• Aw, fake news anchor and all-around nice guy Jon Stewart has pledged to continue paying his writers’ salaries for up to two weeks! At which point, they’ll all be fired.
• Is creating a website to find a random girl on the 4 train creepy or endearing? And, more importantly, will it get you laid?
• When you’re standing next to a drag queen, it’s hard not to look manly. And yet, Carson Kressley pulls it off masterfully.
CONTINUED »
• Finally, we find out that we????????re not the only ones who understand Jon Friedman’s irrelevance. [CJR]
• Lewis Lapham is retiring from Harper’s magazine. That job is just really cutting into his smoking break time. [WaPo]
• Georgie Anne Geyer thinks it takes a newspaper to raise a nation. Blogs, blogs, blogs. [AP]
• Could Stephen Colbert’s book be even better than Bonnie Fuller’s? We think it could, we think it could. [Fishbowl NY]
• What ever happened to the Budget Living editors? Some started a blog, others are planning parties … and everyone else is at Real Simple. [WWD]
• All it takes to be a good reporter is compassion and friendliness? Ha, try telling that to Gabe Sherman. [BJ]
• Donald Trump, not content with having a reality show and a magazine tout his ego, now wants to get into TV shopping. Prepare for lots of gold chyrons. [WSJ]
• Tonight, you might actually have an excuse to watch Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show. He’s announcing I Want Media’s Media Person of the Year, a feat that could bring total viewership up to 20, maybe 24 people. [I Want Media]
• Thanks to Judith Miller, is Arthur Sulzberger Jr. the new Howell Raines? Leave it to Seth Mnookin to overanalyze. [Lowdown]
• The U.S. military admits to paying for editorial in Iraqi newspapers, and suddenly Armstrong Williams doesn’t look so bad. [NYT]
• Richard Branson is taking on Rupert Murdoch, while Rupert Murdoch is taking on Craig Newmark. [Daily Telegraph]
• Lewis Lapham has been hanging around Harper’s only to, ahem, harp on President Bush. [NY Mag]
• For four seconds, you too can be Time’s Person of the Year. [Page Six]
Since Lewis Lapham announced earlier this month that three decades at the helm of Harper’s was just plenty, the search for his successor has been watched closely by the chattering classes. Actually, it’s just Romenesko and fellow media blogs who started to care, but c’mon, this is our life blood.
Admittedly, we care just a bit more about watching Jann Wenner drive Men’s Journal into the ground, but we are a little excited to know longtime staffer Roger Hodge will be taking over at Harper’s.
Not to be confused with Blind Date host Roger Lodge, Hodge has been at the magazine since 1996 — where he was originally denied an internship — otherwise known as a cute little anecdote to tell his ladder-climbing tale.
But don’t expect drastic shifts with the changing of the guard: Hodge doesn’t have anything terribly dramatic in the works. And for good reason.
The left-leaning Harper’s, which is owned by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is selling better on the newsstand than it has in 20 years, in part because it tends to dish up the kind of stories that attract people who are unhappy with the Bush administration. It may be a viable journalistic niche, but the magazine is not a threat to become a business, or at least one that makes money, anytime soon.
“Who wouldn’t want to edit a magazine that had a seemingly bottomless philanthropic fund to finance it?” said Jack Shafer, the media critic for Slate. “If they called me and asked me to take the job, I’d pack my bags tomorrow.
Which reminds us: We’re ready to hand over the reigns to the sinking ship that is Jossip at any time. Just inquire within. We already asked Jack Shafer but, alas, he wasn’t too enticed by our Starbucks card payment plan.
Harper’s Set to Name Its Next Editor [NYT]
Earlier: Thirty years is plenty for Lewis Lapham
Bonus: Google Image search for “Rodger Hodge”
He defended Graydon Carter’s honor. He shifted space-time to suit his laziness. And this spring, Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham will step down.
He’s 70. He’s been doing this job for 30 years. He’s tired. We get it. Now there’s just that small little matter of finding out who’s going to take over.
He said he expected a new editor would be named within a month and that the person would retain the character of Harper’s, a 155-year-old monthly. He described the magazine this way: “It’s about inquiry. It’s not about the promulgation of the truth, it’s about a search for the truth.”
Oh, and about lifting circulation to respectable levels.