Richard Miniter, the editorial page editor of the Moonie Washington Times, is suing the paper for "being forced to attend a Unification Church mass wedding," and also because he says they made him work while he was sick, even though, according to TPM, "During a health scare earlier this year, Miniter was brought out of the newsroom on a stretcher." Who would have expected this at the Moonie Washington Times, of all places?


The (unprofitable) New York Daily News is investing $150 million in a new printing press . Buyers of print ads in the Daily News love it; everyone else thinks it is stupid.


Hey, Lou Dobbs is very interested in Bill O'Reilly's offer of a "semi-regular contributor" position on O'Reilly's show. Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs, together, on the same show. That would be something. Something evil.


Ah, here's a fourth item on this day of layoffs and only layoffs, as far as media "news" is concerned: Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni has named Hearst's Food Network Magazines as the Most Notable Launch of 2009. Americans can no longer tolerate any aspect of their daily reality that is unconnected to television. What an apocalyptic future we all face. Thanks, "Mr. Magazine."

Via Mark Lisanti and FilmDrunk, if you guessed "terrorists," than you guessed right. Also, you're boring.

Couldn't they have saved this one for someone better? I mean, yes, listen, people who kill other people are shitty and suck, but this is just great, like, artful-great. Like, okay, if NYDN publisher Mort Zuckerman were on his deathbed, this would've been awesome. If their Boris and Natahsa-esque gossip columnist Rush & Molloy were put on trial for being communists, again: incredible. But to waste this one on terrorists just seems a little, I don't know, blase?

Anyway. We can't help but see potential in you, Post. To whoever guessed correctly, take a bow, you get nothing except the knowledge that you're an expert of New York Post headlines and/or you still have a job at the New York Post. Mazel.

Mormando's attorney announced that her client was gay at a federal court hearing in Brooklyn on Monday. He was being sentenced for his role in a 2003 shooting ordered up by Vincent Gotti, John Gotti's brother. Mormando began cooperating with the feds shortly after the shooting, which wasn't fatal, and has left the mob to live "a peaceful working life" with his partner.

So he came out in open court, and "gay mob hitman" is a crazy story, and naturally newspapers ran with it. But the New York Times' story has a slightly off note:

"He didn't want to make an announcement to the world," said one person with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the dangers facing Mr. Mormando. "He wanted the judge to know what risks he took - why he wasn't just your average cooperator, someone who had simply broken the code."

Mr. Mormando's hearing was, in fact, cloaked in secrecy, listed on the daily court calendar under the name "John Doe." The documents in his case are under seal and even Pacer, the online federal court archive, has been scrubbed clean of anything related to the matter.

"He's in an absolute state of fright," said the person with knowledge of the case. "You have to understand that his partner is totally freaking out. His partner has no connection to any of this. You can just imagine how fraught the whole thing is."

In other words, even though he apparently consented to his homosexuality being discussed in the public forum of a federal court, Mormando took numerous affirmative steps to keep it from being discussed in the press—he thought the hearing would be effectively secret. It looks like someone tipped off reporters to who "John Doe" was, and the rest is history.

It's hard to feel too bad for an admitted mobster who shot a guy and allowed his lawyer to talk about his sexuality in public. And it sounds like Mormando lives as an openly gay man in his new secret life as an ex-mobster—what he's apparently worried about is the fact that his former mob pals now know he was gay.

But still, newspapers generally tread lightly when it comes to outing. Back in the 1990s, the New York Times didn't report on Jann Wenner's outing, and a Times spokeswoman described the paper's policy at the time: "It's not the newspaper's role to reveal private aspects of a person's life unless it's relevant to the story or if the person wishes the sexual information to be released." Things have obviously changed since then, but the paper still hasn't reported affirmatively whether or not Ed Koch, for instance, is gay, and his name didn't come up in the paper's review of Outrage, a documentary that claimed in no uncertain terms that he is.

Anyway, Robert Mormando is pretty much screwed, because the Times and the New York Daily News and a bunch of other papers reported what appears to be an accidental self-outing (and yes, Gawker picked it up). And the Times reported it despite clear protestations from someone close to Mormando that doing so would make his life much more difficult. Hey—didn't the Times recently successfully institute two news blackouts in order to protects the safety of its own reporters? Maybe this Mormando fellow should have tried that.

Schreffler brought Gatecrasher—once Page Six's competition—back to the paper with Sean Evans (also canned) after legendary NYDN gossip Ben Widdicombe left it for dead (or Star, which he left after five or so months). Sarah Polansky (who went from the National Enquirer to Page Six, where she was fired for being exposed by Radar as a "swag hag") filled in for Evans. I guess Polansky is the only person left over there? We also hear Chris Rovzar at NY Mag's Daily Intel was offered the job, but (predictably) turned it down, possibly because if he were to quit New York Magazine, Manhattan's Gossip Girl-watching population would have to be tear-gassed and read the riot act.

So: it looks like nobody's running gossip or getting decent scoops at the Daily News but the once a week Boris and Natasha-esque sideshow of Rush and Molloy — and they haven't been at the top of their game, lately — so maybe they'll try to bring Ben back again? He was awesome and he's currently doing AOL's Stylelist but I sincerely doubt that Daily News has the cash to compete with whatever he's getting at AOL. That said, the NYDN's gossip pages are just rehashing national items, and there're sleazier places to go for that dirt, so really, they might want to invest in some talent before they become the Knicks of New York's two-team gossip leagues.

Update: Maybe there's absolutely no way the NYDN can compete for Ben Widdicombe. We just heard that Widdicombe's working with TMZ as their executive editor. He hasn't let his New York apartment go, yet, and "needs the money." He's on a six-week trial with them. Well, if it's scratch you're after, Harvey Levin's got plenty to throw around. There're worse places to sell out, I suppose. Another tipster reports that Harvey Levin's been looking since last fall to fill that position, so it's a long time coming. He's met with plenty of people, but it's been difficult to fill the position because of Harvey's temperament.

2nd Update: Sheffler writes in and asks us when will we will be "updating/terminating your piece from the web" because, as it turns out, she wasn't shitcanned, but is leaving the Daily News to go to Bonnie Fuller's Hollywood Life thing. Enjoy your press-releasey goodness:

"I'm ecstatic to join Bonnie Fuller and the team at HollywoodLife.com as the West Coast Bureau Chief. I look forward to bringing my experience in celebrity news and lifestyle editorial to what will be a fabulous online destination for all women," says Schreffler, West Coast Bureau Chief, HollywoodLife.com.

In her new position, Schreffler will work closely with Fuller and Will Lee, executive editor, on editorial strategy, content development and overall direction of the site. HollywoodLife.com, which focuses on celebrity, style and lifestyle news, will re-launch in November 2009 with a new design and editorial focus, targeting style-minded women, ages 18-35...

...Where it will terminate their faces via awesome Bonnie Fuller'd website wonderfulness with little to no discretion. May I suggest a theme song? This is what the future of celebrity gossip looks like:

What is funny, to us, is that New York's tabloids have been following Weiner around all week waiting for someone—anyone!—to bring some of that "screaming crazy town hall crasher" mojo here to the Socialist Republic of New York City.

But Weiner, to their obvious disappointment, has just been hanging out with senior citizens, showing up without much advance notice, and the old people have been cranky and skeptical (because they are old people, and old people are usually miserable reactionary old cranks who hate change of any kind), but not fiery enough to make Fox (despite the Post's best efforts at exaggeration).

And this one just sounds like cranky old people being cranky, again, and no one even called anyone a Nazi. And, frankly, cranky old people shouting nonsense complaints at an elected official is how every political event goes in New York, regardless of what the "issues" are.

Zuckerman had been the benefactor of "The Zuckerman Forum," a debate competition at NYU that annually awarded thousands of dollars in scholarships to undergraduate students. Tonight Victoria Keenan, the in-term Administrator of Student Affairs at the school, sent out the following email to Zuckeman Forum participants announcing the termination of the competition and scholarship money.

Dear Students:

As many of you are aware, the economic downturn and the Madoff scandal had a particular impact on our benefactor, Mr. Mortimer Zuckerman. Unfortunately, funding of the Zuckerman Forum Scholarship Program was one of the casualties in Mr. Zuckerman's necessary reduction of charitable giving. I regret that I must inform you that the Zuckerman Forum will not be held for the foreseeable future, including the 2009-2010 academic year.

It has been a great pleasure working with all of you throughout this competition. This has been a truly unique experience at NYU, and I want to thank you all for your dedication and enthusiasm over the past four years. I hope to see you at other events around the NYU campus; and I would be happy to put you in contact with other campus organizations that focus on debate, public speaking, and advocacy issues if requested.

Best of luck in all of your future endeavors.

-VIK

Sad. But will that won't stop the Post from taking a cheap shot at Zuckerman over this? It's doubtful.

Aniston's working on The Bounty, in which she actually plays a Daily News reporter (put that in your blender with some everclear, hit frappe, and drink that, Col Allan). Apparently, it's a movie about a bounty hunter who finds out his next target is his wife.

The first tip we got was this:

They're doing a scene in the restroom so you have to go downstairs if you actually give a shit.

...so it appears that (literally) pissed-off reporters have to trek around the building in order to empty their hydration vessels in order to continue bringing us the hard-hitting...New York Post counterpoints...that the Daily News provides.

The second substantial tip:

There are dozens of extras getting paid more than real reporters to look like reporters.

Working journalists: do you look like working journalists? If so, there may be a better (paying) career out there for you! But finally, some photographic evidence from one of the extras on set. Want to see what people pretending to be journalists look like?

Pretty accurate, no? Daily News-ers, extras, and production crew can continue to send in tips and photos of what it's like to eerily see yourself not be yourself (or get paid more than yourself) in the fourth dimension they're-making-a-movie-about-my-life-except-not kind of way. Also, information on interactions between Aniston and the Daily News gossip staff would be greatly appreciated. Meanwhile, your move, New York Post.

The NYDN's own story says:

Fawcett - who waged a three-year battle against anal cancer - died shortly before 9:30 a.m. in a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.

That would be about 12:30, NYC time. So when did the Daily News break the story?

First they said they broke it at noon!


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Then they updated it to 12:13, still before she died.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Finally they updated it to 12:39, about the earliest it could have possibly been up.

You have to be quick, on the internet. Too quick.

The Daily News broke the news on the front page today, which is funny, because they keep reporting on that assault thing and calling him names like "traitor." But apparently Monserrate is losing his mind, or something, because of all the stress from his upcoming trial. Being a mercurial violent asshole narcissist is almost as exhausting as "legislating" or whatever he is supposed to do!

Here is your Daily News sports columnist, Mike Lupica, calling Monserrate and Espada various names, on the occasion of their trip to a baseball game.

Anyway. Remember how the Democrats said the GOP takeover was illegal and so they took them to court? The Judge hearing the case basically refuses to decide anything, still.

"As a matter of public policy, you guys should work this out so I'm directing you to go across the street and do that and report back to me at one o'clock," he said. "There are 64 (sic) members over there, who are, in my opinion, hopefully, capable of getting together and working through what I have every understanding and appreciation are very serious and difficult matters, but which can be resolved and can be worked through in a way to be beneficial to the citizens of this state."

Ha, ha.

Is there a more dishonorable, less intelligent form of life than the sleaze that inhabits Albany? No.

Has any group of politicians more debased themselves and the once-proud institution in which they serve? No.

Would New York be better off building a sewage treatment plant on the grounds of the Capitol? Yes.

It would then be possible to flush the human wastes whose double-dealing, felonious flirtations and idiotic incompetence have left the state without a functioning government.

Dream on.

The last time the city's also-ran tab was this upset they were talking about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

If you haven't already read Carr's piece, and we highly suggest that you do, here's the gist of it: One night last week, Carr went out to two parties in the city. One was the New York Observer's farewell to longtime editor Peter Kaplan, the other was an Internet Week-themed event hosted by Guest of a Guest and College Humor. What Carr reported on in his story were basically his thoughts and feelings as he experienced them stepping into these two seemingly diametrically opposed parts of the modern media world on the same night.

The two parties and the people who inhabited them could not have been more different existing within the same ecosystem. The Observer party for Kaplan was held at a swanky Fifth Avenue locale in Midtown, the Century Club, that's long been a favorite haunt of big name New York City writers and journalists. The other party, the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, was held on the rooftop of a chic hotel, the Hotel on Rivington, on the Lower East Side.

At the Observer party, Carr made note of the "aura of elegy" that seemed to be hanging in the room over the course of the night. At the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, Carr noted that there was "no elegy on the roof deck of the hotel, only thumping techno, a hot tub and hordes of young people staring at the lights of Midtown in the distance."

Again, two opposite worlds existing within the same ecosystem feeding off the same food sources, one which appears to be dying slowly with each passing day, the other growing and thriving rather vibrantly.

We highlight David Carr's column today not for any reason other than it struck us as a simple but poignant portrait of the state of media today. We felt sort of moved by it, and we can easily see it being something that will be read in the future as a sort of stick in the historical water showing exactly where the tide of the media world was at this moment in time. It was, we think, an incredibly accurate and somewhat moving snapshot.

With all of that said, we have to add that reading Carr's piece made us feel a bit sad. As we write this, we're surrounded by remnants of the old media world. Strewn all about the floor around us are copies of the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Daily News, not to mention the latest copies of Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker, as well as a couple of recently purchased books. We love all of these things, we love the way they feel to the touch and the way we feel inside when we touch them, and each day we try to wrap our brains around life without them, but we just can't seem to do it. On the flip side, we're completely ingrained into the tapestry of the internet, the very beast most often credited for the ongoing decimation of the old media world, so we obviously have a huge stake in the survival of the new media world as well.

In short, we're torn over all of this. We wish we were smart enough to come up with a solution that would allow both worlds to coexist and thrive, but we just can't seem to do it, nor does anyone else seem to have a viable answer at this point. We also realize that things die and that these things dying is hard to accept and is often the cause of tremendous grief, even though the death of these things usually means that some other things will be granted lives. Regardless of how hard it is to accept the possible outcomes, it will certainly be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the future.

The one thing we are sure of is this—-That David Carr, though we don't always agree with him, is one of the best around at chronicling what is taking place right now within the modern media ecosystem.

In One City, Two Soirees Ages Apart [New York Times]

In the "Talking Points" segment at the top of his show, O'Reilly immediately condemned Tiller's murder saying that "anarchy and vigilantism will destroy a society" and that the act was a "clear thing Americans should condemn." But once O'Reilly got the formalities out of the way, he wasted no time blasting anyone who dared to implicate him in any of this.

"When I heard about Tiller's murder I knew that pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters would blame us for the crime."

He went on to call out a laundry list of "vicious individuals" for implying that his incendiary rhetoric towards Tiller may have inspired the violence, among which were Arianna Huffington, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos (naturally!), former 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes, he said that Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News lied when she said O'Reilly was guilty of "rants" against Tiller, and "far left columnist" Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star. He closed by saying that the "far left is exploiting, EXPLOITING, the death" of Dr. Tiller for political gain, and then reminded viewers that Tiller was responsible for destroying "60,000 fetuses who will never become American citizens."

So yeah, Bill O'Reilly gave everyone pretty much exactly what they expected tonight—-A load of BS.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

UPDATE: Later in his show O'Reilly had two abortion opponents on the show to back up his claim that "the far left is exploiting this, trying to shut guys like me up."

Clips via YouTube and Media Matters

I mean, c'mon guys—-Did nobody at either paper think that the "Standing O!" headline for the Obama's date night in the city might be a wee bit too obvious, that maybe the other guys might run with the exact same thing?

(via Brian Van's Tumblr)

Zuckerman told New York that the solution to the Great Newspaper Die-Off is bingo, which works in England: "Just make bingo legal on our websites.... The newspapers in England are supported almost exclusively by the profitability of running bingo games on their websites. It attracts an enormous audience. But here, you're not allowed to do it.... The Sun makes millions of dollars off of their bingo games."

What would happen if Zuckerman's Daily News were to start a bingo game? It would almost certainly screw it up royally, just like it did with it's promotional Scratch 'n' Match game in 1999, when a "production error" caused thousands of games to produce winning $100,000 matches. Or maybe it would screw it up royally like it did in 2005, when a "clerical error" did exactly the same thing.

Maybe Zuckerman should start with simpler math problems before moving up the big time.

No. He won't. That wouldn't make any sense. Maybe if he hadn't already made her Secretary of State? And even then, probably not.

But we are forced to ask because of an off-hand comment from Arlen Specter (he was busy with the quotes this weekend!) about how he'd like "a stateswoman" to be appointed, and because Pat Leahy wants someone with "real-life experience," which clearly means someone who's been in the partisan political arena since 1974. Leahy and Specter are not really dudes known for speaking for the Obama administration.

It should also be noted that Hillary is 61, even older than current too-old favorite Sonia Sotomayor.

So, to sum up, this Daily News story is about as accurate as their front-page assertion today that "X-Men Rules."

Zuckerman's "blog," as the Huffington Post insists on calling posts, is headlined "The Story You Aren't Hearing About Israel," and leads with this:

Did you hear about the two policemen who stopped to help a driver stuck with a flat—and were shot to death in the head at point-blank range?

Did you know about the 120-kilogram bomb planted in a parking lot adjacent to a shopping mall where thousands of people were milling about the stores, restaurants, and movie theaters?

No, of course, you didn't. These are just two everyday incidents of the ordeal confronted by people in Israel while the world and the political leaders look away. Outrages like these do not make it into the Western media, which exhibit the familiar phenomenon of monitoring only the conflicts that are the flavor of the month.... Ordinary Israelis despair of the cruel bias.

Alright, let's take the bait! Here's the New York Times covering the two police officers getting shot. And here's the Washington Post. And here's the Los Angeles Times. Other papers that ignored the story by writing about it include the Boston Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the London Daily Telegraph.

What about the New York Daily News? Did it devote newsprint to the murders? Of course not, because it is owned by a royal putz who knows not whereof he speaks.

Zuckerman also, in passing, blames the murders of the traffic cops on the fact that "Israel eased restrictions on movement in the Nablus area of the West Bank." This is false, according to Israeli police commanders:

Senior police officials say that the removal of checkpoints and the low intensity of Israel Defense Forces operations in the West Bank did not contribute to Sunday's shooting death of two traffic cops in the Jordan Valley.

But Zuckerman doesn't believe them, because he is a raving anti-Semite.

[Via Mondoweiss.]