In your Byzantine Monday media column: searching for a rich media savior, a recipe duplication scandal, the future of robot media is $1 per hour, and STEPHEN A. SMITH is back in your area code.

Simon Dumenco points out the impolite fact that "much of the best of contemporary journalism has been produced, and continues to get produced, simply because of the largess — and the emotional needs — of a small group of rich people." And where is the next crop of generous, fabulously wealthy media patrons, he wonders? Hmm. Well nothing will dissuade Jared Kushner for at least a few more months, so that's one.


Recipe scandal: Health magazine re-used some recipes from fellow Time Inc. title Real Simple! If consumers cannot be absolutely sure that no subscribers to semi-related magazines have ever prepared this particular chicken dish before us, how are we to live?


David Carr takes a look at robot "journalism" word factory Demand Media, which pays poor freelancers paltry wages to write up stories on computer-generate Google-trending topics like, oh, I don't know, "How to pick the lock of the Jersey Shore house with a Swiss Army brand pocketknife." Carr notes that after spending 20 hours on his story, "At Demand's current pay rate, I'd be making almost a buck an hour." Oh, does the New York Times pay more than that? ZING.


TERRIBLE, DECLARATIVE SPORTS COLUMNIST STEPHEN A. SMITH IS BACK TO WRITING FOR THE PHILLY ENQUIRER. HOLLER AT STEVE—IF YOU MAKE THE CUT.

The US magazine circulation figures for the second half of 2009 are in. And grim! The big losers (and a winner), below.

• Overall Newsstand Sales: -9.1%
• Biggest Newsstand Loser: W Magazine, -41.7%
• Overall Circulation: -2.2%
• Biggest Overall Circulation Loser: TV Guide, -26%
• Biggest Overall Circulation Winner: Women's Health, +21.5%

In your foreboding Thursday media column: Jared Kushner has a bright idea, Howard Zinn's reputation impugned, David Letterman plays a funny joke, and Janice Min somehow survives being rich as fuck.

Look what dashing young man-about-town and charitable New York Observer owner Jared Kushner is doing now: he's starting a free newspaper in Las Vegas! Because he already has New York in his pocket. (No idea.)


NPR's memorial report on dearly departed lefty historian Howard Zinn included a quote from conservadork David Horowitz saying "There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect." People complained that he should not have been quoted! But as much as he is wrong, we are in favor of dissenters being included in obits, because otherwise obits get so mawkish, god.


News of the Weird: David Letterman's television show has hired its very first lady, to write jokes? So I guess it's either just a stunt for some kind of " bit," or another, more powerful joke about ladies aren't funny? David Letterman, you're America's favorite cad!


Former US Weekly editor Janice Min reveals for the first time: It was totally stressful how she earned so much fucking money that one of her paychecks dwarfed her emasculated husband's entire tiny, unsatisfying yearly salary. How did she survive this nightmare situation? She will tell you in the New York Post.

Zac Posen lost his shit because Harper's Bazaar wanted him to stand next to Sesame Street's The Count in a fashion shoot. It was the only way he could get into the magazine "as a non-advertiser," EIC Glenda Bailey said.

In case anyone needed confirmation that was how things really worked, now we have it: A talented young designer can't get into what was once one of the most prestigious fashion magazines for free unless he wants to play Muppet dress up. The anecdote in Eric Wilson's NYT Styles profile portrays Posen as hot-headed, but in defense of his craft—but overall, the piece is far from flattering. It portrays the 29-year-old designer as having gotten way too successful way too young (though Wilson's phrasing is truly unfortunate: "He was the designer wunderkind who went too far, too fast, his sequins falling to the floor like the feathers of Icarus"), and argues that Posen has been too much obsessed with being in the limelight than focusing on his collection. Well, the recession has been a time for all of us to retrench. Maybe his spirit animal was telling him not to launch those fragrance and denim lines.

Peggy Wilkins is an average heterosexual 45 year-old Chicago woman who had to rent an entire apartment above her own to hold her massive, encyclopedic Playboy collection. Gurl U no U always B our friend. [Chicago Reader via Romenesko]

In your slushy Wednesday media column: Keith Olbermann sniffs out media bias whether it exists or not, a way to save magazines in fantasyland, PARADE's editor leaves, and Air America totally owes media people money.

Keith Olbermann called DailyFinance.com a "right wing site" because it criticized his ratings, prompting a harsh retort from Jeff Bercovici. Look, everyone knows that Bercovici's a fascist, we are gay leftists, and Romenesko subscribes to a disturbing political perversion of Nietzsche's "Superman" theories. But we're all professionals, and our personal feelings on who should or should not be forcibly euthanized by the government does not effect our media analysis. Let's just move on.


There seems to be, hilariously, some debate over whether it would be a good idea for a magazine publisher like Time Inc. (which is not dying so quickly now, btw) to give away free iPads with two-year subscriptions. Why not free Rolls-Royces?


Newspaper insert mag PARADE, which could be accurately characterized as "Reader's Digest Digest," has apparently canned its top editor, Janice Kaplan. Although she was just as polite as can be in her farewell note.


When Air America folded, several notable media people were screwed out of some money, the NYT reports. AA owes Rachel Maddow $4k, and Ana Marie Cox $1,100. Having your bankrupt former employer fail to pay you is just the worst!

In your staggering Tuesday media column: Marcus Brauchli is far richer than a newspaper editor should be (especially considering the new classified ad numbers), the future of Harper's debated, and Julia Allison overcomes media haters (like Richard Lawson).

An upcoming book says that former WSJ editor Marcus Brauchli (now editor of the Washington Post) left the WSJ with a severance package worth $6.4 million. Goodness. Does that make Brauchli the richest newspaper editor in history? Quite possibly! It also explains why you didn't hear a lot of "Rupert Murdoch will destroy the WSJ" objections from Mr. Marcus Brauchli.


Gazonga: Newspaper classified ad revenue declined by 70% in the past decade. And that's the story, folks.


Should Harper's Magazine go online-only? Since it's already supported largely by charity, it could be a good candidate—it doesn't have to worry as much about losing ad revenue, and it would save a bundle on printing and distribution costs. The downside: the magazine would surely lose some of its older readers. And, worse, it's hard as hell to impress that girl on the subway with The Strand bag by reading Harper's on your Iphone.


Famous media person Julia Allison declaims on the perils of haters such as trashy blogs, and gives advice on how to persevere on your path to becoming a famous media person, an example of which would be Julia Allison. Taking the other side in this debate is an email from Richard Lawson, who explains why he's always so mean to Julia Allison, and why he hates her, and her media fame, and why he does not want Julia Allison to earn a living of any sort. Watch this fascinating media item from beginning to end right this very minute!

Which fact is more befuddling: (1.) Though Sarah Palin: The Untold Story ...In Her Own Words! is written in the first person, it was made with zero input from Palin. (2.) This magazine is expected to make money.

Since the former governor of Alaska is a demure wallflower who rarely speaks for herself, one of those companies that does Michael Jackson commemorations and glossy paeans to the stars of Twilight has created the Tiger Beat to Going Rogue's War and Peace. Sarah Palin: The Untold Story has a print run "in the hundreds of thousands" and is apparently selling well. Even as the rest of media falls to pieces, memorabilia magazines apparently continue to turn profits. Washington Post blog 44 reports:

"The genesis of it was really simple," said Steve LeGrice, the publisher and editor of Imagine That. "We're up here in New York, and there was clearly this huge enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, and at the same time all the people in the media world were sitting around scratching their heads" about how people could support her.

The Palin issue contains what LeGrice said are family pictures of Palin not previously published by a magazine — including her as a child with her siblings and a dead bear bleeding over a stump; picking through shot white birds; holding a cardboard box of fish freshly caught at an ice hole; and with moose antlers still attached to a fragment of bloody skull.

It also shows her as cute and chubby little girl with glasses, the lone brunette among three blond and sandy-haired siblings.

"I want people to know what I stand for and judge me on that ... read in my own words who I am. Don't believe the things that are made up," the magazine quotes Palin as saying.

There are officially two jobs left in journalism: Sarah Palin's pundit job on Fox, and the unnamed freelancer who mimics her voice for this. [44] [Pic via]

In your musk-scented Monday media column: A use found for print media, the Harper's editor firing saga continues, small stakes mean big arguments in journalism academia, and Howell Raines returns.

Military paper Stars and Stripes is finally delivering copies to the troops stationed in Haiti. If Haitians can use these papers to construct some sort of crude blanket, they will be the most useful print newspapers on the face of the earth.


Further word on last week's abrupt firing of Roger Hodge as Harper's Magazine editor: Everybody's a little scared of publisher Rick MacArthur, who fired Hodge and now seems to be the grand and only god of Harper's, and accordingly it seems that the majority of the staff is leaking snippy little things to the media (hello!), so today's NYT follow-up story is rife with backhanded insinuations that MacArthur is kind of unstable, as well as dumb. To both sides in this mildly alarming interoffice feud: We're here to listen.

Our reading of this incredibly long piece on the case of a J-school professor's disputed tenure hearings is that it's a case of the age-old question in academia: Which is more important, being a good teacher or not being an asshole in the teacher's lounge? The answer, of course, is it's more important to have the undergrads think you're "Cute."


Today's notable NYT op-ed contributor: Howell Raines, making his first(?) appearance as a writer for the paper since the whole unpleasant "You're fired as the top editor of the NYT, Howell" business. His piece is about the Greensboro sit-ins, which makes it hard to criticize. Can Andy Rosenthal still be trusted?

This morning, New York editor Adam Moss lost deputy editor Hugo Lindgren to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He's certainly not the only magazine-world EIC to have a trusted confidante on staff. But they're a dying breed.

Used to be, if you hitched your wagon to the right star when you were an assistant, you were pretty much set for life—or at least as long as you could take working in magazines. When your boss got a new job, you came with, often with a promotion. Eventually, it was implied, you'd end up high on the masthead. The mark of a true consigliere is that he (or she) doesn't actually want to be the editor-in-chief; the consigliere is happy in his or her role as trusted confidante and advisor, without having to deal with the responsibilities (and bullshit) that come with being top dog.

But at least in the magazine world, the model is crumbling. With fewer jobs to go around, everyone's looking out for number one—not necessarily number two. And so some consiglieri get stuck in the wilderness. I asked an ex-consigliere why he thought the breed was dying out. "If there are no great editors, there are no consiglieres," he said. Too true.

In any case, they're not completely dead. Here are some of the most prominent ones. Got other suggestions? Let me know.

Anna Wintour's got creative director Grace Coddington, who's been by her side since the day Wintour started at American Vogue. Prior to that, Coddington was at British Vogue. Before that, she was a model. As anyone who's seen The September Issue knows, Vogue as we know it wouldn't be the same without Coddington.

Chris Tennant is now the editor of Fashion Week Daily. But for years, he was former Radar founder/editor Maer Roshan's right-hand man. They first met when Roshan was briefly at New York Magazine following the fall of Tina Brown's Talk. When Roshan founded the first iteration of Radar in 2003, Tennant was right there with him, and came back for Radar 2.0, which launched in 2005 and had folded by the end of that year. Tennant came back for most of Radar 3.0, which launched in 2007, but left quietly about seven months in.

Which brings us back to Tina Brown. She's had a long history with Roshan—he worked for her at Talk—but her true consigliera is Gabé Doppelt, whom Brown lured to The Daily Beast in August as West Coast Bureau Chief, the same title she'd held at W magazine (where she was Gabriel's boss!). Doppelt and Brown go way back; Doppelt was Brown's assistant at Tatler when Brown was its editor from 1979 to 1983.

Then there's Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, who's got plenty of longtime staffers hanging around—but none, perhaps, as loyal as deputy editor Aimée Bell, who first worked for Carter at Spy and has been at VF in various roles (Vanities editor, Books editor, etc.) since 1992, when Carter started the job. ("Special Correspondent" Matt Tyrnauer also falls in this category; in Toby Young's 2001 book How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, a whiny memoir of his experience working at VF, Young says that Bell and Tyrnauer were so close that people at the magazine just referred to them as "mattandaimée".)

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my former boss, ex-New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan, and his number one consigliere and right-hand man, ex-executive editor Peter Stevenson. Stevenson was originally Kaplan's assistant when Kaplan was executive editor of Manhattan Inc., the business magazine founded by New York Magazine founder Clay Felker. When Kaplan became editor of The New York Observer in 1992—following Graydon Carter's tenure—Stevenson came too. In a cruel twist of fate, Stevenson was laid off by Kaplan's left-hand man, Tom McGeveran, after Kaplan left the paper in June to become creative director of Condé Nast Traveler and McGeveran became interim editor of the NYO.