Brill, 25, writes of a tortured decision during her trip to step away from her family, which includes her famously acerbic father, profiled briefly but ably by Michael Wolff 10 years ago. She opens up to a "beautiful" yachtsman piloting her around in a small boat.

I wanted to tell him absolutely everything - even things about my parents and my relationships with them that I was only beginning to come to grips with myself.

"I can't go back," I said under my breath, doing my best to maintain a lighthearted tone. [The yachtsman] couldn't have know that "going back" referred to not only my current job situation, but also to my entire way of life... and particularly to the extent to which I could no longer allow my parents and their values to stop me from experiencing life the way I was meant to experience it.

A close friend encourages Brill to follow her gut and push forward with her decision to make a break with her family. By the end of the trip she had decided, "My parents are out."

I realized on that boat and under those stars that this is what I want to do. I am not declaring myself unwilling to work but rather, unwilling to be conventional. I've been working non-stop on this site and will continue to work non-stop. This is my life now.

Brill writes that she's "striking out ... and striking back" and "going public." As of Friday, that means jumping into New York Fashion Week at an event later in the day, possibly with her friend Devorah Rose, editor of Social Life Magazine.

In a sense, Brill is following in the footsteps of her father, who parlayed his larger-than-life personality and skills as an inside player into American Lawyer and, more lucratively, Court TV. But unlike her father, she's either not the sort to lash or too smart to do so. Brill writes that Gawker's previous coverage took "my private life public," but ends that the post "gave me exactly what I needed: a good kick in the ass to get going. Finally."

[Essential Emily: Confessions of a 5th Avenue Misfit]

Emily's father, founder of American Lawyer and Brill's Content, was born in Queens, as he often reminded interviewers. (Though he did go to Deerfield Academy, the same private school as Emily.) He must be so proud that his daughter, who just took a job at NBC Universal, has risen above such humble family origins. Born rich, and newly thin, Emily has been enjoying the life of a mogul's daughter, according her recent status updates on Facebook, the social network:

• Emily is really really ready for st. barth's...fuel up the yacht bitches...t-1month!
• Emily is playing with her new clothes and toys...and fuck new years i'm counting down to st. bart's.
• Emily is bubbled out...fuel up/wheels up nowwww....bubbles cant make it till saturday...
• Emily is wheels down but her heart is still in the islands...mmm heaven.

Here's the Yale Daily News editorial board, those rebels with a cause:

[W]e reject Brill's pessimistic contention that Yale currently offers too little to sway talented potential journalists.

In the News and in the New York Times, Brill argued that intelligent students consider journalism a career path inferior to that of more lucrative, heavily recruited fields such as investment banking. We contend that the storied legacies of News alumni — from Time co-founders Henry Luce '20 and Briton Hadden '20 to the dozens of Newsies currently writing and editing for the Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker and a bevy of other prestigious publications — suggest otherwise. Bob Woodward '65 never wrote for us, but he's done all right for himself, too.

Also, you just don't understand us, and that's music, Steve, not just noise. Jesus.

Entirely unrelated: Young Sam Brill will, we're told, be heading to New Haven in September.

YJI Adds to Existing Journalism Resources [YDN]