Press Clips: RELEASE THE IACRACKEN! (or: Newsweek/Daily Beast Merger Rumored, Again)

?ARISE, DAILY NEWS BEAST OF THE WEEK! Press Clips, Day 20, I'm Somehow Writing About The Observer Again edition, right here:

THE DAILY BROWN WEEK BEAST: Nick Summers at the New York Observer has just reported that the Newsweek and The Daily Beast merger is happening (again). I guess they hammered out "the pre-nup." Nobody can really tell you what this "means" right now, so don't listen if they try to. The only thing this means right now is that -- despite the (now disclosed!) fact that Summers used to work for Newsweek -- if this turns out to be true, Summers' has more than delivered with an epic scoop for the Observer. Yes Kyle Pope, it's quite nice, and that disclosure wasn't too hard now, was it? For the moment, breath held, except for a premature congrats to the sad soul who is about to get this "completely thankless...hopeless job," (Tina Brown?) and a premature congrats to Summers: given the signs of all things, he's probably correct.

?VICE Gets Strung Out Over Wired's Breast Cover. The distinguished editorial employees of VICE have somehow yet to smoke their long-term memories today, as someone was cognizent enough to recall that this month's issue of Wired looks exactly like the cover of a 2003 issue of VICE. The peak of their charming, trenchant take on the matter? "Lastly, our model's cleavage is way better for titty-fucking. All smushed together and ready to go, where Wired's model has a canyon (relatively speaking) of flesh between her floppy bazongas." It's never not disappointing that they have yet to devote further resources to media reporting and analysis, a space they are clearly more than primed to get into.

Keller Skelter: New York Times executive editor Bill Keller doesn't like it when reporters are obsessed with the minutiae of his newsroom, Tom Scocca reports. He called those who do "oxpeckers." It might be predictable to point out that some of the most senior and famed reporters on staff at the New York Times actually do this, but, well, there it goes.

Mawhoo To Loosen Grip? If what Edmund Lee at Ad Age, Kara Swisher at All Things D, and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch have all reported to some extent is true, eegh. If they happen, they don't appear to be editorial layoffs, but they're layoffs nonetheless. Takeaway: a once layoff-immune gig looks that way no more.

The Scorched Earth Approach to Your Readership, by Joel Johnson. I'm not sure exactly what triggered Johnson's raging screed against his readers, but whatever it is only serves as more evidence that everyone who doesn't work at a tech blog has it easy. Those people -- as in, their readers -- are categorically insane. That said, "you dumb, cruel, entitled, tunneled vision shit eaters" is exactly how I feel -- and I suspect, most bloggers feel -- about the majority of their commenters. No, not you, but the other commenters. Sorry. It's true.

Linked In. A Miami Herald writer discovers that people pay other people to link to them. It's easy to laugh at the naivety of the piece, but....well, no. Nothing more than that. Information economics are horrifying and widespread. It's a truth people should just get used to.

Glenn Beck vs. The Jews. If he were any more Goyim, he'd be a jar of Hellmann's. I'm just surprised Glenn Beck even knows who George Soros is.

The New Media Ethics: Hamilton is right.

[Full Disclosure: I used to work with Hamilton Nolan at Gawker. I've had beers with him two or three times, and saw him at the Christmas party. I've been to Miami before but never read the Herald, and I'd never pay someone to link me, but I'd consider paying someone to un-link me if I ever ran for office, which I won't. Oh, Hamilton once wrote for Runnin' Scared. Forgot about that. Gawker is owned by Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, who Joel Johnson wrote for, and Johnson also wrote for The Awl once, which Hamilton and I have both written for, and I can't imagine any of the three of us were paid for it, but Johnson's the only one of us who could ask for the money, anyway. I'm a Jew, not really a practicing one, but I'm certainly guilted by my parents like one. I eat mayonnaise sometimes. I generally think Glenn Beck is a penis and would not pay for Fox News if I didn't have to. I didn't know what the word "oxpecker" meant until today, and I once subscribed to the New York Times until it kept getting stolen and I canceled it. Those things should come with dye packs. I've been drunk on VICE's tab a bunch of times. I've never been denied entry into Monkey Bar, but that's also because I've never been, because I really don't think Graydon Carter needs any more scratch than he has. Also, I had miso soup for lunch today, and it was pretty good. There was no mayonnaise in it.]

[fkamer@villagevoice.com | On Twitter | (Actual) Disclosures]

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The CIA Isn't Cool with CIA Agents Talking to The Press

?Imagine being a super-secret spy for the CIA and having something you think is in the best interests of the American people that you know, that they don't. What to do? Call a reporter! Looks like the CIA isn't too cool with this kind of thing.

Jeff Stein at the Washington Post reports that CIA Director Leon Panetta is pissed. Specifically, he is pissed about press leaks:

"When information about our intelligence, our people, or our operations appears in the media, it does incredible damage to our nation's security and our ability to do our job of protecting the nation," Panetta's agency-wide message said. "More importantly, it could jeopardize lives. For this reason, such leaks cannot be tolerated."

And by "cannot be tolerated" he means "we will make your ass disappear faster than that pizza we got for the office that one night we all stayed late." Of course, some people -- like many people who aren't the CIA, and probably a few who are -- think certain leaks are inherently good, but those people will probably be made to disappear, too. In many cases, it almost feels as if Panetta is going after the press themselves!

That said, we've got an announcement to make: a source within the CIA recently revealed to The Village Voice and RunninScared.com that a massive umbrella conspiracy enveloping every branch of government, the drug trade of most South American nations, and the fourth decedent of the horse from Mr. Ed has finally been uncovered as a compl

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]

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Press clips: no Robert Thomson behead anyone this week, please

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?VICTORY! for a New York City newspaper, while the rest are going down, down, in an earlier round. A new, familiar byline at New York's Vulture, and a new, familiar byline at AgencySpy. The iPad is still just The iPad, but Twitter is definitely still Twitter. Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast is still Howard Kurtz. Let's all hack the New Yorker! Press Clips, Day 15, Late and Mostly Scandal-Free Edition, right here.

Robert Thomson Is Drinking Out of His Pimp Goblet Today: All of the New York City daily newspapers reported drops in circulation. Except for one. Via Crain's:

The exception to the downward trend, once again, is The Wall Street Journal, the No. 1 paper in terms of circulation, which reported a 1.8% climb in weekday sales, to 2.06 million copies. The News Corp.-owned paper edged out longtime frontrunner USA Today a year ago.

And that's what a $60M investment of Rupert Murdoch's Na'vi Blood Money will get you, I guess. Sources have yet to tell us that the following sounds will be coming out of WSJ executive editor Thomson's office all week:

In the event he starts to get carried away, someone should probably let Thomson know that Sulzburger's head on a pole will not get him past the 2% climb threshold.

Byline Vulture: This video of Kanye West playing Brooklyn Bowl is kind of wonderful.?So is the byline on the post, which might ring a bell for those who remember back when Gawker Media opened up shop on the relatively-short-lived-and-now-zombified Idolator, as Brian Raftery was one of the site's two launch editors (along with Maura Johnston, who has contributed to the Village Voice). I didn't email, but it looks as though Raftery may be filling in the vacancy at Vulture left by Edith Zimmerman, who recently jumped ship to go launch The Awl's new ladysite, The Hairpin.

Byline Spy: AgencySpy has?classically?been the most underrated and unfairly ignored of the MediaBistro blog stable, if there is such a thing. It's never better than when they're terrorizing the ad agency world and burning bridges to hell and back. The last guy to do that, Matt Van Hoven, sold out and went to work for an ad agency, which many are still convinced is probably just a subversive plot to murder him. For a while, Van Hoven operated under a pseudonym, a blogging tradition of yore that's fun on two ends: (1) being endlessly more capable of acting as a destructive force than a blog with the accountability of real bylines -- which is obviously inherently unethical, but whatever, it's more fun -- and (2) It gives people like me the game of figuring out who these people are! Which we will. But in the mean time, please enjoy this welcome message from the new anonymous AgencySpy blogger, who uses the words "sup," "biz," "shenanigans," "let's get this party started," and a picture of Chuck Norris in his introductory post. I hope -- for his sake -- that this is all in genius humor. I don't think it is.

This will be ugly.

Kurtz and The Beast: The honeymoon is either officially over, or will never end. The lightening-fast pace of blogging doesn't seem to have affected the Daily Beast's star?Washington Post defector Howard Kurtz, as he's posting thrice-paginated columns for The Beast about the White House's press strategy when he wasn't rubbing elbows with Frank Rich on CNN this weekend. "Old Dog/New Tricks" and "Birds of a Feather" cliches respectively applicable.

This will be ugly.

You-Could've-Guessed-It Media Trivia of the Day: The New York Times has more Twitter followers than print subscribers. Thanks Social Times, but, please: wake everyone up when they have more followers than @THE_REAL_SHAQ. "On my way to Barbara square it's statue time," indeed.

WNYC Will Help You Steal Small Dogs If You Donate To Them: No, truly. Their little videos about what you get when you give them money are wonderful.

Also, if you give them $100, Brian Lehrer will personally deliver your Juan Williams Voodoo Doll.

iPadded Numbers: Choire Sicha at The Awl wants to know what the other 149 people who do not read Wired on their iPads are doing with their iPads. The answer? Either making fake covers for the New York Post or playing Angry Birds on a large iPhone. Shit, I got my money's worth.

Hack The New Yorker: A Contest: The New York Observer's Nate Freeman is not afraid to be not-servicey, as he details how others have hacked the New Yorker's website and yet he has not had crazy luck. If you know how to do this and want to write us a step-by-step guide, I have no money in our editorial budget for you but I'll figure out a way to work you into a New York Post cover. Also, don't forget, you can get your (advertorial free!) complimentary six-month subscription to the Observer right here.

It's Awl Good: If you made it this far, then you've no doubt already read David Carr's Media Equation column in the New York Times this week about The Awl. [Full Disclosure! I've written for those guys before.] It's filled with very nice, well-deserved praise for the site. It is also -- as some people have noticed but not really written -- an article that illustrates a kind of Editorial Utopia in the third paragraph that neglects to inform anyone who wants to cop The Awl's trajectory the fact that the site has relied very heavily on unpaid contributions, which kind of complicates said narrative! Somehow, a website called Bygone?Bureau?managed to get this fact in, while the New York Times did not. You know who is a really interesting -- and unspoken-for -- character in all of this? A young woman behind the scenes of some of The Awl's larger ad campaigns from the advertiser's side, Julie Fredrickson, whose love for The Awl (and other New York-based blogs) and knowledge of the people who read them has ended up securing some decent coin for them. Like the Ann Taylor ad campaign Carr attributes The Hairpin's startup financing to. Or the Equinox ad campaign that ran last Winter -- if memory serves correctly, the first sponsored posts to run on the site -- before it, when Fredrickson was with the schmancy Manhattan gym running social media endeavors (among other duties). It takes a village? Or something!

That's it! Press Clips readers, you may not be Robert Thomson, but you're Princes of the Universe in your own right. Thank you for your continued support:

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]

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