The Observer is, at heart, a small little paper written by very smart people. It's not really the ideal pawn in a game of New York media mogul social climbing. Which will not stop Jared Kushner and his new bride from using it for that purpose!

Ivanka (who declined to give Crain's an interview for their story, although her dad did) twitted conspiratorially, "Do you think it's because of late Jared's new paper, The Commercial Observer, has stolen the last of Crains' few remaining advertisers?" Somehow we doubt that is the case! The story is mostly a pedestrian and factual recounting of the last few years of Kushner's and Trump's uniformly laughable rise to DIZZYING HEIGHTS of business moguldom or something, despite the fact that both of them are silver spoon kids with no discernible talent for actually making money, apart from slapping the "Trump" brand on various shitty baubles. Jared is actually astoundingly good at losing money, so far.

What Ivanka calls "misinformed and pointless" is actually just a roundup of the various inanities and business failures she and Jared have racked up in the recent past. The worrying thing here is not that Ivanka (who, her dad says, "loves the public, she loves to be out there") is upset; it's that she and her husband seem to be totally enveloping the New York Observer in the Trump Brand. Ivanka's book ads were just the beginning. The fact that it's now impossible to discuss one of New York's most literary weeklies without being one degree of separation from discussing Donald Trump does not portend a happy future.

And get off Twitter, Ivanka. That will be one million dollars.
[Pic via]

Media junkies everywhere, young and old, this is crack-like goodness. Kaplan's supposed to be on the show to talk about a new compilation book from the New York Observer, but that's passed over pretty quickly for the good stuff. There's even a clip spliced in of former New York editor Clay Felker, who died last year, discussing what makes a great editor. Some of the more compelling lines:

• Sadly, his only swipe at the New York Observer's (Michael Corleone-esque) owner Jared Kushner was a passive-aggressive pawing: "(Jared's positioning it) a little bit different than where I live." Classy, but like Jared, I wanted more blood.
  
  
• On his departure: "I thought I had driven the car as far as it could go."
  
  
• "I have an evangelical mission to save the part of the print media that I love. Which is, to me, sophisticated, arcane, a little bit of a throwback to the 20s, but also a 21st century medium that the internet was a direct assault on."
  
  
• "All my mean friends on the internet say you can't put the genie back in the bottle..."
  
  
• "Tina (Brown) is a lot stronger than I am."
  
  
• "(The best New York editors) come from outside and bang on the door to try to understand it. The really great ones are desperate to understand New York City and are desperate to say what they don't know."
  
  
• On how long it takes him to spot a great reporter: "About a day."
  
  
• "I don't know what's going to happen. I have close friends who work in various (what I like to think of) as information supermarkets. Aggregation has undermined the American news process...It separates the news item from the news story. It's (by definition) a shallow landscape."

Interestingly enough, Kaplan at one point talks about the future of journalism returning to a pay model with a new medium—like, say, an Apple Tablet—that could shut out the broad sheet altogether and create a narrow outlet through which people would have to pay for something like, say, the New York Times (who are more or less cozying up with Apple in anticipation of the Tablet's 'impending' release).

I'd rather leave the futurism to someone else, but this kind of thinking seems a little reckless. Sure, the New York Times is pretty, and has great content, but isn't the information at the heart of every New York Times article—gathering it, compiling it, fact-checking and editing it—where a lot of the money is? And you can't charge people for information. A New York Times exclusive is only an exclusive for the minute or two before someone else has posted their Google-landgrab headline reporting on the New York Times' reporting.

Nevertheless! Kaplan's maybe-changing old-school methodology and the quality he put into his work is going to be interesting to watch as he tries to move whatever products he continues to move forward with as time goes on, which is to say nothing of whatever direction the New York Observer's going to take as well.

The 28-year-old publisher and the 32-year-old reporter and author of Too Big to Fail talked as recently as last month about the top editor job at the Observer, Gabriel Sherman reports. But Sorkin demurred, and some Observer staffers speculate that talks may have stalled because Sorkin wanted an equity stake in the paper. Kushner settled on former Portfolio editor Kyle Pope, who must be feeling really good right about now, yesterday.

Oddly and without elaboration, Sherman mentions that one reason Sorkin might not have been interested was his "unusual incentive arrangements with the Times." Huh? What's that all about, then?

Another reason Sorkin might not have taken the job is that he would no longer be able to call New York Times editors to ask them for access to documents that he would later use as "source documents" in his book.

While we're on the subject of the Observer, the paper is flogging an Observer Living panel—that would be Kushner's real estate events venture—later this month featuring none other than Ivanka Trump. Come meet the publisher's wife! Placed next to a story on the hiring of Pope, it's starting to look like the New York Observer is a newspaper about the New York Observer.

Update: Presented without comment, this quote from Kushner, reported in a new book about the Observer and flagged by the Awl:

One time there was a reporter working somewhere else, whose stuff I liked, and I said, 'Peter, we should look at hiring him.' And Peter said, 'I would, but he violates the one principle I have: Against the hiring of assholes.'

Another update: A source in the Observer camp objected to our original headline that said Sorkin was Kushner's "first choice" for the gig. Sorkin, this person says, was one of three finalists for the salmon paper's top job along with Pope and Dan Colaruso, a former business editor at the New York Post who along with Pope also worked at Portfolio as its web editor and did a brief stint as the managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider after Condé Nast shuttered the business magazine.

In making the announcement, Observer owner and publisher Jared Kushner said, "Kyle is an outstanding journalist - an accomplished reporter and editor - who also possesses an intimate knowledge of the media business. We're looking forward to his leadership in helping to shape and sharpen our product as we continue to drive this newspaper forward. We're thrilled to have him on board."

He starts next week and he'll have his work cut out for him.
[NYO]

Chris Rovzar (who's been on fire with the media stories this week) says that McGeveran might have quit over a takedown of the Newark Star-Ledger that Kushner insisted be more vicious. The Star-Ledger, remember, reported, with some relish, the scandal that put Jared's dad Charles behind bars five years ago. NY Mag also point out that the newspaper is a competitor to Kushner's website PolitickerNJ.com.

Last month this piece appeared; a musing on the woes of journalism state-wide, that featured the Star-Ledger. Sources told Rovzar that "what came back was not satisfactory to Jared," who wanted more blood. The ethics conflict over a publisher out for revenge added to McGeveran's woes as an interim editor who had to cut staff while his boss interviewed for his replacement. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," another co-worker added.

Kushner's reps did not comment, but McGeveran denied the story. You can't help but feel sorry for the guy. Maybe he'll land a cushy job as part of the Wall Street Journal's new New York section, outed today in the Times. For which the paper is apparently making subtle headhunting enquiries to journalists.

The NYO reports that McGeveran, a popular boss, is leaving "to start a new business venture." Not so surprising. Consider the position McGeveran walked into: Forced to take over for a legend, then saddled with the insulting "interim editor" title, and immediately handed the task of firing a huge percentage of his editorial employees. Not fun.

What's left now? Jared Kushner, the 28-year-old New Jersey real estate scion (and Ivanka Trump's new husband) who purchased the weekly in 2006. It's his paper from top to bottom now. There are no (powerful) dissenters left. Whatever happens to the Observer from here on out, the blame rests squarely on Kushner's shoulders. He starts his reign by mourning McGeveran with a perfunctory statement from a flack.

In his farewell email, McGeveran urged his staff: "Don't ever think that you missed the golden era of the paper." Well. The golden era of the paper is probably not in the future, under the reign of Jared Kushner, at least. Good luck to everyone there.
[Pic: douglemoine]

Oh, we forgot to mention that Ivanka's jewelry line is sponsoring her own party as well. No wonder it's called The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, cause she's combining both together! Here is the invite for Wednesday's party, where the name Trump appears no less than nine times, fully one-eighth of the total words on the invite (that's counting times and logos). Quest Magazine is hosting the event in name only, so that there would be another name on the invite other than Trump. We just can't wait to see a picture of Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump in Trump Tower at the Trump book party drinking Trump Vodka. The caption will look like a game of hearts, but with fewer kings and more jokers.

The book itself sounds just like what you would expect from something that has a cover about as '80s as a Dynasty rerun. From the Barnes and Noble description:

The Trump Card also features "Bulletins" from Ivanka's BlackBerry that tap into the wisdom of today's leaders, including Arianna Huffington, Tory Burch, and Cathie Black. "We've all been dealt a winning hand," Ivanka writes, "and it is up to each of us to play it right and smart."

Do you mean all those women have been dealt a winning hand or that each and every human has? It looks to me like a bunch of privileged white ladies are holding all the cards while the deck is stacked against the rest of us.

For a family as into self promotion as the Trumps, it's amazing that Ivanka has been so mum about her wedding plans and that she is releasing a book less than two weeks before he planned October 25 wedding to Jared Kushner of New York Observer fame. Wouldn't that cause undue attention to the wedding? Actually, it will probably cause undue attention (and potential sales) to her new book. Very crafty indeed, Ms. Trump.

Oh, and where is the wedding being held? At Trump National Golf Course, no less. At this rate, she's going to name her first born Trump Kushner-Trump.

The New York Observer's moving again. It went from an UES townhouse to a normalish Flatiron office building to, now, an office building on West 44th street between 8th and 9th. Owned by Jared Kushner! His quote: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." That man, he has the soul of a poet, I tell ya.


O ho, the Washington Post Magazine has been "revamped" for our dynamic modern age, and it's reportedly "A truly solid product for Columbia Heights hipsters, McLean mommies and everyone in between." So, upwardly mobile 24-38 year-old whites living in the DC metro area will enjoy it!


Michael Moore made a movie about how rich people are bad but then he had a party for it in.........a Ritzy Manhattan Penthouse! To be fair, most of the media people that go to these Ritzy Manhattan Penthouse parties would never show up to a party at a homeless shelter, so cut the dude some slack.



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Shucks, Katie Couric's "highly hyped 44-minute Webcast sit-down with Glenn Beck" did not turn out to be the journalistic tour de force that some had hoped for. Rather, critics say, it was a bit soft. Hard to believe Katie Couric would be a bit soft, Haha, get it? Because really she is.

On the topic of Federer, Koblin elicited the kind of stuff courtside reportage was born to breed. Hard hitting:

"Well, Lleyton is a very tough competitor, and he was getting every serve back," she said. "But we believed."

Boom. Anna believes. She drank the (zero calorie) Kool-Aid, and is a full-fledged servant to Federer's will and backhand.

Then, Koblin dares to ask Wintour about McKinsey, the Conde Nast Death Panel currently executing whole departments as well as ridding the Conde Commissary of wasteful beverages like Orangina. This is some Frost/Nixon shit, right here. Koblin goes in for the kill:

Then I asked her about McKinsey. Vogue is one of two Conde Nast magazines that the consulting firm is taking the longest, deepest look at as it prepares a series of cost-cutting recommendations for Chairman Si Newhouse.

"Everything is great!" she said. "O.K, I'm off."

She promptly disappeared into a tunnel.

There you have it! Everything's dandy! Not only are the relationships between Vogue—who McKinsey's taking a good, hard look at—and McKinsey, Vogue's possible hangman, fine, but Wintour's ability to disappear into caves and tunnels like a creature of the night proceeds unfettered.

[Photo by John Koblin, via the New York Observer]

Word trickling in from the Manhattan new media crowd is that Kushner has been taking meetings and asking for "ideas" about what to do with his paper. The descriptions of the discussions that have reached us makes it sound like he's more interested in finding a graceful way to get rid of the paper.

In April, Kushner told us in a statement that "The Huffington Post and Politico both independently reached out to us to discuss web partnerships," and that Politico asked if the paper was for sale (Kushner said it wasn't, at the time). But the word that he's been asking around again for salvation ideas indicates that something's bound to happen—and it probably won't be good for the print edition. Common sense dictates that selling the paper right now is a poor economic option, if not an impossibility; what that leaves, in terms of choices that would benefit Kushner's wallet, isn't clear.

This year or so hasn't been easy at the Observer. Longtime editor Peter Kaplan left in May, and a slew of the paper's best writers were laid off in June. Even the cleaning lady was fired. Kushner bought Very Short List and announced he's launching a new Real Estate paper to shore up his mini-empire, but neither of those sound like very good revenue-generators. And a profile of Jared in New York mag didn't win him any friends.

[Pic: Getty]

That is correct! Kushner's launching The Commercial Observer, a free weekly trade-y paper focused on the NYC commercial real estate market, next month. Figure this one out:

The Commercial Observer, with 24 to 28 pages an issue, will be delivered free to 10,000 people in the city's real estate business. The new paper will sell subscriptions for $240 a year, and it may eventually charge industry insiders, as well, Mr. Kusher said, but "what I care about most is that the right people are getting it." There will be no newsstand sales.

The NYO itself had serious layoffs recently. The real estate trade publication niche is already crowded. And yet NYO execs tell the Times they will "avoid cannibalizing" the NYO's own remaining advertising, somehow. We've emailed Kushner's rep to find out how they plan to do that, and whether this new venture is more of an editorial or advertorial thing. But uh, if this thing works out we will acknowledge Jared Kushner's hidden media genius. It's possible he knows something we don't! He is already much richer than us.
[Pic: Getty]

The Observer's John Koblin reports that sources at Conde say that Wintour's Vogue and Klara Glowczewska's Condé Nast Traveler are getting a "close examination" in order to possibly serve as the models for how all of the individual titles will be restructured within the company. Koblin says that the two magazines are viewed as accurate representations of the company's complete roster of publications, Vogue being the model of the big splashy magazine filled with pages and pages of ads, while Traveler serves as the model for the company's more modest mid-size titles.

If McKinsey and (CEO Chuck) Townsend can figure out how to maintain the majesty of a brand like Vogue, while also reining in editorial costs (photo shoots, models, hair and makeup, clothing allowances for Anna, and so on), then they'll feel they can effectively accomplish that for other brands, a source said.

Also under "close examination" is Conde's endlessly mind-boggling web strategy, with Vogue and Traveler again felt to be accurate representations of the other Conde titles.

Vogue is represented online by style.com and Traveler by concierge.com., rather than by their own brand names. Several Condé Nast insiders have told The Observer in recent weeks that Anna Wintour is beginning to the "get the Web," and perhaps the McKinsey trip helped prompt a sudden awakening.

Wow. Anna Wintour is embracing the web?! Barely a year ago the company line was that they had no intention of turning their websites into "large web destinations" and that they existed only to "support the magazines." Oh how times have rapidly changed.

When Jared Kushner isn't busy firing some of the city's best reporters, insulting the remains of his staff, or taking the "sloppy seconds" approach to venture capitalism, he might be too busy to seek help in one of the New York Observer's more neglected blind spots: Equine Relations.

Lo and behold, then, the Heroic Destiny Squad, who thinks they (or he) can be part of a symbiotic relationship with the Observer regarding the salvation of the horses who escort tourists through Central Park on buggy rides. And also, because Kushner's a Jew, he already works for this dude. Your front-running nominee for Totally Batshit Correspondence of the Year, we present: the New York Observer's Crazy Horse Guy.

From: Justin Massler
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:45:11 -0400
Subject: Important Message for All New York Observer Reporters

Good day reporters of The New York Observer, would anyone like to help save horses on this fine summer day?

I will explain the situation I am writing in regards to.

As some of you may know, many horses are currently imprisoned as slaves being forced to pull carriages in Central Park for the amusement of tourists.

My name is Justin Massler and recently I was appointed by Angels to be the King of the Jews in the tradition of previous Kings such as Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus.

I have been ordered by the God of the Jews to free the horses who are enslaved as carriage pullers in Central Park for the purposes of restoring freedom to the lands, much like how Moses himself had to free the Jews from their enslavement in Egypt so many years ago.

I have decided to commandeer The New York Observer for this purpose which I can do since it's owned by Jared Kushner who is a Jew and therefore one of my subjects which makes his properties subject to emergency commandeering if it is deemed necessary for Divine Purposes.

Anyways, does anyone want to help with this cool elite mission of animal rights heroism? We can use The Observer to launch a propaganda campaign to ban horse carriages and influence public opinion against this unjust practice.

I am therefore recruiting reporters from this paper to take part in this noble cause.

The website of my hero team is http://www.heroicdestinysquad.com/ so you can see that I'm legitimate and not just making this stuff up.

Hopefully someone will respond to this in a positive manner and I won't just be ignored by every single person like has happened to me before in the past which is a depressing thing to have happen, but I suppose such are the trials heroes such as myself must endure in our quest for justice at any cost.

Sincerely,

Justin Massler

President of Heroic Destiny Squad

http://www.heroicdestinysquad.com/

P.S.

Also, does anyone know Jared Kushner's phone number or personal e-mail address? Or better yet, does anyone know where he hangs out?

I figure since he's the owner of The Observer I can commandeer it more quickly if I just get Kushner to agree to this plot himself.

I tried sending him a message before but I think he's trying to avoid me even though I'm his King which is like how sometimes kids try to hide from their parents. Is it true he lives at 21 Astor Place above the Starbucks? If so I can just try to find him at his house and talk some sense into him.

If anyone can give me any info on where this guy can be found it would be much appreciated.

Cheerio.

He is legitimate and not making this stuff up. Moses sent him! Or something.

He is also scary and possibly insane, and this is the kind of stuff we get routinely, too! Good to know all publications of all stripes can still find common ground in the batshit people who take time to write them this kind of stuff.

In a great piece titled "The Gilded Age of Conde Nast is Over," The Observer's John Koblin reveals a slew of shocking goings-on at Conde that almost makes the purging of the company's receptionists pale in comparison. Below are a few of the choice cuts, starting with the horrifying revelation that Graydon is now being forced to lunch with the peasantry in the Frank Gehry-designed space pictured above.

"I saw Graydon in the cafeteria this week!" said one business-side insider, last Friday. "In all my years here, I've never seen him in my life there. He was behind me in the line at checkout with his little swipe card! He was milling around uncomfortably with the commoners."

Now obviously, if the Conde overlords are being forced to sacrifice some of their luxuries, you just know that the underlings are getting screwed, and they are. On that subject, two words people: tap water.

"When I started, there was this little refrigerator, and it was stocked with amazing drinks!" said one ad-sales source. "Pellegrino, Orangina, Red Bull. And like the water wasn't Poland Spring, it was like Fiji. I remember when I started working here, I emailed everyone I know and I was like, ‘I have to tell you about the drinks!'"

But then in December, a few months after Condé Nast ordered publishers and editors to cut 5 percent from their budgets, the drink supply emptied out. That Fiji water turned into Poland Spring. Worse, instead of the fridge, the water bottles were stowed in a warm closet.

And then: "I just found out today that we are on our last batch of Poland Spring," said the source. "We won't have any more after this. We have to start drinking tap water."

Tap water! At Conde Nast! Are you kidding me?! Among the article's other cutback revelations: no more expensed lunches at Nobu, no more take-out from Balthazar, no more free spa treatments, no more fresh flower deliveries to the offices of top editors — the list goes on and on.

But perhaps the most surprising (Or maybe not) detail in Koblin's piece is the revelation that Conde Nast's claim about there are no untouchables within the company is complete bullshit. The New Yorker is the one sacred cow not to be meddled with.

Two well-placed sources said that Condé Nast's chairman, Si Newhouse, reached out to (Editor David) Remnick shortly after the McKinsey announcement was made and told him not to worry about anything-the magazine would be just fine, and neither McKinsey nor company executives would be mucking with his editorial costs.

Go read this piece, if only because, as Choire Sicha pointed out on his Twitter, the story's punchline is among the best you'll ever read.

The party, or "The Party" as it has come to be known by some, remains famous for it's over-the-top flamboyance, and since Talk was partially funded by Miramax money, Harvey and Bob Weinstein served as co-hosts for the event, leading the New York Observer to headline their coverage of the night's festivities, "Weinstein Brothers Revel in Vulgarity, Glory of Manhattan."

In her Daily Beast post eulogizing Isabell dated July 12th, Tina Brown reminisced about the illuminated-by-Japanese-lanterns soiree on the electricity-less Liberty Island to bring in the now-defunct magazine. She spoke wistfully about the plethora of stars she shipped in on an ark to genuflect at her altar, The Statue of Liberty, for the evening. Here's the money quote:

Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the "Star Barge." Like an A-list Noah's Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk.

Brown's piece must have triggered the memory of the New York Times' David Carr, as he dedicates his Monday "Media Equation" column to the Talk launch party, only his take on the event isn't so much a fond remembrance as it is a look back at what he now views as an event marking of the beginning of the end of an era of excess. Noting that the ten years that have passed since "The Party" have seen the death of many established titles as well as a dramatic drop in ad pages, Carr, who says he's "still ashamed to admit that I wasn't one of the lucky 1,000 people invited to the party," writes:

Too bad nobody saw the sharks circling in the harbor. Rather than the culmination of a century of press power, the Talk party was the end of an era, a literal fin de siècle. Flush with cash from the go-go '90s and engorged by spending from the dot-com era, mainstream media companies seemed poised on the brink of something extraordinary. But that brink ended up being a cliff. partied

Ten years ago, journalists, long the salarymen of the publishing economy, began gorging on big contracts and options from digital start-ups like shrimp at a free buffet. With coveted writers commanding $5 for every typed word into magazines that were stuffed to the brim with advertising, there was a fizziness, some would say recklessness, in the air. The industry was drunk on its own prerogatives, working a party that seemed as if it would never end.

Carr goes on to note that Tina Brown's Daily Beast launch party in 2008 was held at Pop Burger in the Meatpacking District, where assembled guests munched on miniature burgers and hot dogs until about 8:15 or so, when the food sadly ran out. Indeed, that's quite a remarkable contrast. But hey, there was an open bar, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?

Finally, all of this brings to mind the words of a certain eccentric American prophet who, speaking about partying in the year 1999, once said, "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." And really, all things considered, is that such a terrible thing?

10 Years Ago, An Omen No One Saw [New York Times]
Farewell to the King of Parties [Daily Beast]

Thomas, who recently published his novel Love & Money, originally wrote about his decision to leave for his personal site.

Sunday I sent around an e-message to friends telling them that I felt it was time to leave the NY Observer. As I usually am, I was candid about my reasons. I have no intellectual or ideological connection to the new regime there. Tom McGeveran, the new editor, seems like a very nice guy, but we've never worked together, and since I have some idea what Peter Kaplan endured over the last couple of years, I can only imagine that Tom must feel, some mornings, that he's woken up in the journalistic equivalent of the trenches at Verdun.

My e-circulation list included a few people in what we broadly call media." Friends who happen to be journalists, people for whom I've written. Page Six wasn't on the list, not that I don't like Richard Johnson, and enjoy what he does, because I do - emphatically - but I simply didn't think the departure of an old guy of 73 after a gig that ran 22 years from first word to last was very gossipworthy. I lawyer friend of mine is fond of saying, "In e-mail, the e' stands for 'evidence'" - advice that I've taken to heart, but - to repeat myself - I really didn't think there was any evidentiary interest in my having decided to go in the direction I have. That I used to refer to Donald Trump as "the Prince of Swine" is a matter of record; in my NYO column I took a view of the way people exhibited themselves in public (their private lives were off the record) and got themselves written about. Nicknames and sobriquets were a neat way of sticking a pin in; I was particularly fond of my coinage for Ralph Lauren: "the Wee Haberdasher." There were risks in this; having referred once to a fashion personality as "a shirtlifter," I found myself essentially blacklisted with regard to freelance assignments for a major publishing company. Anyway, public is as public does, and private is something else. I know Donald Trump's dirty secret, going back some 40 years, when we were both on the board of the much-missed Le Club. It is this: when he shrugs off the public persona that sells books and buildings and TV bullying, he's a very nice guy. But don't tell anyone!

Anyway, someone on my list obviously forwarded the e-mail to Page Six. I'm pretty certain I know who it is, because there are only one or two people on my circulation list to whose lives publicity — the trade-off of someone else's info for future mention of oneself — is as vital and essential a force as gravity is to the solar system. Not that it matters.

But that's really neither here nor there. It does prompt one or two reflections about my former employer. Some dozen years ago, it must have been, Conrad Black briefly flirted with the idea of buying the NYO. A mutual friend, the late, beloved Arthur Ross, called me up and invited me - then a NYO headliner - to meet Conrad for an exchange of views. After the usual pleasantries, I asked Conrad what he thought of NYO as a newspaper. I've never forgotten his answer: "The NYO isn't a newspaper," he said, "it's a mascot."
I think Conrad had a point. Long, long ago the paper hit a circulation wall at around the 50,000 mark - a level it's never surmounted since to any meaningful degree. This suggests that people grow into the paper and later grow out of it. In the past six months, I can't count how many times someone's come up to me and said "I see you're back in the NYO. I gave up my subscription but now I'll start reading it again."

Here's the thing. When you're young, at least until the recent economic mess, life is a lark, to be lived in and of the moment. You want to be hip, current, a la mode. You don't want serious - which is why most young people don't read newspapers, because the NYT et al traffic in the serious. But as you grow older, life starts to get more serious. Policy begins to matter more than personality. The latest fashion no longer matters, the latest scandal, the latest nightclub. They no longer make movies that anyone with an IQ over the national speed limit can suffer through, and hip-hop is unspeakable, so you quickly stop knowing exactly what the latest celebrity is famous for. You're no longer the person the NYO is written and published for. You give it up.

Most people won't believe this, but the NYO started life as a serious paper. The city already had enough of those, however, and Graydon Carter came along and created the editorial enlivenment that got the paper talked about. I stopped writing thinkpieces about capitalism and started calling people funny names, and Women's Wear Daily sent someone to interview me and take my picture. Pretty heady stuff.
The trick is, however, to hold your original audience while adding new readers. Twenty years ago, I pleaded with Arthur Carter to start a Medicine page, on the theory that of the straws that stir the New York drink, medicine is right up there with media and finance, and an aging readership, naturally more mindful of its health, of what are called "wellness issues," would stay with us. Just look at how New York does with its annual "Best Doctors" issue. Arthur didn't buy the idea. I tried again with the new publisher. He didn't answer my e-mail. I still think the idea's a good one.

In my demographic, no day begins without a lament for the late Sun. In culture, arts, sports - and in coverage of the city, which was NYO's original stakeout - it quickly rose right to the top. Made chopped liver of the NYT, with its pathetic, alienating effort to be groovy. Early on, Seth Lipsky asked me to write for his fledgling paper. I was also being importuned to return to the NYO. Here's what I told Seth: "I'm on the horns of a dilemma. Either I can be a juvenile on a grownup paper, or a grownup on a juvenile paper."

I think that says it all.

The aforementioned executives are Times deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman and associate managing editor/NYTimes.com's digital news editor Jim Roberts. Here's part of what they told Reagan about the process that goes into putting together the stories featured on the Times home page.

Both Mr. Landman and Mr. Roberts say that Web stats have no bearing on what they choose to put on the front page of the newspaper or the home page of the site. "In terms of minute-to-minute news decisions, I think that would pretty much drive me crazy," Mr. Roberts said.

"You know, I would say if I had more time I would probably try to investigate more in what our readers are doing," Mr. Roberts said. "I guess I would rather know some broad trends, than some specific minute to minute thing," like whether readers are more interested in science news or fashion reports.

"Or if a profile of someone that I thought was a really really well written piece, if it sort of got miserable traffic, I would like to know about it and at least like to think about why that was the case, whether there was a message to be sent there," Mr. Roberts said.

Now look, we understand the need to create a varied and eclectic array of stories for readers to choose from on any website's homepage, especially that of a newspaper, but how can they completely ignore traffic stats altogether? I mean, really? Isn't that incredibly, oh, I don't know, dumb?!

How The Times Home Page Gets Made [Observer]

New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, fresh off some public trash-talking about his own staff in New York magazine, tells Jeff Bercovici that the paper's staff is doing great under new editor Tom McGeveran: "There's less inefficiency in the newsroom. People are busier. People are producing, and happy to be doing so." Layoffs will do that! Also he's still searching for someone to replace McGeveran, so, we'll see.

In a memo to New York Times staffers about the company's debt and how it's managing it, Sulzberger and Robinson lay out all the well-known facts about how the company has basically pawned everything it owns and is living off credit cards, then say: "As a recent article in AdAge asked, 'But can it [the Times Company] last through 2011? As it turns out, we think the answer is yes, and then some.' We couldn't agree more." We find this memo less than reassuring.

Richard Sine makes the fair and reasonable suggestion that J-schools—which sell a skill set vaguely suited to a poorly-paid, shrinking profession—shrink their own enrollments to match the current job market. Which is to say, down to nothing! Or thereabouts. He suggests they offer one-off classes in actual, useful skills, at prices that would open them to anyone. Great suggestions, which will never happen as long as Nick Lemann has a breath in his body.

The biggest ad page gainer of all in the first half of this year: Fitness Magazine, up more than 18%. It must be either the bikini babes on the cover or this. But not both.

Gabriel Sherman has a huge profile of Jared Kushner in New York magazine today, with a hefty section devoted to his father's little "Set up my brother-in-law with a hooker and secretly tape it and send the video to his family" episode, which landed him in jail. But let's start with Jared's high praise for the Observer, the paper that's been wracked by layoffs and budget cuts under his leadership:

"I found the paper unbearable to read, it was like homework," Jared tells me.

Haha. But Jared is changing that! With his powers of motivation. After he hired PR man Bob Sommer as President of the Observer, he told him, " We called it Weekend at Bernie's, because it was like dead people walking around." Good one! After the NYO's longtime editor Peter Kaplan left and severe layoffs hit the paper, Jared put it to his underpaid, beleaguered journalists straight:

At a meeting last month, Jared told his staff that the Observer needed to move on. "Kaplan is a classy guy, but he's old-school," Jared said. "If we were doing our jobs right, Gawker wouldn't have a reason to exist. Curbed wouldn't have a reason to exist.
"Every Observer writer wants to be a novelist," he went on. "But we need to be deliberate about when we are short and when we are long."

Jared, you are our reason to exist. And your writers don't want to be novelists; they have to, because you laid them off. But Jared's not the type to buy into the doom and gloom; he 's optimistic about the dying newspaper industry to a comical extent. Let's hope he's just lying to put on a happy face:

"I think we're definitely at a bottom for newspapers," he said a couple of weeks later. "Once this Russian winter is over, once the papers fail that should fail, you'll see a resurgence. I think the Observer two years from now will be a very viable entity."

He also promised to run the NYO as a "profit-making entity," which would be a pretty historic moment! Jared seems like not a terrible guy, though, considering the way he grew up—favorite son of a mogul father, who hired a PI to set up his brother-in-law, who he hated, with a hooker, and then had to be talked out of sending the video of the incident to his brother-in-law's children. Jared does not seem to be that cut throat, at least. His dad made huge donations to Harvard and then to NYU to smooth Jared's admission to those august institutions. And it's paid off; the swaggering underclassman has blossomed into a total heart throb. Ivanka Trump found his pimp game irresistible. Their steamy secret of attraction:

"Jared and I are very similar in that we're very ambitious," Ivanka tells me one morning in her office on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower. "That's what makes it so amazing to be in a relationship with someone who is supportive of that. I'm happy for him when he is in the office working late. I know how good that feels when you sit down and return e-mails."

We're fanning ourselves rapidly! Jared Kushner's made some mistakes, sure. He may not be able to run a newspaper very well (who can, these days?), but he's great material. As long as you don't work for him.
[New York Mag. Pic: Getty]