“I was kind of anxious and nervous to meet important people,” he recalled that night. “At first we just talked about books, mostly stuff that he had published in his division. He gave me a couple books that he had published.” Alec paused after he said this for about 30 seconds to finish typing out a text message. “He also gave me this,” he added, indicating a totebag, “which is really cool. I’ve never really had a totebag before.”


As for the novel, part of which Mr. Callahan had read: “It follows three impressionable, sort of naive, romantic kids who go on this sort of introspective road trip...

“We didn’t discuss it too much. He just told me he liked it but that I needed to tighten it up.”

[Observer] (photo via Facebook via Observer)

The WSJ speaks to Costas about his HBO show today, and the entire first half of the article is Costas' obligatory rehash of Bissinger's tirade. I'm sure he will never tire of discussing it! And he has obviously perfected his equivocation on the issue by now:

"The truth," says Mr. Costas, "is that this issue was a powder keg waiting to explode somewhere, and ours just happened to be the match that set it off. I think Buzz realizes he did a disservice to the journalistic standards he was claiming to uphold by jumping on Will that way. At the same time, it's easy for many of those in the blogosphere to dismiss Buzz's outburst as representative of the objections the mainstream sports media has to the excesses of the Internet.

Interesting. Any further "on the one hand, on the other hand" formulaic statements of diplomacy you'd like to make, Bob?

"Put it this way: Though I would have preferred more light and less heat on the subject, I think we did a service by putting the issue out there to be discussed. And it won't be the last time that we'll be discussing it. Next time we'll be better prepared. For now, I'll leave it at this — though Buzz is a friend, those who suggest that he was expressing my views on sports blogs are wrong." His own feelings about the Internet, say Mr. Costas, echoing Alan Ladd's gunfighter in "Shane" on the subject of his weapon, is that "it's just a tool. No better or worse than the person using it."

Then he describes his next show, which sounds incredibly boring in comparison.

[WSJ]

I am the least literary of all Gawker writers, and therefore the least qualified to comment on the contents of Gessen's book (which I haven't read). So I just complained that he talks about Harvard way too much (which he does). But Gessen responded!

Hamilton: I do say Harvard a lot, don't I? It's impolite, right? You know who doesn't ever mention where they went to school? People whose parents went there before them, or paid for a lot of tutoring. In my book I was writing about a certain subset of guys and I didn't think it served any purpose to be coy about where they went to school. But how's this—if you send me your copy I'll cross out all the references to Harvard and replace them with the college of your choice.

So I did. Sheila donated her copy of his book, and I took it and gave it to him at his party. I considered having him replace all Harvard references with Oral Roberts University, but eventually settled on Florida State University, on the theory that middlebrow is even funnier than lowbrow.

Do you agree? Disagree? Either way, you fall on one side or the other in the culture war!

Gessen lost Sheila's book, but, to his credit, replaced it with a brand new copy, and kept his word by replacing every reference to Harvard, by hand. And there are a lot. In the front of the book, he wrote (as best as I can make out):

At the request of Hamilton Nolan, all references to Harvard in this copy of All the Sad Young Literary Men have been replaced with "Florida State" or "FSU." I've also replaced dorm names and bar names, where necessary.

The "Sam" character still moves to Boston after college—I don't see why he wouldn't be able to do that just as well from FSU. Of course he would find the weather more depressing. Otherwise the tone of the force(sp?) of the book and its complaint(sp?) remain intact.

Keith Gessen
New York
6/30/08

Please: take a moment to reflect on all of the various threads of the literary, social, cultural, urban, educational, academic, media, and Gawkerist zeitgeist that are summed up in this single item. It is truly staggering. Do you want to keep it under glass? Burn it? Either way, it has a power over you that you cannot deny.

We are auctioning off this totemic volume for charity. All proceeds will be donated to the New York Coalition For the Homeless—the organization that will be responsible for sheltering all of us once this writing hustle plays itself out.

The link to the eBay auction is here. We listed the book last night at $10; bidding currently stands at $105. But it should rightly go much higher. It's for a good cause.

What price is too great to pay in order to own this, the new version of the "Morris" character's speech on p. 72?:

"There's this thing about guys from FSU. They think everything's fine, just because they went to FSU. And for them, you know, it is. Even the most mediocre mediocrity can make a nice life for himself in New York if only he went to Florida State fucking University."

[Bid for it here.]

The ranks of Glamour dating bloggers are nothing if not distinguished. There was tardblogger Alyssa Shelasky, whose dim-witted adventures in wannabe social climbing were amply documented here. Then there was dudeblogger Mike Cherico, fired for being a womanizing jerk who sparked an insurrection in the Glamour.com comments. Now there's Erin Meanley, pictured, who just debuted with a post about being 29 and not having a husband, already. Sigh. An even more ominous sign: In an email to friends, reproduced after the jump, Meanley explains that, now that she's a dating blogger, "I need some help with pimpage. Set me up!" Well, at least she's being honest, somewhere, about the transactional aspect of her "dating." We've redacted Meanley's email address, but no doubt she'll be combing the comments here for top-shelf prospective mates, so feel free to make like a pimp there.

(Photo via Mediabistro/Steve Burke.)

Ok, we'll be fair. Karlin does not call himself an alternadad. Though the interviewer suggests it. And Karlin did move to Fort Greene, because it seemed "mellower." Ugh. Anyway, he loves his son very very very much, so good for them.

Also Karlin's working on "a movie about children of divorce" because WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH OF THOSE. We're writing a screenplay about someone who goes back in time to act as a marriage counselor to the parents of Whit Stillman and Noah Baumbach. It's called Journey To The Center of the Universe.

[Big Think]

If you are going to troll the Internet for images of or information about someone’s genitals, you might want to do it from someplace other than the university where you work... especially when the proprietor of the site where you land is a big fan of your colleague’s writing.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been more offended by a Google search.

It's understandable that Newton is, at first blush, upset, but are there really guys (or lesbians) out there who think they can just call up pictures of some woman's cooch on demand? That implies, first, an unusually specific type of physical lust. Not just for a naked body, or chest, or for a backside, but for the vag specifically.

But, fine, whatever, there are people out there with all sorts of kinks. But do any of them really have such a bold faith in the power of the internet — a network that any self-respecting perv knows like the palm of his hand — that they think they can just type in someone's name + "pussy" and actually get a picture of exactly that?

Alternate theory: Maybe the offense-giving prof was simply looking for a memorable post in which the lady writer's name was mentioned, for some reason, along with the word "pussy," which is, as keywords go, reasonably rare and especially memorable. The woman writer might have, for example, used a juicy (sorry) quote involving the term in a high-profile piece of writing.

Or maybe not! Perhaps the search was unambiguously offensive. Only Newton has all the clues, and she's being discreet. But everyone else should be installing Google Analytics on their Tumblrs or whatever, because they'll then probably have fuel for at least one outraged Google-search-terms post by Labor Day.

[Maud Newton]

(Photo via MaudNewton.com)

ABC tried to sneak a waiver into its new contracts saying that news writers "would not be compensated for checking their company-issued BlackBerrys after office hours." The union got upset!

Lowell Peterson, the executive director of the East Coast guild, said the writers are comfortable with the tools of the news trade, but the guild is trying to avoid “the 24/7 workplace.”

“People are entitled to time off the job,” he said. “BlackBerrys can be liberating; they can help people keep tabs without going into the office. But they can also shackle people to their jobs.”

The two sides settled, but this little story was popular with the media because, secretly, all members of the media would love to get paid extra for fiddling with their BlackBerries while waiting in line for the movies. The best solution, of course, is to never check your work email outside of work hours. Then watch the overtime roll in.

[NYT]

Novelist (and dude) Nick Antosca, 25, saw a girl reading a galley of a forthcoming book by Chuck Palahniuk, and "I was like, ‘Oh, shit, I want to get that!’ I wondered whether she was a reviewer or if she worked at the publishing house."

Another man, former literary editor Tom Meaney, claims carrying a galley three months before publication is hotter than "the right jeans or the right purse or whatever... it's just an incredible selective object."

But the women, not so m... oh wait, here's one who is totally into galleys! "Reading galleys on the subway is the closest the publishing industry comes to having a standardized mating call" said Karan Mahajan! Score! But the spelling is a little funny there... Wikipedia... ya, that's actually a guy.

Real women are polite, but unimpressed. Liz Maples, an assistant editor at a Farra, Straus & Giroux imprint, told the Observer she actively hides, on the subway, any reading material that gives away her status as a publishing insider, because she doesn't like being approached by strangers.

And then there's editorial assistant Ali Heifetz, at Norton:

“If and when [I saw] a cute dude reading a galley on the train,” she said, “he would be more attractive to me than same dude not reading a galley.
But less attractive than the same dude carrying a guitar case."

D'oh. But you know what? When the right girl comes along, she'll totally be impressed with your advance gallery. So keep carrying them around, publishing types, and holding them visibly at important mixers, just in case. But also try initiating conversations yourself, on even the barest of pretenses. Like, say, of writing a trend piece on literary hookups!

[Observer]

(Image via Lex in the city on Flickr)

What fame hasn't brought: Hilton dishes that "in 2007, I got laid once. One time. Which, for a gay man, is unheard of. That's like, celibate."

How sad and cringe-inducing. But maybe Perez just got way too picky after his 2006 makeout session with John Mayer. He had at least one really, really desperate groupie sending him a sex tape and everything! Now is no time to start holding yourself to "standards" or whatever, Perez.

[LA Times]

Karlin signed a contract for a book that was going to be tie-in for a new PBS series called "Spain ... on the Road Again," which starred flame-haired fatty celebuchef Batali and blonde actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

But in November 2007, a conflict arose when Mr. Pinsky allowed Mr. Batali to engage designers for the book, including one of Mr. Batali's relatives, instead of leaving the design to Mr. Karlin, as previously agreed, the lawsuit states. Mr. Karlin contends that Mr. Batali also expected him to write the book in its entirety, and refused to contribute recipes, pictures, or other material to the project, claiming to be too busy.

When Mr. Karlin asked to lessen his involvement in the book, the lawsuit states, Mr. Batali asked that the writer be fired from the project. He has not been paid, and is suing for $125,000, including the cost of two trips to Spain, according to the lawsuit.

Well, it sounds like Batali really flaked out here, and Karlin deserves to be paid for his hard work. Unless he's just making it up because he's, you know, a little bit of a dick.

[NYS; pic via NY]

I'm not sure that McClellan knows this (he and I have never met or spoken), but PublicAffairs was at first skeptical when McClellan and his agent made their pitch. Doubtful enough that, says [PublicAffairs editor Lisa] Kaufman, founder/publisher Peter Osnos called around first, asking White House reporters what they thought of McClellan. "They told Peter that Scott was a straight shooter," says Kaufman. "That if he says he's going to tell the truth, he will tell the truth."

Obviously, I can't vouch for McClellan's veracity. I have, however, had a chance to read his book. And having also known and worked with Kaufman for several years, I can say this: "What Happened" was not, as Rove et al. have charged, written by his "New York editor." Stylistically, that is just not her voice on the page.

Of course, McClellan stands to earn some hefty residuals if his book keeps selling well, assuming the credulous former Bush mouthpiece has toughened up enough not to accept any B.S. from his publisher.

[Salon]

It seems Sherman won't get to go to a promised event featuring Sex star Kim Cattrall, a party that would likely have figured prominently in the story she's freelancin for some big Asian magazine.

"It was the after-party that was the big thing for me," she told the Post.

Oh please, Ella. You don't need to go to that. You've clearly soaked up the naive, entitled, psuedo-feminist striving at the heart of Sex And The City better than virtually every person at this little "after-party," assuming it ever existed in the first place.

[Post]

(Photo via Post)

Red Sox ace pitcher Josh Beckett recently turned down Jordan's request for an interview for New York Times Magazine story. But even big stars in the 70s wouldn't dream of such a thing. Here's how he got a story on (now Hall of Famer) Catfish Hunter of the Oakland A's:

I checked into the A's hotel and went right down to the pool. I watched as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Rollie Fingers, and Rick Monday eyeballed the chicks laying by the water. I asked one of the players which one was Catfish Hunter. He pointed to a shy, North Carolina country boy barely into his 20s with a chew of tobacco puffing out his cheek. I introduced myself to Catfish and said, "I'm here to write a story about you for Sports Illustrated." He nodded. I said, "Can I drive you to the park?" He nodded again.

Another current Hall of Fame pitcher, Tom Seaver, wasn't any harder to get:

I called the Mets, told them I was an SI writer, and asked for Seaver's home number. They gave it to me, gratefully. I called Tom, told him what I was doing, and he invited me to his home in Greenwich for lunch. We ate in the afternoon on the porch of Tom's farmhouse. He barbecued a huge T-bone steak, cutting out the filet for me and the sirloin for himself. Then I drove him to Shea Stadium in a rainstorm in my old Corvette with the T-top that leaked. Water dripped on Tom's forehead. He looked up and said, "Why don't you buy a Porsche?" I said, "Because I'm not Tom Seaver." Water dripped on his head. He laughed. "That's a fucking fact."

But today, even jerks like steroid fan Jose Canseco screw with him!:

Jose was, well, Jose, reneging on our arrangement only after I'd flown to L.A. at his request. Why should he have wanted to talk to me? He had by then written his second magnum opus and was scheduled to appear on David Letterman and Howard Stern.

So he wrote a story about what a jerk Canseco was, and Will Leitch ran it on Deadspin. Blogs win!

[Slate]

I had a misconception that being 'on steroids' involved the ingestion or injection of a single substance, but that was quickly dispelled. Many steroids on their own are either singular of purpose or not terribly effective. This is where 'stacking' comes in: you can put on mass (75mg of testosterone), promote muscle hardness (50mg of Winstrol) and keep water retention to a minimum (50mg of Equipoise).

Then, one sleepless night (the steroids also triggered insomnia) my testicles shrunk. Testicular atrophy is the most well-known side-effect of steroid abuse. It's an inherent irony: here you are trying to turn yourself into an über-man while part of the most obvious manifestation of your manhood dwindles before your eyes... Basically, you pump so much testosterone into your system that you rob your gonads of purpose, they lie dormant for the duration of your steroid cycle. And while I knew this would happen, the physical sensation was beyond horrible. I felt this rude clenching inside my scrotum, like a pair of tiny hands had grasped the spermatic cords and tightened into fists. It happened that fast - like a door slammed shut. 'No more testosterone!' my gonads cried. 'Closed for business!' I sat up, gasping, clutching my testicles to make sure they were still there.

The prostate is an organ I associate with old men... Not, in any way, an organ I should be aware of. And yet I was, because the benign little organ had swollen to the point where it felt like a fist-sized balloon pressed against my testicles. This is a fairly common side-effect; some professional bodybuilders get prostatitis to such an extent they require a catheter.

From Mr. Average... to Superman [Guardian]

In the fourth grade, at a public school in Queens, Kopelson's teacher went on strike. He turned in to her replacement as his own report a verbatim transcription of a 20-page encyclopedia entry on explorer Hernando Cortez. He got an "A." "'Nice work!' Mr X commented. But, of course, unless the man was being ironic, he probably hadn’t read it – lazy bastard."

Kopelson also criticizes the instructor he submitted plagiarized work to at Yale. She taught a "contemptible" music class. So instead of doing his own work, Kopelson submitted a paper his brother had written for a graduate school seminar. It was 50 pages long and included citations of work in French, German and Italian. Kopelson was only 18, hardly able to write such a thing. Still, he got an "A."

Kopelson used the same paper from his brother as a writing sample for the GRE graduate school test. He got into the English doctorate programs at Columbia and Brown.

At Brown, Kopelson has a "very old, very flatulent" professor who didn't seem to have revised his lectures in decades. Again, he found this instructor and his class "contemptible." So Kopelson submitted as his own essay an article called The Beast in the Closet. He got an "A."

Later, he sent this article to the woman who wrote it as a sample of his own writing. Somehow, he wasn't caught.

Now, giving lectures in Iowa to students he also has contempt for — they tend to be poor students, since the English department is one of the few without a minimum GPA requirement — Kopelson plagiarizes other authors for his in-class lectures.

Also, if I'm reading his essay correctly, it sounds like Kopelson is also implying that he plagiarized David Sedaris for Kopelson's book about the humor writer.

But, hey, at least we know the odds are pretty good the professor wrote his own confessional. Plagiarism isn't quite so hot yet that anyone else would claim to have done this much fibbing. But once Kopelson gets a big book deal out of his admission (like the Lonely Planet guy!), that's sure to change.

[London Review Of Books]

(Photo via University of Iowa)

A columnist for the Sun, Alicia Colon, said writers who pull no punches in their news pieces might not be able handle the give-and-take of political negotiations and campaigning.

"To be a politician you have to compromise, and I don't think a lot of editors or columnists would be able to do it." Ms. Colon said. "Maybe they have too much integrity.

Way to dig deep to find someone to represent extremism, NY Sun. Extremism of integrity, that is. But is it really too much integrity that stops columnists from taking their rightful place as our leaders—or is it that the masses are simply afraid of their intellectual honesty?

"We have a nasty tendency to see complexities in life, and I suspect your average politician likes to think in more terms of black and white," [NYT columnist Clyde] Haberman said yesterday in an interview. "They don't get bothered too much by all the gray that defines life for most people."

"He said this again?" she said, her voice rising in indignation. "I can’t believe he said that! You’d better check that because it’s simply not true."

When will Nan Talese, and the rest of the publishing industry, find a damn writer they can trust? If not James Frey, then who??

[Observer]

For your benefit, I took all of Doree's hard research and remapped it, including only the attractive writers. The addresses of these writers are estimates, but it so happens that Fort Greene is starting to have the literary cachet of Paris's Left Bank.

"What's it like?" I asked her when I decided to face up and write this essay. "Well," she said as if she had had plenty of time to think about it. "It's a sort of one-man symphony orchestra. It ranges from a whistling bird to the sound of big boulders falling down a ravine. There's a chain saw in there somewhere. And a sniveling child making those noises that children make when they've just stopped crying: a sort of honk. A lot of the time it's in 4/4 or 6/8 regular time, but the worst is when it turns arrhythmic and cacophonous. And then sometimes it's just old-fashioned snoring, like Popeye or Homer Simpson."

Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, formerly Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue.

Their Pitch: A coming of age tale of an aspiring journalist who becomes overwhelmed by the glamorous world of women's magazine only to regain her moral footing.
The Real Pitch: A roman a clef about Weisberger's time at Vogue under Anna Wintour. Turns out Anna's a bit of a bitch.
Critical Take: "This reviewer devoured last year's frothy sensation, The Nanny Diaries, and despite the overwrought hype, this season's The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger is no Nanny Diaries." [USA Today]

4% Famous by Deborah Schoeneman, formerly of New York.

Their Pitch: A young, endearingly awkward woman learns the pitfalls of the New York gossip scene while searching for her place in the city.
The Real Pitch: Four-percent is the magic number for enjoying the perks of fame without losing one's moral bearings.
Critical Take: "Schoeneman's occasional attempts at social critique—for instance, the observation that very thin girls may be on Ritalin—come off more like life-style tips, and the novel's many veiled references to actual people make it read something like an extended blind item." [New Yorker]

Tabloid Love: Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places by Bridget Harrison, formerly of the Post

Their Pitch: British lady-reporter learns that love doesn't come easy in the Big Apple.
The Real Pitch: Bridget Harrison's veiled memoir of her time at the Post. Worth reading for the references to her New York love, Jesse Angelo, now the Post's managing editor.
Critical Take: "Harrison's depictions of her fish-out-of-water hijinks lift this sharp yet tenderhearted memoir above the predictable chick-lit crop." [Elle.com]

Sex and The City, Candace Bushnell, formerly of the New York Observer

Their Pitch: An original book about lives of glamorous and successful single women in New York trying to balance their career and personal lives.
The Real Pitch: This was the original. It has so much to account for.
Critical Take: "In small doses these essays are brain candy that will appeal equally to urban romantics and anti-romantics." [Publisher's Weekly]

Blasberg, who was once implicated in conspiracy theories over who's really pulling New York's socialite strings, has appeared in a couple of pictures palling around with the younger Bush—including one of them sitting next to each other at a New York Rangers game:

So what conclusions can we draw from this weighty evidence?

1. Derek Blasberg likes hockey.
2. Barbara Bush likes hockey, or at least likes attending hockey games in the company of Derek Blasberg.
3. As well as doing some other stuff about town with Derek Blasberg.
4. Hockey may or may not become a standard event for the socialites of New York to attend.
5. Blasberg and Bush have not been photographed together at a Knicks game.
6. The Knicks suck way more than the Rangers.
7. In the words of the intrepid investigative blogger Eric McErlain himself, "Not a whole lot."

[AOL Fanhouse]

JARVIS: It's an economic decision, Howie. You know, it starts with a joke where a priest, a rabbi and critic get on a boat, and one of them has to get off. And that's really what this is about. There is no punch line here. It's that it's about saving the leaking boat of newspapers.

And, you know, criticism has changed necessarily, because it's not inherently local. The opinion about a movie in Cincinnati or Cleveland is not different...


HOWARD KURTZ, Reliable Sources, CNN: Jeff Jarvis, I mean, I certainly agree that if you're really down to a crunch and you've got to lay off the city hall reporter, or the school's reporter, maybe the critic is going to go first. But what about the local flavor of a newspaper? I mean, people arguing about whether Joe Jones panned or praised the new George Clooney flick.

Isn't that — wouldn't that be lost?

JARVIS: I don't really buy that. There is nothing local about it.

You know, when I worked for "The Chicago Tribune," in the same city with my parents, my mother would tell me about stories that she read in the paper. And I'd have to say, "Ma, yes, I know. I wrote it."

My own mother didn't notice my own byline. So I don't think...

KURTZ: Don't bring your family problems into this.

JARVIS: It tells you a lot, I know. But I don't think that that value of the byline is so great.

Transcript: [CNN]

(Photo via Buzzmachine)

"The idea is, 'Let’s take all the things that we think are wrong with this business and try to change them,'" said [Robert S. Miller, the founding publisher of Hyperion], 51. "It really seemed to require a start-up from scratch because it will be very experimental."

This is actually great, because once writers stop getting advances maybe more of them will stop fetishizing words-on-paper-in-a-bookstore and realize there is actually a way to publish your stuff for free to the entire world without giving up most of the revenue. You still need a good editor, but there's no reason he needs to come with a dead-trees publishing company attached.

[Times]

(HarperCollins photo via Times)

Roughly a year ago, Pollack started his "Playground" discussion forum. In the last couple of weeks, Griscom's Babble started a similar forum called "Babble Playground."

"We felt usurped, if not completely ripped of," Pollack wrote. Some of his commenters went and started a thread on the competing discussion forum about how their own Playground was totally better. Mature, right? Griscom deleted the thread, which he called "inaccurate and kinda tacky."

Then Griscom sent an email saying, basically, What, you exist? I'm sorry, I hadn't noticed your little chat board. ("We had no idea that you had social networking functionality on your site... I haven’t been there in some time.")

Then Pollack asked his legal counsel if Griscom could somehow be sued and made to starve in the street for daring to copy his brilliant "Playground" naming scheme, and they said Uh, definitely not.

So Pollack exercised the only attack vector left at his disposal, calling Griscom a yuppie and a square:

Babble is an expensive downtown urban loft rehab, where everything looks pretty, but it all feels so perfect, so smooth, so sterile, so target-marketed, so…fake. Offsprung, on the other hand, is like going over to the house of a good friend, a friend who has three kids and can’t afford to even dream about a nanny. The house is imperfect. It’s loud. There’s a weird yellow stain with hair clumps behind the toilet. But it’s home, and it’s comfortable, and it’s yours.

Then all the hipsters went back to ruining their children and the world forever, The End.

[Offsprung via NYM]

Mr. Taro Greenfeld continued: "As much as I can't stand these parochial notions of journalism school, there is something to be said for, like, reporting. There's something to be said for hanging around with people. ... Editors who are around my age say, 'We're just not finding those up-and-coming 20-something writers.' Those people used to be like a bedrock of magazines! ... Why aren't we better at producing young writers?"

That, of course, from an over-40 editor. The fact is that journalism is not rocket science, no matter what J-school brochures tell you. Most talented young writers, even if they have made their names as bloggers, can easily and quickly make the transition into magazines. Yes, the industry is changing—more slowly than newspapers, but faster than book publishing. Still, a solid gig at a prestigious magazine is the best job that anyone can possibly have in journalism. Yes, the starting pay for entry level positions sucks; Yes, it's a sickeningly connection-driven business that rewards rich kids who can afford to work for low pay. Those are institutional problems.

And yes, freelancing full time is a difficult hustle. But don't cry for those who actually have established freelance connections. The $2/ word rate that Shafrir cites sympathetically as the low end of the major magazine scale can, of course, fall much, much lower once you get out side of well known consumer titles, as most freelancers are forced to do. I started writing for 10 cents per word for an alt-weekly. Once you've reached the $2 a word mark, satisfaction is in order.

The real interesting time will come when magazines aren't like this. When employment is a meritocracy; when online and print writing are seamlessly integrated and equally respected; when young writers aren't arrogant and impatient, and old editors aren't out of touch. But magazine themselves aren't in real danger, as long as we need to read something while we poop.

These are girls that grew up in the John Hughes era, and champion subversively feminist chick-programming like My So-Called Life and Gilmore Girls. Now they're glued to the couch every Monday night to find out if tone-deaf chanteuse Heidi Montag and lunkhead loser Spencer Pratt's on/off relationship is like, um, on, or like, um, off. (Hint: until it's no longer commercially viable, there'll be no resolution).

See, The Hills is a world where The Karate Kid loses. Where Jake Ryan never notices Samantha Baker, and the only thing Seth Rogen hits is his bong.

Wow, that's bleak.

Prediction: Ben Heller will be totally into the Hills in about three weeks. Or, at least, I hope so. His wife works at Us Weekly so it's hard to picture another scenario under which the marriage is saved.

HuffPo: Why The Hills Makes Me Love My Wife a Little Bit Less

David Gates
Newsweek isn't known for its prose, but David Gates's style was the exception. His review of Colson Whitehead's novel Apex Hides the Hurt had intern Alexis at hello. His first novel Jernigan, received a rave from the hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, "The minute he starts talking, Peter Jernigan, the narrator of David Gates's astonishing first novel, grabs you by the lapels and compels you to listen to the sad-funny-tragic story of his life." Newsweek has few other writers with such style, and he will be missed.

David Ansen
Since January 26, 1958, Newsweek film critic David Ansen has been counting every movie he seen. By October 29, 2007, he was up to 7,714, and counting. A member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle, Ansen will have to reach 10,000 on his own.

Cathleen McGuigan
A graduate of Brown and Harvard, Cathleen McGuigan is an adjunct professor at the Columbia Journalism School. Her 1986 description of Soho artist as "America's last pioneers, urban nomads in search of wide open interior spaces" for Newsweek is a Bartleby notable quote.

Harold Shain
Harold Shain was a business man. The former president and chief operating officer of Newsweek in March 1998 left the position to become the chief executive of Newsweek Budget Travel just last October. He couldn't have known then that only a few months later he would be accepting a buyout from the Washington Post company.

Alexis Gelber
Alexis Gelber was literally married to Newsweek. That's an approximation of the headline of her Times wedding announcement to Mark Whitaker: "Alexis Gelber Married To Newsweek Writer. Gelber was also a judge on Barnard's annual writing contest for 11th-grade girls in New York City public high schools in 1999.

Nancy Cooper
Senior editor Nancy Cooper took us into Y2K, editing the Newsweek's news section on 2000 from 1997 until the aughts.

George Hackett
If there's one man who embodied the general interest spirit of Newsweek, it was George Hackett. The senior editor worked in the Science & Technology, oversaw the coverage of the Salt Lake City Games, edited Perspectives and My Turn sections. He also started 1994, he initiated Focus: On Technology, which ironically centered on the rise of the internet, which would be one cause of his buyout.