• Erin Andrews, the ESPN reporter who was filmed in a bathroom, thanked police officers for their "dedicated service"in nabbing the perv and promised to use the scandal for good, not evil: "I will make every effort to strengthen the laws on a State and Federal level to better protect victims of criminal stalking." [ET]
  
  
• Seth Rogen got Kevin Smith to start smoking pot, now Smith smokes three times a day and encourages you to do the same: "Do weed! Don't do the other stuff, but weed is good." [Page Six]
  
  
• Chris Noth and his lady love, Tara Wilson, are engaged. Pathetic women everywhere are finally snapping out of their "Mr. Big" fantasy. [ET]
  
  
• The alcoholic mother of the HIV-positive baby Elton John wants to adopt swears she won't let the pop star have his way. That's fair. [The Sun]
  
  
• Madonna's daughter yucked it up for the paps while walking around New York with her pop. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Don Imus starts his simulcast on Fox Business today, and he's sure the struggling cable channel's the place for him because, he says, it's not corrupt, like NBC. Oh, snap! [NYDN]
  
  
• Actor Tony Roberts, perhaps best known for his roles in Woody Allen movies, like Hannah and Her Sisters, has been hospitalized, thus holding up the preview of his Broadway revival, The Royal Family. [AP]
  
  
• The whole world knows that Eddie Cibrian and his wife are splitting up because he was screwing LeAnn Rimes, but don't worry: the couple puts on a happy face for the children. They're too young to read tabloids, anyway. [People]
  
  
• Happy 40th birthday, Gwen Stefani! [People]
  
  
• Desperate Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss has released a more detailed statement following the death of her former fiance, AJ. And, as you can imagine, she's "devastated." "My heart is heavy with grief," she says. [Us]

The New Yorker was Conde Nast's biggest ad page loser last year, and now their publisher is leaving! Drew Schutte came to the NYer last year from Wired—now he's leaving to be "chief revenue officer" of Conde Nast Digital. He's being replaced by Lisa Hughes, publisher of Conde Nast Traveler. Which did better than the New Yorker last year. Needless to say. [NYP]


Last fall Time Out NY had some trouble paying its bills, but fearless president Alison "you can sign my name to that" Tocci assured staff that they'd pull through the tough times. Today, we hear, Tocci announced a new 5% across the board pay cut at a staff meeting. Allow our shamefully anonymous tipster to take up the story there:

[She said it's the] only way, they've done every single cutback possible and had instituted a hiring freeze. We were then invited to a pizza party — do you know how much money 50 large pizzas with toppings must cost? This is a week after they proudly sent an allstaff e-mail announcing their annual sponsorship of yet another NYAMBL bowling team, because god forbid we don't get back against Rachel Ray's team.

Oh, and that hiring freeze? Not ten minutes before she brought it up, she had introduced our ten new hires to everyone.

But she did so while using her real name, presumably. So cut her some slack.

Whoa, Philly Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, whoa! "Should Google 'pick up' (steal) our stuff, if we successfully sued them for $1 billion, two good things happen: 1) Our money problems are solved; 2) everyone else will stop stealing our content." And should Stu Bykofsky suddenly shit gold, his money problems would be solved as well. Whoa now.


Some dude from Tennessee wants to buy the six-paper Creative Loafing chain of alt-weeklies for $13.3 million. Sell. Sellsellsell! Quickly!

Finally, Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby is Twittering LIVE from the high-powered TED conference. What can you tell us, Laurel?

Thanks, Laurel.

"The New York edition of Time Out is on the auction block with a cover price of up to $40 million (£26.8 million) after backers of the weekly magazine pressed for a sale in an attempt to generate profit on their 13-year investment...

Also for sale is Time Out New York's share of the Chicago title, meaning that any buyer would take control of the brand in the United States."

TONY founder Tony Elliott gives a borderline angry quote saying he doesn't want to sell, this all driven by the investors. After 13 years they're ready to make a profit, surprisingly. If they do, we'll be even more surprised. [Times UK]

Complete the sentence: New York is…
Eliot Spitzer: …the place where no dream is too big to come true.

If you could have a drink with another Top 40 person, who would it be?
Eliot Spitzer: These days I prefer hanging out with my kids—having dinner and encouraging them to do their homework and put aside Facebook for awhile.

Poor sad Eliot Spitzer. And also ha ha way to betray our trust in you asshole, at least it landed us this awesome new blind governor.

To: All TONY Staff
Fr: Alison Tocci

Statement from Time Out New York President Alison Tocci:

As Time Out reaches its 40th anniversary in London, and Time Out New York passes the 13-year mark, there is much to celebrate. Sadly, some of our achievement has been clouded by an anonymous, typo-riddled post on Gossip, I mean, Gawker.com, which alludes to our imminent demise.

I can assure you that rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Time Out, like all print media, has felt both the specific downturn in print ad sales as advertisers and readers migrate online, and the general economic downturn complicated by rising paper and printing costs. In addition, we have made significant investment into our own costly transition online.

The result is a tight cash flow situation that has led unfortunately to very slow payment to our vendors and freelancers.

Happily, our New York investors, who understand the value of the brand you have all built and have been entirely supportive over the past 14 years, remain fully committed to us. They have stepped up to the plate in a significant way and I can assure you that our valued vendors, freelancers and all service providers who make what we do possible, will be brought up to date over the next 90 days.

And unlike our anonymous and gossipy friend, you can sign my name to that.

Alison Tocci
President
Time Out New York

[Alison, please send future typo corrections and memos here.]

TONY is light on content and heavy on listings. That's probably not going to change significantly. So consider what they're up against:

• Craigslist: The entire classified ad business has largely been destroyed by Craigslist. Especially in New York, where Craigslist is widely read. Because Craigslist is, you know, free.
• Yelp.com: A site with remarkably extensive listings and reviews of restaurant, bars, nightlife, bars, and shopping. And the reviews are customer-generated, rather than one magazine's opinion. Also free. (See also: Citysearch, Menupages, etc.)
• Blogs: Crazy micro-specialization means that there are probably a dozen good blogs covering any area of interest you might have in New York. Again, free.
• Other competitors: The Village Voice, NY Press, and L Magazine all do extensive reviews and event listings. All free. New York magazine could be considered a higher-end competitor, but its content is a million times better.

• Suffice it to say that TONY can't depend on increasing sales of its print version to stay afloat. That leaves its website. Which they certainly understand—the mag tried to invest and make its website the leader in its category last year. Unfortunately that didn't pan out. And it's hard to see how they could surpass all the aforementioned online competitors now, even with a big infusion of money.

  So if TONY's business model doesn't deliver them a solid profit right where they are today, the outlook is grim.

  [Anybody out there with more info on TONY's financial situation (good or bad), email us please.]

The rumor's not a complete surprise—we were reporting last year that some freelancers were having trouble getting paid by TONY. Our tipsters, though, say that's just a symptom of more serious money problems for publisher Allison Tocci and company:

Middle management has been instructed to reduce operating cost by whatever means necessary. They owe so much money across all their major vendors that it’s just a matter of time before something bad happens — vendors have already stared black listing TONY from doing business with them, because of their delinquent account practices.

TONY has seriously hurt themselves in the eyes of many vendors by not been more proactive towards reducing their ever-increasing debt.

Last year's investment in the website may have sucked away cash that could have been used to pay down debts, our tipster says, and some freelancers haven't been paid "in months." From another tipster:

Time Out NY is in such a critical financial quagmire that insiders speculate that it won't make it to the end of the year. Vendors and some freelancers have not been paid for two years, and that's probably a conservative number. Some of those vendors, including paper suppliers and printers, are ready to stop doing business with TONY until they pay up the hundreds of thousand that they are owed.

Whatever the case, there's certainly some animosity against management and their financial decisions over the past year or two. Any of you had trouble getting paid, or know more about TONY's situation? Email us.

Call Julia! [TONY]

The phone number is not actually Ms. Allison's, but goes to some sort of hotline set up for members of the public to call and attempt to insert themselves into the tumblrd farce of her heavily-mediated take on Modern Romance. Or just harass her, we suppose, but she really probably gets enough of that.

Good on new Time Out EIC Michael Friedson for taking a chance on a relative unknown like Ms. Allison, especially after that New York profile didn't pan out. (Adam Moss declared our heroine to be a bit "too overexposed.") Please go buy like 10 copies! And marvel at how lucky it is for Ms. Allison that Mr. Friedson decided on The Singles Issue and not The Doomed Co-Dependent Relationship With Two Insufferable Media Whores Issue. That would've been embarrassing. Especially after three solid weeks now of Julia's "dating" column consisting of thinly-veiled bitching about her ex, noted prick Jakob Lodwick. That's that fun Sex and the City lifestyle so many validation-desperate little girls across our great nation dream of.

juliaallison.tumblr.com