Today’s Reads
Ohh-lala, the most talked about pictures of the week…Lindsay Lohan nude in New York Magazine.
1. Best Weekly NY Paper
One of the best things Don Webster, my spiritual advisor, taught me was, “Some weeks the Observer sucks—has nothing—then the next week it will come out with like nine good stories…” This is one of those “good” weeks.
Jason Horowitz proves the whole speech plagiarism scandal is in fact part of bigger Clinton plot to link Obama to Deval Patrick, who ran for governor of Mass on a platform of hope but has since been mired in dysfunction, scandal, and unfulfilled promises.
In the days leading up to the Wisconsin primary, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign e-mailed talking points to its top supporters and surrogates under the subject “Just Words,” and separately, Clinton staffers sent out a blog post likening Mr. Obama to his beleaguered ally, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. (“Deval Patrick and his good friend Barack Obama have much more in common than their prosaic words, the depth of the color of their skin, their Harvard backgrounds, and their female political opponents,” the post reads.)
The staffers also distributed—from their private e-mail addresses—a Boston Globe story suggesting that Massachusetts Democrats had voted against Mr. Obama in the primary because of the subpar administration of Mr. Patrick, an Obama ally who also ran on a platform of hope. And the campaign has reinforced the talk-over-substance idea—multiple times—in conference calls with top supporters.
“It comes from the campaign,” explained one prominent Clinton fund-raiser who has received the talking-point e-mails as well as verbal briefings from members of staff saying the same thing. “People are saying, ‘Look. Spread this around. Talk about this with your donors, with members of the press on background. They are really pushing hard on this and [campaign manager] Maggie Williams did it on a conference call three times last week. She said, ‘Remember if Hillary is in the solutions business, Barack is in the promises business.’”
Choire Sicha, ex Gawker editor, peers into the Lohan-Britney train-wrecks as they move beyond tabloids to magazines like RS and New York.
On Brit:
“By writing this piece on everything from her family to her breast implants, haven’t you now joined the mob?” asked host Howard Kurtz to Vanessa Grigoridias.
(For just one thing, Rolling Stone covering Ms. Spears is like Running Times covering Martin Lel, like Yachting covering Paul Allen, like Cat Fancy covering pussycats.)
“I don’t want to be overdramatic about it—but as a media story?” Ms. Grigoriadis said last week, from a donut shop in Long Beach, Calif. “I went on that Howard Kurtz program, and he was like, ‘That’s disgusting, you’re part of the problem.’ And I was like, ‘Uh, you’re a media gossip columnist.’ And everyone can roll their eyes about Britney Spears, but in a few years, when we look back at how the media economy changed? I really feel like she’s going to be the example that people look to.”
And Lilo:
Success! On Monday afternoon, Lohan-nipple-induced traffic brought down New York’s Web site.
Sicha’s thesis: Of course the biggest young music and film stars should be covered by ASME-type publications. In this tabloid/net era, magazines like RS and New York provide the depth that TMZ and US can’t.
But the NYT’s ‘Celebrity’ column hates:
For the 10,000th time we are forced to ask: Lindsay, what were you thinking?
Ms. Lohan surely consented to these pictures in an effort to resurrect her career, in bad shape if not tatters after her difficulties with the production schedule of “Georgia Rule.” But all they do is tell us what we already know: Ms. Lohan is a spaced-out head atop a singularly well-articulated form. The celebrity fashion shoot has become a vital tool in recasting a tainted or too-staid image: the good girl dresses up as if Charlotte Rampling in “The Night Porter,” the bad girl puts on a cocktail suit. Ms. Lohan could have seized this moment to rebrand herself: a few pages in which she would be costumed to look like Margaret Thatcher. But here all she manages to accomplish is to remind us of her tendencies toward self-destruction.
There is a chance this approach could work for her if she is willing to offer the world more than her bust line. And if, in her recreational hours, she is prepared to turn simply to yoga.
Um, last time I checked self-destruction sells. It’s America’s number one pop cultural export—Kurt, James Dean, Jim Morrison.
LiLo’s genius here is in placing the world’s attention back on her with semi-high art images in an ASME sweeping magazine. Mind you, NYMag is regional, too, with only 200k circulation. So the pics were low risk, high (INTER)net reward. She’s trafficking her image in an “edgy” way, in media speak. It seems to be working. I bet she scores a supporting role in major-indie soon.
2. Obama Gets Teamsters, Hillary Gets Cali 527, and more
Obama picked up a Teamster nod yesterday. Meanwhile, the LA Times has a story headlined, “Californians to Save Hillary?”I doubt it:
Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have launched an independent group to raise money and air television ads to boost her flagging campaign. Backers of the American Leadership Project would not say who would be funding the effort; its ads are expected to begin airing this week in delegate-rich Ohio and Texas, which hold their primaries on March 4.
“At this moment, we’re focused on positive issue-oriented messages,” said Jason Kinney, a Sacramento consultant and Clinton supporter who is the group’s chairman. Kinney added that the spots were focusing on healthcare, jobs, mortgages and other economic issues. “She is a recognized leader on these issues,” he said.
Federal law bars donors from giving more than $2,300 directly to a candidate. But they can give as much as they want to groups such as American Leadership Project. The groups, called 527s for the Internal Revenue Service code that governs them, must operate independently of the candidates.
Roger Salazar, who worked as a spokesman in the Clinton White House and for Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, is president of the group, called American Leadership Project. Jason Kinney, a former aide to Gov. Gray Davis, is chairman.
New look paper, original lede, new editor in chief: NYT looks at LAT here:
Mr. Hiller never had much chance of getting the benefit of the doubt at The Times, one of a handful of newspapers with a claim to national standing: its daily circulation of almost 800,000 is the fourth-largest circulation of any American newspaper and the largest in the West, and it dominates the second-biggest market in the country, after New York.
LA will be cool as long as Axl lives there:
“Fuck Mick Wall at Kerrang, Bob Guicionne Jr and Spin—what you pissed off because your Dad gets more pussy than you?—fuck you, sucking my fucking dick…” Axl Rose, “Get in the Ring,” Use Your Illusion II
PS: St Martens and Mick Wall do a nice job here with the New York pages at the end. Sounds like a fun town!
TAGS: Barack Obama, BOOKS, Boston, drama, economy, georgia, Hillary, Music, New York, obama, Ohio, political, Politics, spin, Texas, war
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February 21st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Further proving NY Mag’s score w/ Lilo, from Partfolio—20 million hits, 2000% increase:
Naked Lindsay a Web Home Run for ‘New York’
You may have heard that New York magazine’s nude shoot with Lindsay Lohan generated so much web traffic, it crashed the website. But how much traffic is that, really?
For starters, more than 20 million page views on both Monday and Tuesday, a 2,000 percent increase over the same time last year, according to DART and Omniture. Some of those eyeballs spilled over onto other portions of the website; non-Lohan content received between 2 million and 3 million page views. And with outtakes from the shoot going live today, the magazine is expecting a third day of elevated traffic.
The print magazine is also getting a boost from all the excitement. A spokeswoman says New York has sold 500 more subscriptions this week than in an average week. It has also sold more than 1,000 individual “back-order” copies via website orders, and projects well-above-average sell-through of newsstand copies.