The New York Post

Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 5-year-old ban on smoking in bars, patrons are still lighting up after hours. If you've ever been to the Beatrice Inn or Rose Bar at Gramercy Park Hotel last at night, this isn't exactly news. But rarely is it pointed out—with 1,800 or so words devoted to the topic—as it is in this week's Page Six Magazine.

A spokesperson for the Rose Bar told the magazine, "The Rose Bar is extremely vigilant in preventing smoking by our patrons. There is a full-time staffperson whose sole responsibility is to monitor and prevent smoking within the bar." But Page Six's Sara Cardace, visiting the bar on a Thursday, spotted several patrons puffing, and quoted other sources pointing fingers at celebrity-hosting places like Citrine, SubMercer, and GoldBar.  read more »

What else do you call a day when the comedic actress and writer is seemingly everywhere all at once?

First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those behind-the-scenes videos of Ms. Fey's photo shoot that all magazines' Web Editors are convinced Internet users love. (In an example of too-weird-to -ignore/too-geeky-to -explicate life imitating art, a very Maureen Dowd-like character played by Christine Lahti once wrote a profile of the protagonists' of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show, like Ms. Fey's 30 Rock, set behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show very much like Ms. Dowd's launchpad, Saturday Night Live.)

Ms. Dowd's story was dutifully picked up by The Daily News, The New York Post (whose Page Six also had an item about Ms. Fey today), and The Associated Press, and TMZ. (Apparently a lot of people have been wondering why Ms. Fey has a scar on her face.)  read more »

Stop us if you've heard this one before... According to Page Six The Magazine, some Manhattan parents are so desperate to give their children a leg-up on their peers, they're sending them to Mandarin classes! (And Hindi! And French! And German!)

Page Six's Jennifer Rose quotes a parent named Brett Hauser, who pays $395 for his 6-month-old son to take 10 sessions at The Language Workshop for Children saying, "Mandarin is the language of our future. With China poised to become the world's leading economy sometime this century, I'm doing the only responsible thing. It's like reading to your kid or making sure he gets all the right foods. I'm helping him prepare for his future. Thirty years from now these kids are going to be translating for all of us."

The magazine calls this phenomenon "NYC's New Baby Talkers."

Talkers, yes; new, no.  read more »

Martin Eisenstadt, principal of the Eisenstadt Group and Senior Fellow at The Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy is on a the mind of a lot of bloggers and cable news talent bookers lately. Apparently Mr. Eisenstadt, as an adviser to Senator John McCain, leaked the story that former G.O.P. Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent and not a single country. That bit of news was picked up by many, many media sources including Fox News, whose Carl Cameron's on-air telling of the anecdote Media Mob saw fit to include in a round-up of post-election bashing of Governor Palin. He also spread the rumor that Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher was spotted "canoodling" with Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig and that he might appear on The Bachelor. That little story made it to Politico's Shenanigans blog, written by Anne Schroeder Mullins, and then the New York Post on Nov. 4, in a "Campaign Morsels" sidebar that is not online, but was recounted in New York magazine's Daily Intel blog.

And who can forget back in August when Mr. Eisenstadt revealed that Paris Hilton's family was offended with the McCain campaign for an ad that compared Senator Obama to Ms. Hilton and Britney Spears.

This election year, Mr. Eisenstadt has been full of great scoops. He's also been completely full of it.  read more »

This morning, Matt Drudge reported that Barack Obama's campaign had barred critical reporters from the senator's plane. According to Mr. Drudge, reporters from the New York Post, The Washington Times, and The Dallas Morning News (all papers whose editorial pages endorsed Senator Obama's rivals, John McCain and Sarah Palin) were told that:

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters—and possibly others —will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.  read more »

Sure, it's not as loaded a mistake as Page Six claiming that Michelle Obama allegedly ordered lobsters and Iranian caviar at the Waldorf-Astoria even though she wasn't technically a guest at the hotel or in New York City at the time, but today's New York Post has the sort of gaffe that drives high school composition teachers and Lynne Truss-reading fans of the English language crazy.

As you can see from today's frontpage, the story on Isiah Thomas by Andrea Peyser suggests that the former Knicks coach is getting some sort of arid land.

Of course, typos happen all the time, so perhaps we shouldn't be so huffy (see third Breaking News item).

Update, 4:15 P.M.: The third item on the Post's homepage has changed. Also, per the comment below, it looks like The Post was in the right and our grasp of idioms isn't as firm as we thought.

See Snopes' explanation and Wise Geek's take on this common mistake.

As The Post might say, we regret the error.  read more »

In her column in Page Six Magazine this week, socialite Lydia Hearst declares a 'shame on you' on her fellow socialites for continuing to party and worry about their wardrobes despite the current state of the economy. And while on the subject, Ms. Hearst even turns on her own family's empire:

Hearst Corporation, which my family owns, continues to host parties even as it folds magazines like CosmoGirl. From an objective point of view, it seems excessive. The crash in the '80s was a blip compared to what's happening now, so it's going to come as a shock when this trickles up into high society.

 read more »

The New York Post's Page Six features an item about being treated to lunch by Heather Mills, the ex-wife of Beatle Paul McCartney.The headline of the piece was HEATHER: A LEG UP ON LUNCH, which apparently is a reference to the fact that Ms. Mills is missing a leg.

Pretty funny stuff. But not as funny as the last time Page Six made the joke: HEATHER LOSES HER P.R. LEG, TOO, July 26, 2008. Or the time before that: NO LEGAL LEG FOR MILLS, February 6, 2008. Or the time before that time: LEGS FOR SALE, November 6, 2007.

It's not just Richard Johnson and his merry band of gossips who love making fun of Ms. Mills' missing leg.  read more »

Time, Inc. C.E.O. Ann Moore has said that her three year contract, which is now halfway done, would be her last.

But in today's New York Post, Keith Kelly writes that he's hearing she's going to stay even longer. And she has a found a way to put herself in the good graces of Time Warner chief Jeffrey Bewkes:

Bewkes also has to be pleased that Time Inc., which had about $5.5 billion in revenue and $907 million in profit last year, is now getting about 15 percent of its revenue from digital operations. That's far more than rivals Hearst or Condé Nast collect.

 read more »

Correction of the day award goes to The New York Post's Page Six, which ran this item today:

The source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation.

The original item, which ran on October 17th, has been scrubbed from the Post's Web site, but that doesn't mean it hasn't had an impact.  read more »

Yesterday, the Daily Transom's John Carney offered readers an inside look at theNew York Post's farewell party for Steve Dunleavy at Bourbon Street.  read more »

It rained hard on Wednesday. By the time guests started to arrive at Bourbon Street—the New Orleans-themed saloon in the Theater District—the rain had tapered off but the streets had that shiny, film noir, old New York look. You could almost imagine Travis Bickle cruising by in an old yellow taxi talking about how a real rain would some day come to clean up our dirty streets.

It was, in short, the perfect atmosphere for the party Rupert Murdoch was hosting in honor of Steve Dunleavy, the longtime New York Post columnist, reporter and editor. Mr. Dunleavy cut his teeth in New York journalism writing about the Son of Sam. The old New York now familiar only as a kind of ghost story about garbage strikes, rampant muggings, heroin dealers, squeegee men, Times Square street walkers, economic malaise and social dysfunction—that was his New York.  read more »

We don't have much to add to this excellent item from Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici, except to say that if knowing Shakespeare quotes on sight is the new standard by which media writers are measured, we've got some some cramming to do.

Mr. Bercovici quotes The New York Post's Adam Buckman's review of Heroes in which he cites this line of cribbed Shakespeare—"There's a divinity that shapes our ends - rough hew them how we will"— and suggests that it's "crazy nonsense" and that its speaker, Malcolm McDowell, "should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines."

As Shakespeare would say, "Pwnedeth!"

Does print journalism matter in this election?

“It’s obvious, and no crime against humanity, that the world has many, many places to turn for information, misinformation, analysis, rants, etc,” wrote Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, in an e-mail. “We—The Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial—don’t  dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that’s fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled.

“But we do want our work to be noticed,” he wrote, “and I’ve been repeatedly surprised at the rich, important stories that fail to resonate the way they deserve.  read more »

Good morning!

Officials Try to Stem Crisis; Fed to Meet, The New York Times

Bank Turmoil Slams Asian Indexes, The Wall Street Journal

Here's what you need to know about the financial crisis, The New York Daily News

NY WILL TAKE $1B HIT: GOV, The New York Post

Wall Street Woes Endanger Funding for the Arts, The New York Sun

Stocks Plunge as Crisis Intensifies, The Washington Post

Banking free-fall not over, The Chicago Tribune

Businesses could face tighter credit after Lehman bankruptcy, The Los Angeles Times

Lehman bankrupt, but misery only beginning, Crain's New York Business

Crisis On Wall Street, Forbes

The end of Wall Street, Fortune

Did you spend a dollar on The New York Post this Sunday so you could read the new issue of Page Six: The Magazine?

You could've saved that dollar for laundry by reading most of the magazine's features in other publications. Here's a guide to how the Serpentor of weekend supplements was made:

Cover Story: Kerry Washington, by Suzanna Zuckerman.

Read instead: Party Girl in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, January 6, 2008.

Hot Fuzz: Why Full Beards Are In, by Joshua David Stein.

Read instead: Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol, by Eric Wilson, The New York Times, March 23, 2006.  read more »

"The tears will flow.

Then they will stop.

People will try to get along.

And America will proceed with its business - of vanquishing its enemies, and pursuing its cherished way of life."–New York Post editorial, September 16, 2001.

Even this populist Democratic National Convention has a seating chart, and therefore a social hierarchy.

According to the DNC's rubric, The Washington Post is deserving of the better seat than The Times, and Jezebel and Glamour deserve a closer seat than The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones and Portfolio.

First, a little background. There's really no bad seat in the Denver Broncos press box in Invesco Field, but there certainly are better ones. There are two rows of tables that curve in the press box from the end zone to about the 20-yard line. You want to be in that first row, which features delightfully unimpeded views of the whole stadium other than the glass that surrounds the front of the press box from floor to ceiling; in the second row, you'll see Barack Obama pretty nicely, but you'll also be staring at the back of someone's head.  read more »

The New York Post's Keith Kelly reported yesterday that Michael Wolff’s book on Rupert Murdoch and the Dow Jones takeover is coming out in December, instead of February as initially intended. This spurred Media Mob to get in touch with Mr. Wolff and find out why. We did, pretty much right away, and the answer was just “Christmas,” so we stayed on the line for another few minutes and asked Mr. Wolff some more things.

Below, the conversation is reproduced, though be warned that while none of Mr. Wolff’s words were changed or rearranged, the questions in bold have been reconstructed from memory.  read more »

Speaking of The New York Post's fair-and-balanced DNC '08 Convention Special, the above left Getty Images photo of a Hillary Clinton supporter in Denver (here's another version from The New York Times this afternoon) bears an uncanny resemblance to this morning's cartoon by Post controversialist Sean Delonas.

Thankfully, Mr. Delonas didn't see fit to include his signature sheep in the original drawing.

Never accuse The New York Post of not maximizing its chances to make partisan digs.

On the cover of today's edition—which features a bold Ted Kennedy beside the headline "Old Lion Roars: Ailing Teddy Moves Fellow Dems to Tears"—there's a "DNC '08 Convention Special" custom logo featuring a droopy eyed, buck-toothed cartoon donkey that looks, well, sort of brain damaged.

See a larger version at the Newseum's Web site.

In a recent New Yorker essay on the subject of theodicy, James Wood wrote:

Theologians and philosophers talk about 'the problem of evil,' and the hygienic phrase itself bespeaks a certain distance from extreme suffering, the view from a life inside the charmed circle. They mean the classic difficulty of how we justify the existence of suffering and iniquity with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.

With this philosophical framework in mind, let's look at some of the reviews of Mike Myers' The Love Guru.

"A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious.

The Associated Press is reporting that the defamation lawsuit brought by former New York Post writer Jared Paul Stern against Ron Burkle, The New York Daily News, and Bill and Hillary Clinton has been dismissed by State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub. (This comes via Jim Romenesko.)

In April 2006, The Observer's Choire Sicha profiled Mr. Stern at his Catskills cottage and reported on his book deal which was subsequently cancelled .

This was a tough weekend for a certain segment within the media community, but together, they got through it.

It started out with excitement on Friday: A journalistic fact-finding mission to Las Vegas. But even before the plane took off, some key members of the expedition almost didn't make it. Thankfully, they arrived safely and twittered word that others had arrived as well (perhaps a bit blurry), despite the fact that the trip's sponsors did not pay for their transportation to the airport.  read more »

During the flight, something happened on the ground involving someone in media, which they agreed was

While The New York Daily News and The New York Post had identical takes on yesterday's double publicity stunt at The New York Times Building, one Post employee managed to find a new angle on the story. Herself.  read more »

Barack Obama said today that voters had a right to be concerned about media consolidation and when “Rupert Murdoch has his eyes on a lot of different media outlets.”

The comment, made at an outdoor talk with a few dozen voters in Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, was in response to a question from a voter concerned about how media consolidation impacts the freedom of the press.  read more »

Ante up!

Now suddenly everyone is interested in Newsday. The New York Times is reporting that a Manhattan media blockbuster trio is "in discussions" to buy the Melville-based newspaper: Rupert Murdoch, James Dolan and Mort Zuckerman. Sam Zell decides who's the winner.

It sets up a satisfying auction between Mr. Murdoch (Post-owner) and Mr. Zuckerman (Daily News-owner) and Mr. Dolan, who owns MSG, the Knicks, Rangers and Cablevision.  read more »

Robert A. George is an associate editor for the New York Post's editorial page and he needs your help. He's performing stand-up comedy tonight at the New York Comedy Club on East 24th Street and he sent out an e-mail to friends and supporters:  read more »

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Reporters were mostly only half-listening moments before Hillary Clinton's eyes welled up with tears in a coffee shop here early this afternoon.

It was another of the increasing number of hour-plus gatherings put on by her campaign, and the majority of the reporters were scrolling around on Blackberrys or reading the newspaper or whispering to one another about the ubiquitous but somehow unmentionable Chelsea Clinton.  read more »

Last week, the New York Post’s deputy metro editor Michelle Gotthelf was on vacation, renovating her home in New Jersey. Meanwhile, the editorial structure of her section of the paper was falling apart: On the night of Monday, Dec. 10, metro editor Dan Colarusso unexpectedly quit, leaving a team of assistant editors to fill in on the fly.

And so, on her first day back to work on Monday, Dec. 17, Ms. Gotthelf hastily met with editor in chief Col Allan, who named her the new metro editor.  read more »

According to Gawker, New York Post city editor Dan Colarusso quit last night. One source inside the newsroom describes the mood: "Devastated. No one's too happy, not a good day."

Media Mob has an e-mail out to Post spokesman Steven Rubenstein, and is awaiting comment.

UPDATE: A spokesman declined comment.

A source familiar with the details confirmed, however, that Mr. Colarusso handed in his resigntion.

More than eight weeks since Page Six Magazine went weekly, a portrait of the Sunday supplement’s prospects is beginning to emerge—and it’s decidedly mixed.  read more »

When The Post reported earlier this week that Richard Gere wanted to buy into Julian Schnabel’s glorious new Palazzo Chupi in the far West Village, they said the Buddhist thespian needed to sell his Sullivan Street townhouse before he could afford a new place with Schnabel.

But as we pointed out Wednesday, Mr. Gere actually sold his Sullivan townhouse ages ago--and for a record price. So naturally news comes today, from the Wall Street Journal, that the actor has gone and bought a sprawl at Chupi (which Mr. Schnabel oddly insists is not pink but red.)

Sadly, no Gere purchase price is given.

Is he somehow a more appropriate buyer than the banker William J.B. Brady? When The Observer reported that Mr. Brady had paid $15.5 million for the first Chupi apartment, Curbed pointed out that Mr. Schnabel’s building “was supposed to be the rebirth of the salon--an exclusive enclave of the most talented and creative (and wealthy) minds around."

My old roommate Josh Drimmer was on the cover of The New York Post this morning—naked.

For about a year, starting around the fall of 2003, Josh was one of my roommates in a three-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg (which I’m sadly leaving very soon to move to Washington D.C.).  read more »

Here's a statistic that'll be meat and drink to the New York Post, if not to the mayor and his aides:

More NYC voters said they would back Mike Bloomberg for governor than for president, according to a poll released today by the Quinnipiac Polling Institute.

13 percent of people surveyed said they would definitely vote for Bloomberg if he ran for president. 24 said they probably would vote for him.

That’s compared to 27 percent of people who said they’d definitely support Bloomberg for governor, and another 33 percent who said they probably would support him in that race.

 read more »

Rival tabloid editors’ latest price-chop catfight.  read more »

Observer contributor Niall Stanage, who is currently on assignment in Iran, sends an email for our "general amusement" to say that it is possible where he is to access the sites of the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian and the Times of London, but that attempts to get to the New York Post, the Sun, Gawker or Wonkette are met with "a disappointingly literal 'Access to this Site is Denied' together with some Farsi script presumably saying the same thing."

   read more »