Rosie O’Donnell Seems to Think She Can Quit BloggingShe announced yesterday that she was going to take some time off from her special haiku blog. But quitting your blog is the biggest blogger cliché of all, and Rosie’s a bloggy lifer.
Yes Icahn! Billionaire Takes Up BloggingHey bloggerati! Queens-bred billionaire and master of the hostile takeover Carl Icahn is totes blogging. Why? He wants to “finally focus on more than making money,” the 72-year-old shareholder activist told The Wall Street Journal, and so he’s starting the Icahn Report, where he can post funny YouTube videos and recaps of his favorite television shows. Kidding! According to the Journal, Carl’s entries on the Icahn Report, which has not yet launched, will “highlight what he sees as management problems at public companies, including those he hasn’t invested in.” Which basically means he’s found a way to do one of his favorite things — bitch about poor governance and poor performance at public companies — without having to buy a large stake in them and install himself on the board. Welcome to the Internet, Carl. It was made for people like you.
Icahn Report [Icahn Report]
Icahn Set to Host Blog On Corporate Abuses [WSJ]
ink-stained wretches
‘The Atlantic’ Brings the Media Party to Its Gruesome, Inevitable ConclusionAfter 150 years of really great ideas, The Atlantic has come up with one that makes us uncomfortable. To celebrate their anniversary milestone, reports WWD, they’re going to throw a big party with stars you’d expect, like Tom Wolfe, Arianna Huffington, and Moby (er ), but they’re going to put the whole thing onstage. The audience will be whoever wants to stop by and watch journalists and luminaries get together and schmooze. “It’s the cocktail party as performance art,” said Atlantic Media consumer media president Justin Smith. First of all, didn’t Gawker already have this idea when they had a live feed from their book party? At least at their version, people were doing drugs and trying to hook up. And second, can The Atlantic possibly believe that people, even readers, would want to watch journalists frolicking in their natural habitat*? This is not a good sign. If you’ve ever wondered whether Andrew Sullivan or Matthew Yglesias is better over canapés, you are truly, truly demented. Or, you know, a blogger. Are we really at the point that people are throwing parties solely to pander to us? Somehow we imagined this would feel more satisfying.
*Open bars on someone else’s dime, naturally.
Life of the Party [WWD]
intel
Lloyd Grove: Reduced to GawkingA brief conversation between recently deposed Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove and New York Magazine:
You mentioned some mysterious “multimedia” plans. Is blogging involved?
Well, Nick Denton asked me to guest-edit Gawker, an offer which I stupidly accepted.
How long is the gig?
I’m starting on Monday, and I think Monday is all I can do. I know nothing about the process. I assume I’ll write stuff that interests me and try not to have too many misspellings. From what I gather, the job mostly means being really vicious and adopting a tone of incapacitated envy.
Do you feel like you failed?
No.
— Jada Yuan
Earlier: Lloyd Grove Gives to Panhandlers, Won’t Settle for Less Than 600 Thread Count
