Faran and MisShapes Leigh Lezark
But in an industry where gossip and insinuations are par for the course maybe Brandusa Niro doesn't care. Still one would imagine that a girl with access like Faran would keep a much dishier blog indeed. That thought a lone lends credence to the idea that the blog really is kept by a bunch of silly assistants. Surely Faran can do better than that.
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Jesse Oxfeld went on to New York Magazine, Ana Marie Cox moved to Time (and published a book.) Even mid-grade blogs like Jossip have allowed personalities a chance at a better career.
And now the newest blogger to be validated by the wider media industry is Jessica Coen. Coen recently announced she was moving to Vanity Fair as the online deputy editor sending New York's blogland into a veritable frenzy over her successor as everyone asked the inevitable question of who will take on Gawker.
Thus now that we have established that blogging will get you places if you do it right, who will be the next sensation? The anonymous blog phenomena that was so early 2005 has left an odd gap in the top tiers of well read and respected blogs as more of these bloggers came out hoping for fame and fortune and didn't quite make it. The only sure path to success appears to be manning the Gawker helm. But do people even care about achieving fame via their blogs anymore?
This is an interesting dilemma when we consider the new demographics of the top level blogs. With more and more popular bloggers pursuing it as a hobby or adjunct to already successful (and at times very public) careers will Nick Denton be able to find the kind of captain that Gawker will need to keep the good ship Gawker afloat in the stormy new media seas? Can Gawker fight to stay relevant as her talent moves on to greener pastures and average bloggers forgo the fame and fortune route?
One popular theory for Denton's strategy in the interim is hiring a series of guest editors for short terms stints as the right person for the editorship is tracked down. Gawker staples like Worker #3116, unofficial mascot Krucoff (who just won lunch at Conde Nast and thus clearly doesn't need the new media's help anymore) and the internet's token black friend The Assimilated Negro will be tapped to fill in the gaps. Considering that current managing editor Alex Balk has been a little lackluster in his performance as more of Gawker's original material like features on the Meatpacking District and the unreadable Great Moments in Journalism have fallen flat this strategy feels even more risky.
But Gawker is far too valuable of a property to let issues of mere talent topple it. In order to keep relevant Denton will be forced to make some tough decisions regarding his ship's direction. Perhaps trying to take Gawker in a more pop culture direction is already having a negative impact. Anyone else notice how there are more Gawker Artists bits filling up the ad inventory, not to mention ouroboros style ads for other blogs and new media services? Not a good sign at all. It is time for strategic thinking about new media's direction with Gawker as the unfortunate centerpiece. ]]>
Today, Strumpette has completed its first annual "F-List" competition where more than 450 PR bloggers competed to be named one of the worst. Busted! Excuse me, but all along, we’ve been saying the "A-list” of PR bloggers are a horde of chatty posers. Well, now we got ‘em dead to rights. The most significant aspect of this story is the sheer irony. Turns out our loudest midway hucksters are the biggest failures in the very thing they sell, i.e. web expertise. For them, standard business practice is to proclaim expertise they apparently don’t have. This exposé makes them out for what they really are: Flimflam artists and confidence men that use cheap carnival hypnosis and hype to bamboozle that green right out of your wallet. For $5, they’ll guess that card you’re holding. And, no matter whether they're right or wrong, they’ll announce that guess with all the conviction your money can buy. Hyperbole? Maybe a tidge. But this much is certainly true. This story proves but again that big boobs are where the action is and are HUGELY popular.]]>
September 10, 2006 -- WHEN Ronn Torossian of 5W Public Relations bought out the domain names of p.r. firms all over town, he forgot to buy the most important one of all: his own! Check out ronntorossianpr.com and it will direct you to a Summer's Eve Douche advertisement. "Let's call the man what he is," says our source who masterminded the prank. Torossian acted unfazed and told Page Six, "It's probably one of the many p.r. firms that I beat on a daily basis, and I welcome them to stand up and say who they are."I was unaware of the backstory and that Ron's intention
"was to learn how long it would take 5W's competition to realize that they failed to protect there brand."So I guess the lesson would be if you're going to spin Cybersquatting as an experiment in branding and protecting that brands name, protect your name first?! ]]>
The methods were/are suspect. Fine. A director of the company, Thomas Perkins of Kleiner Perkins fame, resigned from the board of Hewlett Packard outraged over the methods used. Also fine. Good for Mr. Perkins. But in the coverage (page 4, the editor’s note) of the incident it comes to light that Mr. Perkins just completed a $100 million superyacht. I think that’s interesting.SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 7 By Damon Darlin of the New York TImes— The California attorney general’s investigation into the purloining of private phone records by agents of Hewlett-Packard has revealed that the monitoring effort began earlier than previously indicated and included journalists as targets. The targets included nine journalists who have covered Hewlett-Packard, including one from The New York Times, the company said. The company said this week that its board had hired private investigators to identify directors leaking information to the press and that those investigators had posed as board members — a technique known as pretexting — to gain access to their personal phone records. In acknowledging Thursday that journalists’ records had also been obtained, the company said it was apologizing to each one. “H.P. is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge,” a company spokesman, Michael Moeller, said. See documentation on The Smoking Gun]]> In an interview Thursday about the state’s criminal investigation of the Hewlett-Packard matter, Attorney General Bill Lockyer said, “A crime was committed.” But he added: “It is unclear how strong the case is. Who is charged and for what is still an open question.” Mr. Lockyer said search warrants would be issued to obtain the records of Internet service providers in an attempt to trace the identities of the imposters. He said Hewlett-Packard was cooperating with the investigation into what he said was the first California case of a major corporation using such methods to obtain phone records. An investigator with direct knowledge of the state’s inquiry characterized the list of targets as “extensive,” though that person would not elaborate. It could contain people other than journalists or directors. The California attorney general's office said the records of John Markoff, a reporter for The Times in San Francisco, were a "target of the pretexting" in 2005. Two other news organizations, the online technology news service CNET and The Wall Street Journal, said they had learned that their reporters had also been targets. A top Hewlett-Packard official indicated earlier this week that the effort to obtain phone records had begun in January 2006 after an article appeared on CNET with accounts of a Hewlett-Packard management meeting. Those revelations prompted H.P.’s chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn, to order an investigation of leaks, and the company has conceded that subterfuge was used by a subcontractor to gain phone records in the investigation. Hewlett-Packard has refused to publicly disclose the names of the consulting firm it hired or the subcontractor that was used to pretext the records. The company has said that the outside consulting firm was instructed to conduct its investigation according to law and that the firm had told H.P. that its techniques were legal. In May, that investigation identified the board’s longest-serving member, George A. Keyworth II, as the source of the leak. He rebuffed a request to resign, but the company said he would not be renominated. Thomas J. Perkins, another board member, resigned in anger over the way the investigation was conducted. His efforts to get the company to acknowledge the reason for his departure led to this week’s disclosures. There had been earlier concerns at the company about leaks around the time of Carleton S. Fiorina’s dismissal as chief executive in early 2005. An investigation at that time, however, was only known to have involved interviews of board members. Viet D. Dinh, Mr. Perkins’s lawyer, said Thursday, “If it is true that the pretexting started before January 2006 and dated back to 2005, it would suggest a deeper and more troubling chain of events than the hiring of third-party pretexters and would reach much higher to persons responsible at H.P.” By Mr. Perkins’s account, only the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a powerful Silicon Valley law firm and outside counsel for Hewlett-Packard, conducted investigations into leaks in 2005. A spokeswoman for the law firm, Courtney Dorman, said the firm “absolutely, definitely did not” use pretexting or hire anyone who did pretexting during the firm’s informal investigation of directors in 2005. Mr. Moeller said Thursday that the company’s statements about the pretexting had never confined those events to 2006. A lawyer for The New York Times, David McCraw, said on Thursday evening, “We are deeply concerned by reports that the rights of one of our reporters were violated.” “To the extent that this is a criminal matter, we will cooperate with authorities to make sure any wrongdoing is prosecuted,” he said. “To the extent it is a civil matter, we will pursue whatever legal recourse is available. We expect as an initial step that H.P. will make a prompt and full disclosure of what took place in regards to our reporter.” CNET said Thursday that phone records of two of its reporters, Dawn Kawamoto and Tom Krazit, had also been obtained. It said access to Ms. Kawamoto's records had been gained from the same Internet address used by the person who accessed the phone records of Mr. Perkins. A caller used the last four digits of her husband's Social Security number to establish an online account with AT&T to view the records. Access was gained on one date, in late January 2006, it said. A CNET spokeswoman, Sarah Cain, said: "These actions not only violated the privacy rights of our employee, but also the rights of all reporters to protect their confidential sources." An article in The Wall Street Journal said records of its reporter, Pui-Wing Tam, had also been a target of pretexting activity. A spokesman for Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment. Investor reaction to the Hewlett-Packard board furor has been muted. The company’s stock closed Thursday at $35.42, down 2.85 percent from its close before news of the board’s turmoil was reported. Indeed, at a Citigroup investor conference where Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive, spoke and answered questions Wednesday, no securities analyst asked about the problems. Correction: Sept. 9, 2006 An article in Business Day yesterday about the purloining of private phone records in a Hewlett-Packard investigation of news leaks misattributed a disclosure that a reporter for The New York Times, John Markoff, was a target of the effort. The information came from the California attorney general’s office, not a lawyer for AT&T.