• Will the shareholder revolt at the Times Co. finally force the Sulzbergers to address their Pinch problem? Could well be, Arianna say. [HuffPost]
• Times site goes down for four hours last night; world survives. [AP via Newsday]
• Times to consolidate its four weekly suburban sections into one. We told you this a week ago. [Newsday]
It's been far too long, but today's Times corrections column delivers:
Just under a week.
In the two short days since he was profiled in the Times' Sunday Real Estate section, 24-year-old furniture scion Loren Kreiss has become an object of fascination around Gawker, for his wealth (he lives in a 1,500-square-foot Chelsea playpen), his living style (lots of fancy doodads and a cleaning lady to keep 'em shiny), and his sexuality (he fucks straight but certainly lives gay). Since we just can't wrap our heads around the boy, we asked Loren to play 10 questions with Gawker. Being an affable young man, he agreed:
In her latest review of the New York Times Book Review, Intern Alexis is faced with the reality that Harvard students were not in tears while reading Madame Bovary. After accepting that crimson can be so cruel, Alexis notices a lot of "nah-nahs" going around amongst reviewers, which is especially painful when coming from a Pulitzer winner. This, plus the inexplicable anger of reviewer William Logan, after the jump.
We haven't had a chance yet to comprehensively check the entire paper, but we're confident we've identified the best quote in today's Times. From the frontpage article on the resurgent popularity of police horses:
• If you do only one productive thing today, you must, MUST go by our brother Defamer and see his footage of Tom Cruise's BlackBerry exchange with Katie Holmes during his Primetime interview. Diane Sawyer told him the camera was off, but whoops — she caught those lovebirds using emoticons! Well done, D, and major props to the cameraman who zoomed in on the 'Berry. [Defamer]
• Andrew Hearst is back to playing with Quark; Uterus Weekly is his latest masterpiece, which counts Jennifer Aniston's empty womb as a cover story. [Panopticist]
• Didn't we already tell you that Ron Burkle was having a party for the Clintons? Yeah, we did, which means you've had plenty of time to save up the grand it costs to get in. [Deadline Hollywood]
• Braden Keil over at the Post reports that Katie Couric is looking to buy in the Hamptons for around $6 or $7 million. A quick search for $6 million gems in East Hampton turns up this unfortunate beast. Perfect, she'll take it. [NYP / Corcoran]
• Is the Times trying to kill feminism with bottles of peroxide and books about binge drinking? [Broadsheet]
• A community stake-out on Shake Shack helps burger lovers time their visits. [ShackWatchers]
• To reiterate: ambisexual magalog Cargo is dead. Your subscription bill, however, lives on. [Big and Sharp]
Your as-it-happens sloppy report: 3 wins for the Times, which is trumped by 4 for the Washington Post. Among the WaPo's chosen ones is resident fashionista Robin Givhan. Did you hear that, Styles? There's hope for you yet. Kind of.
The funny thing about the Pulitzer Prize announcements is that while there's a big deal made about how they're kept secret until the moment they're announced — not via TV or wire but the old-fashioned way, up at Columbia at 3 p.m. — they're usually a pretty poorly kept secret. (This is not terribly surprising: Scores of journalists are involved in the selection process — on individual juries, on the Pulitzer Board — and journalists are the worst leakers of them all.) The rumor we've persistently heard through the afternoon is that the Times will take home a mere three prizes while The Washington Post will be the big winner with four.
On the other hand, as much as we all want to make fun of poor little rich (and allegedly even straight) Chelsea boy Loren Kreiss, it's worth noting that as someone who decorated his own apartment, he shines in comparison to his long-lost twin brother, Jai Rodriguez, best known as the Queer Eye guy with no discernable talent or expertise who shows up at the end with a CD.
Today's the biggest day on newspaperland's calendar. No, not when Johnny Apple submits his novella-length list of itemized deductions to the IRS but rather when Columbia University announces the Pulitzer Prizes, promptly at 3 o'clock this afternoon. To mark the occasion, Editor & Publisher asked a bunch of former prizewinners where they were when they heard the news. Some of our favorite reporters are included in the roundup — Maureen, the News's Bill Sherman, who apparently used to cover boring-but-worthy things like Medicare fraud before becoming the paper's Jared Paul Stern reporter — but, frankly, their stories are all fairly boring. (It's a Tolstoyan thing, we imagine: Happy reporters are all alike; every unhappy reporter is unhappy in his own way.) We were stopped, however, by this intriguing story from top Timesman Bill Keller, who won in 1989 for international reporting:
We've long held a theory that New Yorkers, while superficially gruff, are actually some of the nicest people in the world. (Californians are forever asking how you're doing — no, really, how are you? — without ever actually caring; New Yorkers don't bother with that bullshit but do pay attention to what you say and will, at the drop of a confused look, eagerly give you directions anywhere.) So we were actually somewhat pleased to see a story on the frontpage of yesterday's Times with the hed, "New York Leads Politeness Trend? Get Outta Here!" We thought it was going to provide empirical proof of our we're-actually-nice theory, but it turned out we were mistaken. The point of the article wasn't so much that New Yorkers actually are nice; the point is that the city is attempting to regulate New Yorkers into niceness, with everything from a ban at spitter on ballplayers (why bother going out to the stadium, then?) to a $50 fine for putting your feet on a subway seat. And to these measures we can only say: Fuck that shit, you fucking assholes.
This weekend's Times tries extra-specially hard to tease your suicidal tendencies with a Real Estate article on 24-year-old Kreiss furniture scion Loren Kreiss. Kreiss enjoys a 1,500-square-foot loft in Chelsea's Mercantile Building (estimated to go for about $6k per month), which he's furnished with his family's furniture, an antique Coke machine, a custom-made Taylor guitar, and several clocks that he purposely sets to the wrong time so he can be appropriately "quirky." His walls are decorated with art from his unpublished graphic novel — future novels are written on his Blackberry while he's getting his cardio fix at the gym.
To commemorate the passing of the Times's sorta-gossip column, Boldface, we asked HuffPoster Rachel Sklar — the Fishbowl vet who is both perhaps the column's biggest fan and also the president of the Lower East Side branch of the Campbell Robertson fan club — to reflect on the greatest Boldface moments of yore. Cue The Way We Were, and then take it away, Rachel:
• Hachette looks to trim payroll costs (huh, feel like we've heard that before someplace); and Time's Jim Kelly throws a party for Joe Klein. [NYP]
• Feeling you haven't been reading enough memoirs lately? (And, really, don't we all feel like that?) Not to worry: There'll be twice as many next year. [WSJ]
• And the newspaper business continues to slowly die. [NYT]
• In new Howell Raines memoir, only two chapters of 43 are about the Jayson Blair saga. [E&P]
• Jann Wenner's longtime assistant is set to leave the company, and, remarkably for that shop, everyone likes her. [WWD]
Today, as promised, is the final installment of the Times' Boldface column. Some say it's dying because the Metro editors were tired of it; some say it's dying because Mrs. Keller, the gin heiress, doesn't like it; some say it's dying because Campbell Robertson, the column's author, has starry-eyed dreams of the Great White Way. (He'll go out there a youngster, but we have no doubt he'll come back a star.) In his farewell column, however, young Campbell provides his own explanation:
If you're not from the suburbs — and, come on, deep down, though you may not admit it, aren't we all at some level — you may not be familiar with the weekly regional sections of the Times. They're the suburban equivalents of the City section, part of the metropolitan edition of the Sunday paper — as distinct from the national edition — in New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and Westchester. (Factoid: In Rockland County, a suburban county in New York State but west of the Hudson, you get the New Jersey section.) They're actually pretty interesting, with a nice mix of news and features tailored to each of these major suburban areas. Or, at least, that's what they were. And freelancer for the Long Island section forwards along this news:
• As expected, the Times dumps its unwatched Discovery Times channel. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Did Bill Keller's gin-heiress wife kill Boldace? Probably not, but she sure didn't help. [WWD (second item)]
• We love conflicts of interest; the Pulitzers board, not so much. [E&P]
• Forbes media kibitzer James Brady wonders, "Is Cosmo editor Kate White the smartest dame in the business?" Of course she is, Jim. Until you find someone else to slobber over next week. [Forbes]
• New Yorker fashion director Michael Roberts moves to Vanity Fair, presumably preferring a publication that does little things like fashion spreads. [Media Mob/NYO]
