• This guy, the Texas Terror: "The videos showed night staff instigating the fights at one of the facility's dorms, even kicking residents and telling them what to do." What a bunch of human cocks.
• The Teenage UES Starbucks Bomber: "Mr. Shaw had bragged to friends that he was responsible for the bombing, [NYPD head Ray] Kelly said, and had started an underground fight club modeled on the one in the 1999 film."
• The Republican Party's Tea Bagger Faction: "The coming revolution is akin to 'Fight Club,' the 1999 film that follows the struggles of day to day life for a regular guy who starts an underground fight club as radical and not terribly productive psychotherapy."

That book was not even that good.

Tragically, the notice was sent out to the U.S.O.O.M. (fun, right?) for all the uninteresting and wrong reasons. An IT organ-grinder named Paul Harvey, who - and get your best pissy I.T. Guy voice on - noted that he had to "to reformat/reimage two computers because the user visited the drudgereport.com site," and that if someone needed to get on Drudge, they still could. Just don't break his fucking computers, first, okay?!

Politico bakes this non-story of IT anal-retentiveness into NEWS like they do everything because of the obvious angle. Drudge is a "conservative-leaning" site and "Barack Obama critic" and thus, conspiracy! Inevitably, because of both Matt Drudge's bi-polar vanity complex and need to keep his relationship with Politico well fed, it stays the main headline on his site. For 19 hours now, going strong. And don't forget what a total and complete non-story this is.

Politico and Drudge have a symbiotic relationship, like those small fish that suck the bacteria off the bigger fish: the bigger fish gets cleaned, and the small fish gets fed, but really, one's getting rid of shit and the other's eating it. Matt Drudge needs Politico to break stories. Politico needs Drudge to link to their stories. And this has got to more or less be the mutant-psychic peak of their relationship: Politico breaks a story on Drudge, for Drudge to link to. It's Drudge's favorite kind of story, because he gets to flatter himself and take the cognitive dissidence route into thinking he was banned for being a badass, by the Government! He links to it, and Politico gets the hits on the story.

For those who were fortunate enough to not have to sit through Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's so-bad-it's-good apocalyptic fetish dream Southland Tales, the movie ends when (SPOILER ALERT!) Seann William Scott shakes the hand of Seann William Scott, playing his clone-via-time-travel double. Stiffler meeting Stiffler rips a hole in the time-space fabric of the universe, and the credits start rolling over a Moby song or something. This is kind of like that, except the world goes on and all we have left to show for it is a news cycle that just made us all slightly stupider people. The upside to all of this is that we've seen through the other side of the fourth dimension, and we finally know what it looks like:

U.S. Attorney's office tells employees not to log on to Drudge Report [Politico]

Carls from HRO bailed on me. Feeling a little vulnerable. But we can still play Blogger Bingo! What accoutrements, affects, people and places did I miss? Did I totally break it down on the NY Blog-media crowd. Oh snap! Word! Fill me in, y'all!

graphic by: Jeff Meininger

AT&T's correct predictions in 1993: EZ Pass, GPS, text messages, Ticketmaster.com, webcams, video conferencing, movies on demand, online universities.
Incorrect: the prediction that these would be brought to you by AT&T.

Microsoft's 2009 predictions for 2019: drawing magically in the air, projecto-keys, ear-looking gizmos, houses and stores that will stalk you, the newspaper of the future, "digital wallet," pretty much everything that was in Minority Report, a grocery list that's digital, translation thingies, things for your boring job, plant diagnosing contraptions, fancy little remote controls.

All the good stuff has been done.

Might "nuking the fridge" have been more palatable if it were followed by a scene where Indy, Mutt, and Ray Winstone spy on Cate Blanchett through a peephole in the high school locker room? Or are we subtly being prepared for an Indy 5 involving the mythical Quest for Teenage Tail?

• Shia LaBeouf Defends 'Nuking The Fridge' And Other Fantastical 'Indy 4' Moments [MTV]

"Letting Your Family In On Your Therapy," WSJ, 7/17/07:

When Tony Fama worries about recurring sadness or has questions about antidepressants, he calls a psychiatrist — his wife's.

Mr. Fama's wife, Helen Kraljic, suffers from bipolar disorder, and he calls her doctor frequently if she seems to be manic or having side effects from her medication. Often, Mr. Fama sits in on his wife's therapy sessions, offering his opinions. Sometimes, he talks to the doctor about his own struggles as caregiver.

"Clinic Treats Mental Illness by Enlisting the Family," NYT, 6/4/08:

It was a depressive swing that brought Helen Kraljic Fama and her husband to Beth Israel's clinic, on 17th Street near First Avenue, nearly 30 years after Ms. Fama suffered her first bout with the disease.

Ms. Fama, 50, who was once a bookkeeper and a cashier, said her manic episodes include an obsession with numbers, which she feels are friendly to her. ("I always brag that she scored a perfect 800 on her math SAT," said her husband, Anthony P. Fama, 60.)

We won't belabor the point; you can read the stories for yourself. Pay particular attention to the similarities in the sourcing. Note to the NYT: You're pissing off your competitors! Probably not a good idea, considering the economic climate at the moment. We beg you, follow the rules by only stealing from the other 99% of media outlets in America.

[Previously]

The Golden Rule

Media outlets can only steal outright from other media outlets that are not their direct competitors, and do not fall in their same class. First-class outlets: National TV news networks (including the big three on cable), the top five national newspapers, top-level weekly news magazines, and a select few websites like Drudge. Second-class outlets: Niche TV networks, local TV news affiliates, smaller metro papers, smaller but still well-respected news magazines, well-known internet news operations that don't fall in the top handful. Third-class outlets: Trade magazines, niche magazines, smaller local papers, niche internet news sites. Fourth-class outlets: Others.
When stealing from one's own class, it must be acknowledged that you are doing so, and that you have been scooped.

Explanation

The Times' mistake was stealing from the WSJ, another major paper in its same class. Had they stolen their story from, say, a trade magazine, it would have been perfectly acceptable. Likewise, a trade magazine can steal from the Times, and a tacit acknowledgment or small link is fine. If a trade magazine were to steal from a directly competing trade magazine, it would be a shameful theft.

Everyone understands these rules. Big papers, because of their sheer resources, provide most of our news, period. Everybody else follows their lead when dealing with major news. Lower-level outlets are expected to give their own take on the news of the day. Papers like the Times set the agenda; everybody else feeds off of it. This is fine. A local paper can put a local angle on a story that originated in a national newspaper; a trade magazine can put an industry-specific angle on the same story. Neither need feel guilty. If the Times picks up a story from a small paper, they will likely put so much re-reporting into it that their version is far deeper than the original. To the extent that you steal original material from direct scoops, though, you must give acknowledgment to the original scooper.

Television news operations are less likely to give credit to print outlets that break stories; of course, TV news produces visual packages for their stories, which they can argue constitute a completely new story. Again, the most stringent need for acknowledgment comes with direct competitors. If one news network steals an original story from another, it must explicitly credit it. Inter-platform theft is a looser matter.

Examples Of How To Steal Properly

Newspapers
Direct competitor: "In a story first reported by the LA Times, scientists have confirmed that Scott McClellan is an android."
Other: "Scott McClellan is an android, scientists confirmed today."

Magazines
Direct competitor: "Is your kid drinking Lysol to get 'high?' It's a phenomenon that's been reported by Time and others, but...."
Others: "Your child may be drinking Lysol right this minute. To get high!"

Blogs
Direct competitor: "Hipsters eat magic fruit, then eat each other. [Curbed]"
Others: "Crazy Williamsburg hipsters are berry-munching madmen—with a taste for flesh!"

Television
Direct competitor: "CBS News has reported that Hillary Clinton is dropping out and joining a nunnery."
Others: "Rumors have emerged that Hillary Clinton may be dropping out to join a nunnery."

See how simple?

The Penalties

Those who foolishly flout this rule by stealing the work of other reporters in their same class with no credit can expect to be ostracized at media parties; have vicious gossip about them leaked to Gawker; and, one day down the road, to be the subject of a gratuitous backhanded smear in the outlet that they stole from (this goes double if you're dealing with tabloids).
Reporters are small people, and we never forget an insult. Play smart.

[pic via Corbis]

[via Multicult Classics]

If they steal David Spade's "Nuprin" bit, I'm gonna straight-up murder someone's ass. [Video produced by Richard Blakeley.]

Where once they were young and upwardly mobile, now they're middle aged and standing still.

And I know this, because I was a Yuppy once - but now, like so many of my kind, I'm an Arrpy.

Nearly 20 years on, we are married or divorced, or both, have children or stepchildren, own nice homes and can look back over two decades in which we've had a fabulous lifestyle.

So how has your thinking evolved into your golden years?

And part of the problem is we've got so used to our spending habits we no longer understand the difference between a luxury item and an essential.

Gas, I've come to understand, is an essential, Giorgio Armani is not.

Food is fundamental, skiing is not.

Goodness! I hope it's not hitting you too hard.

Yes, the sad fact is that up and down the land the Arppies are obsessed with the cost of the bare necessities of life. And it doesn't stop with the food shop.

As retail analysts Mintel pointed out yesterday in their annual analysis of household spending, Arppies are cancelling family holidays.

Two of my friends have already scaled down their summer holidays, one cancelling the annual jaunt to Tuscany and even losing her £2,000 deposit on the three-week break.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

But at least we Arppies are optimists and know things can only get better. Well, they couldn't get much worse.

[Daily Mail via Agenda Inc.]

WHICH IS WHICH?

[Ashley Dupre pics via Us]

• Sulzberger has a stuffed toy moose that he totes around "as a symbol of open communication," whatever that means. Cute! He once tried to hand it off to former editor Howell Raines during a tense meeting, but Raines "laid it aside." Howell Raines: maybe a jerk, but a manly jerk.
• Also in Sulzberger's office: "a wooden sculpture of a beloved motorcycle and sculptures of rock climbers."
• Sulzberger Jr., who has always been cast in his powerful father's shadow, inspired one longtime Times man to speculate, "At some point you have to wonder when the bloodline thins."
• When the Times moved its headquarters last year, Pinch opened up his wallet for a pizza party celebrating the closing of the old building that was described by an inside source as "Dorkfest 2007."
• In 2005, Sulzberger and editor Bill Keller were in a car following jailed former reporter Judy Miller, who was being transported by federal marshals in an SUV with tinted windows. When they stopped, Sulzberger jumped out of his car and started tapping on the SUV's windows, saying "Judy! Judy, it's me!" A marshal had to tell him to get away from the vehicle. NERD.
• In a meeting with Condoleeza Rice, Pinch went out of his way to explain to her that a bomb-sniffing dog recently threw up in the room. Later, he jokingly asked if she could get the President to help out Judy Miller.
• The New York Times Company's stock price: