Quote on this breaking news, directly from Sheila: "I look forward to once again having a reason to sit in a coffeeshop for hours and hours with my laptop." Yea!

First off we have Defamer founder Mark Lisanti, pictured at left in his annual Nikke Finke Halloween garb, who yesterday kicked off a new gig writing a thrice-weekly column for Movieline, the Hollywood site staffed by just about everyone who ever toiled at Defamer. Mark's inaugural piece, an always welcome evisceration of Michael Bay, can be read here.

Next we have former Gawker editor Sheila McClear doing her part to start a movement to boost the self-esteem of freelancers everywhere.

If you're freelance, unemployed, or underemployed, you probably work at home and don't always wear pants either. (Gentleman–no, those ratty "writing shorts" do not count.)

This Friday, July 10th, let's all make an effort to all put on pants. Fridays are often a time for a more relaxed dress code in offices. But not for the jobless. This Friday, take a shower in the morning, fix your hair, and put on some nice clothes even if you won't be leaving the house. Nice shorts and skirts OK too, but NO boxers or pajamas–you must wear clothes that you could actually go to a job in. (Send in pics if you want!)

Too often, un- and under-employment causes people to fall into a rut. This will give everyone an extra shot of self-esteem and aura of respectability as we continue our job hunting. It'll make us all feel better.

We should add that there's a picture of a pantless young woman who may or may not be Sheila accompanying her ASSME post on this. Just saying.

Irate Michael Bay Blasts Paramount Over Unacceptable Tie With Ice Age 3 [Movieline]
Movieline Welcomes Defamer Founder Mark Lisanti to the Family [Movieline]
July 10th is the First Annual Freelancers Put On Your Pants Day [ASSME]
pic via Movieline

Hruska, the smart, city-savvy Omaha import who quietly stormed the NYC media and socialite scene after quitting her hedge fund gig and starting a successful blog covering New York nightlife got a much-ballyhooed* profile in the New York Times today. Most of it's just fluff, and fun fluff, at that: it's nice to see a young upstart - even if they are funded by a Winklevoss Twin, ahem - come wide-eyed from Middle America and get her Blog Empire on. Hruska's unflappably charming, has few detractors and lots of friends in this town, who she gets to flit around with and make part of her story. But there was one part of the profile that might've tugged on some pretty sensitive nerves: the fact that the piece touted her "energetic, well educated and impressionable" staff that is "largely unpaid."

Gawker emerita Sheila McClear rips into Hruska over at ASSME:

As long as you're grateful to work for free in exchange for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and social cache, your "career" is going nowhere. Try crashing parties for your schmoozing opportunities, and you can freeblog for fun but don't spend too much time on it–real adults get paid. Jesus, I sound like a Dad, but seriously–do you want to be popular, or do you want to make money?

Yes, I've checked: ASSME pays. Which raises the question: if ASSME can pay, why can't Hruska? Or why won't she? Even the potential conflict-of-interest-ridden minefield that is media expert Dan Abrams' site Mediaite will be paying their contributors. What gives?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.It's my guess that Hruska doesn't give a shit about the future of journalism, and if she does, it doesn't have much to do with her blog, which is a social scene site. The girls writing for Hruska - not to pigeonhole them - probably aren't looking for a full-time gig in what she does so much as (A) a mentoring from her (B) a good time, which is a kinda fair barter or (C) enough perks to supplement their full-time gigs. If anybody's trying to get gainful employment directly from working for Hruska, that's their fault, not hers, no matter how impressionable they are. But then comes the philosophical imperative: is it bad for society to not pay writers?

Well, that depends on how important you think Guest of a Guest is to society.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Which brings us to The Huffington Post, who, on the other hand, some people definitely think is important to the future of journalism. Among those people: Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse, who awarded Arianna Huffington with a lifetime achievement award on June 9th. Now, mind you: the Huffington Post doesn't pay for the majority of the content that appears on their site. Journalism School students pay lots of money to (hopefully) one day be paid for the content Arianna Huffington is putting on her site for free-nintey-nine. AdAge media writer Simon Dumenco took on the award a while back. And today, Dumenco absolutely lays into Huffington for grievances held against her nearly universally.

First, Arianna Huffington's dismissive views regarding journalism itself:

...Huffington's own defensive explanation, at the Mirror Awards, for why her bloggers earn nothing...she declared, "Our bloggers come and go. They write when the spirit moves them, and they do it because they want to be part of the conversation." Yikes. So after all these years of Huffington giving lip service to the idea that her legions of bloggers are the heart and soul of her supposedly revolutionary über-blog, it turns out she thinks they're marginal, fly-by-night, "come and go" wannabes.

Dumenco could be on to something: if writers are writing for free to gain exposure, this could eventually become so circular - the job I'm writing from right now could be a job done "for exposure" - that the foundation that journalism jobs are built on could become an (ironically) inverted pyramid, one where free content sits at the top, with only those who survive through an income-less period of life scoring paid gigs.

How 'bout those writers who aren't paid, though? How do you ensure quality or liability? Every time the Huffington Post puts shoddy journalism on their site, they risk their reputation as a place to get news. And maybe that - the reputation - is the currency Arianna Huffington has to barter with her "writers." And quality control is important to the press!

And that would be the case with HuffPo. If it weren't turning into a content-repurposing tabloid. Dumenco did the math about the actual content on her site. The stuff that wasn't one of her celebrity-friend-penned columns, or written by one of her five paid reporters:

By HuffPo's own tally, more than a quarter million readers viewed the Heather Graham post, which quoted 13 sentences, totaling 142 words, from Britain's Daily Mail — a paper that (stupidly, naively, I suppose) pays its entertainment reporters. HuffPo's contribution to the, uh, discourse? Just 58 words of its own — which simply set up the Daily Mail's interview with Graham and further summarized the article. And that, folks, is HuffPo's true business model...

The Oncoming Apocalypse Of Journalism - of which Huffington might be one of the Four Horsepeople - could just be a Noah's Ark-esque flood, one in which the only thing holding you above water is a paycheck for quality. Or people could just stop giving a shit about quality, and that could go, too. Either way, Huffington and Hruska make two things about making a buck writing very, very evident: (1) there will now always be someone behind you to do your job for less, at the same rate you're doing it at, and (2) in the economy of writing - shit, in any economy - owning the shop always has and always will have perks. It may be lonely at the top, but at least you're gettin' paid. And if you're Huffington and Hruska, you get to bring your friends along for the ride, too.

Cocktails and Backslaps Don't Pay My Rent–Do They Yours? [ASSME]
Trashy Parasitism as a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme? Hi, HuffPo [AdAge]

I made two turkey sandwiches to bring in to work, to cut down on my personal lunch overhead. Then I got to the office and heard... rumors. Were these rumors true, I asked my new boss? As it turned out, they were!

Still, I accidentally cried when he informed me of the termination of our mutually mercenary arrangement in the see-through glass box of a conference room. I was surprised by how much I cared. I mention this scene not because it is mine, but because it is wholly unremarkable, and it is being played out in workplaces across the country right now. (Two million jobs lost in 2008, says the Wall Street Journal.)

I hung out with one of my best high school friends over Christmas. Ron and I spent a good amount of time living in a van during the years we had a band together. Despite years of fighting "the shop"—that is, going to work on the line at General Motors—he's been there for a while now, making good money while going to school. He's just been laid off, at least temporarily. His coworker, an older woman, told him, "If something bad happens to me while I'm at work, drag me outside. Just drag me outside. I don't want the last thing I see to be the ceiling of this factory."

"OK," he told her. "If you're really serious, I'll do it. Just let me know that you're serious, because a bunch of people will be pissed at me if you go down and I drag you outside. But I will do it."

Tier 1 autoworkers make about $25 an hour, not the $70 that is often reported. Their deal with the devil is being worried about the factory ceiling being the last thing to see if you happen to die on the job—or keeling over the the vegetable patch after cashing that first pension check. I guess that's why they call it "work, and other sins."

I was lucky to spend a year being a smart-ass for a living, although it would be irrationally hubristic to view Internet news-aggregating and the snark-blogging fishbowl as anything more than a Dadaist experiment. Still, it's been more fun than most jobs should ever be—and thanks for the shot.

I enjoyed making Hills videos, harassing Keith Gessen, pissing off Julia Allison, and comparing the defacing of Sienna Miller's house to Passover. I covered the best election ever. I missed work because I was in jail, resorted to benzos to maintain my sanity after the Bellevue incident, stormed out of work in a huff, and finally took off my pants.

Where was I?

Oh right. I do have one thing to thank Nick Denton for. When he assigned me a piece, titled "We Have Seen the Future of Internet Microfame, and It Looks Anonymous," I called the subject of said item—who I didn't know and had never met—a blog 1.0 washout and wondered aloud if he had "been eaten by the Internet." Denton suggested I use the descriptor "supertan," so I added that too. God, I was such a bitch!

Then I met the guy in my writing class, sort-of apologized, and, anyway, now he is totally my boyfriend. Aww! The lesson here: mindlessly throwing e-bricks at people you don't know can occasionally pay off. So Nick: thanks or whatever. (Don't feel bad; I know it was a total accident.)

Anyway, here is a list of some people I like, in no particular order: Ian Spiegelman, Choire, Hamilton, Pareene, Ryan Tate, Richard/Lolcait, Blakeley, Super Squats, Doree, Josh Stein, Neal Boulton, David Carr even though he won't add me as a friend on Facebook, and my shrink. And obviously, of course, the commenters!

(I also made a list of the people I didn't like. But it was too long!)

Well, it's time to go. I got a friend who's gonna teach me how to mix drinks, so don't worry about me.

See you at the Holiday, everyone.

I remain yours, respectfully,

Sheila

[photo: Michael Menard]

There you go, folks. You can kind of, ALMOST, see my underwear—which is, of course, a statement on the (clickable) driving force of online media. Pageviews?! You got it, babe. Sorry I didn't think of this sooner.

[Photo: Burke Heffner]

"Do you ever feel like very event, every happening in the city is just one giant photo op?" I ventured. (Yes, there was an open bar.)

"There's this giant beast that needs to be fed," he said. "Back in the '70s, nobody interviewed photographers. It was bad enough that they were interviewing rock stars. Not that I'm saying you're interviewing me. But I'm not going to—I mean, I have an eighteen-year-old daughter. I'm not going to judge her world... You live in a good time, love," he said, patting my arm. "I don't even enjoy hanging around with people my age, anyway."

Sloane Crosley was the lone female judge, along with Mick, watch designer Matthew Waldman, and Riley John of Surface. As an uber book publicist and newly published author, one might assume fashion ties to be tenuous at best. You'd be wrong: she was wearing a very chic bow-tie halter and red glasses. I inquired as to this bold choice:

"At first I thought [my glasses] would be too ironic, or something, but whatever. Without them, I can't see shit!"

Someone shoved the boom mic towards her face to judge the fashion parade: "Although I applaud the use of the breast-pillow," she said of one model's outfit, "I'm going to have to go with the other one."

"There's just something about the jock strap on the head," Mick Rock contributed, in-between canoodling with a young, drunk-looking blonde.

(Someone needs to say something about the New York version of the Stoli Hotel: it's kind of a shithole. I mean, we get it: we're living in a brand extension. Unfortunately, the physical world of this specific brand is a weird cavernous affair with concrete floors and cheap, tacky Stolichnaya-vodka-red visual themes. It's also not a hotel. There's no coat-check. And the restrooms are in a trailer, like at the state fair or a construction site. It rocks back and forth disconcertingly, like you're on a boat.)

That said, one should always remember the old adage: don't look a gift open bar in the mouth.

Larry Tee!


Mick Rock tells Sheila McClear about Mick Jagger.






Judges, from left to right: author and publicist Sloane Crosley, Matthew Waldman of Nooka, and Riley John of Surface.

GAWKER got excited again that I'd left the internet or something. WONDERFUL. it only helps. we love it here at DRAFINC. keeps traffic moving. THANKS AGAIN!
srsly love/ hate you as much as you do. And your commenters prob need a raise because "should have Saligered himself after heartbreaker" is so weak. I mean, two minutes on the web and you might have said "Love is Hell" and maybe fans might have bought it. But nobody likes HRTBRKR. only dudes in baseball caps and JM when he is trying to fill the parts of his record that actually matter. For some of us, excellence just comes naturally.

Ryan's srsly love/hate relationship with Gawker reminds me of another certain fameball: one Julia Allison. You guys should get a drink and live tumblr the date. Forget about the fact that Ryan has a girlfriend (does he? -ed). Julia loves sensitive but emotionally unavailable men. It would be great both for your careers and our page views. Just wait for Sheila to come back.

After taking away my beer, the cute-but-weathered strawberry-blonde lady cop who arrested me put me in a van with two other quality-of-life violators: an old homeless Polish man named Bogden, and a seventeen-year-old black kid named Kevia. Both were arrested for "outstretch": taking up more than one seat on the subway, or lying down on the seats.

We sat in the van for two hours while officers tried to round up another "body," as they're called, for the night's sweep. "Doin' a big sweep on quality-of-life offenses," I heard the baldheaded, babyfaced male cop tell someone on his cellphone. He talked with my arresting officer:

"Billy's officially ruined the unit. It's ovah. It's completely ovah." He shook his head.

"He's the only what who really believes in what we do, though," the lady cop sighed.

They transported us to the precinct in the Canal Street subway station. Still handcuffed, they pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, the shoelaces out of my shoes, took my backpack and all belongings into custody, and removed my belt. My nose was running from not being able to reach my face for two hours, and my makeup was smeared from lying facedown in the police van. I fit right in! They put me in a cell and slammed the door.

My cellmate was a teenage-looking, chubby goth girl with holes in her tights who scratched herself compulsively. We said nothing to each other; meanwhile, the guys in the two cells next to us were practically having a party. They'd gotten some guards to buy them Cokes and were hollering and yelling about "we'll be outta here by 3 a.m., no problem." They were in for the crimes of "outstretch" and turnstile-jumping.

An hour later, it was mugshot and fingerprinting time! Part of the reason I was in jail so long is because my fingerprints wouldn't go through. They use a stupid machine that places your finger on a Xerox-type platen. Not only does it take regular prints, but you also take prints from different angles. I spent an hour being fingerprinted. Mine were too light, and the court kept rejecting them. Technology!

I slept on the wooden bench in my cell, between rounds of attempted fingerprinting. They kept bringing in new prisoners, trying to put them in my cell: "Hey, I thought only girls are allowed in here," I squeaked when they tried to bring in a scruffy dude.

"Why you gotta be like that, baby?" the new prisoner rasped. "We coulda had something real nice goin' on, sweetheart. Why you gotta ruin it like that?" They put him in another cell.

At 7 a.m., my arresting officer tucked a snub-nosed pistol into her hip holster and took me and Bogden, the homeless Pole, to Manhattan Criminal Court. She always cuffed me too tightly.

In the basement of the Court, we waited, still cuffed, to be processed behind a line of older black men who were sitting on the floor, handcuffed together. That is, each man was handcuffed to the other, like a chain gang. We had our mug shots taken again, went to a medical screening to make sure we were mentally sound, and I was taken upstairs to the female holding pen. This is where my real education began.

They were asleep when I came in, about a dozen women stretched out on benches, and in a few cases, thin mats. Oh, the luxury! For the next twelve hours, I eyed the mats jealously.

The two most common questions you get in jail are, "What you in for?" and, "This your first time being locked up?" The other gals awaiting arraignment were in for the following reasons: there was a redhead who had illegally subletted her apartment, a small Japanese exotic dancer who hit her boyfriend with a frying pan ("He had it comin'"), a cluster of Spanish-speaking girls who clustered in the corner and did not socialize, an older Spanish-speaking women for singing for change in the subway, a thirtysomething black woman for a suspended license, a pair of sisters for larceny, check and credit card fraud, a college girl accused of stealing $4,000 from work (she assured us she had not), and a sweet girl in a short coral dress and heels who had been accused of kicking a car while leaving a nightclub. She hadn't kicked the car, but had put up a struggle upon being arrested: "It's because I'm black, isn't it!" It probably was.

Christy, a 44-year-old black woman arrested for having two screens for a pipe in her backpack, was a jail veteran and the unofficial leader of the group. "It's an election year," she said, standing up to deliver a speech. "They sweepin' the streets of us degenerates, of the black folk. We got to band together. Whoever says every man for himself, that's bullshit. They got all us in here all some bullshit charges."

The burly female guards told us, with sadistic glee, that we could be legally held for up to 72 hours. A few girls broke down at this. Christy watched as a twenty-year-old, arrested for turnstile-jumpting, wept. "I was like that the first time I got locked up," she said wistfully. She reminisced about her youth in Times Square: "We would sit in that movie theater and get lifted! You could not even see the muthafuckin' screen, the smoke was so thick."

"This your first time locked up?" she asked me. I nodded. "You're takin' it really well."

Over the next few hours, we talked about Barack Obama (inmates prefer him 10 to 1), MySpace, and how to properly wash your girl-parts. (I think the word they used was "irrigate.") Tattoos were shown and compared. I used the payphone that was outside the cell by reaching my arms through the bars to dial, and pulling the receiver inside. We were given sandwiches, but the guards got nasty when we asked for toilet paper. A small battle ensued.

Nearly 24 hours after being arrested, a guard clanked the keys in the door and yelled my name. I jumped up, and they took me down to Night Court.

Arraignment took less than a minute. All charges were dropped. As I walked out of the courtroom and hailed a cab, I realized that I was reformed! I'll never drink beer in the subway again.