• Rupert Murdoch is still willing to pour money into the New York newspaper wars, "decline of the newspaper industry" be damned. He will not rest until he can claim superiority over the NYT as a general interest paper in the NYC market. Or he will die trying, literally!
• People most likely to be angry about this: The WSJ's Boston bureau, which was recently closed.
• People who should be most worried about this: New York Post staffers. Every dollar Rupert puts into the WSJ is a dollar that he's not putting into the Post. Which already has very good local coverage, in a vile tabloidy way.
• People who may view this news with keen interest: The 100 New York Times newsroom staffers who have to be gone by the end of the year. "Hiring," you say?

Not, obviously, that he is off the hook for Gitmo et al, but this is a useful corrective (especially because it is aimed, theoretically, at terrified conservative WSJ-readers) to the "but he hasn't done anything yet" bitching. He did a bunch of things that Democrats have been unable to accomplish in years of trying, like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act, children's health insurance expansion, setting aside lots more federal land as wilderness that Sarah Palin will want to drill in, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Preventions Act, and killing the F-22 and a couple other defense boondoggles.

Also, according to the Wall Street Journal, all of the lobbyists are quitting! That is wonderful news, for everyone! Soon we will be back down to a respectable late-'90s era number of lobbyists in DC, arguing for a health care reform package that consists of mailing every American free corn and offering them payday loans to buy more corn.

Colleagues,

Today we told our team in Boston that we are closing the bureau in its present form. The economic background to the closure is painfully obvious to us all. An investigative function will remain in Boston, but the core reporting team will be disbanded, though all nine reporters affected will certainly be able to apply for openings elsewhere on the paper. Coverage of the Boston mutual fund industry will switch to the Money and Investing team and we are creating an enhanced New York-based education team.

Any such decision inevitably stirs apprehension and uncertainty, but there are no plans, nascent or otherwise, to close any other U.S. or international bureau. Meanwhile, the Newswires bureau and the MarketWatch team in Boston will remain at their present staffing levels.

That there has been truly great reporting under the generalship of Gary Putka out of Boston over many, many years is not in doubt. But we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable.

Robert

Eccentricity has its charms, of course, but woman cannot survive on excitement alone! But thanks to the magical duo of Michael Bloomberg and that other guy who keeps threatening to run for political office again before recalling how much he likes to golf, NYC is now a magical wonderland where street cleaners dedicated to their craft slap giant green post-its on your car windows if you dare obstruct their work. This new NYC populated by Cornell grads where the NYPD tows its damn breakdowns is the reason Bloomberg will be Mayor forever and ever!

But what is this?

New Yorkers are fleeing this Utopia for Florida? Well, yes. Turns out all this wonderful service comes at the cost of some of the highest tax rates in the country, which... well, duh.

Things have gotten so bad, Manhattanites are moving to the Bronx and Brooklynites are moving to Staten Island. The end times are here, people!

If you're looking for someone to blame, the Wall Street Journal helpfully suggests you look under "Liberals: Just Desserts."

[Pic: AIP History Center Web Exhibit]

The most basic definition of insider trading is: information that isn't available to the public shareholders of a company is given to sketchy assholes who already have more money than you, first. That way, said assholes can buy or sell stock based on whether or not a company's about to blow up or be royally screwed. Once the information becomes publicly available, the stock price is either too high for you to buy or your stock's already been screwed because they sold their gigantic loads of the company off before you could. And you would've bought and/or sold your stock because you know that when a company produces a bunch of planes that explode nine seconds after takeoff, you should probably sell your stock.

So: insider trading is bad, right? Bad for morals, bad for the economy, bad for people who get manipulated by other people by shady backdoor deals, right? Wrong, motherfuckers! Bwah. Ha. Ha. says the Wall Street Journal's suspiciously named Donald J. Boudreaux. How is this possible? Let's learn. Dr. Evil Donald J. Boudreaux suggests that because it's hard to tell what's a sketchy secret and what isn't, it (A) wastes the time of federal authorities, (B) it keeps asset prices "honest" by telling the truth about what their real value is and (C) it helps the market adjust rather quickly. Watch how he phrases this:

Time to stop telling horror stories. Federal agents are wasting their time slapping handcuffs on hedge fund traders like Raj Rajaratnam, the financier charged last week with trading on nonpublic information involving IBM, Google and other big companies. The reassuring truth: Insider trading is impossible to police and helpful to markets and investors. Parsing the difference between legal and illegal insider trading is futile-and a disservice to all investors. Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest-in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities.

Well, considering the small fact that federal authorities completely fucked the dog on Bernie Madoff, I'd say that anything that even remotely resembles something that might cost people who don't have the money of megalomaniacal bajillionaires a few bucks is probably worth the time of federal authorities. Also, a stock's "real value" is based on information attained through sketchy means? No, I'd say that's an asset's "shadow value." Its real value is based on the people whose fortunes are turned by it that can't afford (or, inversely, shouldn't be allowed) to have it do so. Information that insider trading works off of should be made public, not hunted out and used for profit; the big point Frederick von Dumbass is missing is that letting illegal information be freed up for legal use once obtained by white collar criminals makes said propriety information even more proprietary.

But I don't have a column at the Wall Street Fucking Journal, so, you know, I wouldn't know my ass from my face when it comes to money, which is to speak nothing of Mark Penn's Microtrends (For You To Buy Into, That My Clients Would Like You To Buy Into) column.

Boudreaux's column goes on to cite examples from the gas "crisis" of 20 years ago that allowed Big Unleaded to screw our parents in the tank, and the potential of Big Pharm to inflict damage on the public's health and wallets. Which is fair, but also, why we have regulatory agencies that exist to vette out this kind of thing. The second we let people with access to insider trading use it—people on Wall Street, guys who sit in front of their computer every day for hours at a time scanning forums for the slightest piece of corporate gossip—is the second we put the markets even further out of control of the majority of people who are layman's stockholders. This would be like letting the biggest Star Wars fanboys write the plot of the next three movies (and look what happened when we bought into George Lucas writing the screenplays for the last three).

Even more curious is how the Wall Street Journal allowed themselves to run this kind of complete nonsense without anything remotely resembling a counterpoint; they're big press. People who don't know Wall Street read the Wall Street Journal. This is dangerously stupid rhetoric. It's funny when Clusterstock does it, because they're mostly read by psychopathic, gossipy market obsessives, and because they often to have the counterpoint up five or ten minutes later. This is a little different. This is just patently ridiculous.

"Marissa unintentionally encourages promiscuity," managing editor Robert Thomson said. Uh, really? Yes! Since the font used to attribute quotes on this Google News page is too small for Thomson's taste, search chief Mayer is encouraging "digital disloyalty" among readers who are the actual legal property of the Wall Street Journal.

"Why isn't the font size bigger?" Thomson demands. Seriously, Marissa. What do you know about designing websites in comparison to the leering, name-calling newspaper lackey of digital media genius Rupert Murdoch?

Whispers emanating from the Journal's parent, News Corp., have the paper on track to lose $100 million this year, says one tipster. That's hard to believe, given the $59 million contribution that Journal publisher Dow Jones made to News Corp.'s bottom line as recently as the last quarter of 2008. But Dow Jones profits fell in both of the quarters reported since, according to public earnings reports. News Corp. didn't give precise figures for Dow Jones or the Journal, but did disclose that all News Corp. newspapers saw combined profits fall 97 percent January through April and revenue fall 24 percent in the three months after that.

The Journal could cut some costs by slicing its ridiculous video army down to one guy, plus a cameraman with a cheap recorder, and maybe a video editor. After all, as Current TV's Brett Erlich has show, it's possible to create some seriously fun financial programming with bare-bones production values. Or the Journal can just keep imitating cable news networks, even to the point of absurdly saying "we're running out of time," as the host did toward the end of today's "AM Report." After all, it's not like News Corp. owns a real financial net of its own, or anything.

UPDATE: Dow Jones says it uses "less than 10 staffers" to make the video, and Business Insider has updated its post to reflect that assertion, adding it got its earlier number from "people involved in the show."

Now, credit where credit's due: a few weeks ago, John wrote:

You do not want to miss the weekly festival of swooning self-regard and misty incoherence that will be Peggy Noonan's "Study Group" for undergrads this year, during her fellowship at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics.

Let's see how on the money he was. Tipster, take us away:

After about an hour with the woman, I'm happy to report that she seemed incredibly inebriated, and seldom more than a little coherent. Peggy was a ridiculous and hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all.

It gets better:

First of all, she spoke. Exactly. As. She. Writes. She emphasized these fragments by pounding on the desk with each word. Her eyes focused, and and more frequently unfocused. A couple of times she spit onto her brown vest and pretended it didn't happen. She looked older than her press photos. Ms. Noonan spoke in a sing-song, condescending voice reserved usually for developmentally delayed 2nd graders. After she completed a thought, she'd pause and smile, staring at the air in front of her, reflecting on her impeccable delivery and overreaching wisdom. She used baseball metaphors more than twice.

I'll count that as a double. More, please:

She isn't teaching a class. It's a study group. It's just two hours of listening to a woman who should not be permitted to operate heavy machinery.

Sometimes, this job does itself. Here are your Peggy Noonan Goes to Harvard quotes. Someone get this woman to a kegger. Or at least a regatta. I've provided context with them strictly with emoticons. I think, for all intents and purposes, they otherwise speak for themselves:

• "I'm not a brain surgeon. You have to be a professional. I did my best and I didn't kill anybody. I can't remember what the point of my answer is." : )
  
  
• "You know, and the problem with George W. Bush, is that he made the whole world so nervous. Y'know!" :-O
  
  
• "My study group is about being a person who thinks things and believes them and turns them into words that convey thoughts and feelings." : /
  
  
• "You never have to feel that you're not allowed to think what you think." (>.<)
  
  
• "I wasn't sure I could wear mascara every day. One should dress. One should wear mascara when one can." 8<
  
  
• "I wasn't sure I could stay awake all day. This is one of the major stresses of life - making sure you can stay awake all day. I happen to think sleep is one of the most important things in life. Trying to wake up, trying to fall asleep. I don't know why I'm talking about this." :,(
  
  
• "It's not a faux pas to love your country. Its history. Its traditions. Love it. Bring that love into the world. Share it and the world looks at you and says, ‘Oh, I get it!'" :D
  
  
• "My best advice for you is never feel bad about being a loser." :-#
  
  
• "You Have To Let Your Freak Flag Fly." >°,,,°<

So when you look at the numbers, the heyday of the Soccer Mom is passing. They will continue to exert a measurable influence, but in a world of evolving microtrends, they are on the decline. And on the rise are single, urban workaholics, Internet-junkie empty nesters, and new immigrants taking root.

So, Mark Penn's Trademark Microtrends of The Future:

"Single, urban workaholics"= Alcopops
"Internet-junkie empty nesters"= Masturbating Bears
"New immigrants taking root"= Happenin' Latins

Pay this man one million dollars, at once.
[Pic: Getty]

For some ungodly reason, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government saw fit to make Noonan a fellow this year. As part of the application process, candidates are asked to write up a syllabus of the course they will enlighten impressionable young undergrads with. Noonan wrote hers like she writes her column: She poured a glass of white wine, put on some Commodores, curled up in a big comfy chair with a Snuggie, and turned on the crazy.

Herewith, annotated selections from the syllabus for "CREATIVITY IN JOURNALISM, IN POLITICS AND IN LIFE: A Writer's Perspective, a study group led by IOP fellow Peggy Noonan, Tuesdays 4:00-5:30 p.m., Faculty Dining Room."

A writer tries to make clarity out of confusion, to capture reality, to see what is. A good writer is trying to be alive. A columnist says, "I think this is true, I want to tell you about it, please listen to me, let's think about it together."

Oh, lord. I don't think we're thinking what you're thinking, Peggy.

It is often said that writing is a solitary act, and that is true –- it's you and your brain, your soul and your response to something that's happening either in the world or in your head. And you bring to it, to this subject, what knowledge you have of life, and of man, and of history. But at the same time it is not a solitary act if you are lucky enough to have an audience for your work.

OK, follow closely kids, cause this gets complicated and I'm not going over it again: Writing=You+your brain+your soul+the larger of either your response to the voices in your head OR the voices on the teevee DIVIDED BY everything you know TIMES the square root of your audience. WRITE THAT DOWN.

Ronald Reagan was interesting as a political figure in part because when he spoke there was a quality of mutual listening going on, a listening so intense it was like a form of communication. He would make his case and illustrate his points and you'd sit in the audience and think, "Yes, that's true, I agree" or, "Hmmm, I'm not sure."

Or you could think, Gosh, I'm a little chilly. Maybe I should switch to bourbon. Is it four yet? Oh well. This white wine's a little cold, though. Why did I choose the white wine? Oh, I wanted to polish off that bottle, that's right. OK, I'll just finish it off and then warm myself back up with the Knob Creek. I wonder what they would taste like if I mixed them together? My kingdom for an electric Snuggie! You know what's wrong with our culture? No one stands anymore—Ronald Reagan could stand, and he could walk, the way our fathers stood and walked when there were wars and everyone wore hats and carried handkerchiefs. A handkerchief is like a smile—a wry little smile that says, "Everything's going to be OK, miss. You just don't worry, we'll take care of everything." Are there handkerchiefs on the internet? Maybe there are, but I don't think so. I think we need a handkerchief, to lift us up and carry us back to when things like people and dogs and trees really mattered. Why are we always so angry? God I'd love 15 minutes in the back of a car with Lionel Richie. Where was I? You could think that, too.

So: onward, to a writer's life.

Session One:
Introduction: An Overview:
Who I am. Where I am from. What I have done. My career. Being a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan; being young at CBS News when it too was young, and the Tiffany Network, and carried itself like the greatest army in the world, with spirit and élan and pride, and not a small amount of conceit.

No, not a small amount at all.

Session Two:
"What It Is to Work In a White House."
You've seen the television show The West Wing, on which I was for a short time a consultant. You've read What I Saw at the Revolution, or should have, God knows. Is there more to say? Yes. Herein I say it. Here's where I start: What a privelage, what a great exhausting drama, to do what you are doing, which is: Living History.

What an idiot, you are, to do what you have done, which is: Misspell "privilege."

Session Five:
"What It Is to be a Columnist."
"My column? I call it my pillar!" William Safire is said to have said. What columnists are trying to do. Why they do it. How they do it. Why it matters. Our guest will be, one hopes, a great columnist.

Great columnists. Write. In sentence fragments. Because. It's hard. To write complete. Thoughts.

Session Six:
"What It Is to Write A book?"
To write a book is to swing for the fences. Books last. The great CBS News anchor Charles Kuralt once said in my presence, gesturing toward the television, "That doesn't last, but this" – he gestured toward a book case – "does." (Actually if Google has its way maybe this will change; maybe they'll delete us.) But until they do, books are forever. I've written eight. All nonfiction. Let's talk about them, about the writing of them, and let us have as a guest a great book writer.

Let us!

Session Seven:
"Where Is America now, politically?"
And where exactly should it be? I have some thoughts.

No you don't, Peggy. You do not have any thoughts.

Is it good that what was essentially a media monopoly has been broken? Yes. And it's bad, too.

Knob Creek time!

Session Eight:
"Wrap Up Session."
What did we learn? What can we conclude about the writer's life? What interests you about politics? What is good about modern media, and what is bad? Let us talk about journalism, politics, and life.

This woman is a national fucking treasure. There's also a video of Noonan explaining the class, which she apparently confused with an appearance on Sesame Street.

Like Dan Kearns! Dan Kearns is a construction worker from Florida, and because there is no construction in Florida anymore, he does not have very much to do. So he decided to rename himself "Snipe" and hike north on the trail with guys named "Angry Hippie" and "Dance Party." This is "a symbol" of either "a jobless recovery or of a still-deepening recession" and there are data that prove its a trend:

Typically, about 1,000 hikers leave Georgia each spring in hopes of completing the trail in one all-out trek. This year, trail monitors say, close to 1,400 hikers were in the first wave, with hundreds more following behind through early summer.

People who start at the bottom and hike up are called "NoBos," and people who do it the other way are called "SoBos." The Journal notes: "NoBos and SoBos are reminiscent of the hobos of the Great Depression, though there aren't so many of them this time."

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail" was invented by South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, and while there is a lot of talk of actual hiking through Virginia with modern-day ex-banker hobos or whatever it actually means secretly flying to Argentina to have sex with a woman who isn't your wife.

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.

His new Microtrend: "Grandparents to the Rescue." Aww! Mark Penn is a cuddly scamp. Tell us, sir, where did you come up with the insightful and potentially profitable insider knowledge that led you to write this eye-opening [Summary: Recession's on, grandparents are working less, babysitting more] journalistic column?

We recently did a poll of grandparents in America, and the state of grandparental devotion in America is strong.

Who is this omniscient 'We?' It's Mark Penn's polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. Usually polling firms have to have PR people make up fake story angles from polls like this and then desperately pitch those angles to bored reporters. But Mark Penn can just write it up in his very own WSJ column!

Your decisionmaking skills are vindicated, WSJ. Carry on.

Yes, the most curious thing about this piece about fashion bloggers is that not one of their blogs is named or linked to. Isn't that kind of like running a fashion spread but not telling us any of the designers who make the clothes? Anyway, Gevinson's is called Style Rookie, and the Associate Press revealed her identity in a story about the dangers of children who blog last year.

But that doesn't seem to have anything but a positive effect on her. Noted fashion line Rodarte is using her as a muse and has invited her (and her father) to their fashion show on Tuesday in New York. Sure, she may be a little precocious and affected, but the kid does has some major style. In our fantasies, she grows up, goes to a good school, slaves away as an assistant for a few years, and then is dubbed the chosen one to unseat Anna Wintour. Imagine, a blogger at the helm of Vogue! Oh, never mind. By the time all that happens, there won't be any print media left anyway.

They are still full of self-serving lies! Don't worry about that! Sarah Palin would never let her name be attached to anything that wasn't full of self-serving lies. But, man, her Wall Street Journal editorial today? So boring.

She quotes Ronald Reagan's famous speech against socialized medicine, which was, of course, his speech against the creation of Medicare, and then she accuses the Democrats of wanting to gut Medicare, but then she paraphrases a Cato Institute libertarian describing his preferred health care plan, which would presumably involve the complete eradication of Medicare—not sure how seniors would feel about that one, Sarah!—and also "death panels" again, because why not. Blah blah. You can read anything Jon Cohn has written over the last couple months if you want the fact-based version of what Palin is talking about.

Oh, but Michael Wolff is totally psyched about this incredibly mundane column! "Sarah Palin is Back — and Out for Blood," he says. He thinks the fact that she has a staff of researchers and writers means that she is "the conservative standard-bearer" and "a force to be reckoned with," because remember when she had the finest writers, researchers, and staff the Republican Party machine could provide and she won the Vice Presidency and didn't embarrass herself at all, even once? No, we don't remember that either, because she melted down from the pressure. Literally any moron can buy an op-ed, and any Republican moron can get that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

But who is writing her boring/evil new Facebook updates? (It is probably just Bill Kristol, actually.)

Attached is the ad Oracle ran in the lower right corner of today's Wall Street Journal. An early edition posted to the newspaper's website illustrates how Ellison likes to operate. Check out the highlighted bit — Oracle never bothered to fill in the data to support its certain conclusion. The attitude: "Definitely say we're way 'faster' on hardware from Sun, which we now own, than on IBM, which makes a competing database; we'll find some numbers later to prove it."

All tech moguls, to some extent, play this marketing game, but Ellison has historically been an especially egregious example; his brazenness, in fact, helps explain why Oracle, through a series of mergers, has come to utterly dominate the market for the most complex types of large corporate software.

An example: Ellison in the late 1980s commissioned an ad to tout a hugely complex clustering feature for Oracle database software — and did so before one line of code had been written to support that feature. This according to Mike Wilson's biography of Ellison:

About 1987 word got out that the Ingres database would soon have a sexy new function: It would be able to do distributed queries... Ellison told [Oracle ad man Rick] Bennett to prepare an advertisement announcing Oracle's distributed capability. Then he assigned an engineer to whip up a distribtued feature so the company would actually have something to sell when the ad appeared. Ten days later Bennett's advertisement hit the trade press: "Oracle Announced SQL*Star," it said. "The First Distribtued Relational DBMS..."

"The fact of the matter was Oracle didn't have anything," said George Schussel, the trade show promoter who had followed Oracle from the beginning. "But that was the way they worked. Everything was marketing, everything was image. You simply announced the product and then figured out later how to deal with it from a technological point of view."

Another time, Wilson writes, Oracle took out an ad implying, outlandishly, it had ported a competing database to the PC from mainframes — "IBM SQL/DS AND DB2 DBMS NOW ON PC," read the ad headline. Ellison "exploded" when an engineer challenged the ad, Oracle vet Kirk Bradley told Wilson:

"He said, 'All companies do this. It's standard stuff. You don't know anything about business.'"

It's somehow comforting to know that, while hot companies like Twitter, Google and Netscape may come and go, some longtime CEOs basically haven't changed for decades. Larry Ellison will always be a shameless truth-bender. Just like some of his closest friends.

UPDATE: One commenter supposes, quite plausibly, "They're going to announce the results at OpenWorld on Oct 14 and we're all supposed to tune in then to find out what XX equals." So maybe Oracle is doing the same fill-in-the-blanks thing it's always done, just in a very open and shameless way. Transparency. People do change!

UPDATE 2: Oracle has been fined over this ad, since Oracle did not possess any TPC benchmarks to back up the ads claim. Oracle was, again, hoping the facts would fit the claim, when said facts came into existence, which at the time of this ad they had not.

We do feel for the beleaguered actual reporters in the WSJ newsroom, who have to see their own reputations suffer by association while their paper's leadership caves in to a celebrity pseudo-columnist's right to disregard basic conflict-of-interest rules. One Journal employee told us, "While the Mark Penn incident is as egregious as it is embarrassing, at this point, I think most of the newsroom is so emotionally numb that nothing surprises us anymore. Truly."

The New York Times coaxed a statement out of Penn last night. It is pathetic:

In a statement, Mr. Penn, who declined to be interviewed, said that he had not seen the message until after it was sent, and that "nothing was done nor likely to be done as a result of it." He said that none of the companies mentioned in his column were Burson-Marsteller clients.

"I had no business motive in writing it whatsoever," he said. But, he added, "We will continue to distribute the columns to friends and clients alike, and assured The Journal they will not be tied to any specific marketing efforts."

More pathetic: the fact that this—which is not only not contrite, but actually dares you to believe that Burson-Marsteller will "continue to distribute" the column to clients and potential clients, but that that will not constitute a "marketing effort"—was enough to convince the standards-setters at the nation's premier business paper to give this man a pass. Not only that, but the WSJ's spokesman still refuses to comment on whether the paper is "comfortable with" Burson's actions.

It's also worth noting that while Penn's main excuse to the paper was that he didn't know in advance about this effort to leverage the column into clients, it's ridiculous to spin this into some sort of rookie mistake or uncharacteristic action. The email in question came from Josh Gottheimer, one of Burson's top global executives and head of the firm's Public Affairs practice. That means he's the head political communications guy. He was a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, and for John Kerry and Wesley Clark's presidential campaigns. He was also the head PR guy for Ford. He knows what the fuck he's doing.

Finally, pathetic and amusing: The paper is keeping on Mark Penn, presumably, because they don't think they can afford to lose his unparalleled insight into the latest MICROTRENDS like—in this case—"glamping." Strange. An insider tells us that a WSJ travel reporter pitched a "glamping" story to the paper four years ago. The reporter was told that the story was too old.
[Pic: Larry Roibal]

This was the Wall Street Journal's first real test of journalism ethics under Rupert Murdoch's ownership. And, surprisingly, they've fucking failed, big time. The story broke yesterday afternoon—complete with a leaked email showing top execs at Burson-Marsteller suggesting how to use the latest column by Penn, their CEO, as a tool to recruit clients from the industry he wrote about. The paper assured us yesterday they were "looking into it," and cited their clear conflict of interest policy. That policy, they assured us, was the Dow Jones Code of Conduct that we excerpted in our own post yesterday, which demands that the company ensure that:

* Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers or information providers;
* Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or
* There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings.

Well. Didn't take long to throw that away! Today, WSJ spokesman Robert Christie explained the results of the paper's thorough investigation like so:

"Mark has assured us that through our conversations that he's complied with his conflict of interest policy. He does not have any glamping clients nor did they target them before the column appeared."

That's right: The WSJ's investigation consisted of calling Mark Penn and asking him, "Hey, did you comply with that conflict of interest policy?" The world-famous investigative skills of the WSJ in action, ladies and gentlemen. As a follow-up, we asked Christie if he was implying that it's fine for a columnist to go recruiting clients from a column he just wrote after it's published. His reply:

Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop.

The Wall Street Journal is "pretty sure" that Mark Penn's PR firm will stop using its CEO's purportedly unbiased column as a business recruitment tool! Why are they "pretty sure?" Because Mark Penn said so! Fuck that published email evidence, anyhow! It was on a "blog," and "blogging" hasn't been a Microtrend for like two years.

Here's what this means for you, the reader of the WSJ: You should assume, when you read a Mark Penn column, that Burson-Marsteller will run to the leading companies in any industry mentioned in that column and set up meetings for them with Mark Penn, who will try to use that column as a tool to recruit them as PR clients. If you really want to be safe, intellectually, it only makes sense to also assume that Mark Penn may decide what to write his columns about based on the business needs of Burson-Marsteller—which are, after all, his primary responsibility.

You should also assume that any other WSJ contributing columnist could be doing the same thing. Because the paper clearly does not consider it a firing offense.

Don't worry, Mark Penn. We won't forget about you. We're looking forward to your next column.

[Previously: The Full Story]

Scumbag spotted!

Mark Penn's latest (old, and none too insightful) 'Microtrend' column is about "glamping"—glamorous camping. It ran last weekend. By Monday, according to an internal email obtained by Gawker, Burson was already trying to recruit companies from the industry featured in the column as clients. Burson Executive Vice President (and former Bill Clinton speechwriter) Josh Gottheimer urged Burson's senior staff—including Founding Chairman Harold Burson, US President & CEO Patrick Ford, and others, to use Penn's column as a tool to approach clients in the camping industry about business. Not only that—he recommends that Mark Penn "send a note" to the CEO of these potential clients requesting a meeting.

You may recall that Mark Penn was canned as Hillary Clinton's campaign strategist after it emerged that his firm was trying to get a contract to do PR work for the nation of Colombia—work that went against Clinton's own political position (a story that the WSJ broke). We pointed out at the time that it was idiotic to expect a full-time PR exec to be anything but a PR exec—Penn's job is to bring in business to Burson (one of America's biggest, and shadiest PR firms), and anyone expecting Burson to pass up business opportunities because they somehow clash with Mark Penn's various other hobbies will be sorely disappointed.

Moonlighting from his PR career has already screwed a politician. Now he's screwing a newspaper the same way. Here we have a Wall Street Journal columnist whose firm is taking his newspaper columns fresh off the press and running to any company connected to the column's subject of the week, trying to get them to sign up with said firm—led by the columnist himself!—for PR work. At best, Penn has a conflict of interest here that can only be resolved by resigning one job or the other. The least generous interpretation would be that Burson-Marsteller is purposefully using the editorial space of the Wall Street Journal as a business recruitment tool—fooling one of the nation's most prestigious papers into giving it ad space it can use to promote its own clients, for free.

Either way, whatever sort of credibility Penn had as an expert who spots trends based on data rather than on his own firm's business considerations is clearly shot. WSJ parent company Dow Jones' own Code of Conduct states that "The Company will suffer, for example, if our customers cannot assume" these principles are followed:

• Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers or information providers;
• Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or
• There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings.

We're contacting the WSJ and Burson-Marsteller and we'll bring you their responses when we get them. In the meantime: Don't go trusting any Microtrends. Unless you're Mark Penn's client.

Update: The WSJ referred us to Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal and Executive Editor for the Journal Online. He tells us he is "Looking into it. We have a clear conflict of interest agreement with Mr. Penn and all our outside columnists."
[Pic: Getty]

There is no ambiguity about the facts now: In response to an FCC inquiry, Apple has released a statement absolving its carrier partner, stating, "Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application." AT&T confirmed, "AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store."

For users, the death of Google Voice on the iPhone — via the removal of some iPhone apps and indefinitely delay of another — meant more expensive text messages and international calls, and more snafus in trying to get friends to use the Google Voice phone number. It kept them locked in close to Jobs and his software, a relationship the Apple CEO guards jealously, some say anticompetitively. Jobs, for example, tried to lock Palm out of Apple's iTunes music jukebox; apparently tried to lock employees out of lucrative offers from competitors like Palm and Google; and tried (successfully) to lock competing browsers and podcasting software off the iPhone.

And yet blame was consistently placed on AT&T over the past few weeks. A Wall Street Journal op-ed, written by a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager, explained excatly "Why AT&T Killed Google Voice" (because "AT&T is dragging down the rest of us... and stifling innovation"). TechCrunch, the Valley blog that broke the Google Voice news, immediately declared that "it's not hard to guess who's behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T."

Prominent Mac-news writer John Gruber was the most certain on his Daring Fireball website. "Trust me," he wrote, "it was AT&T's decision." Gruber cited "an informed source:"

A reliable little birdie has informed me that it was indeed AT&T that objected to Google Voice apps for the iPhone. It's that simple.

Of course, it wasn't. Gruber did not respond to our emails, but so certain did the well-connected indy blogger sound that we can't help but wonder if he wasn't snowed by Apple itself. The company would not necessarily have anticipated that a swift, aggressive and public FCC investigation into the Google Voice incident would have proven AT&T blameless. And it's not like the company's flacks haven't been down this road before; Jim Goldman's sometime source and former CNBC coworker is an Apple flack, and Goldman's Apple sources had him reporting for weeks last fall that Jobs' health was "fine," before Goldman was suddenly forced to acknowledge it was very much not fine. (Gruber pointedly trumpeted CNBC's party-line reporting at the time while pissing on ultimately-vindicated posts from our colleagues at Gizmodo; in the interest of disclosure, we should note that this trend continues to this day, and that we find Gruber as reliably entertaining when he's wrong as when he's right, albeit for entirely different reasons.)

No matter how Apple's defenders were rallied this time around — we suspect, as a rule, that it had more to do with anti-AT&T bias than some pro-Apple whisper campaign — one can only hope this incident will further erode the myth that Apple is fundamentally any less inclined toward spiteful self-defeating authoritarianism than any other corporation of its size, be it AT&T, Google or, only slightly larger these days, Microsoft. Apple is uniquely molded to the whims of a single man, it is true, and already apologists have begun to excuse the Google Voice decision as fallout from Jobs' well-intentioned obsession with control. But Jobs, like his competitors, must be judged on actions, rather than intentions. And this one is pretty disgraceful.

UPDATE, Aug. 26: Gruber responded to our email:

I saw your post, and I think it's great. Totally fair.

My source (a) was wrong, not lying; and (b) from the enlisted ranks at Apple, not an officer. I am strong believer that when anonymous sources go wrong, readers deserve to know as much as possible about why, so, based on a few emails today exchanged with this same source, I plan to write about it briefly on DF. [Summary: The Apple source had his own Apple source, who he misunderstood.]

* * *

As for Goldman, I do not believe that he was spun back in December. Here's the nut paragraph Goldman wrote in December:

"I can tell you that sources inside the company tell me that Jobs's decision was more about politics than his pancreas. Sources tell me that if Jobs for some reason was unable to perform any of his responsibilities as CEO because of health reasons, which would include the Macworld keynote, I should "rest assured that the board would let me know.""

Clearly, we now know, wrong. But wrong about what? It was wrong that there was nothing seriously wrong with Jobs medically. But I am not convinced at all that anyone at Apple or on the Apple board was aware of how dire his condition was at that time, other than judging by his gaunt appearance — which at that point had been obvious for 8 or 9 months.

My hunch is that it is far more likely that Goldman's sources were unaware of Jobs's medical condition in December than that they lied to him about it. Think of it this way: Apple didn't benefit at all from December's "Jobs is fine" coverage, other than in the very short run. Come January, when he was forced to take his medical leave, these reports from just a few weeks prior made Apple's PR situation far *worse* than if they had said nothing at all to Goldman.

I suspect Jobs himself was not aware of the life-threatening magnitude or specific cause — his liver — until January.

It's conflicting advice day over at the Wall Street Journal, who tells the victims of the recession first to dress up, and then that everyone should start hoarding their worn and nasty clothes. First, Christina Binkley tells us that just because you ain't got no job doesn't mean to bust out the Ed Hardy T-shirts. It's time for a snazzier style.

In the aftermath of a layoff, style is critical. And it's about more than the decision to polish a wardrobe. The way people comport themselves after losing a job can make all the difference in what comes next.

But then Neal Templin, after recounting how his wife makes him throw out his suits makes the case for holding on to your ugly, worn-out, pieces of shit that make your ass look big until they literally fall off your body.

I, on the other hand, am hard on my clothes. I walk a lot. I run for trains. I lean on things. I spill food. And I wear a small collection of clothes very intensely. When they get threadbare, I buy new stuff. Not before.

I'm not alone. BIGresearch , an Ohio-based consumer-intelligence firm, was kind enough to throw in a couple of questions for me in an Internet survey it conducted this month. More than 90% of respondents, including 88% of women and 93% of men, said they wait for clothes to wear out before they throw them out. And 59% of respondents said they were holding on to clothes longer now that the economy is hurting.

Exactly. When you don't have any money, it's hard to go out and buy a whole new outfit with a matching tie and pocket square from the Don Draper collection, so you have to hold onto our stuff. But, with your old stuff, you're never going to get a job. And the longer you're jobless, the older and nastier your wardrobe will get. Which means you'll never get a job. Which means no new penny loafers, which means....Argh!

Better to just invest in a good, sturdy belt and hang yourself. It's over.

The essay published on Speakeasy, written by a WSJ graphics editor named Jovi Juan and titled "John Hughes, 'Sixteen Candles' and Me," is actually quite endearing once you get rein in your "oh not another one of these" reflex and actually read it, particularly Juan's passage about having his family's lawn mowed by Gedde Watanabe, the actor who portrayed Long Duk Dong.

I wasn't too happy about Long Duk Dong. I mean, he was the only guy in the cast who kinda looked like me. Did he have to talk like a boat person? Couldn't he be a contender for a better-looking babe? He was, incidentally, the only one in the cast I met. I was mowing my front yard, no doubt ruining another shot. And he came over and asked if he could mow for awhile. I said sure and watched him walk back and forth, cutting my grass, smiling as if this was a great way to spend an afternoon. He stopped after a bit, and, laughing, shook my hand and went back to the set.

Being the angry, disaffected teenager that many of us were, Juan says that when the film was being shot at the house next door he was ambivalent, even dismissive, towards the events taking place a few feet away from his childhood bedroom, so much so that he didn't actually see the film until long after its theatrical release when he watched a VHS copy of Sixteen Candles with some friends. Understandably, Juan now expresses regret over having that attitude toward the film.

Its opening scene is a truck delivering newspapers. It passes under a canopy of trees, a cathedral of great green boughs. By the time I saw it, most of those trees were gone, struck down by Dutch Elm disease, even the ones in front of my house. It also makes me sad that I didn't find any real joy in its filming. There I was with a front row seat to an American classic, and what did I do with it? I turned away, yawning, leaving the show just as it was getting good. It took me years and many more mistakes to learn to grasp the singularity of moments, the importance of saying goodbye, of glancing back as you leave a place forever, of letting yourself be star struck.

Kinda touching, no? Now with that said, can we go ahead institute a 48-hour rule on these sort of tribute essays or whatever you call them, as in any and all such remembrances must be published on the internet within 48-hours of the death of the person being fondly remembered? Such stories being run in print media outlets will be granted extra time (A week? Two?) to compensate for print being the tortoise to the internet's hare. Can we get a vote on this?

Now, on a somewhat unrelated note, have you ever wondered whatever happened to the guy who played Jake in Sixteen Candles? Did he get fed-up with losing every available job for his type to Matt Dillion and give up acting? Well tonight my curiosity about Jake's fate got the best of me so I did some digging around.

As it turns out, the actor who played Jake Ryan, Michael Schoeffling, had roles in eight other films after Sixteen Candles (One of which was in the film Belizaire the Cajun, which was, coincidentally, filmed in the swamps near where I grew up). Schoeffling, who's now 48 years old, gave up acting in 1991 and lives in rural northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and family, where he makes his living as a carpenter and woodworker. In 2002, GQ termed him the "Salinger of male models/actors." Maybe he'll emerge to make an appearance at Hughes' funeral?

Citing high "impairment and operating charges" the company incurred through its ownership of MySpace, News Corp. shareholders lost 8 cents per share and the company lost 11% of its total revenue in their fourth quarter. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Murdoch would announce plans to end free access to all of his company's online offerings on the same day.

Reports the Financial Times:

Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online.

He warned that "the big competition will be coming from the BBC," which offers online news for free, but said: "Our policy is to win."

Murdoch's move, if he holds fast to his plans, could play a substantial role in the future of content availability on the internet. While charging for online access to the Wall Street Journal has been mildly successful due to the willingness of the paper's affluent readership to pony up, it'll be interesting to see if the same holds true for New Corp.'s other, less "classy" properties. If his move to force people to pay for access to Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, the News of the World, the New York Post, etc. is successful, expect many others to follow suit, something sure to please David Simon. However, this idea sure as shit seems to have fail written all over it.

Pic via

What appears to be the problem here is that the places that used to be exclusively blogger wi-fi campgrounds have been infiltrated by the unemployed who are too poor to afford wi-fi in their apartments, so they have to go to coffee shops for internet access to look for jobs and watch porn and whatnot.

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours — and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading. In some places, customers just get cold looks, but in a growing number of small coffee shops, firm restrictions on laptop use have been imposed and electric outlets have been locked. The laptop backlash may predate the recession, but the recession clearly has accelerated it.

To make matters even worse, some of these downtrodden killjoys have the audacity to show up with their own tasty goods so as to not have to actually make any purchases!

Customers' frugality has reached extremes in the recession, the 40-year-old (Cocoa Bar owner Masoud) Soltani says. Some patrons show up with a tea bag for a free hot-water refill or quietly unwrap homemade sandwiches, he says.

So there you have it folks— evil corporations are killing blogging by laying off their employees! Or something like that.

Well, okay, bloggers have been doing this very same thing for years, but the coffee shop system in this country can only handle so many freeloaders before the damn thing just goes haywire, and that's what all of you unemployed people have done —you've ruined a perfectly good free market entitlement program. You bastards!

Pic via Flickr

Teenage girls everywhere are weeping now that they have a totally new form of body dysmorphia. For those who don't swear by Urban Dictionary as a way to kill time at work, the condition is when an ankle is so fat it joins itself to the calf, hence "cankle." Like other non diseases (dry eye syndrome, anyone) the cankle became of note becaues it became a way for some corporation to make a lot of money. This time it's Gold's Gym, who have declared July "Cankle Awareness Month." Trust us, one ride on the A Train with a bunch of fat tourists and you'll be mighty aware of cankles.

The gym is offering classes and workouts designed for women (and gay men) who want to work on toning their lower extremities and plumping their calves.

"Gold's personal trainers lead clients through a cankles-targeted regimen of jump rope, calf raises and jumping squats. As part of the promotion, the Irving, Texas, gym chain, with more than 500 locations across the country, launched a tongue-in-cheek SayNoToCankles.com Web site that offers tips such as fat-burning cardiovascular activities and brisk daily walks."

Yeah, we get that leggings are back and it's summer and Carrie Bradshaw decreed that all the girls should wear strappy sandles, but this is just ridiculous. At least there is one lady in the story making some sense.

To help persuade girls to embrace their chubby ankles, Carly Peitzmeyer, a 21-year-old senior at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., formed a Facebook support group called "Cankles Unite!" "I'm not overweight or anything, I just have really huge ankles," she says. "Really, there are bigger things to worry about."

Yes, there are bigger things to worry about, like your feck. What's that? That's when you neck is so fat that it merges with your face.

Gawker has learned that Hinton will not be hopping across the pond to help explain revelations that reporters for the News of the World and the Sun, two Murdoch papers under his purview when he ran News International Group, engaged in rampant wiretapping and that News International paid off victims to the tune of $1.6 million in exchange for their silence.

The wiretapping scandals first broke in 2007, when Hinton was running News International. After News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was convicted of tapping the phones of various royals and their entourages, Hinton told the House of Commons' culture committee that he had thoroughly investigated the charges and assured Parliament that Goodman was acting alone. Last week, the Guardian reported that nearly 30 News of the World and Sun reporters were engaged in wiretapping and other invasions of privacy.

According to the *ahem* Wall Street Journal, the committee has invited Hinton back to explain the discrepancy:

A parliamentary committee that monitors media policy — the lower house committee on culture, media and sport — plans to hold hearings into the matter as early as Tuesday. The committee has invited Les Hinton, the current chief executive of Dow Jones and the former head of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper operations, to give evidence. A spokesman for Mr. Hinton declined to comment.

Hinton won't be taking them up on the offer, a source tells Gawker. Tomorrow, the committee will begin hearings on the affair with testimony from an editor and reporter for the Guardian, which broke the story.

To all:



Please gather at the Hub on the 6th floor at 2:30 for welcome remarks by Rupert Murdoch.



Best,

The Hub is the Journal's new high-tech, multiplatform cyborg center for conquering news in the 21st Century. There are screens everywhere, used mainly for laughing at Fox Business Network.

Depending, perhaps, on her painkiller supply, Peggy Noonan veers wildly between hackish defenses of Republican doctrine and actual clear-thinking criticisms of politicians (and sometimes, when she's had a little Chardonnay, she goes to airports, or walks around the Upper East Side looking at buildings). The latter columns tend to trick people into thinking the former columns are something other than a lifelong party faithful carrying water. But we digress! As a Republican, she would like to see Republicans actually win elections, someday, and because she is already on record as hating Sarah Palin it would not damage her brand, too much, to continue the attack.

She throws a few sops to the believers: after the Palin pick "the left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children" (if we remember correctly, "the left," as represented by Barack Obama, asked that her children be declared off-limits, and "the media" merely reported, belatedly and with obvious disbelief, on her bizarre family life). And there are attacks on unnamed "intellectuals," by which she actually means "the Republican party elite," but she knows quite well that the word she uses is dogwhistle for "liberals."

But maybe we should just enjoy the actually unbridled disdain on display, here.

"The elites hate her." The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

"She makes the Republican Party look inclusive." She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

"She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes." She shows your cynicism.

"Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues." Mrs. Palin's supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this? Maybe they think "not thoughtful" is a working-class trope!

From there, we go on to blaming Palin's fall on "membership in the self-esteem generation," and a repetition of Noonan's post-9/11 mantra: "the world is a dangerous place." She feels that if she repeats it often enough, the Cold War will reignite and Ronald Reagan will rise from the dead, to win it again, for the Gipper, and for the team.

We can't wait to hear what Meg Stapleton has to say about all this!

Take Thomson's comments at the goodbye party for longtime Journal man Dan Hertzberg, the deputy managing editor pushed into retirement after 32 years. They may have been good for staff cohesion, but we wonder if lead Fox News viper Roger Ailes will take them so cheerfully.

The story as we've confirmed it with three different WSJ staffers, is that Thomson, in praising Hertzberg's newsgathering skills, ended up discussing the newspaper's new "Hub," an area on the sixth floor with loads of flat-screen displays blaring TV news around the clock — the beating heart of the new, multiplatform Journal. Thomson (pictured) was saying Hertzberg is like a human version of that room, or something, with his ability to gather and process news. Whatever.

The line that pricked up reporters' ears was when Thomson joked that the real reason the Hub was built was actually to "double the viewership of Fox Business Network," or words to that effect, making fun of the network's vanishingly small audience. Zing!

Thomson then instituted a "new old tradition" of "banging out" forcibly retired staffers by pounding on the wall as they walk out of the newsroom for the last time. Apparently this is a British thing and, according to one staffer (disclaimer: American), awkward, especially on deadline after many long speeches. Back to the Fox bashing, please; that's the sort of catty backbiting a great many English-speaking journalists can really enjoy!

(PIc: Esther Dyson)

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The Wall Street Journal is developing a culture section focused on New York City—which could be rolled out next year—in accordance with Rupert Murdoch's belief that the New York Times' culture coverage is "lightweight." New, more literal 'Culture Wars!' tag here, TK.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Sure, the Michael Jackson memorial was a huge media clusterfuck covered live on every network. But it also meant two hours of ad-free time for them in the middle of the day! Not to worry: "representatives from the TV outlets that covered the event said the loss of two hours of daytime inventory was a decidedly minor concern." The average network would have only sold three ad during that time anyhow, all of them for Snuggies.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And in a continuation of the 'Hobo New York Times' meme we just made up this week, but which is also very real: wunderkind NYT deal reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin is not in attendance at the Sun Valley media mogulfest meeting this year. Usually he's there blogging up a storm. Sorkin told Peter Kafka that he's too busy finishing his book to go out there, but an alternate theory espoused by us is that he's been forced to take a second job handing out fliers, because of Hobo New York Times.

Today in sunny newspaper industry news: 18 layoffs at the Albany Times-Union, ill-fated newspaper magazine-insert 'RiseUp' is more than $6 million in debt, and execs of the bankrupt Journal Register Co. will get more than $1 million in bonuses for pulling the company out of bankruptcy by laying people off, and other fun things.

It's no new story that Apple goes to greater lengths to prevent outside leaks than just about any corporation in recent American history, but who knew that even employees working at Apple often have little knowledge of what's going on there?

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.

Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else.

"I was at the iPod launch," said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. "No one that I worked with saw that coming."

In a separate piece the Times dug into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Jobs' recent liver transplant, going so far as to insinuate that Jobs may have used his wealth and status to his advantage in order to obtain a new organ.

Waiting times for a liver vary in different parts of the country, and people who can afford to travel are free to go to a city or state with the shortest wait and bide their time until they have reached the top of the list, a donor dies and an organ becomes available. Indeed, some patients rent apartments or stay in hotels near a hospital and wait for the phone to ring. It may not seem fair, but it is not illegal.

It is even conceivable that someone could go to the time and expense of registering for the waiting lists of several transplant centers around the country.

"If you had access to a jet and had six hours to get anywhere in the country, you'd have a wide choice of programs," said Dr. Michael Porayko, the medical director of liver transplants at Vanderbilt University, one of the Tennessee centers that has said it did not treat Mr. Jobs.

This isn't the first time the Times has called out Apple for its secrecy. In a piece published last July titled "Apple's Culture of Secrecy," Joe Nocera took Apple and Jobs to the woodshed over their unwillingness to divulge information about Jobs' declining health, which he speculated was the result of another bout with cancer, with company shareholders at the time, saying that Jobs "needs to treat his shareholders with at least a modicum of respect." This provoked Jobs to call Nocera a "slime bucket" in the course of denying that he was again battling cancer.

Since then Apple appears content to feed stories to the tech reporters at the Wall Street Journal, as they did with the news of Jobs' liver transplant that broke on Saturday morning, as well as a story earlier in the month about how Jobs was "starving to death" during a months-long battle with a mystery illness that left him unable to digest proteins. Near the end of May the Journal also reported that Jobs was, according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "healthy" and "energetic" and that he "doesn't sound like he's sick."

So while the Times persistent reporting on these matters may appear to be them lashing out at an entity they feel has disrespected them, the questions that they raise are valid and beg to be addressed, though one can hardly blame Jobs for doing everything in his power to hold onto to life. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal appears content to run with whatever scraps get thrown to them by Apple flacks, seemingly unwilling to question any of it out of fear of pissing them off, or not really caring one way or the other about the validity of any information they get fed as long as their stories get picked up by other media outlets.

Finally, at the risk of sounding morbid, you know how it's often rumored that rulers of totalitarian states have died, most recently in Cuba and North Korea for example, but that government officials are keeping it a secret from the people they rule, going so far as to splice together old film and audio clips to create updated propaganda and employing lookalikes and body doubles for occasional public appearances? It's not that difficult to imagine Apple doing the same thing when Jobs eventually dies, which is well beyond creepy, but sadly something that doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.

Apple's Management Obsessed With Secrecy [New York Times]
A Transplant That Is Raising Many Questions [New York Times]

If you haven't already read Carr's piece, and we highly suggest that you do, here's the gist of it: One night last week, Carr went out to two parties in the city. One was the New York Observer's farewell to longtime editor Peter Kaplan, the other was an Internet Week-themed event hosted by Guest of a Guest and College Humor. What Carr reported on in his story were basically his thoughts and feelings as he experienced them stepping into these two seemingly diametrically opposed parts of the modern media world on the same night.

The two parties and the people who inhabited them could not have been more different existing within the same ecosystem. The Observer party for Kaplan was held at a swanky Fifth Avenue locale in Midtown, the Century Club, that's long been a favorite haunt of big name New York City writers and journalists. The other party, the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, was held on the rooftop of a chic hotel, the Hotel on Rivington, on the Lower East Side.

At the Observer party, Carr made note of the "aura of elegy" that seemed to be hanging in the room over the course of the night. At the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, Carr noted that there was "no elegy on the roof deck of the hotel, only thumping techno, a hot tub and hordes of young people staring at the lights of Midtown in the distance."

Again, two opposite worlds existing within the same ecosystem feeding off the same food sources, one which appears to be dying slowly with each passing day, the other growing and thriving rather vibrantly.

We highlight David Carr's column today not for any reason other than it struck us as a simple but poignant portrait of the state of media today. We felt sort of moved by it, and we can easily see it being something that will be read in the future as a sort of stick in the historical water showing exactly where the tide of the media world was at this moment in time. It was, we think, an incredibly accurate and somewhat moving snapshot.

With all of that said, we have to add that reading Carr's piece made us feel a bit sad. As we write this, we're surrounded by remnants of the old media world. Strewn all about the floor around us are copies of the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Daily News, not to mention the latest copies of Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker, as well as a couple of recently purchased books. We love all of these things, we love the way they feel to the touch and the way we feel inside when we touch them, and each day we try to wrap our brains around life without them, but we just can't seem to do it. On the flip side, we're completely ingrained into the tapestry of the internet, the very beast most often credited for the ongoing decimation of the old media world, so we obviously have a huge stake in the survival of the new media world as well.

In short, we're torn over all of this. We wish we were smart enough to come up with a solution that would allow both worlds to coexist and thrive, but we just can't seem to do it, nor does anyone else seem to have a viable answer at this point. We also realize that things die and that these things dying is hard to accept and is often the cause of tremendous grief, even though the death of these things usually means that some other things will be granted lives. Regardless of how hard it is to accept the possible outcomes, it will certainly be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the future.

The one thing we are sure of is this—-That David Carr, though we don't always agree with him, is one of the best around at chronicling what is taking place right now within the modern media ecosystem.

In One City, Two Soirees Ages Apart [New York Times]

You'll recall Dana as the report who parted ways with a plum new job at the New York Times in 2007 after joking she was going to "kick [future colleague] Bill Carter's ass." She later did kick Carter's ass, at the Wall Street Journal, except with a scoop about Katie Couric that never came true. Whoops! (In fairness, it could be argued that Couric was going to leave the Evening News after the election, as Dana reported, but was aided by her devastating interviews with VP nominee Sarah Palin, interviews that may have shaped the course of the election.)

Media reporter Dana has perhaps grown more sophisticated with time, at least judging by changes in her facade. Compare the chic woman in the headcut up top to the t-shirted girl in the picture at left, disseminated in 2006 (via). (UPDATE: Dana "hates" the headcut, see bottom of post.)

The new headcut at least represents a clueful bit of marketing for Speakeasy, which the Journal doesn't seem to know what to do with. WSJ.com's managing editor can't even decide whether to call it a "blog," preferring the term "real-time column," terminology as charmingly anachronistic as "horseless carriage," as Steve Yelvington pointed out.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And the blog's — er, column's — content hasn't yet lived up to the breezy, indiscreet tone implied by its logo, which features a Martini olive; or to the mission as it's apparently been described to Journal reporters: they are to pass on tidbits overheard at parties, we hear, a tricky proposition for writers trying to impress sources with their journalistic diligence.

A sizzling headcut, in comparison, provides a less complicated sort of entrée.

UPDATE: Dana, writes, "Aaahhh, I hate it!!!!!!" So it would appear the stipple-portrait paparazzi are out of control. Either that or her editors insisted on the sultry/spy headcut. For the record, here's how Dana actually looked as of last year.

News Corp.'s social network is near the end of an advertising partnership with Google reportedly worth $300 million per year. Any sequel to the arrangement is expected to be worth considerably less.

Speaking at News Corp.'s D tech conference, which runs concurrent with Google's own I/O conference in San Francisco, MySpace executives insist they're not sweating. There's a year and a half left in the existing deal, CEO Owen Van Natta said, and it constitutes less than half MySpace's revenue.

Translation: MySpace has bigger problems to grapple with, like a recent poll showing 6 in 10 users are using the site less than they used to. And besides, there's plenty of time for the young and old generations of media moguls to patch things up with one another.