Forgive us for noticing something like this, but we like to stare at shoes (not in a fetishy way, we swear). So we were studying the images of life-threatening platform-stiletto heels featured in today's Times article — and then we realized that one of shoes featured, the Azzedine Ala a Geppetto, is also gracing Jessica Simpson's skanky feet on the cover of today's Post.
• Problem-ridden ABC News hunts for GMA email leaker. This much we know: It wasn't Krucoff. [NYO]
• Howell Raines' new memoir is good. [WP]
• Is Conde considering moving publishers around? Perhaps. [WWD]
• "The Feds yesterday arrested two young Wall Streeters and a mole at a Business Week print shop for running a trans-Atlantic insider trading scam that enlisted investment bank colleagues and a stripper to rack up $6.7 million in ill-gotten gains." It's ledes like this that make it impossible to stay mad at the Post. [NYP]
• NYT names a new real-estate editor; Joyce Cohen has fun with capital letters. [HuntGrunt]
• 'Times' gets new ThuStyles deputy editor; remarkably it's not a gay man. She is, however, a former Observer m.e., which the Observer doesn't mention. [Media Mob/NYO]
Bill Keller makes it official this morning: Boldface, the Times kinda-sorta gossip column, will end its amusing and sometimes awkward run Friday. (Related question: What is this damned column actually called? In the current design of the Metro section, it's clearly slugged as merely "Boldface." People refer to it as "Boldface Names," which we assumed that was a mere vestigial holdover from previous layouts, when the column actually bore that title. But now Keller is calling it "Boldface Names" as well, and one would assume he knows. So maybe B2 simply gets the name wrong, and we're wrong to follow B2's lead? We have no idea.) Keller also confirms that bearded Boldfacer Campbell Robertson is having "a romance with the Culture Department," which we're taking to mean his rumored move to the Broadway-reporting beat is in fact in the offing. We've asked Campbell for comment; we hope to have something appropriately witty and narrative — perhaps with a showtunes reference! — shortly.
Well, hey, with those 10 articles by 13 reporters totaling 10,000 words — plus two more pieces today — the Times has sort of made this thing its own, right?
Not quite enough news about gossip for you these days? Then throw this into the mix: Gawker has learned Variety will report in tomorrow's newspaper that the Times is set to shutter its quasi-gossip column, Boldface. Even better, we understand the report is accurate. No word yet on when the column will see its last day, nor on what will become of Wilmer Valderrama-fancying Boldfacer Campbell Robertson, who last we heard — months ago — was slated to become a regional education reporter for the paper. (It has yet to happen, and most recently we were hearing rumors that he'd be moving from the Metro desk to Culture, where he'd take over Jesse McKinley's theater-reporting beat.) For now, at least, Robertson seems to be assigned exclusively to Page Six coverage — today's Boldface carried a different byline — and so we imagine he'll be busy there for some time. Auntie Joyce Wadler's Columbia J-School Young'un, on the other hand, it seems will not be so fortunate. Which, come to think of it, sounds just about right for a j-school young'un.
The week, Times editor Bill Keller is answering questions from readers. We're finding the Times readers' questions boring ("Why are there corrections?" "Why do you allow anonymous sources?"), and we knew Gawker readers would have far more interesting things to ask. You've submitted questions over the last two days; here are our top-five reader submitted questions. We'll submit them to Keller tonight, and we'll even put one of those red exclamation points next to it in Outlook. That'll definitely get him to read them!
We're actually a little impressed. Though they didn't explain it when they started the thing, it seems Times editor Bill Keller will be answering emailed questions on an ongoing basis throughout the week, and it seems — even more notably — that he's going to spend some real time writing substantive and substantial responses.
An editorial in today's Sun points out, quite fairly, that through yesterday the Times had run some 10,000 words on the Page Six scandal, with at least 13 different reporters credited, as compared to only 4,000 for the recent Israeli election and the same amount for the fall's German election. Why is the Gray Lady so obsessed with this scandal? Perhaps because it's a fun, juicy story? Perhaps because it's fundamentally shaking one of New York's prominent institutions? Perhaps because it's a gripping media-ethics morality tale — and, over the last three years, the Times has become obsessed with media ethics? Well, maybe, grants the Sun. But, argues the little broadsheet that sometimes could, there's also this:
In this week's installment of the Times Book Review, hell hath frozen over and left us with Alexandra Jacobs, who doesn't hate on Bonnie Fuller with the sass and ire we were kind of expecting. This left Intern Alexis in an extended state of emotional confusion, her copy of the review stained with tears. But redemption awaits in nasty reviews by Greil Marcus, Ken Kalfus, and Guy Martin — three men who takes the concept of "catty bitch" to admirable new levels. After the jump, Alexis gives you the weekly rundown of intellectual book-burning.
• Will Katie Couric make the evening news relevant again? Color us skeptical. [NYT]
• This week's new New Republic — now less wonky! — spends its cover and nearly 4,000 words analyzing Thursday Styles and its star columnist, Alex Kuczynski. (Turns out, the section and her column are both morally indefensible. Who knew?) The big question, however, is left unanswered: What does it mean for Israel? [TNR]
• Steve Dunleavy is taking all the Page Six stuff hard. "I bleed for the paper, I really do." Poor Steve. [NYer]
• And, shockingly, the News is reveling in the Post's misfortune. [NYT]
We know it's been bugging you. Why can't the Times have freelancers and stringers who are as ethical as its staff reporters? (Because Times staffers are always paragons of ethics, right, David Pogue?) But now there's no more need to worry, kids. A mere three years after the Jayson Blair scandal broke, and a lickety-split year after the Siegal Committee delivered its report, the paper is pleased to announce its finally figured out how to ensure freelancers' integrity. Effective today, all Times freelancers and stringers won't be allowed to work for that paper until they have — of all onerous burdens — completed a questionnaire.
The Times instituted a new tic last spring, explaining each time the paper granted a source anonymity why it had done so. Over the weekend, the investigative blog Muckraked looked back at the first three months of 2006 and tallied up the different reasons given for anonymity. (Caroline Miller got there first, undertaking a smiliar effort in the Observer last August, and we'd link to it if it were possible to be linked to.) Now, in theory, reporters should grant anonymity as a last resort, only when the information is otherwise unobtainable. That, in turn, means that they should pressure sources as much as possible to speak on the record; the only times it'd be reasonable to allow anonymity, under that theory, is when something real and serious — a job, one's wellbeing — is at stake.
It is, we suppose, admirable and duly transparent and webby and so forth that Times editor Bill Keller will deign to answer questions from readers this week. We noticed the announcement linked from the paper's homepage this weekend:
• Joyce Purnick, the longtime Metro Matters columnist for the Times and the wife of former executive editor Max Frankel, will publish her last column Monday. No word on what comes next.
• Bonnie's rich AMI contract is up at the end of June, and — as one of her mags gets shut down and another's redesign is more or less undone — negotiations are underway. Great timing, eh? [NYP (second item)]
• Newspapers execs met in Chicago, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons. Sexy Jon Fine enjoys that metaphor, as he should. [BizWeek]
• Who does Spin hire to replenish its now-virtually-empty staff ranks? An alt-porn auteur and star, naturally. [FBNY]
• Injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff sends note to colleagues, releases photo. We're very pleasantly surprised to see that he does, in fact, still look like an anchorman. [AP/USAT]
• Forward politics writer E.J. Kessler to move to New York Post op-ed gig. Because people jump from socialist to conservative papers all the time. [Forward]
• All the standard kvetches about media? Wrong, wrong, and wrong, says Bill Powers. [NJ]
• Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the son of Pinch who we've attempted to saddle with the nickname Prince, to leave the Providence Journal for The Oregonian in Portland. Wonder where he'll end up? [Providence Phoenix]
• NYT Congress reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg to become paper's White House reporter. [Media Mob/NYO]
• The Voice loses another, this time investigative reporter Jennifer Gonnerman. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Are Conde Nast editors being shut out of Devil Wears Prada screenings? Um, no. [WWD]
• Celebrity Living notwithstanding, of course. [WWD]
• Times crossword calls a scoundrel a "scumbag," and readers are incensed. Naturally. [Slate]
• Katie decided to move to CBS because her daughters said she should. [NYT]
• But the Couric girls' advice causes biz challenges for both nets. [WSJ]
• Which is just as well for Jim Romenesko, who's sort of obsessed with her. [Media Mob/NYO]
Today in Holy Shit: The New York Sun reports that Vice-President Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, told a grand jury that an Iraq intelligence leak to the Times was authorized by none other than President Bush himself. Not that this surpises us — someone's got to get the press behind this war, and nothing melts Judith Miller like Bush's big, blue eyes. But what's particularly horrifying is that this not-really-illegal intelligence leak, supposedly OK'd by the big guy, lead to the eventual disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
A fluffy goldmine of well-bred living in today's Times:
• The Today Show may be losing Katie Couric's legs, but there's still hope if Meredith Vieira takes her place: Vieira eschews underwear in favor of nature's breeze. [TMZ]
• A moment of sincerity: Jane Pratt and Gwen Stefani working together on a magazine? Holy fucking awesome. We'll spend tonight sleeping on a pile of Sassys, praying for a miracle. [Suicide Girls]
• Because nothing is sacred, bid adieu to the $5 burgers and endless beers at Columbia's legendary West End — it's time for the Cuban invasion. [NY Sun]
• Is Gloria Steinem a Diva Who Dines? [DWD (scroll down)]
• Behold the commuting majesty of the SeaStreak, the preferred boat of New Jersey traders and those nostalgic for a booze cruise. [Dealbreaker]
• In a similarly depressing, finance-oriented vein, we present you with Hedgestock. Oh yes, hell is very, very real. [Dealbook]
• How the Times artfully dodges the Corrections bullet. [Tabloid Baby]
• Yesterday's American Media bloodletting will cut the mag publisher's workforce by 9 percent. [WWD]
• And will save the company about $10 million. [NYP]
• With Katie Couric heading to CBS, NBC is days away from a deal to bring Meredith Vieira to fill her clickety stiletto heels. [NYT]
• Gabe Sherman agrees: Times Discovery Channel might be on its way out. Plus Hearst in the new tower, Lapham at Michael's, and Raines at Harvard. [NYO]
• The New York Times has finally done something to make Jack Shafer happy. So now he'll cancel his subscription. [Slate]
• The Week names Nick Kristof Columnist of the Year. We imagine Andrea Peyser is devastated. [E&P]
