What we did: He came to my house at night, ordered sushi, sat on my couch and drank tea and talked. He touched my breasts in mid-sentence, completely out of context, and seemed distracted by them and sexual thoughts that would pop into his mind sporadically. He told me he hadn't showered in 4 days. I let him know I was appalled he'd come to my house with urine stained manties.

...After agreeing to flash him my tits quickly and letting him have one more cup of tea, he wiped down my coffee table, kissed the Mins, threw out my garbage and left around 3am. [Kelly just wrote to clarify: "The 'Mins' refers to my mini dachshund, appropriately named, 'MINI'. Janka and the Mini got on really well."]

I gave him a quick hug goodbye and felt bad when he said I made him feel dirty and bad. I wished him well and I really meant it.

Overall impression: A very smart, sweet guy who needs some sort of anchor and guidance in his life. A man who is deeply conflicted and needs sex addiction therapy and possibly meds.

Reason I went on the date: It started as a media joke; I wrote my last column as an open letter to him.... I was lonely and bored. He wanted to come over.

Turns out the piece was passed on by the Press to Page Six's Richard Johnson, who "was eager to do an item," Press editor David Blum told us. Aww, offering publicity to a struggling alt-weekly, how nice! As if. The story was bumped up to a news feature by the Post and then turned into a scoop on page three. "We're sorry they couldn't wait one more day and make it a Wall Street Journal page one exclusive," Blum told us.

Previously: Kelly Kreth Bares Junk In Trunk For Hunk Paul Janka

For starters, by "there's an implication," Matt maybe means, "I would like to imply, though I can't find any evidence to support my theory."

Jakob Lodwick has no "ongoing relationship to Gawker" besides being someone we write usually-mean things about from time to time.

We found out about Patrick's website the same way we find out about most of the things we write about: we got a bunch of emails about it. No one pitched it to us, and we didn't publicize it as a favor to anyone. We don't ever do that because, a) ew and b) we don't have to!

"The price of fame has dropped to $20 a month, payable to Verizon Wireless," Matt writes. Well, right! To anyone who has been reading the Internet for the past few years, though, that isn't a particularly shocking revelation. What would be shocking: a blogola scandal whereby Jakob Lodwick and Julia Allison fed Gawker information to ensure that their protege Patrick Moberg attained fameball status!

That's not what happened, though: It didn't need to. The way the internet works is, the cream floats to the top. And by "cream," we mean "most attention-grabbingly retarded shit."

Knight sent a fury-laced letter to the Press this week in which he tells us that the last time he saw Solomon, he actually yelled "Get away from me!" at her.

Why, you ask? Back in the day, Solomon interviewed Knight for a Times Magazine story on Los Angeles art schools. "Having been a journalist (at that time) for almost two decades, I also did my homework," Knight writes. "I prepared a couple of quotable quotes on the subject, which might encapsulate larger ideas." One of Knight's pearls of wisdom, "Modern art began as an assault on the academy, but post-modern art might be described as a return to the academy," excited Solomon so much that, according to Knight, she printed it as her own observation in her final piece, which bore no mention of the Knight interview.

In the final story, a seriously bitter Knight writes, "It was not a quote; my words had become her words. They were used to introduce her observations on the relevant history of the G.I. Bill. Our interview was not mentioned in the 3,500-word piece. (Frankly, the omission had its benefits since her story was awful)." Ouch.

Hi there Gawker,
I am Kelly Kreth, the new sex/relationship writer for the NY Press (and also, President of my own PR firm.)
Anyway, just for the record I am no longer dating Eric Schaeffer.
How about doing a Gawker's 50 most eligible NYC bachelorettes and including me?
Thanks,
Kelly Kreth

Q&As, typically allotted about 14 words per piece, require tweaking here and there, in the interest of conserving space and coherence. (We once transcribed a three-hour recording of Kevin Costner mumbling on about how making 'Open Range' had touched his soul, like, his very soul, man. How it got crammed into a "10 Questions For Whatshisface" column that Monday was inexplicable and also the duty of some hapless editor.)

But there's some meat to these complaints. Making adjustments so your subject's point gets across is a bit different from pulling "How immodest of you! Isn't it bad manners to brag?" out of the air, as Solomon did in her Dickinson interview.

"Two million people read the New York Times magazine," said David Blum, the new editor of the New York Press, by phone this morning. (David Blum is the former editor of the Village Voice, also my most recent employer.) "Most of them think 'that's what they said, isn't it just incredible how everyone's so concise....' The real issue is the New York Times response, their handling of our inquiries, was pretty shocking. I was surprised and disappointed that the New York Times did not think enough of our inquiry to either respond to it or provide an editor to respond to the specifics of Matt's reporting. For them to be dismissive of that is a betrayal of the trust between the readers and the newspaper."

The worst part? Now we have no idea whether Ted Kooser was actually asked this question during his interview with Solomon, but we did so like his answer to: "As poet laureate, don't you think you should be better acquainted with European poetry?" Kooser replied: "Think of all the European poetry I could have read if we hadn't spent all this time on this interview."

Yes, it seems that Kelly and Eric actually had a lot in common!

His particular fascination with excretions spoke to me. Being a woman who is no stranger to poop stories, having published a few of my own on Poopreport.com, I imagined Eric and I someday falling love, showing each other our bowel movements—the most intimate of acts in my estimation. I got butterflies just thinking about it.

While we went out a few more times after that, he was busy and then left on his nationwide book tour for nearly a month and while out of town began filming his documentary. I was busy, too, working, and still into someone else I had dated whom I just couldn't quite forget...Eric and my relationship morphed into more of a friendship and professional one. We settled into infrequent communications referencing less piss and more prose. I know the details may seem murky, but modern relationships seem to be more and more that way these days—watercolors that bleed into each other with no distinct end.

I have gone out with a man who brought his pit bull on a date and proceeded to drink a beer he stole from the Korean deli on the street. I dated a man who told me I had a pole so far up my ass that it was coming out of my throat. I dated a man who tried to pick up a 15-year-old and proudly told me he had fucked his Trinidadian, herpes-ridden bisexual secretary over the copy machine.

From: Tom Kelly Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:04 AM Subject: Manhattan Media Acquires The New York Press

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Rupert Murdoch may have snagged Dow Jones, but today Manhattan Media is buying the New York Press.

On the exact date that our company was formed six years ago with the acquisition of the Manhattan Newspaper Group, we are very pleased to welcome the Press into a portfolio which can now claim truly to be New York's leading community media company.

We have always been admirers of the rich history of the Press. As New Yorkers we watched the Press being born from the imagination and drive of Russ Smith in the late 80's with a dedicated, smart bunch of writers, editors and graphic artists. It really shook up the Village Voice's dominance of the alternative market. We've also watched it in more challenging times yet believe it's a strong and recognizable brand. It needs reviving and reinvention in a great city that's changed a lot, too, in the last twenty years.

It's our fourth attempt to buy the Press, the first being when we approached Russ shortly after 9/11. We knew that we needed to have a distinctive voice and presence downtown but couldn't wait for the Press
to become available on the right terms for us. So we launched our own weekly last May and we're incredibly proud of the work founding editor Bill Gunlocke and his team have performed in establishing Our Town Downtown in a short period of time. We're just as excited at the prospect of taking that team and merging it with the Press' writers and contributors to produce a better paper than either of us could have done individually. Now the resources are just going to be deeper and wider. We will publish next week as the New York Press.

The importance of independent reporting and opinion is even more important now in New York. We expect to invest considerably in editorial for the entire Community Newspaper Group. We also anticipate that most current New York Press employees will be joining the Manhattan Media family.

We have to thank Avalon Equity Fund, L.P., who owned the Press, for helping us to arrange for this transaction and doing all they could to assure a smooth transition.

The purchase of the New York Press is very much in line with our previous acquisition policy: finding media which have a long history serving their communities. In addition to the other titles in our weekly
community newspaper group, the Press joins AVENUE (coincidentally also acquired August 1, 2002) and New York Family. We also remain very committed to start-ups where they fill important gaps in the market - our launches of the Blackboard Awards and City Hall are excellent examples.

For all of you at Manhattan Media, this acquisition marks another step in the growth of our company. We remain absolutely committed to growing this company with a long-term view for the benefit of its shareholders, employees, clients and readers.

Richard Burns
Chairman

Tom Allon
President/CEO

Earlier: Meet Martin Basroon, C.F.O. Of 'New York Press'

Basroon was convicted in 2000 of stealing $12 million from investors in a Ponzi-like scheme, and was released from federal prison in March 2005.

Basroon was the president of a company called Plaza Mortgage Inc., which was charged with duping around 200 investors out of more than $12 million. Many of those 200 investors were his friends and relatives, according to reports at the time.

According to court records and published accounts, Basroon told his investors that the money was going towards high-interest loans to poor Atlanta residents, but it was actually used to shore up his mortgage company. He was charged with transporting a fraudulently obtained check, conspiracy, and mail fraud, and sentenced in June 2000. His conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal in 2002.

Press president Peter Polimino responded to questions on behalf of Basroon via email:

Martin Basroon is the CFO of the company and is a valued and highly esteemed employee. He had a legal problem a number of years ago and that problem is behind him.
That legal problem has nothing to do with his position at our company. We and he will have no further comment.

The H & H bagel truck was in front of Rhea and Martin Basroon as they drove up to a tollbooth on the New Jersey Turnpike. They were slightly impatient and curious as the truck remained at the booth a little longer than expected. Finally, it moved on, the Basroons moved up for their turn and the reason for the delay was instantly apparent — the tollbooth worker was holding a freshly delivered bag of bagels. Was it a regular delivery? An unexpected gift? They asked but they'll never know — the worker's mouth was full of bagel.

U.S. vs. Basroon [V-lex]