OH YES. Nick's new neighbor is Samuel Motherfucking Jackson. You know there was a movie made about this, right? [See above. It was not the one where Samuel Jackson gets EATEN by a MOTHERFUCKING SHARK.] Like, they gave this to me, on a Sunday. Holy shit, I'm never asking for anything ever again.

I mean guys, I don't know, all I see is "sitcom" potential written all over this. Wait, the item, the fucking Page Six item is so classic, I'm dying here. Breathe, Foster. Okay, okay. Let's handle this like adults. Look:

We hear the seller, Wall Street dude Eric Gross, got such a kick out of Jackson buying his pad, he may have accepted the bid, despite it being a tad lower than a nonceleb offer of about $4.1 million. Let's hope Jackson doesn't have any secrets, though. It'll be hard to keep them from the only other neighbor on his floor — Gawker guru Nick Denton.

BAHAHA. Oh, come on. You think that glee was because it was Sam Jackson, or did he get a "kick" out of this because it was Sam Jackson living next to Nick? [Former Gawker Intern Turned Page Six Reporter] Neel Shah, PLEASE tell me you wrote this. This is going to be a beautiful wellspring of material. Sam! We have a tips line. If Nick puts his motherfucking recycling in the motherfucking trash, you know exactly who to call.

Times media writer Edward Wyatt penned a soft, round filing that was about the word "douche." It appeared on today's front page.

This word is one with which this website (and media network) has a wide breadth of experience with. In November, 2006, former Gawker scribe Emily Gould wrote:

Don't get us wrong. It's not that (50%) of our delicate ladyish sensibilities are offended or anything; far from it. It's just that, as vagina-havers, we want to branch out a little bit in the realm of vagina-related insults. Also, we couldn't help but notice that the trope is now so bitten and tired, it pretty much begs to be called "Already Over" (if Already Over wasn't Already Over, obvs). Plus, Dolce has co-opted it for his own use. What a fucking asswizard!

Before we go any further, can we just say that "azzwizard" is kind of magical?

Anyway. People, as we are, can't be without first-stone casters. Observe:

I really, really hope there aren't actually 17,400 results for the word "douche" on Gawker websites that can't be cross-referenced with Joe Dolce.

But for a moment, back to Wyatt's piece. He didn't write about how the word evolved from a technical term of feminine hygiene to a schoolyard pejorative, to a favorite of bloggers and mediocre satire writers alike, to a Times media piece. No: that'd be too meta, and too interesting, and too far into the purview of their excellent After Deadline column.

In a newspaper where the word "fuck" is too vulgar as to only be printed once in its entire history—despite the word "fuck" and its entrenchment in our daily lives, in politics, popular culture, literature, and I'm sure its handy usage around Times' bullpens—they penned a piece based on the statistical usage and adoption into sitcom television, where every decent slang word goes to die.

It's filled with numbers about usage, and quotes from TV writers about how they employ it, like this one:

"As a writer, you're always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk," Dan Harmon, the creator of "Community," said about the word "douche." "This is a word that has evolved in the last couple of years - a thing that sounds like a thing you can't say."

It doesn't get much more interesting than that, except for a line about how the show that once presented the American Public with Dennis Franz's tuchus decided to give it an evolved go:

Users of the recently popular word "douche" defend its use, noting that it was invoked, usually with the suffix "bag," in the 1990s by the character Andy Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue," an ABC series that frequently pushed the boundaries of network acceptability.

Naturally, since this story dropped, the Gawker Weekend inbox has been brimming with glee and excitement.

There are a few angles to take on it. Mediaite's Joe Coscarelli reflects much of the sentiment I've already heard out there in his lede:

I bet you never thought you'd see the day when you could pick up a copy of the New York Times and see the word "douche" on page one. And we're not talking hygiene!

And NYTpicker, that anonymous scourge of the New York Times' newsroom, takes out his or her butcher knife and gets to work on how typically bullshit the numbers used to create this story are, making a special point to note that the Times calls the word "offensive to many people" but doesn't say who those people are:

But seeing TV reporter Edward Wyatt and the NYT base its front-page reporting on numbers the paper actually requested from the Parents Television Council — a notoriously conservative TV watchdog group that has brought 99 percent of all indecency complaints before the FCC (we learned that from an excellent 2004 NYT story) — makes us a little sick. The PTC has been around since 1995, founded by conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell, and is responsible for complaints to the FCC about the Janet Jackson nipple slip and cursing on "NYPD Blue."

NYTpicker's right, and Joe Coscarelli's right. It's patently ridiculous that the Times uses generalized opinions to substantiate their numbers, to help give their story a case. There's also something inevitably entertaining about watching a newspaper as prude as the Times give the word "douche" some kind of once-over, even if the story behind it is fairly flimsy.

But honestly, this all just kind of brings me down.

Believe me, the last thing I want to do is rain on the parade of fun that is the New York Times using the word "douche," as someone who can only die happy once Clark Hoyt calls one of the Styles writers a "fuckface" in his Public Editor column. But let's talk about this like adults, kind of, for a moment. As someone with a strange affection for vulgar language, I only see this as an intense letdown.

To do this story two years ago would've been one thing, as the numbers slowly rise into becoming a trend, before it hits fever pitch. But for this story to run now, without Styles writer Allen Salkin's byline—and Salkin would've done way better with this—is absurd. Besides the fact that it's boring and plucked from a bullshit ether, the potential they laid waste to with this one is absurd. Mainly: to address the issue of creating new terms that don't exhaust themselves more and more on each usage. For example:

Where did the word "douche" come from in it's literal, non-slang implication?
Who were the first people to make the word "douche" a pejorative?
Who appended the word "bag" to the word "douche"?
Who uses this word every day?
How long has it been around?
Who (besides Gould/Shafrir/Balk/Sicha-era Gawker) has called this word over?
And what media outlets use it on a regular basis? But mostly:
Who's offended by the word?

There's nothing interesting about the word "mediocre" unless it's placed in an interesting context. On the inverse, the word "fuck" is almost always interesting, if only because it begs the question of necessity. The idea behind using a word like "douche" or "fuck" is to emphasize or exclaim something, it's to aid a common goal of writing or speaking, the reason people like me love language: to communicate an idea to someone you otherwise couldn't.

But what does the word "douche" communicate, exactly, besides the kind of person who would use it?

Maybe someone who's just unsavory in some regard, or someone who's typically unaware of their uncouth behavior. Or someone who does something your way of going about things disagrees with. There're way too many words like it. Maybe people just enjoy the way it rolls off the tongue, or maybe people actually enjoy employing the connotation of a Feminine hygiene product (which is the point all you nu-Feminists should take to say the exact same thing Gould said three years ago).

But really, the word douche is just like the story the Times did on it, and the generalized sources—the "some people" who "may be offended" by it— they used. It's empty. It means nothing. It's a completely subjective assessment of somebody who does something you don't like. I know people who use the word "douchebag" when referring to other people; I'm willing to bet those same people use the word "douchebag" to refer to the people referring to them. And I'm most disappointed when people I know who use the word could find something more concise, or shocking, or linguistically artful to go with. It's sold at the Wal-Mart of pejoratives. It's cheap, it's made en masse, and there's nothing but bad preservatives in the ingredients. Let's all—The New York Times, Bloggers, TV Writers, Those Who Use The Word "Douchebag," Those Who You Would Call A "Douche," Bar Patrons, Sports Fans, English Professors, Joe Dolce—become better communicators, and find something better than the word "douche" and it's mediocre suffix "bag" to go with.

Or, you know, we could just judge each other a little less.

Since none of these things will probably happen in the foreseeable future, just go with "douchenozzle" until it does. At least it sounds funny.

[Related Reading - Commenter VioletViolet makes a salient point: "I still think the NY Times article on "vajajay" was worse, although at least it wasn't on the front page. When you're asking Gloria Steinem for her opinion on a term that's use was mostly limited to The Soup, you're in trouble."]

Mind you: this is the same guy who breathlessly reminded the American legal system that Eric Dane is on the Emmy Award-winning Grey's Anatomy in his lawsuit against us for posting a tape of Eric Dane trying to spice up his marriage in a threesome with his now-preggers wife and a madam. Heh. It was awesome. It's here. You should watch it.

But now Marty's ready to make a mess out of more people's lives by dragging them through prolonged legal engagements that aggressively create rifts between people with a common purpose: in ours and McSteamy's, to bring stories to The People. In the case of Kate and Jon Gosselin: for the children. Marty Singer is about to fuck up some children.

But it takes three to tango (as we learned). This wouldn't be so awful without the help of Singer's awful client (the child-exploiting Kate Gosselin) and their awful defendant (the sleazy walking Ed Hardy lifestyle line that is Jon Gosselin). These people are awful! Don't they have eight kids somewhere wondering why their parents are being such complete meanies/absentee, hyper-aggressive, moneygrubbing scary breeding units? Because they are. Basically, it goes like this: Jon Gosselin went on Larry King to tell Kate to put the divorce proceedings on hold. He made TLC shut down the production of the show. And sometime before that, took all but $1,000 out of a shared money market account of Kate and Jon's.

Now Kate wants the money back in there. Furthermore, Singer is alleging that Jon's lawyer is a crook.

Singer says Heller has done this before, citing a New York Supreme Court decision which says Heller directed one of his clients in a divorce to "withdraw everything that's in the bank" so the money could be used to pay his fee. And then there's this ... Singer blasts Heller, noting that the New York Supreme Court "addressed charges that you violated 'thirty-eight counts alleging multiple violations of the disciplinary rules,' and charges that you 'had engaged in a pattern of misconduct involving misrepresentations, deceit, abusive treatment of clients, fee gouging, neglect and willful failure to return unearned retainers to his clients' in matters which involved your 'mishandling of the matters of twelve separate clients.'"

Damn. Talk about being able to sniff out your own kind (Ahmadinejad). Lawyers! God bless 'em. Good to know Singer's keeping busy with a client list full of America's most savory famous types. I gotta admit, though, I am curious to hear what Jon intended on doing with the scrilla (besides paying lawyers). Maybe he was broke. Maybe Jon just wanted the money to get in on the next McSteamy key party? Maybe he's gonna invest in web startups, har har! Who knows. Either way, Singer wants a piece of it. Somewhere, eight children hate him.

The untimely death of someone like Jackson, a once in a generation worldwide superstar, is one of the few things that can possibly breathe new life into the balance sheets of a slowly dying tabloid media industry. Remember, not only was Michael Jackson a star of Elvis proportions, but he was an insanely weird star of Elvis proportions, perhaps the weirdest star the world has ever known (Even weirder than Elvis himself!) or will ever know, with a long personal history filled with scandal.

Here's something key to remember on this—In the United States of America, the dead cannot be libeled. Only living individuals can sue for libel. So I can run around all over town saying that Millard Fillmore used to fellate goats in the White House if I chose to and there's absolutely nothing that Millard Fillmore's descendants can do legally to make me stop saying it.

Now just imagine how many sensational Michael Jackson stories are out there waiting to be told that were never told before out of fear of being driven into financial ruin with libel lawsuits tied up for years in the American court system. Surely there will be people looking to sell their stories now, and surely there will be tabloid magazines that will scrape up whatever cash they can muster to buy these stories, even the most marginal, and slap them on their front pages under provocative headlines. They will sell by the millions, even in a down economy, because Western society has an insatiable appetite for celebrity scandal. It makes us feel better about our own wretched lives when the curtain is pulled back on those in the spotlight to reveal souls that are just as dark and tormented as our own, if not more.

But it won't just stop there.

In the days, weeks and months to come we'll be bombarded with more Michael Jackson television specials, print media special issues, commemorative products, re-releases of albums, etc. than most of us can stand. And then of course the more traditional media will recycle some of the stories dug up by the aforementioned tabloids and their reporting of those stories will bring in viewers and sell copies of newspapers/magazines. What you've seen just in the last 12 hours or so, what with the release of Jackson's death photo and the second by second movements of his corpse being reported on live television, is only scratching the surface.

Now to be fair, we at Gawker certainly aren't exempt from any of this. It's no secret that our revenue is generated through advertising dollars based on a rather simple metric—How many eyeballs are seeing the site on a regular basis. We will be covering the coverage of the story, and perhaps adding to the story here and there, as we always do, and stories like this one tend to spark tremendous public interest. Just look at the spike in traffic we experienced yesterday from all of this as evidence. This is all a part of what former Gawker editor Choire Sicha (or maybe it was Emily Gould?) termed, "the celebrity industrial complex," and we as consumers have no one but ourselves to blame for it. If we ignored all of this stuff it would probably go away, but we don't, so it doesn't. In turn, those of who work in media serve it up on a plate for the masses eager to consume it. Then we all medicate ourselves silly so we can get through the days and sleep through the nights and the world spins madly on. It's just the way we live now.

If only we'd all take a moment to step back and listen to the words of this contemplative visionary, perhaps the world would be a better place.

Times Square pic via Animal New York

As editor of the late Time Inc. title Business 2.0, Quittner once employed Valleywag emeritus Owen Thomas (as well as your current Valleywag). But somewhere along the way, Quittner soured on Thomas.

Thomas jumped to Valleywag and Business 2.0 folded. When Quittner landed at Fortune, Thomas wrote about Quittner's inflated title, covered Fortune's suspension of his blogging privileges, and quoted the Scrabulous-playing columnist saying he had "too much time on my hands."

Quittner seemed to take it personally. After jumping to Time, he used the magazine as his personal burn book, noting in January that a Sony virtual world wouldn't create an avatar "as fat as your average tech-gossip blogger."

Now Quittner's at it again, with a Sims 3 review in which he creates a "Loser" character named "Thomas Woodchuck" and burns him alive (see clip above). As several tipsters have noted, the resemblance between Woodchuck and Thomas can't be missed — nor can the creepiness of teaching his daughter to drown an enemy in the pool.

It seems early to get too alarmed; there are worse things than being called an "unredoubtable... woodchuck" in an anonymous comments, or killed virtually in a videogame. We're just a little surprised Time indulges Quittner's grudge — or that the reporter, after all this time, still holds it.

The hedge-fund chief today answered a series of questions about his press on PE Hub, a website for the private-equity industry. Valleywag's coverage of Thiel figured prominently. Some choice quotes:

I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters. I don't understand the psychology of people who would kill themselves and blow up buildings, and I don't understand people who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy.

Awww, he thinks we're angry!

It's like terrorism in that you're trying to be gratuitously meaner and more sensational than the next person, like a terrorist who is trying to stand out and shock people.

It's odd that Thiel would equate provocative writing with terrorism when the arch libertarian seems so comfortable saying sensational things to get attention. Last month, he wrote that women's suffrage ruined democracy in the early 20th Century. At Stanford Law School, Thiel started a conservative newspaper and is said to have had some kind of noisy fight with campus liberal Rachel Maddow, now of MSNBC fame.

So it's surprising that Thiel is so tight-lipped after saying "what gets written is half right, and half entirely wrong." We'd love to hear specifics. Sadly, as in our past attempts to get comments from Thiel, none have been forthcoming.

Thiel is hardly alone in trying to turn tech blogs into a rah-rah chorus. There is now an entire media ecosystem dedicated to disseminating CEO and investor spin. Thanks to Thiel, anyone who questions the publicist-approved message can now be labeled a terrorist. Whatever: Valleywag will continue to be a place that prints the truths that others are too polite to say out loud.

And Peter, on this my first day as the Valleywag, you couldn't have picked a better welcome gift.

"Speak no ill of a former Gawker writer," Denton once wrote, citing a longstanding, "unspoken rule" at his company, apparently intended to keep his loose confederation of caustic writers from turning on one another and collapsing his profit-making enterprise into an online black hole of self-reference and backbiting.

But some snark slaves couldn't help themselves — and Denton, it turns out, was foremost among them, especially after the CEO took direct control of his flagship website and started churning out blog posts. Breaking the directive in a lengthy item on his predecessor Gould's bed-hopping allowed the gossip merchant to surface some juicy (and worthwhile) dirt on wunderkind novelist Keith Gessen, even if it did betray a certain fascination with the Brooklyn literary set from whom the former business reporter believed himself to be reclaiming Gawker.

The goal posts had been moved: Speaking ill of a former Gawker writer was now allowed, it seemed, if confined to activities undertaken since leaving the company. This allowed any number of further items on Gould, who was turning into a bona fide fameball (and worthy subject of coverage).

But it turned out Denton had broken more sharply with the old Gawker norms than was readily apparent. Recapping Gould's story on Vanity Fair's website today, Jim Windolf reveals that the blog mogul last spring planted an embarrassing video of Gould that was shot at at Gawker Media event while she worked at the company, in which the blogger peformed "mock fellatio on a plastic tube:"

"When I finally met Emily," [onetime "Gawker Mascot" Andrew Krucoff] says, "I felt so bad about posting the blowjob video and I took it down. Yes, it came from within Gawker. Denton fed it to me and I was too eager to play his lapdog on that one."

Perhaps Denton's intent was more mischievous than vengeful; Gould herself once called him "a pranksterish rapscallion" of a boss. But in the same post, Gould also presaged the less charming, "much less okay" ways Denton might treat her, especially once she was out the door. (Denton had begged her to stay and offered an $80,000-$90,000 annual salary, former Gawker editor Choire Sicha told Windolf. Denton disputes that account.)

Gould left little question how the leak of the video felt from her side of things:

"That was the point where I was like, ‘Wow, I am actually kind of scared of this person,'" Gould says. "I had never during my time at Gawker witnessed Gawker being used as a tool to try to take someone down. It was more like, people take themselves down, and you watch, and you write about it. This was different. This was him having an agenda, and to watch people fall in line with it, it's very creepy."

We — oh fuck it, I — don't buy Gould's premise that Gawker coverage of her has been part of a filthy, inaccurate and somehow evil attack campaign. This is (and always has been) a gossip website, and Gould became a significant player in the world we write about long before she appeared on the cover of the Times magazine or signed a six-figure book deal.

That said: leaking an embarrassing in-house video — if that is what in fact actually happened — shot at a company event, to visit a sort of vengeance on an ex-employee is beyond the pale and beneath the man I ultimately work for.

(Especially because I got fairly plastered at the last company event. And acted really obnoxious with Ian Spiegelman. And may or may not have invited Richard Blakeley up to my place. To crash on the couch, I SWEAR.)

[Vanity Fair]

Still, if we'd known repurposing other people's content, whether on Twitter, Tumblr, Tumblr or Tumblr, was a fast track to literally tens of thousands of dollars in publishing money, we'd have jumped on that trend sooner.

As opposed to what we're doing now, which is, uh, totally different.

(Top pic via Nick Douglas)

Sure, it's a bit hokey, but it's also an honor. So, I along with Ryan, Hamilton, Richard, Alex, Owen and new kid on the block John thank everyone who voted. To quote Sean Penn's perfect acceptance line: "Thank you, you commie homo-loving sons of guns!"

OK, so there was a funny Peppermint Patty is a lesbian laff. But other than that, we sat through 22 minutes of jokes about irresponsible spending and borrowing, with images of furniture out on the front lawn, and homeless shelters full of horrible cots and crazy people. This being television, of course the family got their home back in the end—but only after enduring time spent as desperate squatters, evicted renters, and abusers of weird laws involving the elderly. Here's the whole thing if you missed it.

Forget what criticism you might have about the general state of television's Greatest Show of All Time. This particular episode just seemed tacky, cruel, and, most importantly, not funny. The millionaires who make the show haw-hawing at distressed people who suddenly find themselves homeless? Yikes. Or were they not laughing, rather trying to show that they relate? Either way it came across as condescending, poorly-timed and not what we were looking for to pick up the mood after spending an afternoon with the depressing Sunday New York Times.

Speaking of which, the always-deplorable Sunday Styles section has soared to new depths of hardy-har pandering to rich folks. Don't like your nanny? Fire her and blame it on the recession! Only making five hundred grand a year? Oh boo hoo for you! Lately they've been veering back to something that's less ridiculous but seems to be something of a farm league for the Nation section: this week, there was a profile of that 14-year-old Hannity-in-training and a look at the state of the pro-choice movement. Can we have our enraging entertainment back, please?

And, yes, this very website could be said to often mock the increasingly large pool of downtrodden and bewildered. The esteemed Time magazine finds our posts about the economic evaporation of the media to be "kick[ing] someone that's already dead." Maybe they're right. We'll cop to that.

But a highbrow newspaper section that makes rich people feel sorry for themselves is just boring and useless on its best days. It's pretty offensive on its worst. And a television mining the death of the middle class for humor, then protecting themselves from feeling too bad by putting a pretty bow at the end? Ugh. Sometimes, you just want something funny to watch on a Sunday night.

For the second time in a week, Smith claimed Gawker and PerezHilton.com were run without "editors, publishers, lawyers," even though this site has all three, the editors being listed right on the front page.

Not that it has any bearing, as Smith claims, on factual accuracy: CNN and Tina Brown's The Daily Beast both have the full complement of structural gatekeepers listed by Smith, and both left Smith's error unchallenged.

We will give the cranky octogenarian credit for learning one trick of the Web trade: Trying to start a dustup with a much larger competitor in an obvious bid for attention. Sometimes it works!

(Video via Huffington Post)

Because it sounds somehow even lazier than making a book out of your mom's email messages, a scheme hatched up, perhaps not coincidentally, by another Gawker writer.

Douglas insists the work is backbreaking — "reading a thousand jokes is like watching five hours of porn" — but he's already automated the process of collecting submissions and permissions. Those who make it into the book get no royalties, but a free copy of the work ensures they at least won't have to pay to see their own content in printed format.

So we've seen blog books, internet cat-picture books, a family email book and now the first book collection of tweets. Remember when the internet was the desperate medium, and had to steal its content from the incumbent players, rather than everything working the other way around? Those sure were the days.

Former Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove asked Smith to open up about getting canned, and boy did she ever. Though Smith said the loss of her gossip column was "emasculating," she (still) thinks gossip as a trade is dead and pointless and stupid, because what's with the kids these days and their non-stars? Cheryl Crane and Johnny Stompanato — now those were some celebrities.

Since gossip is absurd, Smith these days is "doing philosophical journalism." We're not sure if she's talking about her WowOWow column on breast augmentation, or the one about how she sleeps naked, or maybe the one about "the best public bathroom in NYC." (Oh, Liz.)

But the point is, all the other gossips are fools. Which Smith has been saying for a while, but now she names names, including ours.

Page Six gets it:

I read Page Six mystified every day, and everybody I talk to agrees with me. They don’t know who anybody is.... Well, it’s almost like they just dump a bunch of chicken feed out there and there’s no bones in it.

Here's a dig at the Post generally and (probably) at Aussie editor Col Allan specifically:

The New York Post, I hate to say this, is not a New York newspaper. It doesn’t love New York, it hasn’t adjusted to New York. It’s like aliens came down. It’s a fun newspaper at times. I always liked its saucy, vivid, way, but it has no New York heart. I figure they didn’t like me because I was alien to them.

Another swipe when asked about "sites like Perez Hilton and Gawker"

I don’t think they mean anything either... I wouldn’t give any credence to most of the stuff I read. I mean, there are no publishers, no editors, no lawyers vetting anything [Gawker has all three of these things; but then again the Daily Beast has at least two and that didn't stop this error —ed.]. This is the problem with the Internet where everybody has a voice and we’re stuck with it.

...which leads directly into this swipe at herself:

We’re going to have the Internet even when we don’t have things to eat. We’re going to still have it. I’m all for it, and I’m doing it myself on the Wowowow.com site, but it’s not important. It isn’t even semi-important.

The only person who escapes Smith's ire is fellow old-school gossip Cindy Adams, who keeps it real in the N-Y-Pizzle. She's not some Aussie interloper or reality-TV zombie whippersnapper!

If Smith hates the gossip business so much, why did she try to renew her Post contract, telling Rupert Murdoch she "hoped to die with my boots on my desk?" Why is she still writing a syndicated newspaper column and for Variety? Maybe Smith is afraid her life will be meaningless if she gives up her longtime gossip gigs. But she should give retirement another look. Not because of what the Post thinks about her work, but because of what she thinks about it.

First, a quick rundown of who did and did not publish pictures of the R&B singer after she was reportedly struck by boyfriend Chris Brown during a side-of-the-road fight before the Grammys. (TMZ first ran the pictures Thursday night. They quickly spread.)

Ran the picture:

• New York Daily News (with picture on homepage
• New York Post (with picture on homepage)
• Newsday (with picture on homepage)
• Us Weekly (with picture on homepage)
• Huffington Post (ran picture on homepage with link to TMZ)
• Gawker  (with picture on homepage)
• Star (alternate picture on homepage)
• TMZ (obviously, since they were the ones who obtained and first published it)
• Perez Hilton (with picture on homepage)

Did not run the picture, but reported it:

• People , which did a full story about the picture but did not even link it.
• E! also did not link the picture when it ran a story about the photo and how Los Angeles police are investigating how it was leaked.
• The LA Times wrote about the same investigation, with a link to the photo on TMZ.
• Drudge Report linked the TMZ photo prominently.

(Larger news sites like CNN, MSNBC and New York Times did not cover the picture by end of day Thursday.)

Critics say running the picture humiliates Rihanna at a time when she's already in emotional agony, that it pierces a zone of emotional and physical privacy already grossly violated in the apparent attack on her. Victims of domestic abuse and rape have long been accorded special rights in the criminal justice system; it is argued they should retain a similar degree of control if and when information escapes that system. Finally, it is lost on no one that sensational pictures like the Rihanna shot can bring profit-making publishers large amounts of traffic, opening publishers to charges of exploitation.

So why would anyone run the picture, as we and others did? The Rihanna story has always been about an unfortunately common crime involving two famous people and a high-profile event. This has given rise to a full spectrum of speculation about the case. Though unsettling, the evidence of Rihanna's injuries settles at least some of that guessing game.

One result of this: underlining the seriousness of an attack that many people have sought to minimize.

Meredith has folded Country Home, meaning 250 layoffs. The company is also "relocating the creative functions of the ReadyMade brand and Parents.com to Des Moines," which really sucks, let's be honest. An internal memo said ad revenue was down 15% last quarter, and this quarter is even worse.


Gawker, Nick Denton, and Gawker Media as a whole have finally jumped the shark, reportedly, an event which occurs with the same frequency as mustaches coming back in style. I'm a little concerned that this has happened and it's only January, though. Can we jump the shark twice in 09? Let's hope so! [Independent]

Les Payne was a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter a popular editor, and a columnist at Newsday for almost the past 30 years. The paper, which is struggling like every other paper, just dropped his column. Their grand sendoff? "The writing of former Newsday columnist Les Payne can be found at http://blog.lespayne.net/. Thank you." Meh. Learn all about Payne's distinguished career in this retrospective.


At Nielsen Business Media, home to shaky trade mags like Adweek, Brandweek, and Mediaweek, top editor Tony Case has quit. One source tells us he "couldn't take the browbeating" any more. We also hear that the masthead on each of those three magazines includes every staffer left at all three, to "make it look as if each magazine is well-populated."

The new New Books columnist at Harper's will be Ben Moser. John Leonard, who passed away in November, had written it since 2003.

Dow Jones freezes salaries for the year! They're just copying the NYT. Or McClatchy. Hey, who isn't doing it? [Fishbowl DC]

There was a grenade attack (crazy) on Mexico's top television station (unbelievable) during the nightly news broadcast (totally psycho). The fact that this item is just appearing here is part of the problem. I'm starting to wonder whether Mexican narcotraffickers really believe in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and that it should apply to Mexico. [CSM]

She says this was back in the spring. Perhaps in March, when we asked what the hell he was doing at a Microsoft party and noticed him touching himself a lot during photoshoots. But whenever it was, while Del Conte tried to get an interview with him started, he was furiously checking his BlackBerry mumbling that he'd been on Gawker. He then started looking at her tits.

Natali's tale is in clip form above. And to indulge our number one fan, here's a brief roundup of his post-mercury-poisoning antics.

• Before getting fired from/quitting his Broadway show Speed-the-Plow, he spent a night off sending a mass text message to ladies, telling any/all of them to come to his hotel room. Whoever got there first, won him for the evening. That's how he ended up with his current girlfriend, 23-year-old model Ashley Chontos.
• He also, inexplicably, sent a "six paragraph" text to View prattler Sherri Shepherd.
• E! gossipeuse Ted Casablanca says that Piven was actually fired from Speed-the-Plow, rather than quitting.
• And, finally, he went seeking treatment for his suspicious ailment in Thailand, of all places.

Clay Shirky—a professional smart man—tells CJR that hey, it's all reading. Why not embrace the internet?

It seems to me, in fact, from the historical record, that the idea of literary reading as a sort of broad and normal activity was done in by television, and it was done in forty years ago...

What the Internet has actually done is not decimate literary reading; that was really a done deal by 1970. What it has done, instead, is brought back reading and writing as a normal activity for a huge group of people.

For real! Has everyone forgotten about the television menace? That's what originally turned Americans to zombies. At least on the internet you have to read and write a little bit, even if it's in idiot AOL commenter-style. We are the new vanguard of the literary revolution! Everyone can still feel good about themselves. [Including the aforementioned Victoria Blake, who also called us her favorite site in the whole world pretty much, shout out to you, Victoria!] Reading!