Tom McGeveran

And Wolf Blitzer got to declare it, as the countdown to primary closings in the Western states put their projection for Barack Obama at 297 electoral votes, clinching him the election. Wolf Blitzer!

In the newspaper's own obituary, a history of the newspaper's six and a half years as told by its editors and more. The material is surprisingly frank, in a way normally reserved for the newspaper's editorials, about the politics of its mission, but it's all pretty fascinating and worth reading.

Contribute to some great journalists' severance packages by buying a copy at the newsstand, but if you can't make it there yet you can get it all here.

A spokesman for actor Paul Newman has confirmed that he died yesterday at his home in Connecticut at the age of 83; the cause was cancer.

From the New York Times obituary that just went up:

If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.

He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless. Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into craggy, charismatic old age.

Or ... do they?

David Letterman's riff on McCain tonight isn't quite as cutting as you may have heard; sure it's a bit tough but the whole thing also reads as a reaction to his getting dissed for Katie Couric and a crater. Anyway perhaps the scolds will lighten up by the time this airs tonight; the events of today were almost too absurd to be funny, but David is pretty hysterical.

ST. PAUL—This is a strange convention.

Everyone here has to scramble to cover a convention that just barely seems to be happening, while a hurricane overtakes the gulf coast. Here's the giant television screen that greets you as you enter the perimeter, circa 9 a.m. Central time. In the general filing center, a small arena adjacent to the main convention floor at the next-door Xcel Energy Center, there are five large television screens displaying the 24-hour cable news; all of them are doing Hurricane Gustav coverage, and there's the ambient noise of television-anchor panic pervading the room.

By the way, the general filing center, the room where you can go plug in your computer if your news organization did not rate its own space in the media center, is practically empty, and much larger than it was in Denver.  read more »

The bar is open in Media Pavilion 2, and Denver native Tony Gomez and his colleagues inform The Media Mob that they'll be serving drinks, popcorn and soda till 10 p.m., which means we can afford to wait to get started.

Loudon Wainwright III: 'Recovery'

Working the subgenre he likes to call "Country and Eastern," Westchester native, Peter Stuyvesant descendant and paterfamilias of the Wainwright gang (Rufus, Martha, et al) is in stores today with his new album, "Recovery." Coming off his strangely a propos soundtrack album for Knocked Up, this revisitation of the folkist's four-decade music career has him sounding "better than ever" according to Rolling Stone's Will Hermes, who writes: "You can imagine him singing 'Saw Your Name in the Paper' to his singer-songwriter offspring, Rufus and Martha — a confession about fame's dubious allure that now reads like a paternal warning.  read more »

It's probably inevitable that in these brutal times for news-gathering operations, a new lexicon would take hold to describe the baffling challenges of the industry.

One phrase we're hearing a lot lately is "platform agnostic."

The phrase seems to have been around for some time now actually, to judge from a Nexis search on the string of words. It appears first in the Nexis database in 1991, but in terms of annual use doesn't break the double digits until 1996, when the phrase appears 29 times. Then the word seems to have its big break, leaping from 64 uses in 1999 to 158 in 2000.  read more »

Have you been following the course of Sean Avery's career? Not with the National Hockey League but in his betweentimes internship at Vogue?

Well, Men's Vogue has. On their web site, Mr. Avery gets a byline for telling readers what it's like to be a hockey player who likes to play dress-up:

I don't watch sports. I don't read about sports. Generally, other than spending a lot of time in dressing rooms both at home and on the road, I don't hang out with other athletes. Over breakfast in hotels when the Rangers are on the road, I read the Style section in The New York Times.  read more »

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MONDAY, JUNE 2

Monday evening begins promisingly enough with a tribute to recently departed cinema god Sydney Pollack; Turner Classic Movies is spooling four of his films tonight. The Slender Thread airs at 8 p.m., starring Anne Bancroft and Sidney Poitier and a suicide hotline--for real! Then every two hours another one: Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, and Jeremiah Johnston.

If you only tune in for Tootsie, you'll be done in time to catch the premiere episode of Legally Blonde: The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods, in which contestants vie to play Reese Witherspoon's secretly-smart ditz lawyer on Broadway. On MTV, of course.  read more »

CBS has just announced plans to acquire online media company, CNET, in a deal worth $1.8 billion.

The press release says: "The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide."

Most of you probably know CNET.com, the Web site that breaks news about online and tech industries.

They're also the purveyors of ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, mp3.com, CNET news.com, UrbanBaby, CHOW, Search.com, BNET, MySimon and TechRepublic.

Full press release after the jump, and thanks to PaidContent.org, where we first read the news (you can find some more analysis of the deal there, and we'll come back to this when we've had a chance to think it through a bit).  read more »

In the course of promoting her latest movie, Iron Man, Gwyneth Paltrow has been seen in at least three incredibly short dresses.  read more »

So now we know what Matt Drudge was talking about: Tim Arango at the Times is reporting that CBS "has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its newsgathering operations to CNN," a report sourced to "two executives briefed on the matter."

This is something CNN has talked about with other networks in the past, Mr. Arango points out in the article, but the talks with CBS have been "revived and lately intensified."  read more »

Eliot Spitzer's 2006 campaign message: "Bring some passion back to Albany."

Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard thinks the World Trade Center might have been destroyed because it was too expensive to re-wire the building for class-A tenants. (PageSix.com)

An example of the kind of freedom satellite radio affords Howard Stern: His half-hour rant calling former sidekick Stuttering John a "no-talent ingrate." (PageSix.com)  read more »

Not only will David Shuster, the MSNBC talent who got into trouble over claiming the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea on the hustings, be returning to the network; his suspension will have lasted two weeks, and he'll be back in time for the NBC-sponsored debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Feb. 26. Broadcasting & Cable reports:  read more »

Greg Sargent at TalkingPointsMemo has confirmed with sources of his that the prime beef Hillary Clinton's campaign has had with the MSNBC network is the pugilistic behavior of Hardball's Chris Matthews.  read more »

After Hillary seemed to suggest that his suspension was not enough of a punishment for his pimp remark, MSNBC affirmed to Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo that David Shuster will not be fired.

"He remains on suspension indefinitely, but he will not be fired and will be returning to MSNBC," MSNBC director of communications Alana Russo told Sargent, who then speculates (pretty plausibly, we think) what it all means:  read more »

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Vanity Fair just announced that they are planning to cancel their annual Oscars after-party.

Here's the entire announcement, as posted on VF Daily this afternoon:

After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party. We want to congratulate all of this year’s nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year.

In the mundane setting of its morning Gossip Round-Up, Gawker blogger Joshua Stein announced this morning that he really is leaving the site this time.

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Legendary novelist and editor Toni Morrison's endorsement of Barack Obama is obviously not significant for her ability to move voters at the polls, which is not proven and probably not likely to be proven. But given her perceived attachment to the Clintons—Bill, she famously once called America's first black president; and Hillary she has been close to in the past—we thought it worth printing in full the letter of endorsement she sent to the Illinois senator, as released by the Obama campaign. Follow the jump to read it.  read more »

The biggest surprise during this morning's announcement of nominees for the 2007 Academy Awards was that they were able to find someone—Kathy Bates, "a good friend of the Academy"—who was willing to risk the ire of the striking writers by participating. Cate Blanchett, the new Meryl Streep, garnered nominations for playing Queen Elizabeth and Bob Dylan. Also, remember Michael Clayton? The Academy does! Nor was sentimental indie favorite Juno shut out.  read more »

Chris Matthews addresses criticism of his recent statements about Hillary Clinton's career earlier today on his cable news show, Hardball.

And here is the comment that started it all:

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles beat out that weird Golden Globes whatever-it-was in last night's ratings. (The Hollywood Reporter)

James Wolcott signed a two-book deal with Doubleday. One is for a memoir of New York in the 1970's, the other is a collection of his writing. (Publishers Weekly)

Margaret Atwood just delivered her first manuscript in five years; it's untitled. (CBC)

There was some shuffling that, deep down, involves More and Marie-Claire. We'll figure it out off-hours. (Eat the Press)

There is something kind of unseemly about Esquire's stoutly promotional cover-spread advising men to shop at Victoria's Secret. (Jeff Bercovici)

Rachel Sklar has devoted some serious pixels to the ongoing Maureen Dowd dateline debate; it's a good place to catch up. (Eat the Press)

Former New York Times executive editor Howell "Change Agent" Raines will write a media column for Portfolio. (Howard Kurtz)

And here's why, for now at least, we are calling this new daily end-of-day round-up what we're calling it.

Our friend and sister-wife (via Observer blog The Media Mob) John Koblin was out in Soho last night and files this report:

At a little after 8 p.m. last night, the 88-year old Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau strolled into Balthazar.

If you tried to get a table at that time you were told there was a 90-minute wait. But not Mr. Morgenthau, who model-stomped deliberately up to the hostess stand and flashed open his wallet to show his ID. He was immediately ushered to a table.  read more »

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The National Book Foundation has released videos from the National Book Awards (hosted by Fran Liebowitz!) Here's Fran introducing Hours novelist Michael Cunningham, who presents an award to Joan Didion after introducing her with a little speech. Afterwards you can go watch your Chris Crocker or Jacob Lodwick video or whatever. Merry stinkin' Christmas, ingrates!

A reader just sent us this screenshot. It's something we've noticed before on television--endless advertising for one of the biggest players in the credit crunch storyline, often opposite news programming detailing the downward spiral.

In a meeting yesterday, Jay Leno told his staff he'd continue to pay their salaries through Christmas, Variety reports.

Previously, Mr. Leno had been paying them on a week-by-week basis, which he'll continue to do after the holiday, he reportedly said.  read more »

Police have arrested a second man in connection with the hold-up at a Flatiron District private poker club that cost a New Jersey college professor and father his life.

The New York Post reports that Steven Perez, 21, of Tampa, Fla., was arrested last Saturday and is being held without bail in the hold-up.

A source who was at the club that night gave Spencer Morgan an eyewitness account of the evening's events, in which a shotgun dropped by one of the robbers apparently went off, fatally wounding 55-year-old Frank DeSena in the chest.

The Post report cited a source saying it was not clear whether Mr. Perez is the 'triggerman' but that police believe he is one of three suspects in the hold-up caught on video surveillance cameras at the 'secret' poker club near 28th Street and Fifth Avenue.

From Spencer Morgan's account:

There was a guy in a yellow slicker who had been under a table with Mr. DeSena. He said that the man with the shotgun had been shaking, and the shotgun had slipped and dropped to the floor. When the gunman rushed to pick up the shotgun, it went off, and hit Mr. DeSena.

They waited: It took 20 minutes for the ambulance. Two of the club’s female waitresses were sobbing. People kept saying what a nice guy Mr. DeSena was. He would be taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he would be pronounced dead shortly before midnight. >> READ THE STORY

The hapless G train will be getting an extended run: According to The Brooklyn Papers, the MTA plans to extend G service south beyond its current terminus at Smith-9th Streets to Church Avenue.

The real question is whether the G will ever be "extended" to Continental Avenue on the other end, which is its official terminus but whither it rarely goes.

With No Country For Old Men's cinematic debut it was perhaps inevitable that bookstores would see a surge of popular interest in the already-popular work of Cormac McCarthy. And in the East Village, where the reading of novels is hardly the greatest danger posed to young men's virility, Cormac's doing double-time.

Click "Read More" for more of our annotated version of St. Mark's Bookshop's instore bestseller list.
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In Vogue's holiday issue, actress Penelope Cruz unloads on the paparazzi that fueled the story that she and U2's Bono were having an affair:  read more »

Novelist Fernanda Eberstadt has written into Max Abelson of our blog, The Real Estate, with some of her early memories of life on Park Avenue:

The most famous party my parents gave was in 1962. It was a costume party. They moved out all the furniture and brought in a reggae band, and Jacqueline Kennedy, who was then First Lady, came to the party, with a lot of Secret Service men, and everybody danced till dawn, when they were served bacon and eggs.  read more »

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Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress who is frequently confused soap-opera-fan-style with Carrie Bradshaw, the character she portrayed on HBO hit series Sex and the City, who was a writer and not a fashion designer anyway (and based on former Observer scribe Candace Bushnell, btw), has been rewarded for being the beneficiary of a fantastic wardrobe: she has her own fashion line!  read more »

OK, it's a rough day for New York society gossip. Park Avenue Peerage is off to India; A Socialite's Life has posted a Thanksgiving message that reminds us of a bad drag queen joke, and we've already visited David Patrick Columbia.

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Yawn. What? Right. Here's the gossip round-up for Nov. 23, 2008, Thanksgiving Friday and possibly the slowest news day ever.

An eight-months-pregnant Nicole Richie and her friend, the society disc jockeyess Samantha Ronson, volunteered at a Hollywood soup kitchen yesterday.  read more »

Former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True went on trial in Athens yesterday on charges she conspired over a decade ago to acquire for the museum an ancient gold funerary wreath.

After the Battle of Brooklyn: East River Incognita II "further examines [artist Duke Riley's] fascination with and exploration of maritime history and events around the waterways of New York City.  read more »

Jacques Steinberg had a nice bit of news in an otherwise unrewarding piece on cable network MSNBC the other day: Rosie O'Donnell was close to a deal to host a show on the network.

Then, last night at 7:06 p.m., O'Donnell posted the following to her blog:

msnbc
one hour
live
following keith olbermann

we were close to a deal
almost done
i let it slip in miami
causing panic on the studio end

well
what can u do

2day there is no deal
poof
my career as a pundit is over
b4 it began  read more »

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Robert Chambers, the 41-year-old who made headlines as a York Prep kid in the 80's when he was convicted of manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin, has been busted again.

According to the Manhattan District Attorney's office, he and 39-year-old Shawn Kovell had been the target of a three-month investigation after "citizen complaints" that they were selling drugs out of an apartment they shared on East 57th Street.

It looks like they've got him dead to rights, too: "The investigation utilized surveillance techniques and an undercover detective to purchase quantities of cocaine directly from Chambers and Kovell near and inside their residence," the D.A.'s office announced in a press release.

They were arrested last night on multiple counts of felony narcotics sales after police turned up drug paraphernalia including crack pipes and "packaging materials" in the apartment.

The 14 counts Mr. Chambers is charged with carry sentences ranging from three and a half to 30 years in prison each.

The district attorney described a "violent struggle" during the arrest and did not rule out further charges coming from those.

With Rupert Murdoch talking about taking The Wall Street Journals Web site free, Financial Times is girding its loins for battle.

The newspaper announced yesterday that later this month it will initiate a program that allows online readers to access 30 articles a month without registering as paying members of the site.

Presently most of its content requires a subscription.  read more »

From a New York point of view, the AP buried the lede here:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Here's something Madonna can really celebrate: a nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Madge joins heartland rocker John Mellencamp, the puckish rappers Beastie Boys and premier dance acts Donna Summer and Chic among the nine nominees for the hall.

(Even calling her Madge is like an acknowledgement of her non-New Yorkiness!) So we remember that she got her start at the Mudd Club and broke out of the crazy early-80's dance scene, but does anyone else?  read more »

Did you know The Plaza was turning 100 this coming month? Paul Anka knew! Matthew Broderick knew! They're both going to be on hand, apparently, to celebrate the momentous event. Once upon a time it was a lovely hotel your middle-class mother took you to for tea once a year (hey, Carmela! Welcome back!) Now it's a condominium you can't afford to live in. So break out the Grucci fireworks, the 12-foot birthday cake, and ... the Orchestra of St. Luke's!

Read the full press release after the jump.  read more »

It's hard to evaluate the news coming from Keith Kelly's Media Ink column in The New York Post about Conde Nast chief Si Newhouse's Wednesday meeting with Joanne Lipman, editrix of Portfolio.

The splashy $100 million project is the object of some Schadenfreude, though the Schaden-part has always been difficult to pin down.  read more »

Minutes after Times spokespersons had confirmed published reports the company was set to stop charging readers for access to parts of its Web site, the online version of the newspaper published an article by its own media reporter, Richard Perez-Pena, in which Times brass explained the move.

Much of the lead of the article was devoted to vindicating the Times' decision exactly two years ago to institute a paywall for access to its 23 news and opinion columnists' work, as well as to much of the Times' archived news material.  read more »