New York Times editor Bill Keller won a Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for appropriate handling of Wikileaks. Unrelated: No word on the four reporters missing in Libya. [University of... MORE»
Jeannie Park and David Chan bought 109 Waverly Place five years ago for $5.1 million. It was a pretty good price for an 1840s Federalist-style home half a block off Washington Square Park. The only catch was that the five-story red-brick beauty had years before been carved up into six apartments and an owner's duplex, and four of those units had rent-regulated tenants in them, as The Observer reported at the... MORE»
Al Gore and Andrew Wylie teamed up to ditch Penguin and Rodale for the former veep's future tome, still untitled. It's the first book acquired by Jonathan Meacham as Random House executive editor, his post-Newsweek move. [Keith... MORE»
When ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams's friends and family gathered in his sister Ronnie's Central Park South duplex on Monday night to celebrate his first book, his father, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, took up the traditional paternal duty of divulging an embarrassing childhood anecdote. Apparently, when Abrams fils was in ninth grade, a female French teacher had derided him in front of the class.... MORE»
We're excited to announce the launch of our New York tech scene site, Betabeat (BETABEAT.com). Beginning tomorrow, Betabeat will deliver insider information on the latest ventures, startups and investments in Silicon Alley, profiling the personalities who rule the scene, offering social scorecards ranking top players, and analyzing trends and new products with The Observer's house wit and... MORE»
If you think a Brooklyn magazine that was not made out of your friend's Bushwick garage with an antique letterpress is for arriviste poseurs, prepare to hate Brooklyn Magazine, a quarterly published by the team behind the freebie listings pamphlet The L Magazine, which launches today. For some, the magazine's professions of borough cred will seem a stretch. ... MORE»
Tina Brown has made good, in her way, on her promise to decode "crackling, confusing digital dots": Newsweek this week synthesizes Charlie Sheen's every manic Ustream with Bret Easton Ellis's theory, long promulgated over Twitter, of "Empire" and "post-Empire" entertainments. Mr.... MORE»
The Huffington Post would really like us to stop thinking about last week's layoffs and Bill Keller quips. As predicted, they unloaded a breathless, four page-long press release of hires and other good news this... MORE»
Last summer, Simon Rich was in the thrall of Brooklyn Heights, in no small part because the curveball pitch was invented there. "That alone is reason enough to live in this neighborhood," he told The Observer at the... MORE»
At Tina Brown's girl-power extravaganza last night, Women in the World 2011, hosted by Newsweek and The Daily Beast, Diane Von Furstenberg named her female role model as Rebecca Lolosoli, a woman credited with creating a girls-only village in Kenya. "I met Rebecca two years ago," said Ms. Von Furstenburg. "She came to visit me. She told me all about her. She told me how she had to flee her village. So I told her, I have a village too, on the fourth... MORE»
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller might soon be eating the words of this week's column, "All the Aggregation That's Fit To Print." No, not because he reveals to the world his wife's twilight tweeting habit. Not even because of that paragraphs-long back-door brag about how important we all insist he... MORE»
On a Tuesday evening not long ago, a group of publishing assistants in their early 20s gathered in a well-appointed apartment on the West Side of Manhattan. "Assistants: Meet the person on the other end of the telephone," the email had said. Still in their workday Moscots and belted sweater dresses, they found live human beings and an assistant's paycheck worth of cheese and wine, along with a gestural six-pack of beer that would go... MORE»
Who do you have to frack to get some credit around here? That's what we're wondering after a recent New York Times series on the latest hot-button environmental issue--hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. "fracking." The Times series is packaged as a slow-cooked exposé, but a small team of reporters from ProPublica had been doggedly covering the practice since 2008--before it was even a beat, let alone the celebrity cause of Mark... MORE»
Say this, good or bad, for The Atlantic--its left hand does not seem to know what its right hand is doing. The magazine's new story about Gawker--getting buzz already for Nick Denton's note that he wouldn't have clarified the Christine O'Donnell story--seems unaware of The Atlantic's own aggregation efforts.... MORE»
Denise Oswald, former editorial director for indie publisher Soft Skull Press, has landed a new job as a senior editor at HarperCollins imprint It Books. The Observer broke the news that Soft Skull would close its two-person New York office late last year, leaving its operations in the hands of the Berkeley-based publisher Counterpoint, which acquired Soft Skull in... MORE»
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