1. I love the Internet: Politico on Frank Rich
New York Times columnist Frank Rich is always attacking the DC press corps, constantly complaining of a Beltway-groupthink. But Rich lives in Manhattan, rarely visits Washington, and has yet to hit the campaign trail. This week a fine story about Rich appears on Politico, a political news website.
Under a headline of “Frank Rich bashes political reporters,” Michael Calderone interviews Rich and his recent targets, David Broder and Mark Helprin. The story serves as a fine example of ways the Internet allows unorthodox journalism. Calderone writes a traditional news story about an essential topic that few “traditional” news sources would cover: who is where covering what for what news source, and how that helps us understand the information we’re receiving. It ends like this:
Rich has used Broder as a Beltway punching bag for years…
He’s on my case,” Broder said, speaking of Rich. “But that goes with the territory.”
On Monday, Broder told Politico that the column’s argument was “way off base,” but insisted that the Romney campaign, rather than he or Halperin, should respond directly to Rich’s criticism.
“If I were not there doing the reporting, I would not have that column to write,” said Broder, who, at age 78, will be in New Hampshire on Tuesday, followed by Iowa. “People do their own columns their own way.”
Broder’s 78! And still on the trail.
2. Artist Murdered in Pakistan
Yesterday this blog looked at the dual suicide of two New York artists (ADD LINK). In keeping with the art/death theme: Pakistani painter, Ismail Gulgee, and his wife and servant were murdered in Karachi:
The three were found gagged in different rooms of the house, which is in the city’s most upmarket district. The hands of his wife, Zarina, were tied.
“All three were suffocated. This happened around three days ago,” said senior Karachi police officer Asif Ejaz Sheikh. He said Gulgee’s body was found in the bedroom, his wife’s body in the kitchen and the maid in the main hall. The bodies were found by police after a neighbour complained of a bad smell.
Gulgee trained as an engineer in the United States before turning to painting works of modern art. He won various awards.
After starting out as a portrait painter, he turned to more abstract painting and became interested in Islamic calligraphy.He produced numerous works using the different names of Allah, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York said on its Web site (www.metmuseum.org).
“In these textural works, Gulgee brings the Islamic calligraphy tradition to the modern practice of action painting such as that developed by the American artist Jackson Pollock,” the museum said.President Pervez Musharraf said on his Web site Gulgee was his “all-time favourite” artist. Musharraf condemned the killings, state television reported.
3. The Art of Fashion Reportage I: FASHION IS TA-tally Awesome!!!
Not everything in life is so serious, deadly, art-y, or political. Today, let us celebrate the reportage of fashion, which falls under the larger umbrella of lifestyle or “Style” writing. Global fashion is a $500 billion-dollar behemoth. It makes up the largest chunk of worldwide ad revenue. And thus the press covers fashion like any other industry.
Still, the fashion beat–clothes, egos, celebrities, models, accessories, fashion shows—is decidedly fluffy when compared to, say, covering the State Dept, governance, or even the MLS. That doesn’t mean there aren’t gifted fashion writers. While the French have a sort-of Granta of fashion in Purple Magazine, we Americans have recently received a gift called Page Six the Magazine, which comes every Sunday c/o the NY Post. Lydia Hearst, a “heiress/model” and founder of the Factory 2.0 with Cisco Adler, pen’s The Mag’s best column. But it’s a diary—Hearst goes to Milan for a shoot, comes back for a benefit—and not, alas, true fashion reportage.
For that, Page Six has hired Faran Krentcil to write the Mag’s signature “Six in the City” column. Krentcil is fast becoming the Sewell Chan of fashion reportage: the fast-tracked wunderkind living the dream. I met Krentcil once at a party in 2004. We argued about a prep school in my hometown that she attended and I delivered pizzas to. She was vicious, well reasoned. At the time she worked for WWD or something. In 2006 she was hired to be founding editor of fashionista.com, a new blog dedicated to Fashion, capital F. Here’s a post from today:
Rumer Willis Rumored for Fashion Week
We’re not sure we believe this tip, but we certainly like it: We hear Rumer Willis will be attending some select shows at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in February. Having photos snapped at Rag & Bone or Temperley would definitely help a public profile get raised, without any scandal, seduction, or shocking pregnancy (ahem).
Maybe there are more meaningful jobs out there, but what could be more fun for a woman than gossiping about clothes? Unfortunately, the “Six in the City” column isn’t online. Luckily New York Mag transcribed it for us:
The problem with clichés is they’re usually true. Case in point: Me, the blonde, curly-haired girl writing tales of my “fabulous” life. You know what to expect – I breakfast at Tiffany’s sans carbs, I meet devils in Prada, and then I report back to you. Except, of course, it’s not that easy. Celebrities aren’t just like us. And socialites are sometimes just girls who get high in high heels. But there’s some gorgeousness, too, the kind that makes you live in NYC in the first place. It’s my job to find it and serve it up to you.
NY Mag tells Candace Bushnell to sue. I say: this a great country because jobs like this ACTUALLY EXIST! Yes, you, young girl watching The Hills and studying for your SATs…you could eventually be paid big money to write about clothes, celebs, models etc. FYI: Krentcil went to Duke, so apply there.
4. Criminal Omission: Baltimore Sun fails to print story about its Moscow bureau’s closing
Read this impassioned piece by Erika Niedowski. Another foreign bureau closed (and the paper refuses to print last dispatch) :
TAGS: attack, HBO, Islam, Manhattan, model, New Hampshire, New York, New York Times, Pizza, political, Practice, russia, Slam, warMOSCOW — This is a sad story. Sad because it will be the last in the Baltimore Sun to carry a dateline from Moscow, where for nearly 55 years, the newspaper has posted a full-time correspondent to chronicle the goings-on in a nation spanning 11 time zones and a tenth of the earth’s land mass.
By the time you read this, I will have found a new home for the library that takes up a full wall of the Sun’s sixth-floor office not far from the Kremlin. I will have taken down the hanging maps, including one showing areas off-limits to foreigners during Soviet times. I will have turned out the lights, locked the door and closed a chapter on a kind of journalism this paper has been doing since 1887: the kind where foreign places like Russia and China and the Middle East are made familiar and, if we correspondents do our jobs right, what goes on in them, germane.
Russia has taught me that Americans are uptight and overanxious, that I roll my eyes too often, that patience really is a virtue.
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