Gawker: Valleywag

It's Spy vs. Spy as Microsoft Mounts Whisper Campaign Against Google

Ryan Tate — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:07:21 EDT

It's one thing for little nonprofit groups like Consumer Watchdog to hound Google for how it handles privacy and competitors. Much trickier for the company: A large corporation like Microsoft, can afford to whisper in reporters' ears, individually.

It's easy to miss this aside in today's New York Times story about Google's lobbying, which has Microsoft flacks collecting intelligence on closed-door Google presentations, so they could disseminate counter-propaganda in real time:

Microsoft declines to comment on its archrival's efforts. But during Mr. Wagner's presentation to journalists in San Francisco this month, Microsoft P.R. handlers, who had learned the gist of the presentation, were e-mailing reporters offering rebuttals of Google's arguments. Mr. Wagner faced a barrage of pointed questions.

See: The Silicon Valley press corps can ask tough question of tech companies; they just need said questions spoon-fed, via iPhone.

(Pic by Hamed Masoumi)

How Censorship Finally Helped Wikipedia's Co-Founder

Ryan Tate — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:43:26 EDT

Jimmy Wales had an image problem. After bending his online encyclopedia's rules for a lover and, allegedly, for a benefactor, the Wikipedia co-founder faced rebuke and nearly lost his job. Then the New York Times made him a hero.

How did breaking the rules finally net Wales some good press? The Times disclosed Sunday that Wikipedia helped actively suppress news that a Times journalist had been captured in Afghanistan. If the capture was widely publicized, the paper worried, the reporter would be more valuable to his captors.

Wikipedia editors actively froze out edits reporting the capture, and allowed Timesmen to do the same. The reporter eventually escaped. The ethics of the censorship are debatable. The benefits to Wales are not: The Times depicts him leading the suppression effort, even though a woman named Sue Gardner actually runs Wikipedia. Wales thus re-cements his image as the face of Wikipedia and gets another round of lucrative speaking engagements (he has historically pocketed the fees).

Better still for Wales, he can point his critics to the Times situation as an example of how Wikipedia rules should not be absolute. When you're busy saving journalists, who cares if you bend the rules for some nice young ladies while you're at it?

(Pic by Re: Publica)

How You Could Have Saved Michael Jackson

Ryan Tate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:40:05 EDT

The Twitterati were obsessed with the less brilliant Michael Jackson: His most brain-dead lyrics, his worst video moments and his awful neglect at the hands of...you!

New York's Jessica Coen knew how Michael Jackson would have wanted to be remembered.

ABC News' Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent, was basically just watching Michael Jackson videos all day Friday.

Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow blamed Americans for killing Michael Jackson by not paying enough attention to him, and thus never learning that they were paying way too much attention to him.

This would be Kurt Andersen's moment, if only he'd pursued his morbid dream.

BlackBook's Tricia Romano made her own fun.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

How MySpace Humiliates Fired Workers

Ryan Tate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:51:48 EDT

MySpace's CEO purportedly keeps his body pretty tight. But he should lay off the weight obsession at work. Owen Van Natta said MySpace was "bloated" when he laid off 400 workers; now they're reportedly called "fat" to their faces.

Says TechCrunch:

MySpace has been holding a number of meetings for staff... during which they've referred to the recently terminated employees as "fat". Unfortunately, some of these "fatty" employees have been present at these very meetings - the company has kept a number of terminated employees onboard through the duration of their contract...

And if that weren't bad enough, workers' final paychecks will bounce, incurring a bank fee and possible overdrafts, since MySpace screwed up its calculations and put a stop payment on the drafts. Hopefully you didn't deposit yours too quickly!

It's a good thing MySpace's business doesn't involve brokering sensitive relationships or allowing people to communicate clearly with one another.

Steven Brill Fails at Customer Service, Too

Ryan Tate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:35:07 EDT

Airport-security gimmick Clear is just the latest example of Steven Brill failing investors (see also: Brill's Content, Inside.com, etc. etc.). But this time the mogul is just stone-cold ripping off customers, too, pocketing their half-used $200 membership fees.

It's not that Clear is bankrupt; according to a FAQ on the company website, it's not seeking legal protection from creditors. It's just that right now "Verified Identity Pass, Inc. cannot issue refunds due to the company's financial condition."

Translation: If you think you're legally owed a refund, we're going to make you sue, as we have a "senior creditor" to worry about.

Of course, Clear customers were already used to poor treatment from the company; as software entrepreneur Joel Spolsky points out, Clear required customers undergo detailed background checks, even though this was a pointless waste of time, since the customers ended up having to go through the same security inspection as everyone else (after they cut to the front of the line, the reward for paying $200/year).

Right about now the customers are wishing they had run some background checks of their own. Brill, who left the company in February, says customer data submitted to the company is safe. Probably.

The Deadly Side (For Real) of Twitter

Ryan Tate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:17:14 EDT

Twitter won't just give you a black eye; as Flavia Maria Boricea found out, Twitter also kills.

The Romanian teen was way, way too addicted to the microblogging service. Not only was she using it in the bath, she ran down her laptop battery doing so, and then tried to plug the thing into the wall. Reports the Croatian Times:

Flavia's mother... said her daughter had tried to plug the power into the socket with wet hands after the battery had died as she used the device for a lengthy period in her home in Brasov, central Romania... Her only injury was a burn mark on her hand.

The lesson, of course, is to always dry your hands before connecting your electrical Twitter device to a power source and bringing it into a tub of water.

(Pic via ebertek on Flickr)

Michael Jackson Traffic Melts Entire Internet

Ryan Tate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:32:27 EDT

Any doubts about Michael Jackson's megastardom should have ended after news of the singer's death tripped up Google and crashed AOL Instant Messenger, Wikipedia, TMZ and, of course, Twitter. A survey of the epic traffic:

Leading news websites saw traffic surge to 4.2 million visitors per minute from around 2.75 million visitors per minute, according to Akamai.
CNN's traffic grew fivefold in one hour and the site clocked 20 million pageviews.
Twitter had its biggest spike in traffic, to 5,000 tweets per second, since Barack Obama's election as president, according to co-founder Biz Stone.
Facebook status updates tripled.
AOL Instant Messenger went down for 40 minutes.
TMZ, which broke the news of Jackson's death, crashed several times amid a surge of traffic.
The LA Times, which got early confirmation of the death, went down, as well.
For about half an hour, Michael Jackson queries weren't working on Google News.
Wikipedia froze amid an edit war on Jackson's page.

Twitter Doesn't Care About Iran Anymore

The Cajun Boy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:27:40 EDT

Well it's taken almost two weeks, but it looks as though The Week America Died is about to knock "#iranelection" out of the top ten Twitter trending topics.

I just caught this screengrab off of my Twitter homepage at 9:16PM eastern time. What could possibly knock it off? Another celebrity death? Or another fake death perhaps, like the Jeff Goldblum dead in New Zealand rumor? Anyone down for starting a Steve Guttenberg death rumor with me?

UPDATE: Oh snap! Our own Richard Blakeley just snapped this screengrab on his Twitter homepage, and it loooks as though, if only for a moment, #iranelection has been knocked out of the top ten.

The Still Re-Birth of Julia Allison

Ryan Tate — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:10:28 EDT

Julia Allison no longer has her last proper job, at Time Out New York. Her reality show fizzled; a business partner ditched her. The archetypal protocelebrity was reduced to shilling for an amusement park. Time for a rebirth, via hair.

Yes, it's red. And yes, Allison assures us, it's permanent. As permanent, at least, as her two-year stint as a Time Out New York dating columnist (the magazine now brags of its "Julia-free Sex & Dating section") or her overpaid gig as a Star "editor at large" ("an embarrassment" one editor later sneered).

The fameball is not without her assets; she retains her "lifecasting" Web startup, NonSociety, and a deal with NBC's obscure digital channel New York Nonstop, which gives Allison a toehold into the glamorous world of cable-news punditry (she was on MSNBC just this past Sunday).

But as Allison's fellow protocelebs can attest, fameballing in the midst or a recession and reality TV glut isn't what it used to be. And her business grossed just $60,000 last year, before things got really bad.

So while Allison might say (as she did in a recent instant message to us) "I feel like I haven't been on Gawker in eight weeks; it's making me feel happy / irrelevant" and ask if she's "blacklisted," her real problem isn't grabbing attention. It's making a living, and thus a life, out of it.

UPDATE: Regarding the hair, a tipster adds:

Julia was broadcasting for some really random network from a soccer event at Hudson Terrace last night. While she was still sporting that HIDEOUS one piece (it looked Aladdin-inspired) she's wearing in the pic on Gawker, her new 'do was covered by a huge headband. The reason? Apparently the dye turned BRIGHT RED near her scalp over the course of the day, leaving her with noticeably two-toned hair. It looked entirely heinous. In typical Julia Allison fashion, she was bitching very, very loudly about it. She obviously mentioned that it was Anne Hathaway's colorist that did the job so she "should have known better." Yeah, ok, Julia.

Another choice remark: "I was trying to look like Lindsay Lohan but it ended up like the fifth element!!!"

UPDATE 2: Allison wrote in to say her decision to part ways with Time Out was mutual and that she hadn't "lost" her job, as we had it, or "complained" about not being on Gawker.

How Google's Thirst for Power Might Bury San Francisco in Rubble

Ryan Tate — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:00:52 EDT

With its many servers, Google devours electricity. And with search queries growing by 50%, it's only getting hungrier. The solution? Drill a two-mile-deep hole in the Earth, extracting geothermal energy and possibly destroying San Francisco with a terrible earthquake.

The AltaRock project north of San Francisco is hardly Google's first foray into electricity production; the company has hydroelectric projects scattered across the country.

But AltaRock is special, what with its capacity for triggering deadly seismic activities. With investors like Google, Kleiner Perkins and the federal government, it's no wonder the company has, according to the New York Times, denied an inconvenient truth: that a similar geothermal project in Basel, Switzerland "set off an earthquake, shaking and damaging buildings and terrifying many" in December 2006, according to Swiss government seismologists cited by the Times.

And, yes, it could happen here:

Seismologists have long known that human activities can trigger quakes, but they say the science is not developed enough to say for certain what will or will not set off a major temblor.

It's been easy for politicians to convince themselves that what's good for Google — a high-paying employer that doesn't make its money polluting — is good for their communities. That's an assumption they may have to shake off.

[Times]

How the Crescent City Revealed Wired's Plagiarizing Editor

Ryan Tate — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:09:23 EDT

How did the Virginia Quarterly Review connect Chris Anderson's book to Wikipedia, thus unraveling a plagiarism scandal? A strange use of parentheses.

Anderson referred to a certain town as "Crescent City (New Orleans)," and the reference caught VQR's Waldo Jaquith, who was reviewing Free, off guard. As he told Fishbowl NY:

At first, I was thrown off. I thought that maybe that before it was called New Orleans it was called Crescent City and I was mad at myself for not knowing that.

But Wikipedia's entry for New Orleans only had Crescent City as a nickname, not as the original monicker for the town. So Jaquith ran a Google search using some of Anderson's specific language and — boom! — up came a Wikipedia article describing the origin of the term "Free Lunch," which Anderson had obviously copied from.

I figured that what had happened was that whoever had written it wanted to be cute and call it Crescent City, but also wanted to link to the New Orleans article [on Wikipedia]. So they put it in parentheses,

Then Jaquith remembered Anderson had once, in Free, weirdly put the word "currency" in quotes, so he ran that section through Google too, and found another chunk of text had been copied from the Web. The rest is history.

Anderson might be a plagiarist, but at least he has what poker players refer to as a "tell." And how appropriate, for the editor of Wired, that it's his reluctance to remove hyperlinks.

[Fishbowl NY]

(Pic by Pieter Baert)

iPhone Porn Makes Long-Awaited App Debut

Ryan Tate — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:14:03 EDT

It's been a full year since Time magazine dubbed porn "The iPhone's Next Frontier," and only now has an application publisher dared to distribute a truly adult application: An app called Hottest Girls was updated to include naked pictures.

The upgrade looks like a brazen publicity stunt; Apple told Time last year it would ban adult content from official applications. Assuming that position hasn't changed, Hottest Girls could soon be pulled from the app store and even, if Apple elects to do so, yanked from iPhones where it is now installed.

If it permitted to stay —Apple is now allowing NC-17 games, after all — expect a flurry of "innovation." While porn has long been available through the iPhone's Safari browser, publishers haven't even begun to explore the possibilities of being able to use the device's touch screen interface. Apple has the opportunity to change the world again; it just needs to seize it.

Facebook Tell-All Has Founders Banging Groupies in Bathroom Stalls

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:52:08 EDT

Ben Mezrich's forthcoming Facebook exposé was sold to film producers before it was even written. The Hollywood influence helps explain why the book answers such pressing questions as, "Who might the co-founders have conceivably boned, and where?"

Far be it from money-and-technology-obsessed Silicon Valley types to fixate on the fleshy trappings of wealth; they want to know the nitty-gritty details of how a market-leading social network was born. And indeed, both Boston magazine and the New York Times, which obtained galleys of the book, note that Accidental Billionaires doesn't tell the reader much about how the site was actually assembled; instead, lustier details — well, purported details — win out.

Luke O'Brien recapped one scene for Boston:

Zuckerberg himself remains distant, a robot in a fleece. How strange, then, to see this cipher getting freaky with a coed in a bathroom. Rendering Zuckerberg and [co-founder Eduardo] Saverin as campus studs, Mezrich shows them turning out groupies in adjacent stalls.

Zuckerberg is also shown being picked up by a Victoria Secret model at a party in San Francisco (a change from the book proposal we obtained last year, which had co-founder Eduardo Saverin with the model). The pair leave together. As both the Boston and the Times note, the scene is hard to swallow; Facebook had launched just months prior. Dweeby Zuckerberg already had groupies? O'Brien, who has himself dug into Facebook's past, wrote that Zuckerberg has "been dating the same girl since the site's early days" and that there's no evidence Facebook was created so Zuckerberg could score with women.

Even Mezrich doesn't sound too confident in the hook-up scenes. From Boston:

"I just told the story that I was told by multiple sources," Mezrich explains now. "More power to Mark if that's what really happened. ...I have a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg right now could date anybody he wants to. ...Mark has done some amazing things, and if having sex with a Victoria's Secret model is one of the things that he doesn't like to read about himself, I would be surprised."

In other words, if Zuckerberg should accept the tales because they're flattering. That was the stance the subjects of Mazerich's Burning Down the House seemed to take when it emerged much of that book — also turned into a movie — was fabricated. But, unlike those obscure college card sharks, Zuckerberg's ambitions extend far beyond silver screen notoriety, and the Facebook CEO is more likely to make a fuss. Indeed, his flacks have already declared that Mezrich's unreleased book sounds inaccurate. Somehow we doubt they'll leave it at that.

[Boston, Times]

Layoffs Rumored at Mrs. Google's Genetics Company

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:24:19 EDT

Genetics company 23AndMe can purportedly help you predict your health in decades to come, but we're hearing the three-year-old company can't even forecast its own near-term needs: A tipster tells us the company laid off seven employees.

"There was some talk about meeting 'aggressive sales targets' to get through next year," this person added, inmplying the company will quickly burn through the $13 million 23AndMe just raised from Sergey Brin and the company he co-founded, Google. Brin is married to 23AndMe's co-founder, Anne Wojcicki (pictured); 23AndMe also just leased office space from Google.

23AndMe is also in the process of raising another $11 million from other investors to close out its second round of financing. The company had a total of 30 employees, according to CrunchBase, but it's not clear how up-to-date that number is.

23AndMe didn't respond to a call and email seeking comment; presumably the startup is busy trying to get more money in the door. Time for more spit parties.

Do We Need a Restraining Order Against Josh Quittner?

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:00:13 EDT

We never imagined Josh Quittner would burn a previous Valleywag editor in effigy, but after seeing the video he's posted on Time.com, we wonder if we might need a restraining order.

As editor of the late Time Inc. title Business 2.0, Quittner once employed Valleywag emeritus Owen Thomas (as well as your current Valleywag). But somewhere along the way, Quittner soured on Thomas.

Thomas jumped to Valleywag and Business 2.0 folded. When Quittner landed at Fortune, Thomas wrote about Quittner's inflated title, covered Fortune's suspension of his blogging privileges, and quoted the Scrabulous-playing columnist saying he had "too much time on my hands."

Quittner seemed to take it personally. After jumping to Time, he used the magazine as his personal burn book, noting in January that a Sony virtual world wouldn't create an avatar "as fat as your average tech-gossip blogger."

Now Quittner's at it again, with a Sims 3 review in which he creates a "Loser" character named "Thomas Woodchuck" and burns him alive (see clip above). As several tipsters have noted, the resemblance between Woodchuck and Thomas can't be missed — nor can the creepiness of teaching his daughter to drown an enemy in the pool.

It seems early to get too alarmed; there are worse things than being called an "unredoubtable... woodchuck" in an anonymous comments, or killed virtually in a videogame. We're just a little surprised Time indulges Quittner's grudge — or that the reporter, after all this time, still holds it.

Facebook Backer Peter Thiel Wants You to Know Environmentalism Will Kill Us All

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:39:44 EDT

Peter Thiel's objectivism and anti-immigration donations were hard enough for Silicon Valley colleagues to stomach. This attack ad he helped fund against climate-change legislation should be even less popular among California's Tesla-driving, cleantech-obsessed venture capitalists.

Clarium Capital boss Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, where he sites on the board of directors. But Thiel, an outspoken campus conservative at Stanford, has had trouble reconciling his self-professed faith in science and innovation with the "fraud" he argues "major research is turning out to be."

So perhaps it's no surprise Thiel is eager to fight climate-change legislation grounded in "major research." He's a key backer of American Solutions for Winning the Future, Newt Ginrgrich's group to support oil drilling and coal mining. The political organization just produced a new attack ad to try and derail the Waxman-Markley climate change bill, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions and charge energy companies for exceeding them.

And boy is it terrifying! Maybe after all the bridges fall down, everyone's homes are foreclosed and millions of families starve, John Doerr can personally apologize to Thiel for trying to get rich off cap-and-trade.

The Case Against Chris Anderson

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:41:22 EDT

Chris Anderson's plagiarism scandal is still unfolding; Brooklyn writer Ed Champion has found instances where the Free author copied material he was supposed to be summarizing. But there was grumbling about Wired's editor long before his book scandal.

Anderson should be given his due for what he's accomplished with Wired. His magazine took home a general excellence prize at the latest National Magazine Awards, along with the prizes for design and best magazine section. It is a favorite of our own readers, and a formidable title.

But Wired is not without its problems, which Anderson is arguably too distracted to fully address. Examples:

Wired.com: A magazine obsessed with technology should have no trouble integrating its print and online editions, but by most accounts the two sides remain deeply divided at Wired, stunting the magazine's online strategy just as print readers increasingly jump online.

Joel Johnson's Boing Boing post is the definitive word on the matter, along with the comments underneath. But there's also history. After Condé Nast acquired Wired.com, Anderson initially ran it as a separate company. He once slammed its interface to bolster the print edition.

And, readership trends be damned, Anderson has made cuts to the online staff, twelve in November and an additional round in April (Condé Nast said only three staff were let go in April, but wouldn't tell us how many freelancers/permalancers/contractors were also cut).

UPDATE: As Anderson points out in an email to us, he does not run Wired.com. But integration is a two-way street, and Anderson at least shares responsibility for friction between the online and print sides, as described in the Johnson thread, and for their disparate strategies. And as his title's top editorial executive, Anderson is in a position to push for changes in the relationship between print and online.

Galavanting over advertising: Anderson makes an estimated $2 million a year giving around 50 speeches, according to numbers compiled by the New York Times. This lucrative circuit takes him to places like Oslo, Norway, where he recently lectured a gathering of marketers. The trips, we hear, do not sit well with Condé's publishing side.

Plagiarism: Anderson has said that, in lifting material off Wikipedia for Free, he simply forgot to convert some footnotes to in-line attributions within the body of the text. But even with attribution, he should have paraphrased the material or, failing that, used quote marks.

Books counter to the recessionary zeitgeist: Granted, the most useful books often demolish conventional wisdom. And successful authors often face swift backlash from New York's finicky media elite. But it's worth noting that Anderson's book Free is coming out at precisely the time many businesses are finding new ways to charge charge customers, rather than new ways to give things away.

Likewise, the sort of niche Web content one might have invested in after reading Anderson's last book, the Long Tail, is faltering amid the advertising downturn.

(Pic by Pop Tech 2008)

Apple's Frozen Board Needs a Reboot

Ryan Tate — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:14:07 EDT

A hospital officially confirmed Steve Jobs received a liver transplant there, and did so with Jobs' permission. Meaning everyone is talking about the Apple CEO's sickness, except Apple. The pressure on the company's paralyzed directors is, justifiably, mounting.

The deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal went so far as to call out individual board members on Twitter. "Gore, Jung, Schmidt, York, Levinson - where are you?" Alan Murray wrote. Yesterday, before the hospital confirmation, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera accused the directors of "dereliction of duty."

Like a hung computer operating system, Apple's board is neglecting pressing information-retrieval work. Data on the effectiveness of liver transplants for Jobs' condition is, at once, scant and unpromising. Yet some specific information about Jobs' condition would be useful in evaluating his prognosis, according to an anonymous surgeon's blog (see prior link, via).

The kindest and most generous characterization that can be made is that that the evidence for treating neuroendocrine tumors metastatic to the liver with liver transplantation is mixed at best.

But obviously Jobs' is recovering nicely if he's going back to work next week, right? Perhaps, but it's not clear how hard he'll be able to work; recall that Jobs may be working part-time, per a Journal report earlier this week. Or he might not. He might be already back to week, per an anonymous (read: probably spoon-fed by Apple) report from CNBC's Jim Goldman. Or he might not be returning until June 30.

It should go without saying, but apparently needs to be said: Apple shareholders deserve to know who is running Apple — and who will be running Apple a month from now.

Rob Corddry Sorry About the Ogling

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:49:11 EDT

A Daily Show host weirded himself out a little bit; a San Franciscan had pizza envy and Doree Shafrir discovered a yoga mat that automatically raises your blood pressure. The Twitterati were flabbergasted.

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry owned his creepiness.

The SFAppeal's Eve Batey rose above petty jealousy.

Amazon.com mailed former Observer hand Doree Shafrir a thinly-veiled serenity test.

The Daily Show's Miles Kahn was determined to make the Iran situation somehow funny.

Vice's Nick Douglas found inspiration in the DirecTV program guide.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Nikki Finke Did Not Make $15 Million Today

Gabriel Snyder — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:34:34 EDT

News broke earlier today that Nikki Finke had sold her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog to Jay Penske's Mail.com Media Corp. Now, fantastical numbers are being floated around about how much she got. Who would do a thing like that?

Finke's success at turning the thin gruel of studio press releases into high-drama gossip has always hinged on her ability to put herself into the middle of every story. Everything is "Toldja!" this and "I just spoke to" that. Take her coverage of this past weekend's executive shakeup at Paramount - Finke can only write in the first person:

4:20PM: As my sources predicted...
4:20PM: I just heard that
3:50PM UPDATE: I've just learned that my story today

She is a fantastic story-teller, but the greatest character Finke has created is herself: dogged scoop-monger with spies in every corner of every studio lot and agency suite. It's neat stuff, and puffing up one's persona puts her square in the tradition of columnists — well, good columnists — everywhere. But Deadline Hollywood Daily is a pretty small Internet property. Finke's 90,000 pageviews per day is less than a tenth of what Gawker (to pick a site at random) receives on a good day. So, when figures start getting thrown around about how she sold her blog for $15 million, it's easy to suspect that there's some self-mythmaking at work. (On that basis, Gawker.com alone would be worth $150 million. Hey, Nick! I want a raise!) To put that number in perspective, you would have a tough time finding anyone to pay $15 million for The Hollywood Reporter these days.

The deal was announced this morning via a press release that did not disclose the terms. But sometime this afternoon, PaidContent started the ball rolling with a report that Finke's deal was worth around $1 million, which even then was hedged. Citing just "sources," Rafat Ali wrote, "the sale amount was in 'seven figures' and there are some other incentive triggers built in. My bet is it is in very low seven figures." Though even that number was pretty jaw-dropping, it's pretty easy to imagine that there are incentives — Penske guarantees some salary to Finke and bonuses based on revenues or traffic — that could theoretically push the value of the deal up to seven figures.

But pretty soon, another zero was added. Jeff Bercovici got ahold of "a source with knowledge of the details" who put the pricetag at $10 million. He qualified that by noting that included "a long-term contract for Finke's services" — again suggesting that there is no way that Penske cut a big check to Finke today — but still struck a gobsmacked tone: "Who says you can't get rich blogging? Showbiz reporter extraordinaire Nikki Finke did — to the tune of eight figures."

Then Finke's arch-nemesis Sharon Waxman, who's got her own startup The Wrap to run, took up the story. Waxman said Finke "would not comment on the purchase price" and couldn't get ahold of Penske (a classic journo tell), but she got the scoop: Deadline Hollywood was sold for $14 million. And we weren't done yet. The Financial Times, without citing anyone, just stated flat-out that the deal is "worth about $15m."

Do I know that it's Finke spreading this absurd number around? No. She didn't reply to my email, which in my state of shock after seeing Waxman's story was, in its entirety "$14M? Really?" And when I told Waxman "I simply do not believe the $14M number" she stood by her report as the "real deal" and added a qualification that "the number is paid out in chunks, over years. And she has something like a 10-year contract." Her story, however, was a less explicit: "The individual knowledgeable about the purchase price said it would be paid out over several years. Normally such deals are tied to traffic or to revenue projections. Nonetheless, it is an exceedingly high price for a relatively small website."

And then she noted the most important part of why these ludicrous values are being tossed around the Internet: because it suits everyone's purposes to think that an industry gossip blog is worth major bucks. As Waxman noted: "It is a crazy-stupid number, in my opinion, but I'm very happy about it — I'm all for people paying stupid money for websites."

Finke no doubt received a nice little pay-day in her deal with Penske, but I would be willing to bet $15 million that whatever check he wrote today wasn't for anything close to $15 million.

The First Rule of Facebook Club Is...

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:13:23 EDT

Columbia Pictures is close to securing a director for its Facebook movie: David Fincher, of Fight Club fame, is reportedly in advanced talks. He'll be expected to move fast, before the market for a movie about the social network evaporates.

Columbia wants to start production by the end of the year, according to Variety, even though the book on which the film is based won't be released until July 14. So even assuming screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is working on advance manuscripts, he and his colleagues will need to move quickly.

The book is being done by admitted fabricator Ben Mezrich, so they should probably start with the fact-checking.

Wired Editor Steals Content for Book About How Content Should be Free

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:54:27 EDT

Chris Anderson has been caught lifting huge chunks out of Wikipedia for his book Free. The irony speaks for itself. But it's worth noting that the Wired editor's excuses are disconcertingly clichéd.

Like so many plagiarists before him, Anderson claims his act was unintentional. The Virginia Quarterly Review first reported his copying, and the explanation he gave us is that he and his editors decided to kill Free's footnotes "at the 11th hour;" though much attribution was restored within the body text, Wikipedia sources were not. This was due, according to the statement he sent to VQR, to "my inability to find a good citation format for web sources (I resisted the time stamp proposal)."

The upshot: Print authors like Mike Pollan were cited for "intellectual debts" Anderson owed them, while many of the forward-thinking, freely-contributing writers Anderson champions in the book got no attribution. As it happens, this is violates the copyright license governing Wikipedia.

Anderson told us, "this is my screwup... I feel terrible about it." The lifted work was "mostly historical asides and nothing central to the book." But history is hardly simple to document, and it would seem a book on free products would be significantly diminished without its passages on the famous "free lunch" of the 19th-century saloon, or the origin of the phrase "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

Like Maureen Dowd before him, Anderson promises to fix everything on the Web:

We'll have the original notes that were supposed to accompany the book, which includes all these, online by publication date

Update: Hyperion, Anderson's publisher, has gave a statement to VQR backing his mistake-not-plagiarism spin:

We are completely satisfied with Chris Anderson's response. It was an unfortunate mistake, and we are working with the author to correct these errors both in the electronic edition before it posts, and in all future editions of the book.

Jay Penske: The Hard-Partying Si Newhouse Wannabe of Bel Air

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:21:55 EDT

As the L.A. media otherwise disappers, Jay Penske is in empire-building mode. His hitherto low-profile Mail.com Media Corporation acquired Nikki Finke's showbiz blog and he backed Movieline in April. From what we've gleaned, the guy's a true Tinseltown dreamer.

Age: 30

Residence: The tony Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air.

Childhood: Born in New York, Penske went to high school in the Detroit suburbs, where he made the All-American Lacrosse team.

Family wealth: Father Roger Penske, a race car driver, owns Penske Corporation, which owns auto dealerships, leases trucks and makes various auto parts.

Love life: Has dated actresses Lara Flynn Boyle, Gina Gershon, Jordana Brewster (left) and Devon Aoki (with Penske, top of this post)

Personality: Says an associate, "He comes across as hugely elegant, massively sophisticated then as you get to know him, you see this slightly skeevy side, heavy drinker likes to party."

Business: Penske's Mail.com Media Corporation took a $35 million investment from Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in September; but we hear he's been having trouble finding properties to buy.

Sites: MMC runs Mail.com, an also-ran email portal whose heyday was in the 1990s; OnCars.com; our former Defamer colleagues' Movieline.com, celebrity news site HollywoodLife (he shut down HollywoodLife the magazine earlier this year) and now Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily. It also provides private-label sites to large organizations like sports teams and universities.

Dragon fetish: Penske also runs Dragon Books, a vanity boutique book store he runs a little Bel Air shopping center. Its placeholder website has been under "redesign" for more than two years. Then there's the Luczo Dragon Racing team, which he co-owns with the chairman of hard-drive maker Seagate Technologies.

Flops: Started Firefly Mobile, selling cell phones for kids, in 2002; by 2006 the company needed a restart.

So how much did he pay for Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood?: Seven figures, supposedly. PaidContent's Rafat Ali reports that his company had been in talks with Finke at a lower number. We heard from Finke's editor at the LA Weekly, Jill Stewart, that Finke was talking as if she was looking at "so much money" while she pondered the deal. Seven-figures sounds mighty high for DHD, but if Penske was having trouble making deals, maybe he was willing to overpay.

Aspirations: Penske is said desperately seeking entree to the fashion world, part of a broader quest for elegance. The same associate:

He wants to be a modern day Si Newhouse, he wants to have a glamourous publishing company.

We hope, then, he reconsiders the name Mail.com Media Corp. as the name of his flagship.

Return of Fake Steve Is a Vote of Confidence in Real Steve

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:02:30 EDT

Fake Steve Jobs is back. Dan Lyons, author of the piercingly funny satire blog, insists his return may be temporary. But he wouldn't be having this much fun with Jobs' illness if he still worried about the Apple CEO's death.

Sure, the tech writer has a forthcoming Newsweek blog to promote, named after his column at the weekly magazine. But his decision to lay off on Jobs wasn't a business decision so much as heartfelt concern about the Apple chief's health.

Now, as Fake Steve, Lyon's again cracking wise about favor-currying New York Times columnists begging to donate their livers, CNBC reporters bringing him lattes and, our personal favorite, having a gaunt Jobs brag that "I'm bench-pressing twice my body weight."

We're surprised his bosses at Newsweek are playing along; Lyons killed his personal blog after they demanded he remove a post calling Yahoo flacks "lying sacks of shit." Perhaps the subsequent problems at the magazine's print edition have opened Newsweek's eyes to the promotional power of the Web.

Sure enough, Lyons is already linkbaiting Gawker. Yes, Mr. Jobs, we'd be happy to show up at your house with a camera; just send along an access code to the front gate in case we need to use the restroom.

(Pic by Mark Coggins)

Tesla Gets $465 Million from Feds

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:00:45 EDT

The Department of Energy has made it official: Tesla Motors will, in fact, get $465 million in government loans to fund its Model S sedan. Chalk another one up for founder Elon Musk's improbable dream of a mass-market electric car.

Having amply documented Musk's shortcomings, we must give him his due: It was no small feat to convince the federal government of Tesla's financial viability, given his firm's recent struggles with liquidity and shakedown of customers for more money. It also must have been tricky to sell the Model S itself, given that Tesla has been showing off a "barely ambulatory" prototype, in the words of the Los Angeles Times.

And yet there's Tesla, mentioned in the same breath as automotive giants like Ford and Nissan as recipients of federal largesse. DOE convened a press conference confirming anonymously-sourced reports that the three companies will share an $8.5 billion stimulus fund for fuel-efficient vehicles.

Daimler's recent 10 percent stake in the company no doubt helped. Now Musk just has to build a $100 million powertrain factory and deliver an affordable electric sedan in less than two and a half years — or hope his new investors are as flexible about such deadlines as the rich California environmentalists who have funded him until now.

MySpace Exec Gets $500K to Sit at Home While 300 Laid Off

Ryan Tate — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:20:50 EDT

MySpace today confirmed the rumors it will lay off 300 international staff, on top of 400 U.S. layoffs last week. The social network also shoved aside purported co-founder Tom Anderson, who has a new gig: NOT going to the office.

For this, Anderson will earn $500,000 a year for two years, Business Insider hears. He also needs to be an "ambassador," for MySpace, which sounds very much like a non-job:

As a part of the deal, [MySpace CEO] Owen [Van Natta] and new News Corp digital media boss Jon Miller asked Tom to stop coming to the office..."He'll have little decision or involvement with the product," says a source.

Of course, Anderson will continue to be everyone's default MySpace friend and will presumably continue to show up for all kinds of exciting parties. He's just not getting tens of millions of dollars for it anymore, having been demoted to six figures, and won't be mucking with MySpace's "strategy" of being a zombie social network. An economy like this requires certain sacrifices.

Who Wants to Work for Nikki Finke?

John Cook — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:27:35 EDT

Nikke Finke has sold her web site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, to Jay Penske's Mail.com, and will be hiring a reporter in New York to expand the site's coverage. So get those résumés ready, kids.

The sale amount hasn't been disclosed. Penske, the son of car-racer-businessman Roger Penske, fancies himself an emerging new-media mogul—his company MMC recently revived Movieline.com and also owns Hollywoodlife.com and OnCars.com. With Finke added to his stable, he now has three partially overlapping entertainment-oriented sites as part of his "large and rapidly growing portal."

Penske was the co-founder of Firefly Mobile, which markets cell phones to kids. He also runs a rare and used bookstore, Dragon Books, and has followed in dad's footsteps with a racing team he co-owns with Seagate Technologies chairman Steve Luczo.

Finke told All Things D's Peter Kafka that she hadn't been looking to sell the site, which had been run by LA Weekly:

"I was not anxious to sell. I was not looking to sell," she says. "This was sort of a process where various people kind of wore me down…I'm very pleased with what happened. What wound up happening was nothing like the offers I was getting a year ago."

How demure! We wonder, though, why someone who wasn't looking to sell their web site would say she can't discuss Variety's attempt to purchase said web site "because of non-disclosure agreements I have with other interested parties," as she put it in March. And Jill Stewart, her editor at the LA Weekly, said Finke had been discussing the deal with Penske for at least two months. The terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but Stewart says Finke characterized it as "so much money" while she was deciding whether to make the jump.

In any case, more power to Finke for capitalizing on something she's worked extremely hard on over the years. And for keeping control of the site during her tenure at Village Voice Media's LA Weekly, which ought to be apoplectic over the fact that it let her develop a sale-able online property while she was in their employ without, it would seem, owning a piece of it.

Finke will have some new colleagues now in the MMC empire, including MovieLine's Stu VanAirsdale and Kyle Buchanan, neither of whom she seems to like very much. When the pair was at Gawker Media's Defamer, Finke took them to task for allegedly repeating bullshit rumors. When Gawker Media folded Defamer into Gawker and they decamped for MovieLine, she wrote, sympathetically: "Neither of those guys are journalists."

We wish Finke the best in this new phase of her career, and look forward to her expansion into her old stomping ground, New York. As for any potential complications that may arise from her new role as a general manager and editor in chief of a web site with staffers other than herself, we'll just quote Kafka, who approached the matter with just the right amount of delicacy:

That will be a tricky expansion to navigate: Recent history shows that blogs produced by dedicated/obsessive proprietors often stumble when they expand, in part because dedicated/obsessive proprietors may not be the best managers, and in part because it's tough to find people who want to, or are able to, work for dedicated/obsessive proprietors.

The Persistent Failure of Steven Brill

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:06:45 EDT

Steven Brill has a reputation for being a media wise man—a deep-thinking mogul who's always spotting the opportunities of The Future. Which is kind of strange, since the majority of his projects have been ostentatious failures.

Brill's latest company, "Clear," which was supposed to save rich people a half hour standing in security lines at airports in exchange for $128 a year, is shutting down. Let's do a quick and dirty balance sheet of Brill's successes and failures—keeping in mind that to do your best is all your mom really asks.

Successes

The American Lawyer: Brill launched what would become the nation's leading legal magazine in 1979. This is not an unqualified success, though, since American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media) is having problems right now.

Court TV: Brill created the network (now truTV) in 1991. After receiving a huge popularity boost from the OJ Simpson trial, it was sold it to Time Warner in 1997. For which Brill got a tidy sum.

Emily Brill: Steven's daughter, the ultimate narrator.

Failures

Brill's Content: Launched in 1998, this mediacentric mag was supposed to capitalize on America's insatiable thirst for news about the news! Turned out not that many people really care about the news about the news. Not enough to pay money, at least. Stopped publishing in 2001.

Contentville.com: A website selling "a variety of content ranging from thesis papers to ebooks." Closed in 2001.

Inside.com: The legendary media site that launched the careers of many top media reporters and also failed to make any money. The magazine version of Inside was merged with Brill's Content, and the website was part of a convoluted plan with Primedia to corner the market on media trade publications, but the whole thing was shuttered in 2001.

Clear: In the post-9/11 world, Brill noticed, airport security sure was a hassle. People would pay to be "verified" beforehand so they could breeze right through! Right? 165,000 people did, reportedly, and Clear raised more than $100 million from investors, but now it's dead, unable to afford to keep going.

Brill also wrote a couple books which didn't sell all that well and a column for Newsweek, but you can judge those on their own merits. He's not out of the game, though—his other ongoing venture is Journalism Online, a company that plans to help various magazines and newspapers charge readers for online access. Bet on it!
[Pic via]

Nikki Finke Does a Deal With Mail.com

Gabriel Snyder — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:37 EDT

Mail.com, which launched Movieline.com with the ex-Defamer crew, has purchased Nikki Finke's Deadlinehollywooddaily.com. [AllThingsD]

Getty Heir Giving Up on Feud Already!

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:00:48 EDT

The costume-wearing heir to the Getty oil fortune is back with a new entry on the "What's it like to be rich?" blog! Did Peter Getty bring the funk right to our face?? (No). Click through to find out!

We had high hopes that Peter Getty would give our "nakedly hateful" rant against him the full rich boy-thrashing, but alas. And alack. We're greeted with only diplomacy!

Seriously; we knew it wasn't going to be a stroll through the park sharing our thoughts about growing up rich at any time, least of all during a recession. But we had to introduce ourselves somehow. What was the winning move? If we point out the things we might have in common, we're patronizing. If we point out the differences, we're rubbing people's faces in it. If we mention any difficulties that accompany wealth, we're self-pitying. If we simply ignore the subject, we're Marie Antoinette.

Just address it frankly in our first post, we figured, get it out of the way and go for a few laughs, so that's what we tried. We expected a little initial hostility, but we have to admit we were surprised to see it go international this fast. A guillotine has yet to be erected in Union Square, so maybe we didn't bomb as drastically as all that.

At least any uncertainties about a subject for our second post were removed quickly enough. Still, we don't want this to become a series of writings about the last thing we wrote, so we'll try to move on. Join us if you like.

So you want us to "join" you, do you? Here is what we require to agree to your armistice:

One gilt-laden vessel of Pharaoh's ashes from the tombs of Egypt.
A procession of seventy peacocks, linked with a golden chain.
Spoons of the finest silver; forks of the finest copper.
A baronial estate on the highest San Franciscan hill, surrounded by Bengal tigers trained by the holiest Indian shamans.
Babes.

If you consent to our terms, signal by having your manservant set the Transamerica Pyramid alight, that its smoke may permeate the crisp airs of the continent and waft to us here, on the Eastern shore, borne upon the sweet winds of liberty. If we do not receive your signal in the next fortnight, it's on and poppin.
[Pic via]

Apple: Den of Secrets

The Cajun Boy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:36:53 EDT

It looks as though Apple did a good job angering the New York Times with the news that Steve Jobs recently underwent a liver transplant. The paper's Tuesday edition dedicates two pieces to Apple's renowned penchant for shadiness.

It's no new story that Apple goes to greater lengths to prevent outside leaks than just about any corporation in recent American history, but who knew that even employees working at Apple often have little knowledge of what's going on there?

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.

Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else.

"I was at the iPod launch," said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. "No one that I worked with saw that coming."

In a separate piece the Times dug into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Jobs' recent liver transplant, going so far as to insinuate that Jobs may have used his wealth and status to his advantage in order to obtain a new organ.

Waiting times for a liver vary in different parts of the country, and people who can afford to travel are free to go to a city or state with the shortest wait and bide their time until they have reached the top of the list, a donor dies and an organ becomes available. Indeed, some patients rent apartments or stay in hotels near a hospital and wait for the phone to ring. It may not seem fair, but it is not illegal.

It is even conceivable that someone could go to the time and expense of registering for the waiting lists of several transplant centers around the country.

"If you had access to a jet and had six hours to get anywhere in the country, you'd have a wide choice of programs," said Dr. Michael Porayko, the medical director of liver transplants at Vanderbilt University, one of the Tennessee centers that has said it did not treat Mr. Jobs.

This isn't the first time the Times has called out Apple for its secrecy. In a piece published last July titled "Apple's Culture of Secrecy," Joe Nocera took Apple and Jobs to the woodshed over their unwillingness to divulge information about Jobs' declining health, which he speculated was the result of another bout with cancer, with company shareholders at the time, saying that Jobs "needs to treat his shareholders with at least a modicum of respect." This provoked Jobs to call Nocera a "slime bucket" in the course of denying that he was again battling cancer.

Since then Apple appears content to feed stories to the tech reporters at the Wall Street Journal, as they did with the news of Jobs' liver transplant that broke on Saturday morning, as well as a story earlier in the month about how Jobs was "starving to death" during a months-long battle with a mystery illness that left him unable to digest proteins. Near the end of May the Journal also reported that Jobs was, according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "healthy" and "energetic" and that he "doesn't sound like he's sick."

So while the Times persistent reporting on these matters may appear to be them lashing out at an entity they feel has disrespected them, the questions that they raise are valid and beg to be addressed, though one can hardly blame Jobs for doing everything in his power to hold onto to life. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal appears content to run with whatever scraps get thrown to them by Apple flacks, seemingly unwilling to question any of it out of fear of pissing them off, or not really caring one way or the other about the validity of any information they get fed as long as their stories get picked up by other media outlets.

Finally, at the risk of sounding morbid, you know how it's often rumored that rulers of totalitarian states have died, most recently in Cuba and North Korea for example, but that government officials are keeping it a secret from the people they rule, going so far as to splice together old film and audio clips to create updated propaganda and employing lookalikes and body doubles for occasional public appearances? It's not that difficult to imagine Apple doing the same thing when Jobs eventually dies, which is well beyond creepy, but sadly something that doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.

Apple's Management Obsessed With Secrecy [New York Times]
A Transplant That Is Raising Many Questions [New York Times]

Google Games Bite Newspapers

Ryan Tate — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:48:00 EDT

Desperate for online advertising, newspapers have learned to aggressively optimize their content for Google. The result: more traffic. Junky traffic.

Readers tend to spend gobs and gobs of time on newspaper sites. Indeed, their level of engagement has been print journalism's strongest asset online, but that's changing: According to data from Nielsen Online, readers are spending less time on top newspaper websites, including six minutes less per month at Washingtonpost.com, one minute less per month at USAToday.com and a minute and a half less per month at NYTimes.com.

That's a natural consequence of deriving new traffic growth from a Search Engine Optimization staff, as we've heard anecdotally is happening at many papers. The count of unique users goes up, while the value of each reader for advertisers goes down.

And when the likes of Huffington Post comes to town with a local section — HuffPo launched in New York Monday — it becomes that much harder to convince advertisers you have a special relationship with the locals.

The ideal strategy for newspapers would be to hold the local audience while cultivating new niches likely to be a lucrative as the online ad market grows more sophisticated. Unfortunately, there's hardly a newspaper in the country that can afford to take its sweet time.

Lesbians Really Dig Kurt Andersen

Ryan Tate — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:03:46 EDT

All lesbians are Midwesterners who cotton to Kurt Andersen; all Apple copywriters should fear a Steve Jobs tantrum; and all people with cameras are unpaid Associated Press stringers. For the Twitterati, Monday was absolutely something.

The lesbians just love Kurt Andersen, according to Kurt Andersen.

The Associated Press is still mad as hell at the internet, and isn't going to take it any more, but in the meantime Lauren McCullough would like the internet to please send free content kthxbai.

Joining the day's crowdsourcing trend, the New York Times' Brian Stelter asked for fact-checking help.

Ryan Block of gdgt found some slipping standards at a Steve Jobs-less Apple.

The Times' Jennifer 8. Lee found an ethical issue with her coworker's choice of Twitter application.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Tesla CEO: Daimler Won't Let You Fire Me

Ryan Tate — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:44:07 EDT

Elon Musk posted a lengthy blog entry slamming his CEO predecessor, Martin Eberhard. Ostensibly, Musk is just defending himself against Eberhard's recently-filed lawsuit. But enemies of Musk take note: If Tesla wants to keep Daimler's money, it must keep Musk.

At least, that's the way Musk is telling it:

Given that Daimler prides itself on integrity and conducted exhaustive due diligence, they would not have insisted that I remain CEO as a condition of the deal if Eberhard's attacks had merit.

Daimler's "cash infusion" (Musk's word) should be crucial to Musk's electric car company; just before the money came in we reported Tesla was running on fumes after nearly running out of cash last fall. So Musk will be awfully hard to oust if the Daimler deal really does lock him as CEO, if only because Tesla needs all the liquidity it can get.

Musk is said to have kept cash tight at PayPal to advance his control of the company; the Daimler clause accomplishes a similar goal at Tesla, albeit by different means. It would appear Musk is in the driver's seat, at least until another sugar daddy comes along.

Feds to Hound Blogs for Acting Like Magazines

Ryan Tate — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:45:14 EDT

Some writers accept free products, services or trips and then write "reviews" of said items. When magazines and newspapers did this it was fine, but now that bloggers have joined in, it may well become a federal offense.

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing guidelines around products, referral fees, travel and other freebies given to bloggers, the Associated Press reports, and intends to "clarify that the agency can go after bloggers - as well as the companies that compensate them - for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest."

Bloggers are so very dirty. AP:

Journalists who work for newspapers and broadcasters are held accountable by their employers... The blogosphere is quite different.

Except not really. The New York Times, for example, "for years... accepted free cellphone service, satellite TV service, music-download service, whatever," columnist David Pogue wrote in 2006 (the paper only changed this practice in the wake of a a controversy around Pogue's free use of a $2,000 data-recovery service). Over at Hearst's Esquire, restaurant reviewer John Mariani often eats for free, which is nothing compared to the free travel and resort stays other print writers accept.

At fashion-heavy magazines like those run by Condé Nast, free schwag helps make up for lackluster pay, a practice that became more widely known with the Vogue roman-à-clef Devil Wears Prada, in which an assistant's raid on the magazine clothes closet is a key plot point.

If the FTC is truly interested in protecting consumers, it will start its anti-shilling campaign with the media that accept the biggest gifts, make the most money and reach the most people. For the moment, at least, that means traditional media.

UPDATE: The FTC confirms to All Things D that it plans to go after even simple Amazon affiliate links.

Best Tumblr-to-Book Deal Yet

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:40:20 EDT

Look At This Fucking Hipster, a blog about looking at hipsters, and then making fun of them, has scored a book deal. Plus the formerly anonymous, self-loathing author has been revealed!

He's Joe Mande, a "comedian/ writer" who graduated from Emerson College, has a show at Upright Citizens Brigade theater, appears on Best Week Ever once in a while, and was named the "Best New Comedian" this year by Time Out New York. He doesn't look like I imagined, which is okay! Max Silvestri interviewed him for us last month.

There have been many Tumblr-to-book deals, including ones from current or former Gawker employees Doree Shafrir, Richard Blakeley, and Nick Douglas, but as brilliant as those may be, none of them include pictures of people like this, and therefore LATFH The Book (due out next spring!) may well be the awesomest of all.

We've emailed Joe Mande and we'll let you know when we hear whatever he has to say about all this.
[PW via NYO]

Staring Into the Craigslist Cesspool

Ryan Tate — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:27:37 EDT

"Craigslist killer" Philip Markoff was arraigned on grand-jury charges that include first-degree murder, robbery and two counts of armed kidnapping. As if Craigslist users needed another reason to feel jumpy.

It seems every day brings more stories that help paint the listings website as a cesspool of scams, killers and sexual exploitation. Here's just a random smattering of the coverage from the past week or so:

Queens woman allegedly rents same apartment to seven people via Craigslist (NY Post)
Woman reports buying fake tickets to Chesney (Fargo Inforum)
Two busted in Craigslist hooker scam (NY Daily News)
Nebraska Mom Attempts to Sell Her 18-Month-Old on Craigslist (AP)
Hawaii Craigslist Sex Ring Busted; Woman Wanted (KGMB)

These sorts of stories may well be the natural result of Craigslist's ubiquity and desperate economic times. But don't be surprised if Craigslist starts bragging about good news — its charitable contributions, jobs it has found for people — much more loudly. The company needs all the good news it can get.

Steve Jobs Had A Liver Transplant

Foster Kamer — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EDT

The Wall Street Journal reports: Steve Jobs had a liver transplant in Tennessee two months ago, he's in recovery, and is going to be back to work before the end of the month. Just like they said he would be.

Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin of The Wall Street Journal - who, it now appears has an outright monopoly on exclusives and leaks regarding Jobs (something that'd make sense, considering the most direct implication of the Apple CEO's various health crisis: Apple's stock price) - reported last night on the revelation. Though not going to far as to state anything but the actual surgery as outright fact, the Journal's filing vaguely speculated that Jobs' 2004 pancreatic cancer came back, and spread to his liver:

William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. "All total, 75% of patients are going to have the disease spread over the course of their life," said Dr. Hawkins, who has not treated Mr. Jobs.

Getting a liver transplant to treat a metastasized neuroendocrine tumor is controversial because livers are scarce and the surgery's efficacy as a cure hasn't been proved, Dr. Hawkins added. He said that patients whose tumors have metastasized can live for as many as 10 years without any treatment so it is hard to determine how successful a transplant has been in curing the disease.

Jobs took a leave of absence in January, handing control of Apple's day-to-day over to COO Tim Cook after publicly disclosing that he had a "hormone imbalance" that was "robbing" Jobs of his body's healthy proteins. Which sounds nothing like what causes one to get their liver removed.

The Apple CEO's been beset by rampant speculation about his health problems by Apple shareholders, journalists and bloggers of the tech and financial stripe, and some very self-entitled fanboys since said 2004 cancer scare. He's also been notoriously mum on the details of said health. Even when more or less busted red-handed, like this, the company continues to run interference, with Apple flack Katie Cotton barely even dignifying the question ("Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there's nothing further to say.") and Jobs not returning anything for comment to the Journal.

The notoriously showy CEO enjoys managing his own press, and probably isn't too ecstatic about this bit of news leaking; then again, after what sounded like a pretty traumatic few months, he could probably care less. The guy's got his health back, and a company to run. No doubt the inevitably glitzy Steve Jobs Comeback Special will happen soon in front of a grey curtain, with cheeky jokes and maybe a not-so-subtle U2 soundtrack.

Meanwhile, the company didn't go down the shitter while he was gone (at least no more than maybe this), and other than what's no doubt going to be rampant speculation on this potential efficacy (or lack thereof) of Jobs' procedure and a few nutty conspiracy theories on whether or not Jobs pulled a Woz and cut in line, there's not too much more to see here until the guy gets back up on stage and shows us his about-town face. Don't worry, fanboys, haters, and otherwise: your vicariously lived-through deity carries on.

Jobs Had Liver Transplant [WSJ]
Apple boss 'had liver transplant' [BBC]

Previously: Why Steve Jobs's Health Matters to Us

Google's Naughty Heir Lusts for New York

Ryan Tate — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:18:44 EDT

Philippe Dauman Jr. can't stop flouting taboos. Friends remember his Park Avenue orgies. Family members note he joined Google when his father's Viacom sued it for $1 billion. Even San Francisco, we hear, is too tepid for him.

Dauman, a friend acknowledges, is partying as hard as ever. Though he's grown sick of the scene in San Francisco, Dauman spends freely to find fun elsewhere, jetting to Vegas some weekends to party with his New Yorker girlfriend at events with a around four females for every male. (This is a new girlfriend; the dominatrix Dauman was said dating is history.)

Dauman's also returned to New York on a near-monthly basis, including for Fashion Week in February, and this summer to his parents' vacation home in East Hampton.

Or so we're told. But Dauman's hedonism doesn't seem to have affected his work. Though his side gig, a music startup, appears defunct, the Columbia JD and MBA got a promotion at Google last month, from "Strategic Partner Development Associate" to "Strategic Partner Development Manager." (See the excerpt from Dauman's LinkedIn profile at left.)

Presumably this means Dauman will have more responsibility around local content acquisition, as his father has described his job. This could help sell his bosses on a New York move; AOL, the New York Times and Huffington Post are all duking out in the city and surrounding markets for local news website dominance.

It certainly wouldn't be Dauman's first time finagling an advantageous transfer. Below, Dauman Sr., well-to-do CEO of Viacom, describes how no less a negotiator than Google chief Eric Schmidt was persuaded to hire Dauman Jr., despite the Viacom suit.

[video via]

Lance Amrstrong Denied Chance to Slam Greg LeMond, Or Story Saying He Slams Greg LeMond

Ryan Tate — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:55:38 EDT

Lance Armstrong uncensored his Wall Street Journal letter saying everyone hates Greg LeMond, except Lance Armstrong; Daily Show people had a vicious fight about chairs and the Economist got snarked on. The Twitterati got it out of their systems.

Daring Fireball's John Gruber felt the swearing went without saying.

The Wall Street Journal gave interview-hating Lance Armstrong something to disintermediate, all right.

Miles Kahn of the Daily Show exposed a deep schism within the Church of Jon Stewart.

Casting aside any worries about access, Technologizer's Harry McCracken said Apple's acting CEO marketing VP is boring with boring sauce. (UPDATE: Corrected Schiller's title. What were we thinking?)

PBS' Mark Glaser was so over the Economist.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.