L.A. Gets More Love From The Magazine WorldGustavo Dudamel, Joel Stein, and Bricia Lopez are among the experts who weigh in on their favorite parts of the city for Condé Nast Traveler.
America’s Real-Estate Conflicts, As Enacted by the Hearst GalsVeronica Hearst is using her Fifth Avenue apartment and a property in upstate New York as collateral in case the auction for her 52-room mansion in Palm Beach doesn’t hit $40 million. Meanwhile, her step-granddaughter Lydia Hearst just bought a $1.49 million apartment in the Sheffield 57 on West 57th. Damon Dash got freaked out by the lunar eclipse. CNBC’s Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, has joined the board at her alma mater, NYU. Cindy Adams thinks Ellen Page is, uh, “a young, white, female Obama.”
in other news
David Carr Loves You, Joel Stein Does Not
Do you agree with David Carr’s Golden Globe predictions? Believe he’s right that Scorsese will win for best director? Well, let the man know what you think already. He’s just twiddling his thumbs waiting for your feedback. Or so it seems from today’s media column on Carr’s obsession with the comments on his Carpetbagger blog. “Now I have become a day trader, jacked in to my computer and trading by the second in my most precious commodity: me,” he writes. “How do they like me now? What about … now? Hmmmm … Now?” We’re moved by Carr’s extreme concern, perhaps even more so because we’ve just been jilted by a certain West Coast writer.
In a (now-much-blogged-about) January 2 column in the Los Angeles Times, Joel Stein asked readers to do him a favor and not e-mail him: “I get that you have opinions you want to share. That’s great. You’re the Person of the Year. I just don’t have any interest in them A lot of e-mail screeds argue that, in return for the privilege of broadcasting my opinion, I have the responsibility to listen to you. I don’t. No more than you have a responsibility to read me. I’m not an elected servant.”
Compare this to Carr’s description of his rapport with a frequent commenter who went traveling: “I sort of missed him. I dropped him a note and then called him in Israel about being off the grid (in particular, my grid).”
Why the sharp contrast in attitude? Could our journalists’ keen interest in readers’ opinions be another Reason to Love New York? Do you think so? We want to know! — Lori Fradkin
24-Hour Newspaper People [NYT]
Have Something to Say? I Don’t Care [LAT]
in other news
You’re the ‘Time’ Person of the Year, and Joel Stein Has Penis Envy
Oh, happy day. After weeks — nay, months — of buildup, Time’s Person of the Year issue is here. And if that’s not exciting enough on its own, it gets so much better: We’re the Person of the Year! (And so are you! And you! And even you, little Timmy!) Yep, that’s right: This year’s Person of the year is “You” — which is to say, the blogger, Flickr’r, YouTube uploader, Wiki contributor, and hive-minderer who the flagship title of a massive media company has now decided actually holds the keys to the Information Age. Naturally, then, Joel Stein takes a spin through multiplayer virtual world Second Life to find out what the hell You’re up to — which, this being Joel Stein reporting, is sex:
I spent the next 4 1/2 hours with Cristal as she took me to a waterfall, a snowy Christmas scene, a shipwreck and a sex club. At some point, she offered me a free penis. Much as I didn’t want to take it, it’s damned hard to tell even a fake woman that you don’t want the free penis she’s giving you.
The Freudian reading of this is unavoidable, that castrated Old Media is strapping one on just to stay in the nubile Web 2.0 game. It’s also terrifying. Because if print media’s wandering off to have sex online while leaving bloggers to handle the real reporting, we foresee much less coverage of Baghdad and much more of the Lower East Side.
My So-Called Second Life [Time]
