May 2009
34 posts
Why Newspapers Are Dying
“When potentials [sic] clients would call the number listed, bookers at the Ozone Park office would answer the numerous phone lines and ask callers his location and what he was looking for, before setting up appointments with various prostitutes. According to Cuomo, “the bookers were instructed not to explicitly discuss sex during the telephone conversations with the Johns and instead...
“After the three little ones—Shrimpscampi, Beretta, and 8 1/2, screamed and...”
– Richard’s recap of RHONJ is a thing of brilliance.
[Gawker]
People often ask me what my mom thinks of Postcards From Yo Momma, and I usually respond that she thinks it’s hilarious, but that it also gives her no small sense of comfort to know that she’s not the craziest mom out there. In fact, I would argue, on the PFYM craziness scale (1=totally, completely normal; never gives guilt trips; totally not passive-aggressive; etc. to 10=Big...
“Unfortunately the kid from West Catfish Hump didn’t have a theory of weekly...”
– The Shadow Editors: Some Day The Op-Ed Page Will Be Edited | The Awl
Tom Scocca on what went wrong with the alt-weeklies.
The problem with Facebook
leoncrawl:
…the reason old people like it more than young people is that, the young people got accounts way earlier, before adding random people you had met once actually made your Facebook experience less fun.
I guess there are probably numbers to prove I’m wrong, but I bet people who joined later— specifically, people who joined after newsfeed became the main thing— have fewer friends and...
Dubai Is Sorry to See You Go →
paulbrady:
I thought Mohney did an excellent job of 1) saying up front that he was on a press trip and 2) doing his best to make the junket report interesting reading—which it was!
Well, sure! But it’s sort of in the category of people putting in “full disclosures” in their stories that they used to be roommates with or dated the cousin of or once borrowed $5 from a source....
Does Anyone Have Advice About Putting Together a...
I’m considering putting a fundraiser together for a friend facing major medical bills after a bike accident—she works for a (big, national) magazine as a full-time freelancer and doesn’t get health insurance. She was in the process of applying for health insurance through the Freelancers’ Union when she got in the accident. She will probably end up owing around $30,000.
...
Dubai Is Sorry to See You Go →
chrismohney:
Press trips are indeed icky no matter how you slice it. Unfortunately they’re pretty much critical to travel writing, since no one but the NYT, Time Inc., Conde Nast etc could actually afford firsthand reporting (or “reporting”) otherwise. Probably the worst ROI of any genre of journalism if individuals had to pay for everything they experienced on assignment. No coincidence that...
urg:
doree:
Help! I want to use the question function for the first time, and now it’s not showing up for me…
Make sure you have a question mark someplace in the post. Preferably in the title or the last part of the content.
AWESOME, thank you!
Help! I want to use the question function for the first time, and now it’s not showing up for me…
Dubai Is Sorry to See You Go →
fek:
The main inescapable problem of a press tour is that a press tour is inescapable. No matter your feelings on quid pro quo journalism – even if you declare outright that you will not cover activity X, still you may well be materially expected to participate in activity X to satisfy the entirely illusory expectations of the publicity client. Such is the case with my press tour in Dubai,...
rachellehruska:
It’s because the girls there (like Melissa) do the parties with tequila present!
Aaahhh, I just saw that Melissa did this party roundup. Okay! It’s a start!
Something that makes me sad: the all-maleness of Gawker. I love (most of) the people who write there now, but the lack of ladies has really become glaring, especially since the people who write over there occasionally (T.A.N., Cajun Boy, Josh Stein, Foster) are also dudes. I’m not debating the merits of any of the individual writers or the merits of ladywriting vs. dudewriting, just saying...
Riding a Bike Makes You Smarter →
gillianmae:
(duh)
It’s perfect bike riding weather all week. (Gillian probably doesn’t like when I say that though because she is hard core and rides all winter. I, on the other hand, am one of those annoying cyclist types who drags the bike out of hibernation at the first sign of spring and then clogs up the road.)
I’m having a hard time feeling too much sympathy for all these banks that are faced with huge losses from bad credit card debt. Where do they think their customers got their wildly inflated credit limits from? They were the ones sending everyone solicitations every single day to borrow more, more, more. I realize that in the end, we’ll all pay if they’re left holding the bag. But...
Clarification: my teacher was the one who couldn’t do math. She didn’t make me write essays about how I couldn’t do math.
As you were!
As I was reading the entire Internet today, I came across the website for my elementary school, where I discovered that my least favorite teacher of all time, who used to make me stay in from recess and write essays about how I was “bad,” and also couldn’t do math (Me: “I don’t understand why when you multiply two decimals together you get a smaller number.”...
The Daily News has a story today about a high school in Queens that’s starting its own restaurant, to be staffed by students, where students and faculty can eat. The paper says the restaurant is the first of its kind in the city.
But definitely not in the country! Brookline High had its own restaurant when I was there. I seem to remember French fries being a popular menu item. Somehow they...
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Get Excited!
I have seen the first episode and… well, just set your DVRs, okay?:
The opening credits evoke The Sopranos, with shots of highway signs and a final, ominous shot of a “Welcome to New Jersey” sign glowing in the darkness. The matriarch of the show, Caroline, is a no-nonsense 50-something redhead given to pronouncements like “Before I like you, I don’t like you” and “My family is thick as...
Germany Bans Very Long Names:
Germany takes a highly regimented approach to naming. Children’s names must be approved by local authorities, and there is a reference work, the International Handbook of Forenames, to guide them. Jürgen Udolph, a University of Leipzig professor and head of the information center there that provides certificates of approval for names that have not yet made the...
youngmanhattanite:
The show with David Wain, Paul Rudd, etc (Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black were just added) on Thursday is now sold out but you can still get tix to Doree’s Postcards from Yo Momma talk that happens right before it. Our advice: hit that and then sneak into the main stage area as the talk is winding down.
Heh. I’ll totally ride some Rudd/Showalter coattails…
The long, strange saga of the hipster grifter, aka Kari Ferrell, appears to be coming to a close—or at least a game-changing pause. We admit that the notion of Ms. Ferrell eluding capture for months, even years, befriending twentysomethings in tattooed enclaves across the country while she insisted that she had been framed (or at least, was sorry) was alluring.
Confirmed: Grifter in Slammer | The...
I wonder what they’ll post when their newspapers go out of business.
