the unspiked files
In the latest installment of Gawker's Unspiked Files, Dan Crane auditions for NBC's hit talent contest. (The article follows after the jump.) The Unspiked Files are a repository of pieces commissioned by newspapers and magazines that never made it to the page. Earlier articles on actor Alec Baldwin and a Scientology-related suicide are listed here. If you have an article that deserves to see the light of day, email unspiked@gawker.com.
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the unspiked files
In 1999, Rolling Stone assigned Hollywood reporter Mark Ebner to the story of Philip Gale, an MIT prodigy born into Scientology who killed himself on the birthday of the cult's founder. The organization sent Rolling Stone a damning dossier on Ebner and the story was spiked. Ebner says he was told by his assigning editor that Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner was close to John Travolta, one of the sect's most prominent Hollywood supporters. Since then, the Church of Scientology has softened in its response to critics; and internet outlets have proven less easily browbeaten. So here—after the jump— is Ebner's original piece, Death of a Nethead.
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the unspiked files
On a recent fall afternoon, the actor
Alec Baldwin was tossing a football around on the sidewalk by a Marriott Hotel. While the crew of his TV show ’30 Rock’ were setting up the next shot, Baldwin was clearly the star — the only principal cast member in fact — in this section of Long Island City, Queens. He was light on his feet, laughing and joking with the crew, and happily posing for a photograph with a wandering fan.
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magazines
The publication of a relatively juicy interview with Jennifer Lopez—
rejected by an unnamed fashion magazine—reminds us that magazine articles are often dropped not because they're bad but because they're good. Or—more often—simply because they've been overtaken by events or clash with some other article or because an insecure editor has over-commissioned. (Tina Brown, who published Kevin Sessums' J-Lo profile on her new Daily Beast website, was notorious for assigning three times the articles she ran.) Anyway, here's an alternative for journalists who've spent weeks slaving on an article only to see it spiked: Gawker's
unspiked files.
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Gawker
