The founders of Twitter are the 2009 "Media Person of the Year," according to IWantMedia.com. Their primary accomplishment: inspiring the Twitter song. Congrats, fellas!

Here is a plan to save newspapers, from the German publisher of the biggest daily paper in Europe: You can see links for free, but you pay for all the news content you read on the internet, either per-story or a flat subscription rate. Is not a bad idea! Now just put it into place and make it work before you go bankrupt. That's the trick.


This, then, is the only thing left of Conde Nast's $100 million investment in Portfolio: a repurposed Portfolio.com, with more news you can use, and an owner who "wants it to be a must-read site for small- and medium-size business owners." How declassé!


Last week the Chicago Sun-Times lost a sports columnist to the Chicago Tribune. This week, the Chicago Tribune lost a sports columnist to the Chicago Tribune. Next week, both papers will still be going broke, and all the Chicago sports teams will still be mediocre.

Here is where things stand for Tiger, this morning: His love life is pretty fucked. Although his sex life sounds great! Of the five or so extramarital women everybody thinks he boned, the big news today is about the original Tiger Fling Girl, Rachel Uchitel. Just two days ago she gave a big front-page exclusive interview to the New York Post about how this is all bullshit and she never did anything at all with Tiger and god, this is all bullshit, because of lying whores who hate her.

Well! She's changed her mind. Rachel's having a press conference this afternoon to announce that she did, in fact, do all that sexy stuff, with Tiger Woods. (Update: The press conference was just canceled, but the admission to boning the golf star is now out there.) We assume this is because she read our advice and wants to clear the air as she moves forward with her nightlife career, but, Rachel—not so abrupt next time. The turnaround from total, vehement lie to revelation of truth that everyone already suspected must be a little smoother, so as not to make you appear to be either a psycho or blackmail victim. Although we will consider everything forgiven if you make a point to mock the New York Post's dead-wrong exclusive at your press conference.

Tiger Woods: Your job is simple. Just be Tiger Woods. That means, continue being the most robotic, uninteresting sports megastar of our time. You, sir, are a cipher. Fans and sponsors love you for it, because they can project whatever image they want upon you, and your inscrutable, uninteresting being simply swallows it up.

Golf is the most uninteresting spectator sport in the world. Golf fans are not moralists. They are people who believe that golf shirts in various shades of coral are acceptable outerwear. They are the bland upper crust of Middle America. That, and rich assholes who love to cheat on their wives. Neither of these groups of golf fans cares one bit about your marital infidelity, Tiger. Nor do your sponsors. What they do care about is being forced to think about something other than golf.

People play (and watch) golf to escape the real world. The world of golf is a world of creepy perfectly manicured lawns and rolling greens as far as the eye can see and lots middle-aged white guys. People want to embrace you as the staid, unblinking image of perfection on a golf course, Tiger. They don't want to be forced to consider who you're fucking. The masochistic desire of sports fans for a feeling of inadequacy next to their heroes does not extend into the bedroom.

So just shut the fuck up and play golf, Tiger. You'll be boring the hell out of America again before you know it.

First of all, the only people besides Harvard-Yale grads who have anything invested in this ritual are their hangers-on, asshole bloggers (me), or sports writers, who think they have a really great narrative on their hands by writing the same narrative they do every year. Watch. This year's filing by ESPN, penned by one Mr. Tom Lakin:

It is, after all, the 126th installment of a tradition that began back in 1875 with a 4-0 Harvard win. In the years since that first meeting, the legend of The Game has grown. Perhaps best known is the 1968 contest in which Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie an undefeated and heavily favored Yale squad — a result immortalized in The Harvard Crimson student newspaper by the famous headline "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29."

In 2008:

Before two of the nation's oldest universities had a field to play on, they were eager to prove which school was superior in the rough-and-tumble new sport of football. Since 1875, the Harvard-Yale rivalry has emerged simply as "The Game."...And with Satuday's tilt at the Yale Bowl the first time since 1968 both Yale and Harvard come into The Game unbeaten in league play, the rivalry game will determine the Ivy title.

And in 2007:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The current Yale and Harvard players have heard all about the tradition of the venerable rivalry and are preparing to make some history of their own. Meeting No. 124 is Saturday and the stakes are as high as they get with the Ivy League title up for grabs. Both teams enter with 6-0 conference records. The last time that happened was 1968 and Harvard famously rallied from 16 points down in the final 42 seconds to tie Yale, spoiling Yale's perfect season.

So, yeah: basically, the same shit every year. Big old tradition for people who don't normally care about football to care about football. These people don't have time for football! Between all the awesome regattas and going to one of a handful of schools getting a degree from now maybe matters, football's mostly bullshit to them until they own a stake in whatever team is smashing the Bears this week. To the rest of us, it's interesting only if you've really seen Big or The Dark Knight that many times, and there's nothing else to watch on TV. Because the Harvard-Yale game, as far as football goes, sucks. This is not an opinion so much as it is a general consensus.

This young gentlemen seems to think this year's hyperbolic announcing of the Yale-Harvard game might be a bit much.

As in, straight-up stupid. Because, yes, going to a game in New Haven is just like seeing a game anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. You don't need to watch football or sports or even have been to the south to understand this. One palpable difference is: at the Harvard-Yale game, this guy has a better chance at scoring than either of the teams.

Needless to say, the situation in the SEC is slightly different. Like security! At Old Miss, they have issues with people wearing costumes. I mean, sure, Yale has people in "costumes."

But real football games don't mess with things like facepaint, or the asstacular body suit pictured above. Oh no, these guys go all out:

Woah, there, buddy! Went a little over the edge with your sporty spirit, no? Just slightly. KKK guys, showin' up to Old Miss games. At least the Ivy crowd would pick up on this kind of irony, and dress as Marxists, or something. What'd security at the Yale-Harvard game look like today?

OH ZHHOOOZHOOPUPPY.

Yeah, but Ivy Peeps can get hard, too, motherfuckers.

When they're not busy farting out the inevitable air of disappointment over the uninitiated. Observe the sad and sober:

A first-time drinker's disappointment, maybe? Next time we suggest an ether-soaked cloth. Because this isn't exactly the riotous assembly the rest of College Football gets to see every Saturday. Oh no. This is something else. The easily intimidated should gird their loins:

Who's skiing, today, right? The most accurate assessment might come via comparative basis. Granted, your high school football team may not be running world economies, but at least they can run an audible.

There is, however, culture to be had! And Yale-Harvard has a competitive spirit, to be sure. While inflatable bulldogs loom over alumni old and young, the youngest are trying to get drunk enough to black out—but inevitably puking—while rumblings and remembrances of competition not yet had or had too often result in the vicious pejorative shouting of whose school is better. It results in things like this. NSFW, especially if your work has a thing against assholes being incredible assholes and bad apings of The Departed:

And astute observations!

In SECspeak, this translates to EAT SHIT AND DIE YANKEE even though a rival school might only be thirty minutes north of another. Lost in translation, again and again. Other dispatches emerge:

I'm not sure what that means, but then again, I didn't go to Yale. Or Harvard. But I bet it has something to do with the enormous networking opportunities that present themselves at these things. Next year, I'm dressing as this guy and not leaving until I've closed a lower rate on my Visa. Or at least my dry cleaning bill.

But in the end, a winner must emerge. And today's winner was a come-from-behind defeat by Harvard. Let the celebrating begin. With Batman fans:

The Dark Knight would like you to get home safely, you second-rate sissies! A 14-10 victory IN YO FACE. More! The Harvard Law Dean of Students' Twitter Feed would like to feed into your insecurities over and over and over Yalies. Even they gotta get in on the action:

And Yale fans, like any good sports fans, prepare to riot at the failure of their warriors. Cop cars, turned over! Terrible taunting! Emotionally scarring and physically dangerous situations, yes? Yes!

We all have our own private consolations. Because, really, though, all college football ends in the same result, no matter who it is winning, no matter your school, your degree, your color, age, race, sexual orientation, tax bracket, building clearence, byline or birthright, we really truly are all the same when it comes to the endgame of a football victory: some straight-up homoerotic manlove, as fans rush the field.

Granted, these fans won't be getting arrested today, like everyone else's, but then again, they're not tearing down goalposts, either. Hell, they might get to play on "special teams" for an hour or two. A higher, deeper education, indeed. Note the young man in the left-hand corner of the picture, though: he knows, oh yes, he knows the truth of the situation. Yale-Harvard games, like their students, are just different. In the best ways possible.

There is already a scandal: Mets fan Rep. Eliot Engel wore a Yankees cap on the House floor last Friday! His spokesman had to note, to Roll Call, that the hat was only on his head for a little bit, and that Engel "hasn't switched allegiances" (he is not Spike Lee, people).

Then there is this:

But some Mets fans weren't buying into the Empire State rendition of "Kumbaya," politics be damned: Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) was notably absent from the list of sponsors of the resolution formally congratulating the Bronx Bombers. One might think Weiner, who is thought to have aspirations of being the Big Apple's mayor, would want to curry favor with the big chunk of its residents who root for the Pinstripes.

It seems, though, that Weiner's loyalty to the Mets runs even deeper than his political ambitions - even though he acknowledges that his team isn't in the same league as the Yanks. "I only follow double-A baseball," Weiner tells us. "I'm a Mets fan."

Oh, Anthony Weiner. You are such an annoying person, even though that was a very good Baseball Quip. It may seem counterintuitive for a man with mayoral aspirations to not root for the most successful and popular New York baseball franchise, but in 2013 this guy needs to win Queens, Brooklyn, and a New York City Democratic primary election. The Mets are his ticket to Gracie Mansion!

Heard on the Hill [Roll Call]

He talks about love, he talks about charity, he bares his soul and grapples with the meaning of redemption. But obviously, all anyone cares about is hearing about is hearing about his fake hair, and other humiliations. Here they are:

1. The Time He Was Afraid His Wig Would Fall Off at the French Open. In the early years of his male-pattern baldness, a rabidly narcissistic Agassi took to wearing a flamboyantly high-maintenance weave. As if it wasn't enough that the hair that made him famous was fake, Agassi admits that it was a crappy fake, too: At the 1990 French Open, Agassi's conditioner caused his weave to fall apart, forcing his brother to bobby pin it to his head and the horrified tennis diva to go all sweaty-palmed over whether his scalp pelt would go flying mid-match.

2. His Girlfriend, Brooke Shields, Convinced Him to Ditch the Pelt and Shave His Head. There is something tragic about the moment when a balding man realizes he can fluff and rearrange no longer, and that it's time to give up on hair entirely. It is even more tragic when said balding man is Andre Agassi, and his famously hot actress girlfriend is the one who has to tell him he's reached the point of no return.

3. Ruined His Career with a Meth Addiction. Couric rattles off members of the tennis community who have public distanced themselves from Agassi following the revelation that he was junked up on meth for "the better part of 1997," when his pro career began to plummet. Confronted with Martina Navratilova's accusation that he is "up there with Roger Clemens," Agassi blinks repeatedly and speaks through a strangled voice as he points out that using steroids to be good at baseball is really nothing like the self-destructive pattern of chronic methamphetamine use, and anyone who equates the two is sort of a jerk. "I had a problem. I would ask for some compassion."

4. He dumped Brooke Shields. This is only mildly humiliating for Agassi. (What kind of fool dumps Brooke Shields?!) The real humiliation is Brooke's, because she had some really embarrassing relationships in the '80s and '90s, and then, just when it seemed like she had snagged herself a real catch, turned out he was a deeply troubled, self-hating drug addict—and then he dumped her. Good thing Shields' love life worked itself out, because if things had gone differently, she could be deep into Jennifer Aniston territory by now.

The Detroit Free Press ran a series of articles about Medicare on the suggestion of the health care company Humana, which also bought ad space to go with the series. Incredibly, the Detroit media situation just got slightly more wretched.


Mika Brzezinski says that when she was canned from her CBS gig a while back she tried to act all brave and happy for her kids but then one day her daughter got really upset about her losing her job because she knew mommy loved that job so much and ever since then Mika resolved not to lie to her kids about how she felt about being fired. Not sure what the point of all that is.


Sportswriters at the Denver Post are no longer allowed to make predictions about sporting contests they're covering. Sez their editor: "It is an ethical move. Sports writers are no different than other news-beat reporters. We would not have political reporters picking sides in a political contest." Huh. Cause I could swear that sort of horse race coverage is the majority of what political reporters do? Reporting on who's winning. With polls and things like that? So you have a good idea, by election day, who's going to win? And also I could have sworn that you just made sports beat writing 50% more boring? Ah well. You don't want sports beats writers changing the outcome of a game by predicting one team will win. Which always makes that team win. So.


The Washington Post's ombudsman brings back the ol' throwback question, "Does Howard Kurtz have a conflict of interest because he's a WaPo media reporter and also has a show on CNN, which he covers?" The answer of course is "Yes." Jesus. Please stop discussing this face-smackingly obvious "question." A better question is, "Why doesn't Howard Kurtz ever have anything interesting to say?"

10/30, WSJ: "Equidistant From New York and Philadelphia, Easton (PA) Faces a Choice: 'They're Both My Team'"
10/28, NYT: "If any spot could be torn apart by the World Series, it would be the town of Cranbury, N.J."
10/28, USAT: "'We live halfway between the two cities, and we are a typical 'we-don't-know-who-to-root-for' family,' [John] Marchese [of Egypt, NJ] says."
10/28, AP: "HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. - When the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees meet in the World Series on Wednesday, New Jersey will be a state of divided loyalties."

If your news outlet hasn't written up your "Halfway between Philly and NYC, Divided Loyalties" story yet, don't worry. Using GPS, draw one line Northeast-to-Southwest between the two cities; now draw another perpendicular line Northwest-to-Southeast; any crappy city along that line is equidistant from the two opposing World Series cities. Who are the residents of Owen Sound, Canada pulling for? We'll find out soon!

The Mets-owning Wilpon family actually made money on at leason one Madoff account. How's that for a "home run," EH?

The report shows that Mets LP, one of the team's financial arms, withdrew $570.5 million from two accounts it held with Mr. Madoff's company, $47.8 million more than it put in.

Dealbook notes that they had other Madoff accounts too, so they may come out with a net loss, but still. Pretty nifty. Now they're gonna get sued and have to give all that money back, because that's how it goes for the Mets (Luis Castillo).

Meanwhile the Yankees will clinch their World Series bid tonight. What a contrast. Big, big contrast.

HOLY GRAIL ALERT: Computer nerds at Northwestern University have created a computer program that, all you do is plug in the stats from a baseball game and it will write an entire news story about that baseball game, and the news story is not even bad. The computer program's name: Jay Mariotti.


A tipster tells us that in addition to the previously reported layoffs at Vanity Fair last Friday, W Magazine also laid off 8-10 employees that day. ALSO: Another tipster tells us there were at least four layoffs at Lucky today, including a few editors.
If you know more about the endless magazine layoffs, email us.


Who says the media business is grim? A TV station in Saginaw, Michigan "is generating revenue by running on-air and online obituary ads after three of the region's four daily newspapers reduced publication to three days a week." This works especially well in Saginaw, Michigan, where everyone would rather be dead.


HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has figured out how to save the book publishing industry: Hire cheap, out-of-work editors to repackage old classics into E-books. Uh, hooray?

Limbaugh, a noted athlete, was a member of an investment group organized by sports mogul Dave Checketts until everyone remembered that he hates black people, of whom a lot are employed by the Rams and other NFL teams. After NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said yesterday that NFL owners are "all held to a high standard here, and I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about," Checketts officially axed Limbaugh from the bid.

We're actually disappointed, because Limbaugh and the NFL deserve one another more than they could ever know, and Limbaugh fits right in by our lights in the NFL's grand tradition of associating with people who nearly decapitate their ex-wives, raise fighting dogs, and accidentally shoot themselves in the leg. But we're not quite as disappointed as the folks at Red State, for whom it is exactly the same in all respects as the Holocaust.

This wouldn't have happened if Condoleezza Rice were commissioner. Anyway, who says racists can't own professional sports franchises?

See, up in Lakeville, Massachusetts, 40 miles south of Boston, someone or other wrote "I [Swastika] Obama" on the 18th green at the local country club.

What does it mean? Did an actual Obama-admiring Nazi carve this in the golf course? Is something threatening the president with something? No one will ever know!

As if that wasn't enough Golf-related Racism for one week, now some folks in Port Huron, Michigan, are accused of sending a racist message to their black neighbors using golf balls.

Plastic balls covered with Nazi symbols were discovered Sept. 25 and Oct. 11 in the backyard of the home in which Michael Brown and his wife Michelle live, The Port Huron Times Herald reported Wednesday.

The African-American couple has told authorities they believe neighbors are responsible.

The people accused of, who knows, planting these Nazi balls, are being evicted. Supposedly because of the golf ball thing but who even knows.

Three makes a trend! Someone else do something involving swastikas and golf, but not until the next time we're guesting at Deadspin.

This means the various poorly dressed and oddly coiffed young terrorist hep cats who burned the Olympic banner on the streets of the Windy City have won. Presumably they are right now pausing the Crass albums on their "Disc Mans" just long enough to cheer the failure of America. And they will be joined in that cheer by Matt Drudge!

"WORLD REJECTS OBAMA," Drudge says! That is a hilarious and easily predicted distortion! Also wasn't it weird how suddenly the right-wing hated the idea of a President trying to get America the Olympics? Like, seriously, what the fuck was that about?

Some of us were against having the Olympics in America because the IOC is run by vile old bastards, the bidding process is staggeringly corrupt, and Chicagoans, like New Yorkers, did not particularly want the Olympics, all that much. We did not want the IOC to reject our bid because Chicago has too many black criminals and because the idea of Obama trying to boost an American city enrages us, though. Why does Matt Drudge hate America? (Note: Chicago is part of America!)

Here we have the forces of American Exceptionalism and unrepentant jingoism teaming up with dreadlocked anti-American anarchists. Maybe the Spanish fascist who used to run the IOC will win the Olympics for Madrid, or (most likely) they will go to Rio de Janeiro.

Yesterday NYT ombud Clark Hoyt revealed that the paper's top editors "would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies." Uhh. We'll do that for you, for free.


An anonymous Wesleyan alum has donated $20K so that the school can continue to give students free copies of the New York Times for the next two years. Wesleyan joke, "print is dead" joke, or "meanwhile everybody else read it on the internet" joke? You decide.


All the reporters who gave much of a fuck about the Los Angeles Kings hockey team got laid off, so the team just went and hired its very own reporter! He's guaranteed editorial independence, allegedly. But is he really independent? Only daily photographs of his butt, posted on the LA Kings' site, will prove it.


Jerry Capeci is America's most famous mob reporter, and now he runs his own website, Ganglandnews.com, and he says plenty of people pay five bucks a month to read it. Enough for him to make a living! So maybe this is like, the future of journalism, perhaps? Sure but look: People will pay to read about mobsters but maybe not about, you know, city council meetings. Can The Mafia save journalism? Yes, only The Mafia.

Like many athletes these days, Joselito's in the business of endorsing crappy products people probably don't need. In this case it's an energy drink called Gay Up.

Of course people who can't understand why Ortega, who plays in the manly, testosterone-laden realm of bullfighting, would want to shill for such a homosexual product. But he sees no disconnect. He's been pierced by horns, too:

I am a bullfighter. That is not going to change. I am going to go out into the ring as I have done until now, to risk my life, and the seven goring wounds on my body prove that... If the gay community welcomes me as an image or a symbol, that is fine.

Um, quite. But we're still trying to figure out what's so special about this energy drink, anyway. Gay Up. Is it like "power up?" Does that boosts one's gay index level? If so, how does it work? Can it turn straight people gay? If so, how long does it last? This whole thing is very confusing.

Did you know that "Cheerleading accounts for 65% of all female catastrophic injuries in high school and college"—even more than Tucker Max fans? Did you know that despite this, the NCAA doesn't consider cheerleading a "sport?" Rather, it appears, they consider it a pastime for whores.

The greatest changes in cheerleading have been the growing popularity of gymnastic moves known as "stunting"

Mmmm hmm. Would the New York Times be as quick to tackle the little-known story of the pervasiveness of stuntin' in dangerous non-sport "cheerleading" so unflinchingly? Let's just say we haven't seen it yet.

In conclusion, yes, cheerleading is just as dumb as the sports for which it cheers.

• Lindsay Lohan's a silly, silly brat. The former movie star tried to pull imaginary rank by moving other celebrities' seating assignments to accommodate her sister and two friends. Her little plan took out Juliette Lewis and Christian Siriano's seats, but security stepped in when she tried to reassign Taylor Momsen. That has to sting. [Page Six]
  
  
• President Carter, who's making all sorts of news these days, thinks Kanye acted inappropriately the VMA awards. Carter, you're so hip. [CNN]
  
  
• Sad Mischa Barton's drunken days don't seem to be behind her, for the actress was slurring her words at the G-Star after party. She then danced by herself in the deejay booth. Can't this girl get her act together? [Page Six]
  
  
• Kendra Wilkinson and Hank Bassett Baskett must have thought they had a pretty good life, but now that fairy tale's crashing down: the Philadelphia Eagles just dropped Bassett from the team. [NYDN]
  
  
• Abercrombie & Fitch has filed an inane lawsuit against Beyonce because they think her "Sasha Fierce" line of products sounds too much like their perfume, "Fierce." [Reuters]
  
  
• Megan Fox admits that she's "aggressive, hurtful, domineering and selfish." We believe her. [LA Times]
  
  
• Madonna's brother thinks she looks like "Rachel Zoe gone horribly wrong." Eck! We can't imagine such a thing. [E!]
  
  
• That was fast! Burt Reynolds has already left rehab for his addiction to pain killers. [AP]
  
  
• Those royals sure can be rude: Queen Elizabeth's sister, Princess Margaret, burned letters sent from Princess Diana to the Queen Mother. Margaret thought she was respecting her family's privacy, she claims, but we think she was just being mean. [Telegraph]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin's lawyer is pissed that the family's former nanny is speaking out about how she had sex with him. Honestly, he should be commending her courage. [Us Weekly]
  
  
• Someone pulled a gun on Paris Hilton's "BF" Doug Reinhardt at a club in LA. He wasn't hurt, thankfully. Wait, who the hell is Doug Reinhardt? [TMZ]

Breaking, whoa, I did not even know this stuff happened for real, but yes it does!

Tests conducted during the world athletics championships in Berlin last month, where Semenya's gender became the subject of heated debate following her victory in the 800m, revealed evidence she is a hermaphrodite, someone with both male and female sexual characteristics.

Okay, so they found that Caster Semenya, one of the best female sprinters in the world:

1. Has no womb.
2. Has no ovaries.
3. Has "internal testes."
4. Has three times the testosterone of a normal woman.

Now they're telling her she should get surgery immediately because she may face "grave health risks." Uh. Well. So. Just don't listen to us any more.
[Pic: Getty]

In a note to readers today, Whicker admitted that it was a "lapse of professionalism" for him to use his Tuesday sports column as an opportunity to fill Jaycee Dugard—kidnapped, raped, impregnated, and imprisoned for the past 18 years—in on the sports action she's missed in that time. While it is technically true that "Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years," Mark Whicker now realizes that that fact does not necessarily need to be juxtaposed with a horrific child kidnapping case in order to cobble together a space-filling sports column when regular sports action is slow.

He also has now come to understand that the column's kicker—"Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard."—while pithy, may have been misinterpreted by some readers as being callous towards the ordeal of this young woman tortured unimaginably by a child rapist psycho. For this, Mark Whicker is sorry. But he would be remiss if he did not re-assert one important fact:

Jackie Autry isn't in charge of the Angels anymore, as you might have surmised by looking at the standings.

That's news that anyone can use—kidnap victim or not. Mark Whicker thanks you for your attention.