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Wired

how things work

Wired Shows How Your Magazine-Profile Sausage Gets Made

Assuming that people are actually interested in how a story is formed and goes to press, Wired magazine is continuing how-to series with a blog about how a Wired article gets written. The article in question is about Being John Malkovich/Adaptation screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, so it's "meta." Wondered some editors, "What if we posted the edit—hell, the rough draft. What if we posted the pitch letter? What if we posted the emails about the pitch letter?" Haha, what if you exposed the sad quotidian details of our everyday work lives? More »

memos

Who Do You NOT Want On Wired's Next Cover?

Seriously—they're asking their readers in a survey. "Check any of these names if you definitely would NOT buy the next issue of Wired if they were on the cover. Check as many or as few as you like." More »

fameballs

Be An Extra On Julia Allison's Show!

NonSociety, Julia Allison's new media project of indeterminate meaning, needs your help! The protocelebrity and Wired cover girl is filming a TV pilot show for Bravo with her friends, and she's sent out an invitation seeking “35 fashionable, vivacious people who will agree to go on camera.” It's interesting that while Julia's show has been heavily hyped for some time, she's rather self-deprecating about its prospects. The exclusive affair happens tonight, so the invite is last-minute. While you might expect, say, half of your friends to come to a party you throw, we're conservatively estimating that Julia is counting on around a 5% response rate, meaning she sent this email out to 700 people in search of 35 takers. We could be wrong! After the jump, read the entire invite—then RSVP and help her out. It's the least you can do. Spies, please send us some details. More »

celebrity science

Julia Allison's Weary Morning-After Email To Wired

Julia Allison posted an email conversation with the editor of Wired, the magazine that, in case you missed it, put her on the cover this month and thus made her famous for being famous for nothing. Ever the crafty self-promoter, Allison asked if her cover was as good for Wired as it was for her: "I hope - that as time goes on, you’ll be proud you took the leap," the Time Out New York dating columnist wrote. Remember aspiring fameballs: follow up is key. Wired editor Chris Anderson replied, "I feel great about this one." So sweet. In another moment protocelebrities should study, Allison makes a thinly-veiled pitch for some kind of Wired writing gig by pretending she's tired of all the self-promotion (for real this time!) and wants to get back to her "roots" (what??) as a writer: More »

this thing looks like that thing

The Backhanded Art of the Unflattering Cover

Hey, Julia Allison's on the cover of once-important lifestyle rag Wired! Ms. Allison, who's moved beyond the "dating columnist/celeb talking head" thing to become a noted dater-of-rich-nerds, is the subject of yet another of those interminable stories about becoming Internet Famous in Three Easy Steps. We haven't read the piece, except that we already did in a different magazine like a month ago. More importantly: editors and contributors who perhaps have some doubt as to your value as a cover model may undermine the honor with unflattering photoshop work and coverlines. ("Even if you're nobody," eh?) Just ask right-wing comedienne Ann Coulter. And consider yourself warned.

Exclusive

Wired Ran Rehashed Article In Its Inaugural Issue

Wired magazine is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, with much reflection and self-congratulation. But one strange thing: in its very first issue in 1993, Wired ran an article that had already run under a different byline in a different magazine. A tipster provides evidence that an article in that issue about Japanese computer hackers by Karl Taro Greenfeld ran almost verbatim a year earlier—under a different byline—in Tokyo Journal. Furthermore, Greenfeld ran another article on the same subject in the LA Times Magazine, in which he describes one computer hacker identically to how he had described a different computer hacker in the Wired piece. Something seriously weird is going on here. [UPDATE: We now have a note from Karl Taro Greenfeld, saying that he is the author of all the pieces in question, and explaining the byline discrepancy, which is posted below. An explanation of what happened here—and key portions of all the stories in question—after the jump]. More »

disclosure

Wired Drug Writer Has His Own Drug Expertise

Remember that Wired article about the various pluses and minuses of drug use that got the Times' panties all in a bunch about whether it would actually "promote drugs?" It was a stupid controversy over a relatively innocuous drug story. The Wired piece didn't deserve criticism for its content, but it might have been served by some disclosure; the author of it, Mathew Honan, is a reformed cokehead. That fact didn't appear in Wired, but on Honan's own blog: More »

drugs

Meth Advocacy In Wired Gets The Times All Uptight

Wired ran the meth tutorial above under the headline, "Give Your Intellect A Boost — Just Say Yes To Doing The Right Drugs!" That was, like, a month ago, but the Times is now wondering if the article might, you know, give people the wrong idea about drugs. In addition to some positive words about meth, the article also praised drug Aderall and said it is "often prescribed to A.D.H.D. patients (wink, wink)," implying people should lie to their doctors to get the drug and "enhanc[e] concentration, turning mundane tasks into wondrous ones." This incident bodes well for Wired in two ways: More »

the long tail

Julia Allison Is Chris Anderson's Tail Tonight

Wired editor Chris Anderson tonight came face-to-face with the "Long Tail," his oft-cited metaphor for low-grade internet fame, via an encounter after the National Magazine Awards with fameball Julia Allison. Star Editor-At-Large Allison worked Anderson hard, no doubt as part of her relentless effort to take the "proto" out of her protocelebrity — to be more than tail, basically. She reports on her blog that she chatted Anderson up for 20 minutes and ended up "bopping him enthusiastically." Wait, Julia. Didn't you just tell the Times you were going to stop using your "pink-encased loaded weapon" this way?? Anyway, alternate photo captions for the picture above are totally welcome after the jump. Even if you're drunk. Especially if you're drunk. [Julia Allison: 1, 2, 3, 4]

Wired Hacks CIA.gov A writer at Wired put his story on a CIA.gov address yesterday, taking advantage of a simple coding vulnerability that lets anyone make any page look like it's on the CIA's site. Whip up a fake version of the CIA's real sites, send a few spams, and you've got a neat Internet fraud outfit, convincing people the CIA is demanding their credit card numbers. Gimme 5% for thinking of it, kay?