SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, dump your liquor down the sink and watch last night’s Mad Men.
Television
Mad Men Watch: Double Exposure
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put on your raincoat and watch last night’s season 3 premiere of Mad Men.
Top 10 TV Chefs
With a large menu of TV chefs to choose from, TIME cooks up a retrospective of the medium’s greatest culinary masters.
Tell Us What You Really Think! Except, Don't.
Exhibit A: A Washington Post reporter accuses Gawker of ripping off his story in a blog post. Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder’s rebuttal says the Gawker post was better (and thus better read) because the original was boring, while Gawker’s post gave the subject (a so-called “generational guru”) the kind of snide, uncensored treatment …
The Morning After: Olbermann-O'Reilly Feud Back On, If It Was Ever Off
So this weekend, Brian Stelter of the New York Times reported that the long-running feud between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly had reached a truce, through the influence of the two hosts’ corporate bosses. Citing four sources at both networks, Stelter wrote that the increasingly venomous back-and-forth had been …
The Post Vs. Gawker: When Does Linking Become Larceny?
Washington Post writer Ian Shapira recently reported a feature on a business guru who consults executives on how to deal with twentysomething employees and clients. When Gawker wrote a snarky post based on (and linking to) his article, he was thrilled at first. Then, prodded by an editor, he looked more closely at the Gawker post and …
Seinfeld Cast Reuniting. For Real This Time.
The cast of Seinfeld is reuniting. But not on Seinfeld. A fictional, yet real, meta-reunion of the classic sitcom is going to be the story arc of the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, debuting Sept. 20 on HBO, Larry David announced at the TV critics’ press tour today.
How did Larry David decide to get the Beatles back together? …
Birthers of a Nation
And speaking of hot-button issues involving the President… there is suddenly renewed media attention to the claim that Obama was not born in the United States and thus is not eligible to be President. This theory has been around for years, was hot on the Internet during the election, has been thoroughly debunked, and at this point, …
Obama Shifts Health Presser for NBC & the Hoff
America’s Got Talent. And, Wednesday night, America is getting yet another President Obama press conference, this one focused on the President’s pitch for health-coverage legislation. Can it get both?
It will on NBC, which agreed to carry the press conference after the White House moved it an hour earlier, guaranteeing that David …
NYT = NPR? Can a Pay Paper Seek Foundation Money?
My column in TIME this week is about the various plans media outlets are considering to float their operations as their old business model is suffering. On the heels of this comes a report that the New York Times is considering—but only considering—getting foundations to support its reporting, as public broadcasting does. In an …
Neighborhood Journalism II: Adrian Grenier, My BFF
There really is no escaping TV. Case in point: as I posted earlier, I was biking to my local food co-op this morning when I came across the setup for a shoot of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire pilot. But that was not the only TV-related encounter I had this morning; it was not even the only HBO-related encounter I had this morning.
Dead Tree Alert I: Who Pays for News?
My current TIME column combines some themes I’ve written about in a few Tuned In posts lately, looking at the lengths journalists are going to to fund their work, and pointing out that even “free” news is paid for by somebody:
Will ___ save journalism? Lately it seems easier to find ruminations on that subject than to find
…
Why Journalists Are Like SCOTUS Nominees
Because of a disconnected cable box (unhooked for TIME’s office move) and a desktop Mac that has a hard time with streaming video, I’m not watching the Sotomayor hearings today. But having watched some of the first three days, and having read much of the commentary, it strikes me that you could replace “judges” with “journalists,” and …