC's contempt for its audience. If you're stupid enough to spend money based on what CNBC says, you deserve to lose it. On the other hand, there's a killing to be made in CNBC fuck-up arbitrage.

Sure, you could just read any of the many other superior sites covering New York metro news, national news, political news, sports news, and/ or business news. But yo: Do you really want to miss stories like these, all in one place, with the option of a "quick read?" Sign up today.

This Craigslist ad has the same contact numbers as the press release announcing "The Fifth Annual 'The Great Gathering of Chefs.'"

looking for former gourmet magazine staff (Midtown)

we are doing a food project and need former gourmet magazine staff.
It will be a huge event involving chefs from thoughout the nation.

So, if you're a newly unemployed former Gourmet staffers, show up at the Mandarin Oriental Sunday at 3 pm and "Emeril, Daniel, Eric Ripert, Michael Psilakis, John Delucie, Jean-Georges and George Mendes, just to mention a few" will personally hand you a golden fork! And hopefully some food, as well!

Yea, so basically the WSJ has a very disheartening report saying guys are out buying beds and shit that cost tens of thousands of dollars so that they can have shit like wine coolers and TVs and safes built into the bed, cause who doesn't need that, right?

He delighted in showing her that the TV could be lowered into the footboard via remote, and he let her pick out the color and pattern of the mattress fabric. His wife declined to comment.

The silent treatment already. Oh dude you are going to be buying so much fancy shampoo forever to make up for that one. Real smooth, in your Batman bed. Awesome, yea right. Fancy beds, Jesus Christ.

This is the very first paragraph, okay:

Facing a banking collapse that was unlike anything it had seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve created $2 trillion of assets and debts during the past year to rescue the nation's financial institutions. But it did not make clear to taxpayers just where all of this money went.

And that's when journalism died.

They've already been subjected to a wild animal baby, hipsters in a mud pit, and some dark black and white shit they probably smoke opium to in France, or whatever. Now this. "Stop thinking"? I think your ad sucks. At least they got some football pictures in there.
[Copyranter]

In a note to readers today, Whicker admitted that it was a "lapse of professionalism" for him to use his Tuesday sports column as an opportunity to fill Jaycee Dugard—kidnapped, raped, impregnated, and imprisoned for the past 18 years—in on the sports action she's missed in that time. While it is technically true that "Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years," Mark Whicker now realizes that that fact does not necessarily need to be juxtaposed with a horrific child kidnapping case in order to cobble together a space-filling sports column when regular sports action is slow.

He also has now come to understand that the column's kicker—"Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard."—while pithy, may have been misinterpreted by some readers as being callous towards the ordeal of this young woman tortured unimaginably by a child rapist psycho. For this, Mark Whicker is sorry. But he would be remiss if he did not re-assert one important fact:

Jackie Autry isn't in charge of the Angels anymore, as you might have surmised by looking at the standings.

That's news that anyone can use—kidnap victim or not. Mark Whicker thanks you for your attention.

Hodgman hit the "Tweet to everyone button" when he meant to hit the "direct message to just this one person" button on a note that included his phone number. He took it down fairly quickly, but not before a handful of folks "re-Tweeted" it, meaning the number will likely be public forever. And of course, you can never really take anything down from Twitter—the search function archives it all:

When the ad broke big, WWF in the US put out a hasty condemnation; then they said it was a spec ad from a Brazilian agency and that WWF "did not authorize its production or publication." Okay, well, maybe not exactly. Ad Age reports:

After the WWF appeared to initially deny approving the ad, DDB Brasil and the WWF hammered out a statement posted in Portuguese on both groups' Brazilian websites Wednesday afternoon apologizing for the ad and attributing it to "the inexperience of some professionals on both sides, and not bad faith or disrespect toward American suffering."

Thank you for clarifying that, in Portuguese! Upfront and bold responsibility-taking. So some people did some stupid shit and messed up, no biggie. We'd move on except that now the agency and the WWF both say they have no idea who did the video version of this ad. Mmmm hmm.

Radios are old, right? Get rid of that 'Radio' anchor weighing down your valuable forward-thinking brand of the future, by all means! But for god's sake, replace it with something. Otherwise you get this:

[Our] tipster says that in-store signs will reflect the change this week, and storefront signage will begin to be reworked as "The Shack" sometime later this year.

Forget the old "Radio Shack." The new home of sophisticated electronic retailing is "The Shack."
With everyone broke, this should go over well.
[Endgadget. Pic via]

Sent: Thu Jul 30 17:14:53 2009
Subject: To whom it may concern

To whom it may concern:

On June 4, 2009, Sydney Masters, an employee of R. Couri Hay
Creative Public Relations, Inc., sent an email promoting her client Paul
Morgan, CEO of Phoenix Rising Laser that contained factually erroneous and
misleading statements about the TRIA Laser Hair Removal System. This email
was sent in error and we regret that we made these statements about TRIA.
On behalf of R. Couri Hay Creative Public Relations, Inc., Ms. Masters, Mr.
Morgan and Phoenix Rising Laser, we apologize for any confusion about the
safety, efficacy or features of the TRIA Laser Hair Removal System that we
may have caused.

The TRIA Laser Hair Removal System is the only FDA approved
laser hair removal system for at-home use. It received FDA clearance in
2008 and has never required a prescription for use. The TRIA Laser Hair
Removal System uses the same semiconductor diode laser technology used by
the professional systems and was developed by the same scientists who
invented the technology nearly two decades ago. Clinical studies
demonstrate that the TRIA Laser Hair Removal System delivers long-lasting
hair reduction and prevents the hair from growing back.

Questions about the TRIA Laser Hair Removal System should be
directed to TRIA Beauty, Inc. at triabeauty.com or 5880 W. Las Positas
Blvd., Suite 52, Pleasanton, CA 94588. For questions related to R. Couri Hay
Creative Public Relations, Inc. or to Paul Morgan, please contact Mark W.
Smith of Smith Valliere PLLC, 509 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022
(212) 755-5200.

Sincerely,

R. Couri Hay
President & CEO
R. Couri Hay Creative Public Relations, Inc.

[RCH pic via Guest of a Guest]

Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, has won a [settlement in a] libel case against the Guardian UK, which published "an article that mistakenly claimed he was a rapist." Helluva mistake! The newspaper ran an apology but Zuma felt it wasn't big enough. We're usually not sympathetic to these UK libel cases but if you "mistakenly" call the president a rapist, no correction is too large. [Which is not to say Jacob Zuma is a nice guy.]


Alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing borrowed $30 mil in 2007 to buy alt-weeklies in Chicago in DC, in one of the worst-timed media deals of the past decade not involving the Tribune Co. Now there's fear that the hedge fund that's the company's largest creditor could sell off its parts for scrap. That's what you would do if you were that hedge fund, too.


Reed Business Information is putting Publishers Weekly, Broadcasting & Cable, and several other trade magazines up for sale. And RBI CEO Tad Smith is leaving the company.


The latest idea for saving the New York Times, courtesy of Michael Arrington: the "top 10% of the writers" at the paper walk out and star their own new version of the NYT, which investors would shower with money. Hmmm. Problem—the percentage of current New York Times writers who consider themselves to be in the top 10%: 100%.

The straight news: Gatti, who had taken more blows to the head than any human ever should, was vacationing in Brazil with his wife, Amanda Carine Barbosa Rodrigues. Their relationship was known to be violent. It did not end well. Cops say she strangled Gatti to death with her purse strap, which was found covered in his blood. Her alibi was not so great:

Rodrigues could not explain how she had spent nearly 10hours in the room without noticing that Gatti was dead, authorities said.

Uh huh. The final indignity: not only did Perez Hilton (a boxer himself!) run the wrong guy's picture as Gatti to memorialize him—he ran a picture of Alfonso Gomez, a guy who beat Gatti. Ouch. Perez's heartfelt words upon learning of Gatti's passing: "Major bummer!"

We know that Arturo's family appreciates that, Perez. For future reference, though, here's another photo from the very same set of Getty pictures from the Gatti-Gomez fight that you pulled your wrong photo from. The secret to identifying which one is Gatti: He's the one in the "GATTI" trunks. Don't say we never gave you any worthwhile tips! [NYDN, True/Slant. Fight pic: Getty]

Okay, GQ. Just take GQ instead. Wouldn't that have made more sense to give GQ in the first place? Anyhow we hope this works, cause if GQ goes down you're all getting Foreign Policy.