Harold Evans in New York wall spat

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 2 May 2006 at 13:18
Tags: Journalism, Sunday Times, United States

It’s not quite the Berlin Wall, but Sir Harry Evans is having problems with a wall that divides his New York apartment from his next-door neighbour. It’s is only a foot thick, but it does – at the moment – provide the former Sunday Times editor and his wife Tina Brown some privacy when they hold a garden party.

Now a developer has bought the adjacent property and, according to the New York Post, is planning to tear down the property and replace it with a 15-storey apartment complex.

And that – according to Sir Harry, who claims ownership to six inches of the wall - could mean the end to their privacy. As he put it: “This guy comes in like Ronald Reagan and says ‘Tear down the wall’â€? – a reference to former American president’s famous 1987 speech in Berlin.

It’s expected the battle over the wall will end up in a New York court.

Explosive news in LA

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 2 May 2006 at 11:17
Tags: Journalism, United States

In these security-minded days, when anything suspicious can be part of a terrorist plot, a simple newspaper stunt can have a serious backlash.

That’s what happened when the Los Angeles Times dreamed up an idea to promote the new movie Mission Impossible III. It involved just a simple idea of playing the movie’s theme song whenever anyone opened one of the paper’s kerbside sales boxes.

No, the newspapers didn’t self-destruct after five seconds. But close.

Unfortunately some people thought the little red box inside the vending box, with wires protruding, seemed suspicious and summoned the local bomb squad, which promptly blew up the newspaper box.

“We were not expecting anything like this” admitted a spokesman for the Los Angeles Times.

Altogether, the paper had placed the electronic devices in 4,500 news boxes around the city. Fortunately not all of them were detonated.

New York gossip glossy goes ahead despite scandal

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 25 April 2006 at 13:45
Tags: Journalism, United States

Despite the scandal still swirling over its “Page Six” gossip page, th New York Post is pushing ahead with its plan to produce a second issue of a  glossy magazine spinoff of the column.

The second issue of Page Six Magazine is due out later this year, but will feature one big difference: Its editor will not be Jared Paul Stern, the fastidiously-dressed freelance who has been accused of trying to shake down California billionaire Ron Burkle for keeping stories about him out of the column.

Since the scandal broke, Stern and three other freelance gossips have been let go. So the next issue of Page Six Magazine will be edited by Richard Johnson, who has for long edited the column. (more…)

The cat and the correspondents’ caterer

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 19 April 2006 at 11:04
Tags: Journalism, United States

The media frenzy garnered by Molly, an 11-month old moggie that was trapped for two weeks in a hole in the wall of a food store in New York’s Greenwich Village, may in part be attributed to the fact that the owner of both the cat and the store is an Englishman from Keswick who for years has been a friend of many news people in New York.

Since his arrival in the US almost 20 years ago, Peter Myers has been providing British ex-pats with many of the delicacies they miss: veal and ham pies, Cornish pasties, Scotch eggs and Cumberland sausages.

He was a regular patron, from the start, of such newspaper hangouts as Costello’s, many of which served his home-made specialities. He also hand-delivered to journalists hankering after a taste of home.

The efforts to free Molly from her hole in the basement wall of Myers’ food shop attracted scores of journalists and resulted in stories, according to the New York Times, in papers all around the world including the Sun, plus papers in France, South Africa and Australia.
In some papers, Molly got as much space as Iraq. After her release from her hole in the wall, unharmed by her ordeal it seemed, Molly was treated to a meal of lean pork and sardines in olive oil. No black pudding for her.

Former Times correspondent will edit Marie Claire

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 19 April 2006 at 09:38
Tags: Journalism, Marie Claire, Times, United States

A former New York bureau chief for The Times has been appointed editor-in chief-of Marie Claire, the Hearst-owned American version of the French beauty and fashion magazine.

Joanna Coles replaces Lesley Jane Seymour, who has been editor for almost five years.

Coles, after leaving The Times in 2001, worked for New York Magazine, first as articles editor and then features editor. Eighteen months ago she joined More, the Meredith magazine for women over 50, as executive editor. She was a popular and respected editor.

Coles will take up her new job in May. Hearst has made no official comment except to announce Seymour is leaving the company.

One of the oddities of the unexpected change is that Marie Claire was recently nominated for an award at next month’s National Magazine Awards, its first nomination for at least five years. Also Marie Claire’s circulation, under Seymour, grew thre per cent in the second half of last year to a total of just under 1 million, plus another half million newsstand sales.

Hurricane-battered papers collect Pulitzer Prizes

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 18 April 2006 at 16:51
Tags: Journalism, United States

Two newspapers that virtually drowned in last year’s Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes, the highest honours in American journalism.

The papers, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans and the smaller Sun-Herald in neighbouring Biloxi, Mississippi, received the awards, which were announced yesterday, for public service.

The Times-Picayune also won an award for its coverage of the disaster. When the hurricane hit, the paper had to evacuate its offices as the floodwaters rose. Although the paper was forced to suspend publication of its print edition for three days, it continued to publish online, drawing millions of readers from around the world to its web site, nola.com.

At the same time, the Sun-Herald managed to continue publication by switching its printing to a sister paper many miles away in Columbus, Georgia, and shipping the papers to Mississippi. It never missed an issue.

In respect to the dead still being mourned in New Orleans, the staff of the Times-Picayune (the name comes from the Spanish for “small coin�?) celebrated their gold medal without the normal champagne.

Other awards went to the Washington Post (four prizes) the New York Times (three) and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver (two). The New York Times receives one of its awards for its reports on national eavesdropping, the second for reports on China’s rough justice system and the third for its reports on genocide in Darfur.

The Washington Post got one of its awards for its probe into the alleged corrupt activities of Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, another for its revelations about America’s secret anti-terrorist “black site” prisons and a third for dispatches from Yemen. The fourth, by contrast, was for its fashion reporting.

Chinese ban on new foreign magazines

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 10 April 2006 at 11:31
Tags: China, Journalism, Magazines, United States

Rolling Stone has really hit the Great Wall. The government in Beijing has decided that the magazine cannot publish a second issue of its Chinese edition – because it failed to get proper approval for its front cover and title.

In fact Beijing has imposed a moratorium on all new foreign magazines on topics other than science and technology. That – says the Wall Street Journal – is a big blow to media companies that were seeking to cash in on China’s booming ad market.

It’s a particular set-back to life-style magazines. Titles that have already got approval have been assured they can continue publishing This should include the Chinese edition of Vogue, which was launched last September.

Sports Illustrated, which announced last month it hoped to launch a sports magazine in China sometime soon and says it has concluded a partnership with a Chinese company is optimistic it will get the go-ahead.

As for Rolling Stone, an official in Shanghai said curtly “It doesn’t exist anymore.�

Scandal of the New York gossip page

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 10 April 2006 at 11:22
Tags: Ethics, Newspapers, United States

It has all the makings of a Hollywood thriller. Two men meet secretly in a New York loft; a secret camera in the ceiling tapes their meeting as FBI agents stake out the scene from a room upstairs. The protagonists are a California billionaire and a New York tabloid journalist.

That meeting over a glass-topped kitchen table is now rocking the American journalism world, making big headlines and creating turmoil at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

The two men were California industrialist Ron Burkle, who made his fortune from supermarkets and is somewhat notorious for his amorous affairs and freelance gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, a contributor to the Post’s “Page Six”, America’s best-known and probably most widely-read gossip column.

It’s alleged that the journalist was trying to shake down the billionaire with the promise of keeping his name out of the column. His price: $100,000 plus regular monthly payments of $10,000.

(more…)

Walking with dinosaurs

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 10 April 2006 at 10:09
Tags: Newspapers, United States

Perhaps someone should have taken a look in advance, but the opening event at this years conference of the Newspaper Association of America — which represents close to 1,500 daily papers — took place in Chicago’s Field Museum in a large hall flanked by two dinosaur skeletons.

There were a few jokes, but nobody was crass enough to suggest the animals might be a metaphor for what’s happening in the industry these days.

Condé Nast paying editors’ mortages

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 10 April 2006 at 10:00
Tags: Journalism, Magazines, United States

One of the best-kept secrets in American publishing is how Condé Nast keeps its editors, top executives and even some of its writers happy. The answer: In addition to paying top salaries and good expenses, the senior staff enjoy one other big perk: help with their home mortages.

Tina Brown and her husband Sir Harry Evans are among at least 20 beneficiaries of the housing perk which was seen the publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, Gourmet, Details, Condé Nast Traveler and numerous other magazines shell out millions over the years.

It helps explain why Condé Nast editors, in the main live in expensive apartments and homes, and are renowned for their parties. That, it’s said, is what company chairman Si Newhouse likes to see. He likes his top executives to be part of the New York social scene. (more…)