In 2005 things took a turn for Mr. Essex. He was hired to be editor in chief of a magazine called Absolute—one of those shiny luxury publications that straddle the line between advertisements and editorial and leave the reader (flipping through it idly in a shiny luxury condo lobby, perhaps) feeling glazed and hollow, not sure exactly why.  read more »]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/media/church-cuddles-state-media-s-glossy-new-reality#comments Media Andrew Essex Ellen Asmodeo Gotham Magazine Haute Living Jason Binn Manhattan Magazine Seth Svmilof Stephen Kong WSJ. Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:39:31 -0400 John Koblin 72261 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/media/katharine-second-begins-reign-washington-post

Katharine Weymouth, the most powerful person at The Washington Post, was making her way from the elevator bank across the dingy lobby to the exit of the building, a big brutal concrete thing on 15th Street NW. Fred Hiatt, the paper’s editorial page editor, was at the door right before her and almost let it close on her before he realized who she was. There was a big lurch, and with all his arms and legs, he kept the door from slamming on the new publisher.

"Thanks," Ms. Weymouth said. "Getting a coffee and some sunlight!"

"Yeah," Mr. Hiatt said.  read more »

After Clay Felker passed away Tuesday morning in Manhattan, The Observer spoke to some who knew him well.

Robert Benton

The first time I ever screamed “fuck” in front of a room full of women was when I got mad at Clay at the Esquire offices. We were having this argument that went up and down the hall and I reached my wits end; I just said, “You fuck!” It came out of my mouth before I knew what I had said. Clay could drive you crazy, but you never stopped caring for him.

Milton Glaser

We were once in Paris.  read more »

Last week, The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor, Robert Thomson, announced sweeping masthead changes—new people have been added, some familiar names dumped.

Laurie Hays, former deputy managing editor, is off to Bloomberg; Bill Grueskin, another deputy managing editor, is packing away for Morningside Heights and semi-retirement at the journalism school at Columbia University.

Other people left, too. Earlier this month, The Journal’s formidable Federal Reserve reporter, Gregory Ip, said that he was leaving for The Economist; a special writer from the San Francisco bureau, Rebecca Beckman, said she was leaving for Forbes.  read more »

]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/13-months-after-murdoch-journal-diaspora#comments Media Rupert Murdoch The Wall Street Journal Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:06:45 -0400 John Koblin 71192 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/make-nice-nikki-l-times-starts-hollywood-blog

“I’ve been getting e-mail for years from people who think that I’m a moron,” the Los Angeles Times’ entertainment columnist Patrick Goldstein said in an interview with The Observer this week. “I don’t think that’s gonna change.”

Mr. Goldstein, who’s been with the Tribune paper since 1979 and has written an entertainment column called The Big Picture since 1998, was talking about his newly launched blog, also called The Big Picture. “I have a thick skin,” he says, when asked how he plans to deal with any negative feedback he’s sure to get from commenters and other more established industry bloggers.  read more »

Understandably, when a newspaper has to make deep cuts in its payroll, columns like this crunch the numbers. How many pink slips, and in what areas?

But that is arguably less important than how the remaining staffers are reorganized to fill the gaps—or not.

The big victim in the last round of cost-cutting at The New York Times: Starting this month, the Metro section’s regional desks are, essentially, dead. Local reporters who have been spared have been redirected and reassigned. Jersey general assignment reporter and poetry writer Tina Kelley will be “spending more and more of her reporting life online, busting rhymes here and there along the way,” wrote Joe Sexton, the editor, in a memo sent last week to staffers.  read more »

Campbell Robertson, the dogged Times journalist who has worked his way up from office clerk to gossip reporter to Broadway-beat man, is headed to Iraq.

“We were out last night and he was picking my brain on Iraq,” said Times Baghdad bureau chief Jim Glanz in a telephone interview on June 17. “He said that people have been asking him when he’s going to Iraq. And he said he’ll go once the Tonys are over!”

In some ways, it’s unbelievable that a man who wrote a story for Monday’s Times recapping the Tonys—for instance, he wrote that the awards tried to “goose ratings” by including more numbers from Rent this year—is going to be filing with Basra and Mosul datelines before old story subjects are back from the Hamptons.  read more »

Mary Kaye Schilling’s final days as an entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Times were bleak.

“It was incredibly stressful there,” she said on the phone June 17 from California. “I really believed the L.A. Times could make a comeback, but the situation really became untenable.”

Two months ago, Ms. Schilling parted ways with the West Coast paper of record—she says it was mutual, sources there say otherwise—and in mid-July she’s returning east, where she worked in magazines for many years, to become the culture editor at New York. Women’s Wear Daily reported the news first on June 17.  read more »

“Three or four people leaving is not a big deal,” insisted Maer Roshan, founder and editor in chief of Radar.

Actually, it’s five: Senior editor Tyler Gray, en route to Blender, just had his last day at the magazine, as did managing editor Leigh Ann Boutwell, who is joining her boyfriend on the West Coast. On the business side, the magazine’s president, Fred Poust, fled Radar’s East 45th Street offices on May 30, along with finance director Dwight Holovach and Web site general manager Michael Small, who came in with great fanfare from Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.  read more »

On the afternoon of June 2, Wolf Blitzer was talking to Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum about his 9,647-word piece about Bill Clinton.

“Some people who work for him now say that he seems to be angry all the time, angry when he gets up in the morning and angry when he goes to bed at night,” Mr. Purdum was saying.  read more »