• Katie Couric to narrate PBS docu on Walter Cronkite. No one ever said she's not clever. [B&C]
• Why does Bush likes to pick on the Times? Because of the Jews, of course. [SFChron]
• The New Yorker rock critic Sasha Frere-Jones wants to be a rocker, too. [LAWeekly]
• September VF will focus on fashion, be as fat as Vogue. [WWD]
A letter of complaint sent today to NYTimes.com and copied to us:
From floods to printing and emailing, is there anything water can't do?
Kudos to the usually loquacious Maer Roshan, who in this latest Radar go-round has successfully restrained himself from any pronouncements about its rebirth. Until today, that is, which goes down as the first time Roshan has publicly discussed his magazine's resurrection since his future employee Jeff Bercovici reported that possibility in WWD and Maer denied it. Buried on the bottom of C6, near the back of the business section, today's Times announces that Radar plans to have its website up and running by mid-August and will begin to deliver print issues — six to eight annually — in 2007. Yusef Jackson's — the Rev. Jesse's son — is the lead investor, and no one says how much he's investing, who else is investing, how much the total investment is, or whether Ron Burkle is part of it. But the Times says Jackson has raised enough money to "keep the magazine solvent for five years," and it also answers perhaps the largest question about this rerelaunch. "I'm not insane," Roshan tells the paper. Uh-huh.
So did you read Maureen Dowd today? While her beloved Washington, D.C., is submerged underwater, while a study published in her newspaper yesterday revealed unprecedented and mind-boggling waste and corruption with Katrina-relief funds, while the White House is deflecting attention from its disastrous execution of the war on terror by instead rattling its sabers at her employer, and while it suddenly seems the whole Israel/Palestinian thing will finally, irrevocably spiral out of control, what does one of the country's most influential newspaper columnists write about? Duh. Whether Miranda Priestly, the fictional Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada, was really too hard on her assistant. Even more surprising: Her verdict.
• Ron Burkle wants to buy the L.A. Times, and the Chandlers are finally willing to talk to him. And we're sure he'll continue to care deeply about Radar if he buys a real — well, real enough — media outlet. [WSJ]
• Bushies hate the Times even more than usual these days. [WP]
• AMI might be holding on to Bonnie, but a different bigwig will hit the road at week's end. [Ad Age]
• New editor Steve Garbarino to add an advice column to BlackBook by Siberia owner Tracy Westmoreland? [NYO]
Oh, you think your life is tough? Maybe it is. But it's nothing compared with the challenges faced by Times Feed Me columnist Alex Witchel, also known as Mrs. Frank Rich. Today she reveals the exquisite misery of attending a charity dinner with mediocre food, being seated next to an unnamed Hollywood Big School, and, when the entrees arrived — apparently "the accepted moment to switch conversational partners, no matter how much fun you're having" — turning to start her convo with the big shot and discovering that he was instead focused on his BlackBerry. The horror! (After the "accepted moment," it seems, it is unacceptable to turn back to the previous, more interesting, conversational partner.) After 750 words on Witchel's horrible terrible no-good very bad travesty of an evening, we're amazed she's able to get out of bed in the morning.
• The GOP apologists at National Review want the White House to revoke the Times's press credentials. [NR]
• The White House, thankfully, doesn't think so highly of the idea. [E&P]
• Knight Ridder is officially no more. [SJMN]
• Dan Rather had to die so that CBS News could live. [NYSun]
• People style spinoff TK? Perhaps. [WWD]
• There are no mags for teenage boys, and, for some reason, the Eat the Pressers are upset about this. [HuffPost]
• The news is still big; it's the newspapers that got small. [Slate]
• David Carr asks: Is CNN news or entertainment? What, it can't be both? [NYT]
• Pissing off Dick Cheney was not, in fact, the Times' reason for running its financial-records-spying story, says Bill Keller. [NYT]
• As we already told you, WWD media man Jeff Bercovici is going to Radar. WWD media woman Sara James, however, is not. She's leaving Women's Wear — we're sure of that — but it's just unclear where she's going. [Jossip]
• Roger Ailes thinks with Fox Newsies aren't working hard enough. [B&C]
• Wednesday will be Charlie Gibson's last day at GMA, and his feeling will be hurt if he doesn't get as many video tributes as Katie did. [USAT]
• Spiers steals David Lat from slutty sister Wonkette for her nascent juggernaut. Next time, she'll just twist Denton's nipple directly, without the intermediary. [WWD (second item)]
• Bigshot VCs give people like Rafat Ali — proprietor of the distressingly capitalized paidContent.org and, years ago, an intern where we used to work — money. [WSJ]
Well. We thought we had it on good authority that new MSNBC chief Dan Abrams was not, in fact, a virgin. But then, we also thought he was younger than 40.
You know, as opposed to the usual calm, relaxed state of things there.
Ah, yes. It was that mystical, halcyon time that archeologists call The Pre-Thursday Styles Era.
But isn't the bigger problem that the city's middle class was already so small one guy's dismissal makes a difference? (And since when an eight-figure NBA coach considered middle class, anyway?)
Er, BREAKING: After 10 years of mutual love and support, Diddy and PR man Dan Klores are getting divorced. Word is that Puff left DK for another woman — Jill Fritzo at PMK. But just in case Diddy gets involved in another shooting, Klores is staying on a $1K/month retainer. Gotta keep the bases covered.
• Times to sell ads on front business page. Coming next: white after Labor Day. [NYT]
• VF to boost biz coverage; AMI to miss accounting deadlines. [NYP]
• Us Weekly has its best-selling issue ever, and Janice Min had nothing to do with it. [Jossip]
• New Times Building turning out to be a good investment. Huh. So it turns out Pinch knows how to make those, every now and then. [NYP]
• The Committee to Protect Journalists picks a new executive director, and it turns out he's one of our machetunim, sort of. (I.e., new CPJer is real-life bro-in-law of our glittery little brother, Defamer.) [CPJ]
Today's Observer calls attention to Times metro reporter Sewell Chan's signal accomplishment of the last year: 422 bylines, nearly 100 more than his closest competitor and more than twice the total for most other reporters. What we can't quite decide is whether Gabe Sherman's piece is designed to celebrate Chan's accomplishment or to demonstrate his insufferability. We suspect the goal was the former, but we're pretty hung up on the latter. To wit:
What he couldn't figure out, however, was how anyone ever — sniff, sniiff — caught on to him.
The Times' retail reporter, the petite and Jewish Michael Barbaro, who yesterday wrote about the availability of petite-size clothing at Saks, informs us on today's frontpage that jobs at Walmart's HQ are apparently having the surprising effect of bringing Jews to Bentonville, Arkansas. (We, as Jews, find this situation just as troubling as we imagine the Bentonvillians do.) How many Jews have shown up in Bentonville? Enough for them to open their own synagogue — which recently celebrated its first bar mitzvah. And how did Bentonville mark the occasion? With two local DJs, who broadcast "Another Tim and Jeff Travelogue on Power 105.7!" to teach their listeners about this mysterious ritual. Barbaro quotes from the beginning of the segment:
