Kent Brownridge Still Stealing Silverware From the House of WennerMEDIA
• Kent Brownridge picked a new fight with his old boss Jann Wenner, poaching ten-year Rolling Stone vet Joe Levy for the top spot at Blender. Brownridge already stole Men’s Journal editor James Kaminsky to take over Maxim. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• The OK! issue with the Jamie Lynn–pregnancy exclusive sold only 900,000 copies on the newsstand, well short of the roughly 1.5 million the mag had predicted. [WWD]
• Steve Cohn on the Condé shake-up following so fast on Steve Florio’s death: “It sort of reminds me of The Godfather. They go to the funeral and then they blow everything up.” [NYP]
white men with money
Meet David Karp, Small Wonder We don’t know about you, but to us there’s nothing worse that starting our day off reading about some wunderkind who’s accomplished more by the age of 21 than we have in our adult lives thus far. Seriously, do teenagers not even smoke pot anymore? Today the Sun profiles David Karp, an Upper West Sider who left behind a “normal childhood” and quit Bronx Science as a sophomore to work on UrbanBaby. Since cashing in on that company’s sale, Karp has founded several successful tech start-ups, including a new social-networking Website called Tumblr. It’s pretty cool, a combination of a blog and Facebook, which is perfect if you are a chronic exhibitionist like Karp’s investor Jacob Lodwick. “The VCs were ready to throw millions at us,” Karp tells the Sun, but of course, he’s all about the users. “Our focus is not selling it to Google in two years or flipping it,” Mr. Karp said. Hm. Yes, but David, are you happy on the inside? Oh really? Are you sure?
The 21-Year-Old Behind a ‘Darling’ New York Web Startup [NYS]
gossipmonger
Rachel Roy Is a Dash PreggersRachel Roy is pregnant. Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford toasted new friend Carrie Underwood with Cristal at Southern Hospitality. Ew, they serve Cristal at that place? Katie Holmes took Suri to have frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3. 50 Cent and Lance Bass talked smack about each other’s books. Anna Wintour skimped on the food (only cheese sticks and almonds!) at her Style.com party on Tuesday. Prince Albert showed up at the “Grace, Princess of Monaco” exhibit at Sotheby’s.
in other news
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, New York HistorianHere’s a nice change of pace: A legendary sports figure has come out of retirement to write a book about the past, and this time we’re pleased about it. No, it’s not O.J.’s scribblings; instead, legendarily goggled Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has published a work of history. On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance hit the shelves yesterday, according to an NPR report. It’s full of fascinating details about upper-Manhattan athletics in the age of the Cotton Club — like that the Cotton Club’s main competitor, the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom, hosted its own basketball team, the Harlem Rens. At the Renaissance, the dance floor doubled as a basketball court, and a Rens game reportedly featured the first interracial jump ball in basketball history. But Abdul-Jabbar has harsh words for another rival, Harlem Globetrotters, whose clowning around he associates with the Cotton Club’s tradition of catering to a white audience. You can only imagine what he must have to say about the Washington Generals.
The Harlem Renaissance, On and Off the Court [NPR]
