Not just one single text, Ashley, but at least, what, three or four texts, minimum, on the subject of hookers?

"My case in point," the call-girl-turned-singer/author/model wrote The Post in a text message yesterday.

"Here you have all these girls accepting gifts, money, trips from Tiger in exchange for sex — all the while knowing he is married.

"And now they all can't wait to tell their stories in exchange for even more money from the tabloids?

"And I was the hooker? At least I kept my mouth shut."

On a personal level we respect the fact that you are right, Ashley, and are actually the classy one here. But on a PR level we must advise you not to get too cozy with the tabloids. They'll stab you in the back in a second. Unlike, say, bloggers, who tend to be honest friends you can turn to with any question or random opinion, prostitution-related or otherwise.

Gurl U no U need 2 text message us.

[Pic: Myspace]

Austin Fenner, a 20-year veteran reporter, was fired on November 9th, the same day as Guzman. And—if Fenner's claims are true—for the same reason: complaining about the Post publishing that infamous cartoon depicting officers shooting a chimpanzee meant to be Barack Obama. (Was it worth it, New York Post?)

The Huffington Post reports Fenner filed a 27-page complaint in court today which specifically signals out metropolitan editor Michelle Gotthelf and assignment editor Daniel Greenfield as the racists-in-chief. The lawsuit outlines a number of claims that fall just short of the sheer crazy-terribleness of Guzman's, but it's still a model example of (alleged!) racism.

Here are the worst/best parts:

The main thrust of the complaint is that minority Post staffers are subjected to "pervasive discrimination and harassment... based on their race and/or color" at the hands of their nearly all-white colleagues.

This discrimination manifested itself most blatantly in Fenner's claim that, after he criticized the chimpanzee cartoon in the blog Journal-ism, Greenfield and Gotthelf told him he couldn't enter the "Whites Only" newsroom without their permission for the five months before he was ultimately fired:

During the cartoon row, Fenner claims he also witnessed racism directed at New York Governor David Patterson, when editors refused to interview him about the cartoon:

And after Fenner publicly complained about the chimpanzee cartoon he said editors started to get sweary—and not even in a creative, hard-boiled-newspaper-editor-type way:

All this led to that fateful Nov. 9 day, when Fenner was called from an assignment in Brooklyn, ordered to give his notes to a white reporter, and fired.

The Post told the Huffington Post that Fenner's claims were "totally false and the claims of discrimination completely baseless." OK, you convinced us! Forget paywalls: The Post should charging for seminars on how to deny accusations that your organization is a seething pit of racism.

The tipster, who is clearly no fan of the reporters on the chopping block, says the dismissals are not economically motivated, but are based on performance reviews that happened in spring and the current salaries of the journalists — that go as high as $95,000. He does not pull his punches:

All these people should have been canned years ago, but management was just too lazy to do anything.

We had heard rumors that this round of layoffs was disproportionately targeting minorities. Another source at the paper claims that soon there will be no black or hispanic reporters left. The tipster seems to corroborate this.

They were going to get rid of most of them by the end of the year, but the Sandra Guzman lawsuit halted the whole thing because many on this list are minorities and are more likely to sue.

UPDATE:

A spokesperson for the Post said the following:

"The report is incorrect. We're not planning layoffs."

1. Andrea Peyser confronts the mom of a 16 year-old shooting suspect about why she is such a bad mom that her kid would shoot somebody. Answer: Because she is selfish and she lets her son hang out with his relatives thugs. Black people! Why can't they raise kids the right way? "There do exist real fathers. Take Federico Grullon. He won't allow his three kids to leave the house."
Black kids should be shackled at all times.

2. Did you know there is a soup kitchen now for orothodox Jews? And other Jews are facing foreclosure? But Jews are the ones with all the money!

So — shhh! — The United Jewish Appeal has started Connect to Care, which already has given more than 8,000 needy Jews financial services, job help and mental-health counseling to get through unfamiliar territory.
Just don't expect anyone to admit it.

3. "If Johnny Depp is the Sexiest Man Alive, I'm swearing off men." That one wasn't totally unexpected.

We have two separate (unconfirmed) staff change rumors today, from tipsters. First, at SI:

At the ever-shrinking Sports Illustrated, the magazine's #2, exec ed. Mike Bevans, has privately announced that he'll be among the staffers taking a buyout. This marks the second Time Inc. purge in a row that M.E. Terry [McDonell]. has lost his aide de camp: last year it was David Bauer.

Second, we hear that the New York Post has replaced veteran police reporter Phil Messing with relative rookie Kirsten Fleming. Indeed, Messing's byline does not show up in a search since last month. Out tipster says, "The fear, of course, is that the writing is on the wall for Phil who is one of the more reliable and experienced police reporters in the city. He's old school. But the Post is rumored to be wanting to get rid of 10 to 15 reporters so everyone over there is worrying that their heads are on the chopping block." If you know more, email us.
UPDATE: Actually, another search for just Messing's last name turns up lots of recent bylines, so he's still hard at work, for now.


Oh Anthony Kennedy went on and on about how his office's demand to pre-approve his quotes in a school paper was misunderstood, but now the WSJ says he did the same thing once at GWU. Whatever. Just don't outlaw abortion.


There used to be a dozen analysts covering newspaper companies for Wall Street. How many are there now? Not so many! Now it's just Rick Edmonds, a dude who works for Poynter, trying to figure out how bad the newspaper apocalypse is. "My conservative estimate is that there is $1.6 billion newspapers used to spend annually on reporting and editing that they don't anymore." Journalism! Related: An incredible graph about magazines, and the money they are no longer making.


BusinessWeek media reporter Jon Fine (a good reporter!), currently on a months-long round-the-world vacation with his wealthy wife Laurel Touby, announces on Twitter that new BW owners Bloomberg have laid him off. One thing he can take solace in: His months-long, round-the-world vacation.

Andrea today issues her sentencing recommendations in the case of liberal lawyer Lynne Stewart: Let the fat bitch rot. That is an accurate summary!

Let her rot.

Charismatic terror monger Lynne Stewart is no beauty. But she is a great actress.

The lady ex-lawyer who loves terrorists too much lumbered into the Manhattan federal courtroom in 2006, all 200-plus pounds of fire-breathing radical.

What a terrible, fat lady. She should have gotten more time, just to do those prison workouts! Eh?

Her lawyers said — are you ready? — Stewart was too fat for the lockup.

Lawyer Elizabeth Fink said her obese client's breast cancer was sure to return in a place where women are denied the dignity of wearing bras.

"If you send her to prison, she is going to die," Fink intoned.

We should be so lucky.

You can write to Andrea at andrea.peyser@nypost.com.

We've received this from four sources now, including from our dark overlord, who posted it to #tips.

To New York Post Staff:

Most of you have read the sensational allegations a former employee made in a complaint filed against our company and our executives. Her claims of being a victim of unlawful discrimination and retaliation are baseless.

In fact, the entire complaint is filled with distortions and misstatements and virtually every key factual assertion is untrue. We will defend this case vigorously and are confident that the legal process will reveal it to be totally meritless.

While we are in the midst of this litigation, we urge you to do your best to focus on your work and respectfully ask that you not discuss it with fellow employees or people outside the company. Thank you for your cooperation and if you should have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Human Resources.

CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.

They don't teach you that move in J-school.

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.

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]

Sandra Guzman was an editor at the Post charged with running, among other things, a section aimed at Latino readers. After the paper published a Sean Delonas cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee being gunned down by white police officers, she complained internally about what she saw as the paper's persistent and overt racism under the leadership of Australian he-man Col Allan. Then she got fired.

Yesterday, she filed a complaint in federal court alleging systematic racism in the Post's hiring, firing, and editorial practices, and depicting Allan as a stupid, giggling frat-boy who likes to show his female employees pictures of naked men for kicks. The complaint has all sorts of damning allegations—you can read the whole thing here, but some of the good bits are below. Guzman has separately filed a complaint against the Post with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The lawsuit comes just one day after the paper fired reporter Austin Fenner, one of the few remaining African-American reporters on the paper's staff—we're told there are just three others, one of whom has been on an extended sick leave for most of the year. We're also told that the paper—a metro daily in New York City—has no African-American editors, and hasn't for nine years. UPDATE: A tipster points out Robert George, an editor on the Post's editorial page, is an African American. Our sources on the Post's demographics were thinking of the news and features pages.

SECOND UPDATE: According to two other tipsters, business editor Jay Sherman is an African American as well. For the record, we asked a rep for the Post about the paper's demographics, and got an e-mailed statement, printed below, in response.

We've contacted the Post to confirm that and for a response to Guzman's complaint, and we'll publish it when we get one.

Here are some of the allegations:

The Post, Guzman says, was a "hostile work environment" for women and non-white staffers, who are subject to "pervasive and systemic discrimination" and "harassment":

Allan's "inappropriate and sexist comments and conduct have been widely known throughout" the Post. For instance, he likes to show ladies what penises look like. He thinks it's funny!

He also, Guzman says, likes to rub his penis up against his female employees, whether they want him to or not:

Other editors at the paper, following Allan's classy lead, have taken to offering female staffers better jobs in exchange for blow jobs:

Allan's colleague Les Goodstein, a News Corp. senior vice president, thinks latin ladies are hot, and told Guzman so. He also liked to lick his lips while staring at other women's breasts in her presence:

The beef that precipitated Guzman's firing was over a drawing by Sean Delonas, a racist, gay-hating, and—worst of all—astoundingly humorless cartoonist. The Barack-Obama-Is-a-Dead-Chimp cartoon is not his first exceedingly tasteless offering, and at one point, Guzman says, Delonas had the bright idea of depicting Jews as sewer rats, a pitch that apparently got nixed:

Guzman's complaints about the cartoon fell on deaf ears, both because real men don't care about whiny P.C. minority-type people and because she just didn't get that the whole point of the New York Post is to "destroy Barack Obama." At least that's what she says the paper's Washington bureau chief told her:

Col Allan certainly didn't care about P.C. minority-type people: When some of them staged a protest outside his newspaper, he laughed at them because "most of them are minorities and the majority are uneducated." Unlike the Post's highly sophisticated, Sean Delonas-loving readership:

Allan felt the same way about the vanishingly small number of non-white employees he oversees. When one of them approached him to discuss his feelings about the cartoon, Allan simply walked away:

After Guzman made her feelings public in an e-mail stating that she had raised her objections to the cartoon to management—an e-mail that got picked up by the Huffington Post and other blogs—Allan, she says, launched a crusade against her. His animus, according to Guzman, overwhelmed his news judgment. In August, Guzman—who is a personal friend of Justice Sonia Sotomayor—was invited as a guest to a White House reception celebrating Sotomayor's confirmation. No other reporters were to be present. Guzman asked for permission to cover and report on the event, and Allan said no. Granted, her personal relationship and status as a guest would make such an assignment weird, but a) it could have been disclosed and presented as an insider account, and b) since when has the Post cared about conflicts of interest? Especially when they have a chance to get an exclusive about a highly newsworthy event? Of all the transgressions listed in Guzman's complaint, this is perhaps the most shocking—that Allan let his hatred of Obama, Sotomayor, and Guzman kill a potential scoop.

There's much more, so do read the complaint in its entirety. We're sure Rupert Murdoch will, using his sophisticated racism-detecting system to determine that Guzman is full of it. Because if Glenn Beck's not a racist, then Col Allan certainly isn't, right?

UPDATE: The Post has released a statement responding to the complaint.

This lawsuit has no merit and is based on charges that are groundless. As previously stated, Ms. Guzman's position was eliminated when the section she edited was discontinued due to a decline in advertising sales.

According to a story in the New York Times today (in which the NYT tries very hard to suppress its glee), the Post's circulation has fallen by 30% in less than three years, to just a hair over half a million; and its financial losses were around $70 million last year, making the paper an expensive habit even by Rupert Murdoch's standards. And the fact that Rupert's adding local reporting to the WSJ makes Post reporters (reasonably) nervous they're falling out of favor.

We must not let this perpetually money-losing right-wing tabloid fall from grace! New York would be such a boring newspaper city without a loud, drunk voice of opposition. A few helpful suggestions:

• Andrea Peyser's sexxxy, but is she sexxxy enough? Millions of people in New York have sex every day without being mentioned in Andrea Peyser's column. Work on that.
• Col Allan is drunk, but is he drunk enough? Secretly rig the water fountains to emit gin, if you haven't done so already.
• Sean Delonas is racist, but is he racist enough? Racist cartoons are all well and good, but try upping Sean's visibility by getting him out there on the street, among the people, beating up minorities, then quick-sketching it on a blog. After he's all done promoting his children's book.

Don't ask, don't look

In this town, gay rights trump religious and aesthetic sensitivities every time...
Next time, pal, don't look. It's safer.

Look on the bright side, gay liberals: The New York Post is finally standing up for the rights of Muslims! The right to discriminate against you, specifically. Baby steps.

And what about this dude's right to fuck horses without being sentenced to three years in jail, Andrea? It was a female horse!
[Pic via]

• Rupert Murdoch is still willing to pour money into the New York newspaper wars, "decline of the newspaper industry" be damned. He will not rest until he can claim superiority over the NYT as a general interest paper in the NYC market. Or he will die trying, literally!
• People most likely to be angry about this: The WSJ's Boston bureau, which was recently closed.
• People who should be most worried about this: New York Post staffers. Every dollar Rupert puts into the WSJ is a dollar that he's not putting into the Post. Which already has very good local coverage, in a vile tabloidy way.
• People who may view this news with keen interest: The 100 New York Times newsroom staffers who have to be gone by the end of the year. "Hiring," you say?

Andrea Peyser scoffs at ESPN's Steve Phillips claiming a sex addiction just because he sexed up his young assistant. Andrea Peyser thinks sex addict treatment "Sounds like a great way to meet horny chicks." And how!

Addictions are routinely compared to deadly diseases, such as cancer, by people who'd rather drink than put down the glass, the crack pipe, or — hopefully — the condom. This is an outrage that sickens those who are truly diseased.

In the rest of her column she advises Jennifer Anniston, "Next time, try showering with a friend."; she calls the Yankess "oversexed"; she jealously mocks Maureen Dowd for wanting to bone the president; and she curses New Yorkers for being so fat, and unsexy.

There is no shame in seeking help, Andrea.

What kind of zeal for terrorist-appeasement prompted the New York Times to commission a front-page apology to the Taliban?

That's because Rohde wrote about what his captors felt and said, instead of joining the SEALs and killing a bunch of them, which Andrea Peyser has certainly done many times, right? "I'll probably never know what the reporter experienced," Peyser writes. That's true. Maybe she should try it!

There's been talk of insular Bloomberg gutting BusinessWeek and moving the financial information company's own staff; even if things don't go that far, it's hard to imagine the editor atop the financially troubled magazine finding much of a leadership for himself at Bloomberg.

(Pic: Adler, Getty Images.)

This story teaches us all a valuable lesson: when minor celebrities try to use the tabloid press to their advantage-when they need something from the tabloids, as opposed to tabloids' lecherous reputation with real celebrities' lives-it's always the tabloid press who wins. Let's go over this one more time:

1. A minor celebrity in need of press spin calls a tabloid. Erica Wang calls the New York Post.

2. Why should they care and/or take her side of the story? Because their subject will give the rest of the scoop to them when the appropriate time comes. The Post runs an awesome, fun-filled report of Wang and friends partying after she was "stood up at the altar." Wang and friends also try to spin it to other outlets, like us. Erica Wang spinning her jilted bride story could be anything from revenge, to the desire for infamy, to a book deal or a TV show or, as our wedding expert Phyllis Nefler suggested, a Page Six Magazine interview. It could also be a press play to fight for image when this does become a legal battle of some kind (English billing her for the wedding-which he eventually did- her trying to get money from him, etc).

3. The story explodes, as English claims she abused him. The rest of the press wants it. The initial subject of the story delivers the entire exclusive to her original spin publication. Point for Nefler: Wang delivers on the exclusive Post interview. She gets her side of the story out on her home court-the Post-who keep delivering for their mutually beneficial relationship by spinning the story in her favor. Meanwhile, English starts talking to his hometown Boston Herald Boston Globe in order to win favor locally regarding his side of the story.

And here we are: 4. The home tabloids can claim victory when the story moves into overdrive on both sides. English admits: he didn't file a domestic violence complaint against Wang until she went to the press to try to paint English as a bad person.

English waited nearly a month to report the Sept. 14 incident — pressing charges a day after The Post published an exclusive interview with Wang in which she called him "an animal" for blowing off their wedding. English "felt he had to move forward to protect his credibility" after the article, his lawyer, Danielle de Benedictis, told The Boston Herald.

Yup. This wasn't a story worth reporting on until Wang made it one. And now she's got a domestic abuse charge against her and people coming out of the woodwork with character color on her.

Maybe English was worried about the press on him being bad for business (let's say he wants to be a family-friendly TV chef), or maybe he was just pissed (he's got three kids who he doesn't want reading this shit). Who knows. Either way: the Post took the ball and ran it all the way into the end zone. They made the story, broke each piece every step of the way, and were eventually the cause for it getting played out even further. They also continued to establish themselves as a place minor-celebrities can present juicy scoops to in exchange for favorable coverage, which may or may not work to said celebrities' advantages. In this case, it hasn't worked out well for Wang.

But two questions remain: Why the hell did Wang think it was a good idea to carry on with the wedding party? We now know she had more than enough time to cancel it. Probably revenge, or impulse, or sadness. But the second, and more interesting question: Why the hell did Wang try to spin this to the press so hard? What did she really want out of all of this?

Everything we've heard-comments, tips, hearsay from other publications-have indicated in some form or another that this is the kind of thing that Wang's reputation adds up to. Lesson learned, then.

The makings of a minor celebrity are typically a sad, sordid affair for almost everyone involved. Almost. In the case of the New York Post, this is when you get to clock out early on Friday with a pat on the back from the boss. NYP Editor-in-Chief Col Allen and Crew, as someone staffing a gossip page myself, I've got to say: commendable work.

[Update: I incorrectly attributed the Boston Globe's scoop the the Boston Herald. I didn't even know Boston had gossip reporters before this! Awesome. Now I know who to hit up when I want to know what's up Bill Belichick's ass this week. Whickeh Pissahs.]