You never think of CJR Daily as being a hotbed of drama and strife, but in a shocking out-of-the-blue move managing editor Steve Lovelady and deputy editor Bryan Keefer quit today in protest after after Columbia J-school dean Nicholas Lemann informed them of his decision to slash the online budget almost in half. Lovelady accused Lemann of being "out of the 19th century" in his decision to re-allocate the money on a direct-mail campaign to raise subscription cash for the Columbia Journalism Review magazine. "He's taking the one, fresh, smart thing he has and gutting it," said Lovelady. Said Lemann: "I have the same issue that everyone else in journalism has, and this is our best lunge toward a solution."
CJR Daily generates all original content and receives almost 500,000 monthly page views, up 30% from the beginning of 2006 according to Lovelady. Impressive numbers and growing — if you're into that sort of thing. As it happens, Lemann revealed recently that he is not in a piece for the New Yorker entitled "Amateur Hour" wherein he wrote "To live up to its billing, Internet journalism has to meet high standards both conceptually and practically: the medium has to be revolutionary, and the journalism has to be good." It's clear from the article — and from this decision — that he doesn't think the medium lives up to its billing.
Minor niggling point: Strangely, Seelye waits until halfway down the article to name the editors.
On August 1st, "This Is Not Chick Lit" proudly and defiantly hit bookstores, and on September 1st, "This Is Chick Lit" will proudly and defiantly follow. Today on HuffPo we've got a face-off of sorts between the two, as "This Is Not Chick Lit" editor Elizabeth Merrick and "This Is Chick Lit" contributor Rachel Pine each write about their reasons for participating in their respective anthologies and their decision to reject/stand behind the categorization of "Chick Lit."
Here's the good news: We've got two amazing anthologies featuring the work of some truly terrific women writers on both sides of the "divide." I put that word in quotes because I've never felt particularly strongly about whether or not something was "chick lit" per se as long as it cracked me up and engaged me. That's the litmus test of me and really any reader, no matter what the packaging or how pink its cover. What bothered me most about chick lit, frankly, was how the term was used to dismiss a huge chunk of the bookstore as silly, girlish prattle. I wrote of this last fall in response to an excellent and thoughtful piece on the subject by Salon's Rebecca Traister, which cited Canadian literary lioness Margaret Atwood saying "There's good, bad and mediocre in everything ... So...if it's about young women we're not supposed to take it seriously?" Said Traister:
It is the fear of not being taken seriously that surely undergirds the urge to blast chick lit. Female critics -- the genre's most frequent, and thus its loudest -- are understandably afraid of having their entire sex tarred with the same "frothy" brush as their chick-lit writing counterparts. When Curtis Sittenfeld wrote this year that calling a book chick lit is akin to calling a woman a slut, she also asked, "Doesn't the term basically bring us all down?"...This fear is valid, especially in a cultural atmosphere in which "women's magazine" is a derogatory term but Esquire routinely wins National Magazine Awards, in which Weisberger and Bushnell merit a combined review but a first novel by a man about a single guy in his 20s looking for love and professional fulfillment gets lauded in a full-cover review on the front of the New York Times Book Review.
So where are we almost a year later, now that Sittenfeld's second novel is out, called of all things "The Man Of My Dreams" and featuring a cartoonish frog on the cover with a crown on its head, ready to be kissed into Prince Charming? That's about as chick-litty as a cover can get (barring Manolos and martinis) and yet Sittenfeld has positioned herself firmly as far less "chick" than "lit." I'd say that's a plus, and I'd cheer Sittenfeld for pushing the envelope on the assumptions if the pushing was less at her fellow women writers and more at the easy and dismissive labels that pigeonhole them. That is, fortunately, beside the point, because a year later we're in a place where "This Is Chick Lit" and "This Is Not Chick Lit" can coexist side by side, each making their own arguments for why women writers can be funny, serious, smart, goofy, sexy, literary, poetic, or alternatively a guilty or not-so-guilty pleasure. This, as it turns out, is discourse — and as long as it's showcasing some good, smart, accomplished women writers, then I think it takes us that much closer to turning the chick lit frog into a prince.
from gawker.com
As Gawker 'dreamed,' and as everyone was just sort of waiting for, Page Six-er Chris Wilson is leaving his post at the gossip column. The Daily News reports that, after some time off, Wilson will be leaving the New York Post for a higher-paying position at Maxim (color commentary on that from Gawker and Jossip). Page Six has been making as much news as it breaks lately, with editor Richard Johnson's recent DUI incident and former contributor Jared Paul Stern's alleged shakedown of billionaire (and reputed lover of lissome young ladies) Ron Burkle. Page Six recently hired Bill Hoffman and Sarah Polonsky to join the remaining Johnson and Paula Froelich on the masthead; we'll be keeping an eye out for Wilson's replacement, as we are wont to do.
Harry Shearer
EDINBURGH--In the wake of today's news about the new airliner plot foiled (am I glad I'm not at Heathrow today!), and of the reactions to Joe Lieberman's defeat on Tuesday, a couple of thoughts from this corner.
On terrorism itself: every time the Bush administration has patted itself on the back about how splendidly our Iraqi adventure was succeeding in preventing more terrorism on our shores, all I could think of was the length of...
from usmagazine.com
Oh no you don't, Stephen Huvane! Janice Min and her $600- million Us Weekly aren't going to let you diss their reporting, journalistic integrity, and "Today Show" cred. Yesterday Huvane, who is Jennifer Aniston's publicist, flatly denied Us Weekly's crowing report that Vince Vaughn had proposed and "Jen Says Yes!" Oh reaaaaaaallly, said Us Weekly tartly, and responded by noting that Huvane's pants were on fire and proceeding to reel off a list of other "Famous Denials By Jen Aniston's Publicist" that just so happened to be 100% TRUE, including but not limited to "Brad And Jen Are Engaged," "Brad And Jen Are Splitting," and "Jen And Vince Are Just Friends Thankyouverymuch." AKA, suck it, Huvane.
In other news, we're going to see how many times we can use this graphic, just for kicks.
Earlier this week we noticed a curious event on the website of event photographer Patrick McMullan: " CHAT WITH A STAR Unveils the "Blogmobile" and Hosts a Cocktail Party to Celebrate the Launch of CHAT WITH A STAR.COM." Now, ETP was not invited to this illustrious event, but from the photos 
we could not detect any discernable stars, though presumably the Blogmobile travels on the information superhighway. Ew, sorry, that was awful. Right. So, ETP checked out the webiste, featuring a still-pretty-flimsy star page including onetime supermodel Beverly Johnson (a pioneer, actually, as the first African American woman on the cover of Vogue) and scrappy four-time Stanley Cup winner Butch Goring, he of beat-up helmet and Islanders dynasty fame (with whom ETP has actually chatted, in person, in Russia of all places, but that is another story). We still have no idea what this has to do with the Blogmobile, but that's okay.
Where, you ask, is the media angle here? Well, we recently learned that one of the bloggers for the star-studded site is none other than former NYSun Four Seasons-luncher and huffy-emailer Pranay Gupte, who will be joined in his upcoming blogging forays by none other than The Amazing Kreskin.
Our work here is done.
from usmagazine.com
Wenner Media sold a 50% stake in Us Weekly to Disney in 2001for $40 million. Yesterday, it announced plans to buy it right back — for $300 million, making Disney a 650% profit and Jann Wenner king of the Wenner Media castle once again.
Wenner, who sold the stake to raise money to take the mag weekly, is reprtedly "thrilled" to buy it back at a premium, given that it's a juggernaut in the magazine industry with a 1.7million circulation that's still growing. Never mind that the Jen & Vince engagement kerfuffle is only beginning.
Disney, for its part, is no doubt also "thrilled" to have made such a tidy profit, saying that it now wants to "concentrate on its core assets." That everyone is so thrilled signals an impressive deal, says the NYT's Kit Seelye, who quotes Mort Zuckerman as valuing Us Weekly as $600 million — a steal for Wenner! — and announcing with a certain je ne sais quoi that "all you can do is tip your chapeau."
WWD crunches the numbers:
But the big question Wednesday was: Is Us Weekly really worth $600 million? According to Publishers Information Bureau, the title earned $201 million dollars in ad revenue alone in 2005, up 10 percent from the prior year. Plus, the magazine earns more than $3 million a week selling over a million copies on the newsstand, according to publisher's estimates for the first half of 2006. According to sources, Us Weekly is slated to make roughly $60 million in profits this year; the title lost $34 million in 2001, its first year as a weekly. And, provided demand for the celeb weekly stays ravenous, Us Weekly's profits could grow even more.
That last one is a big "if" based on recent reports that the demand for celeb weeklies is flattening. This, again, is where Jen & Vince come in, and maybe therein lies the business savvy in Wenner's plan: he knows that there will always be a Jen & Vince engagement rumor, a cheating Jessica Simpson, a Britney baby-dropping meltdown, a weird alien baby Suri and, more importantly, stars being just like us at Starbucks to give him a steady return on his investment. To them — to all of them — we tip our chapeau.
Eric Boehlert
Did you know Ned Lamont's win in Tuesday's Connecticut Democratic primary has energized "gleeful Republicans" because it will allow them to portray Democrats as anti-war? It's true, I read it in Time. What I didn't read in Time though, was the fact that a clear majority of Americans now label themselves anti-war as well, which might complicate the GOP strategy Time seems so enthralled by. Then again,...
