"Uneven numbers are the gods' delight." – Virgil

"Back to back,
double-plat,
I did what you won't.
Men lie,
Women lie,
Numbers don't.
Ain't nothin' changed ‘cept the year it is.
I think I have to send you a reminder,
Here it is." – Jay-Z

This website's initial readership could casually be divided into two groups:

1. Those came here not having known the previous work of the site's business and editorial proprietors and, furthermore, the various contributors.
2. Those who came here already way too familiar with the work of the site's proprietors and contributors.

The former group, however, will have to empathize for a moment with those who arrived here on The First Day, which was exciting, and wonderful, but also foreign and slightly nerve-wracking. Maybe you asked yourself:

• Is my computer working correctly, or is that the design?

• Is this "Butterfinger Blast" advertisement some kind of post-Urban Dictionary joke?

• Will Tina Brown or the masses of Tumblr cut the proprietor named "Choire" before he gets a chance to tell us how to pronounce the name of his site, after having concerned ourselves with the pronunciation of his own name for so long?

It's also possible that none of this was a concern to you at any point. But what's undoubtedly true is that the American media industry was not a hopeful place in April 2009. And it was especially so for a blog whose tagline was "Be less stupid." And a blog that was allegedly driven by smart, funny, original editorial content that we knew would decidedly eschew concentrated social media presences, SEO trickery, inflammatory headlines, a flashy design, meaningless ranking systems, and basically all the other fancy things that other editorial titles with much (self) ballyhooed launches arm themselves with from the onset. The kind of blog whose head you want gently tilt on your shoulder, and put your arm around, and assure that there was very little it could do that would result in your not being there for it when it started to get verklempt over sponsored advertising. The kind of blog whose main advertiser pulls out right before they launch ("Boxing Day; In the balls.") but still proceeds as planned anyway, the kind whose publisher's relationship with its Cat is a thing.

Let's be honest: In April 2009, this kind of blog was very likely fucked. And in April 2010, it likely still is. [Awl Publisher David Cho very vigorously disputes this, for the record. –Ed.]

But here we are, a year later.

And here are the numbers to prove it.

[Counter-Upper's Note: The following numbers were taken on the evening of Monday, April 19, preceding the first birthday, which would be April 20^th. If you are a high school student and you are reading this and you're strangely thinking about using this for some kind of report, well, you are plucky! But we are humans and one of us has a kid so sometimes we get all crazy-eyed and maybe end up a number or two off, and we'd feel really bad if your teacher counted the numbers of ours you used in your report — which you're more than welcome to do, regardless — and knocked you down a grade for getting some wrong. That said, we'd totally go to bat for you.]

THE WORK THAT'S BEEN DONE.

Average Number of Posts Per Day: 22.75.

Bylines, Alex Balk: 2887
Bylines, Choire Sicha: 1865

Here is a pie chart representing those two numbers:

SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE THAT WORK.

Total Contributors: 114

Post Counts

Balk: 2887
Choire: 1865
Dave Bry: 401
Mary HK Choi: 85
The End of the '00s: 51
Chris Lehmann: 42
Maura Johnston: 41
Tom Scocca: 41
Abe Sauer: 39
Natasha Vargas-Cooper: 30
David Cho: 25
Matthew Gallaway: 21
Emily Gould: 21
Seth Colter Walls: 17
Awl Staff: 17
Miles Klee: 16
Melissa Lafsky: 15
Marisa Meltzer: 14
Simon Dumenco: 12
Doree Shafrir: 12

SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE RESULTED FROM THIS WORK.

Number of Theme Songs: Not one, but two!

Number of Books Spawned from Awl Columns: Two (known)
Authors of These Books: Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Chris Lehmann.

Number of Books Spawned from Jay McInerney's Three Week-Old Wine Column or Other Websites With Multiple Theme Songs Written By One of Our Time's Most Veritably Underrated Singer Songwriters: None, bitches.

Hope for a Whiskeytown Reunion Expressed in an Alphanumeric Symbol: ∞

SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE NOT GONE AS PLANNED.

First Time the Awl Newsletter Was Mentioned: June 4, 2009.
Last Time the Awl Newsletter Was Mentioned: Two Weeks Ago.
Last Time the Awl Newsletter Was Sent Out: I DON'T KNOW YOU TELL ME CHOIRE.

OTHER THINGS THAT HAVE NOT GONE AS PLANNED.

Number of blog acquisitions by The Awl: 1
Number of blog acquisitions by Gawker: 1
Number of days since The Awl's acquisition announcement as of April 20, 2010: 63
Number of days since Gawker's acquisition announcement as of April 20, 2010: 65
Number of aforementioned blog acquisitions launched into verticals or integrated three months after acquisitions as promised: 0.
Number of logos: 1.
Number of logos entered for Design Our Logo Contest: No idea but I still think mine was pretty solid.

THE THINGS WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT MORE THAN OTHER THINGS

[Note: Now we will switch it up and make the numbers bold instead of the titles behind the numbers. We don't entirely know why but think it will look better. Okay. Here we go.]

The 17 Most Commented Posts:

On the matter of Matt Cherette: 265
On the matter of A Small Child Lost in a Balloon: 217
On the matter of The Tiny Pool Of English Words Actually Used: 217
On the matter of The Top 50 States: 208
On the matter of Being Lost: 177
On the matter of Walking Out of Movies: 176
On the matter of A Correspondence Between Tom Scocca and Keith Gessen: 168
On the matter of The Oscars As They Happen, The Second Part: 167
On the matter of The 30 Best Punk Songs on YouTube: 164
On the matter of Cooking Steak: 157
On the matter of Not Liking Avatar: 143
On the matter of Ke$ha: 141
On the matter of A Calendar to Benefit Charity: 139
On the matter of Regarding The Awl's Readership: 132
On the matter of Fat Fetuses and Felonies: 129
On the matter of The Possibility of Inglorious Basterds Winning an Academy Award: 126
On the matter of The State of the Union: 126

THE THINGS ABOUT PEOPLE DYING AND/OR BEING KNIFED

[Okay. We're going back to the old way of doing things now.]

Posts tagged "Knifecrime Island": 14
Posts tagged "Summer of Death": 10
Date of last Summer of Death post: September 22, 2009
Date of first Knifecrime Island post: November 19, 2009
Gap between "Summer of Death" and "Knifecrime Island": 55 days.

THE FINAL TALLY

Number of Posts: 5937.

Number of Years Old: One.

Age at Which One is Bar Mitzvahed: 12 or 13.

Forthcoming Feel-Good Sentences To Leave You With On A Friday: Just one.

Congratulations everyone for being a part of this thing, and here's to much more of it.

We hereby declare this study signed, certified, sworn for, and closed.

-Christopher Conklin and Foster Kamer

God love Christopher Conklin and Foster Kamer, but holy crap was this crazy!

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It is his first appearance in the paper since he was let go in December. The article is about The Cooking Channel, which is trying to be a cooler spinoff of The Food Channel. The word "hipster" is not used once, and it is, in my estimation as a casual scholar of Salkin's work, "pretty solid." It also isn't symbolic of anything, but it does give me faith that 2010 has been and could turn out to be a pretty decent year, as hope continues to resist the cosmic snuffer of the universe.

I'd like to dedicate the following jam to him.

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From what I can gather, Festivus was introduced to pop culture in a Seinfeld episode, via screenwriter Daniel O'Keefe, who wrote it into the show. His Dad came up with it to commemorate the first date he went on with his then-to-be-wife. Daniel O'Keefe wrote it into Seinfeld as the holiday that wacky character George Costanza (played by Duckman star Jason Alexander) celebrates. It's intended to be a holiday free of the "pressures and commercialism" of the other holidays that people spend money on.

The holiday continued as a storyline throughout Seinfeld, and included such rituals as "The Airing of Grievances," which is where you sit around a table and tell everyone how much they disappointed you over the last year, and vice-versa. Beyond that, I don't know much about it, because Seinfeld only served to remind me of the people in my family I can't stand. They all live in some proximity of Hollywood, Florida, and they all think Seinfeld was so-true-it's-funny hysterical. I thought Seinfeld was so-true-it's-traumatizing upsetting, the way some WWII vets couldn't sit through Saving Private Ryan. (Aunt Roz, if you're reading this, I'm mostly talking about you. I will marry a Shiksa just to piss you off.)

Two books were written on Festivus. One was by Daniel O'Keefe, in 2005, with an introduction by Jason Alexander. The other was written by Allen Salkin, with an introduction by Jerry Stiller, in 2008.

Festivus strikes me as a well-intended thing: it's a broad philosophical statement on the bullshit that December holidays are wrapped in whimsical nonsense and served well by the brand recognition of a TV show as popular as Seinfeld. To write one book on it is mountain-of-molehill type stuff. To write a second book on it is to birth a skyscraper from a sandbox. It is, like many things Allen Salkin has done, impressive.

But Allen Salkin has written many things that have been considered-to say the least-unimpressive by the strident group of people who opine about media, be they amateur, professional, or otherwise. In other words: Salkin's been the target of catty, bitchy bloggers since he started at the Times. (Before that, he was at the Post, and he was dating Lisa Loeb! Funny how those seem like "innocent" times compared to his tenure at the New York Times. )

One of his first pieces for the Styles section was about some kids who were going to have the Lower East Side reality show. It was something that we all wanted to read, right? But also something that made us all cringe. The long view, however: Here was a guy at the New York Times who might try to put some flavor in the Styles.

This interest quickly alchemized into something slightly more hostile, however, when Salkin pissed off everyone at the New York Observer by writing a softball profile of its (at the time) new young owner, Jared Kushner, that largely condescended to and slighted the efforts of the New York Observer's writers, as well as their now-former editor Peter Kaplan.

In January, 2008, Salkin probably did a good job provoking the wrath of Gawker when he wrote that it had "jumped the snark" in the Times. He was not at the time nor has he been since the only person to write about this! But considering Salkin's previous efforts, which included writing about how women who eat red meat are easier to fornicate with than vegetarians, curious fascination with Salkin turned to open contempt. Here was this guy at the Times whose job it was to write about trends! And from what some would consider a "lofty" "perch." (The "argument" against "trend" pieces is always, at heart: why this thing instead of that thing?) But it was his job, and he did it.

Gawker Weekend writer Jon Liu once called Salkin the "Christiane Amanpour of Sunday Styles." He was later referred to by another former Gawker writer as the "Seymour Hersh of the Sunday Styles." I also took my share of shots at Salkin. For instance, when Salkin profiled a group of media personalities who have a decidedly anti-oversharey organization, he did so without mentioning his own oversharing tendencies, and also couldn't acknowledge the irony that they let him profile them. It was not a great piece.

In any event, when Salkin was let go, this was almost inevitable.

And Gawker Media owner Nick Denton wasn't the only one who expressed schadenfreude at Salkin's dismissal.

The one time I met Salkin, he seemed surprised that I introduced myself. He was kind. He even signed a book for me. He handed me his business card, we had a quick talk, and I got the impression he was-get this!-a guy who was working hard at a newspaper. Working hard at a goofy newspaper job, yes-but also that his beat put him directly in the path of ongoing public scorn.

Salkin also took on assignments a lot of people would be scared to handle. One example: he suggested that MTV was at least a bit responsible for the death of DJ AM. And also, let's not forget: he did write that article on Gawker. Whether or not it was good-or even accurate!-is almost besides the point that Salkin, always in the cross-hairs, had basically now thrown his body on the grenade.

So I considered the laying-off of Salkin, and I wasn't happy. Salkin's job description at the New York Times, when you get down to it, is, or was, one of the most troublesome. But like so many of the things that "media critics" spend time mocking (The New York Sun! Radar magazine's Three Different Iterations! Etc!), I get the feeling we will miss Salkin, if for no other reason than that the opportunity for someone to take a risk in a major newspaper and fuck up (or succeed wildly) has now been further shrunk. That's kind of sad.

So, here: the best media souvenir from the last year I've received. Salkin's business card. Long live him, his reporting, and his ridiculous-ass holiday.

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The party was at this two-story wine bar place on Division Street which is down by Canal Street-which an employee, ______, told me that he pronounces as "C-ANAL" street, which was funny-in the fairly smelly part of Chinatown, as opposed to the really smelly part of Chinatown, or just the kinda smelly part of Chinatown where you get pretty good dim sum. There are these surprising places down there like that, and this was one of them.

When you walk in, there were two tables full of the food. Beautiful food! And lots of people and a nice person standing around checking names off of a list, but that was really for semantics, because company owner ______ was sitting at the bar and basically saw everyone come through the door, so if, say, infamous terrible publicist ______ came through the door, he wouldn't have made it in, because someone would've told him to leave or ______ would've punched him in the face. But back to the food.

After talking to lots of people I learned that, in the past, the presence of food at ______Holiday Parties were most frequently just more of the same mini-foodstuffs every other holiday party has, if at all. ______, who owns websites and kept various editors and chief honcho ______ from killing each other for a bunch of years, was in shock at the presence of actual food. If I knew there was going to be food, I wouldn't have eaten before. Can you believe this? We've NEVER had food at these things. Why didn't you put it on the invite? he asked ______, who is in charge of business things and dealing with people. I did, ______ told him. Did you read it? I don't know if ______read it but I did and I kinda remember there being something about food but it certainly wasn't any kind of SPOILER ALERT-type notice, you know?

Anyway, the one problem with eating all this great looking food-there was a cheese plate, but also, pumpkin risotto and risotto balls and these (OBLIGATORY) mini-meatballs and actual pieces of steak and breads with pricey-looking olive oil and asparagus with some kind of wonderful eggy thing on it and a green bean and radish salad which was DELISH-was that A) both floors were really crowded and B) there was really nowhere to sit. These were fairly tight, economical quarters. You had to squeeze through people to get anywhere. Now, it wasn't impossible to get somewhere-certainly, by 10:30, this was much easier to do-but you definitely had to get your squeeze on to get to the bar. And then you had to find a place to put down your smallish-plate and smallish fork and eat. So, that part was kind of torture, but in the end, if you're shameless and drunk and hungry, you don't give a fig about tact and just kind of get down on some food. Especially when they bring out dessert, you're just like, panna cotta? I'm in. And you are, because you've had lots of wine.

In fact, that was another funny thing! To get the "dark stuff," i.e. hard booze, you had to ask the bar for it, but the glasses of wine were put out for easy taking, effectively making the pricey booze harder to reach. Like the well-measured size of the space: economical! Maybe even thrifty.

Nobody, to my knowledge, puked, but there were lots of tall people. ______ was walking around in a suit looking really tall. Do you have any idea how many tall people work there these days? Between ______, ______, ______, ______, and ______, who's kinda taller than I remember, those guys could probably play a decent game of pickup! Not like Rucker Park-pickup, but you know, like, Equinox Gym pickup, if Equinox had basketball courts. [Both The Awl and ______ have had Equinox advertise with them so I feel okay with using their name and also it's apt.] Funny that none of the tall people work at ______, which is run by a bunch of short guys who clearly masturbated too much as youths, thus stunting their growth.

Eventually the party thinned out but for the most part conversation was nice and casual and I'm sure lots of people met for the first time. Those ______ ladies are wonderful! Their honcho ______ was probably itching to go home to her RSS feed and ______ is very nice and ______ was dancing with her manfriend or whatever they call guys on ______ these days, and he was nice too. I think I saw ______, and ______ was there. Who else? ______, and her former longtime boyfriend ______-but you know that already-and the lady biz honcho ______ was there putting the fear of God into people like me, but not, because she was nice, too. ______ was drinking the entire time with his ladyfriend who was drinking too, and they both managed to position themselves comfortably the entire time, which was impressive.

The only "down" moment came when I was talking to a freelance design writer who told me he felt like an imposter here in "the face of all this ______ success," considering I.D. closed this week, and basically, design writing is screwed and over. And he's correct. To an extent.

I mean, what do you think of when you hear the words ______ Holiday Party? If it was a bunch of people popping bottles of Veuve and showering foamy champers in all directions, maniacally laughing about all the awesome ways they've survived all the people in media who're totally screwed out of jobs-checkbook journalism and posting by the fistful and getting anonymous email-based tips up quickly and videos of ______ not really having sex-while doing blow by the tablespoonful arm-in-arm? Well. It wasn't that. But you know what it was? Modest and nice. For being in the face of "all this ______ success," you wouldn't know is was anything more than any other holiday party, unless you were eating. But you had to make an effort. And if you did, you didn't go home hungry. It was a pretty nice time.

After the party last night, I had a dream. In my dream, my friends and I all signed up for the I.D.F. While there was definitely the creeping feeling that you could be killed at any moment, for the most part, being in the I.D.F. kinda felt just like being on Jersey Shore.

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Welcome to Applied Mathematics. I'm your host, Foster Kamer. I'm a full-time college dropout and assistant editor at BlackBook. I failed Algebra 2 in high school and took it twice (To Mr. Simmons and Mr. Caldwell: Don't think I've forgotten you. You'll pay.) which makes me the perfect candidate to be assigned an issue/data set that needs to be analyzed by a numerically-retarded writer. I'll be collecting, computing, and delivering the results here. Disclaimer: I really did take Algebra 2 twice. Statistics are only as reliable as their mouthbreathing alchemist, me.

This Week's Problem: The Secret Voodoo of the Pinch-O-Meter: A reader writes, "Every time the Post runs a story about the troubles of the New York Times it has a graphic with publisher Arthur Sulzberger's busted face which is meant to indicate how close the needle is to 'KO'd.' [It's called the Pinch-O-Meter]. It's my contention that the needle rarely if ever moves, because the people at the Post are lazy or have no real idea. Is there actually any motion? Does it have any effect on the Times stock price?"

Information Hunter-Gathering: My trusty research assistant* and I first perused the New York Post's website for as many Pinch-O-Meter's as we could find. We searched by byline, related articles, and subject matter, which is aside from Excessive Googling. Since the Post has a search engine about as busted as the picture they use of Sulzberger, we only found nine Pinch-O-Meters. The questioner's contention that there are "twenty or so" means he's either an avid reader of the Post or he's getting too senile to do anything but blow numbers wildly out of proportion. [Ed. note: This is Balk, and I asked the question. He's right on both counts.] Anyway, if our research is correct, they used it once in '06, once in '07, and brought it back full force this year when they really decided to lay into the Times.

Analysis: We took the opening and closing stock price from the New York Times (NYT) each day the Pinch-O-Meter ran. We then compared it with the closing stock price of the previous day. To analyze the Pinch-O-Meter, we first took "casual" estimates by eyeballing the nine individual Pinch-O-Meter graphics, assigning each notch a numerical value. We then downloaded a "screen protractor" to get an accurate read on the actual, mathematical degree on each meter.

Trials And Tribulations: We contacted Post reporters with bylines on the Pinch-O-Meter'd stories [Media Ink columnist] Keith Kelly and [Post Finance reporter] Holly Sanders via email for comment, with the following questions: "Do you know who originally came up with the Pinch-O-Meter graphic? Do you know if the Pinch-O-Meter graphic actually correlates with the stories/changes as it's run? Would you use the Pinch-O-Meter less or more if you found out it actually had an impact – however marginal – on the NYT stock price? And if you could, would you, personally, do metaphysical harm to the New York Times' stock price with the Pinch-O-Meter?"

Kelly responded: "I'm afraid I won't be much help–the reporter doesn't usually pick the graphics that go with his or her story." He told me to get in touch with Post Business editor Jay Sherman. Sanders said the same thing: "I'm not involved in art decisions at the Post, so I can't really help you on this one. I forwarded your message to the business editor, Jay Sherman."

Sherman never got back to me (Jay: you're still welcome to!). Sadly, neither reporter answered the question of whether or not they'd inflict metaphysical voodoo-esque harm on the Times. Like, really, though, is there any doubt? Also, I hate protractors, electronic or otherwise. They're strange instruments used for strange things like this and math problems.

Numbers and Shit:

• Pinch-O-Meters Used: 9
• "Calculated" Pinch-O-Meter Scores: 85, 80, 80, 87, 86, 86.5, 80, 87, 88
• NYT Stock Price at first found Pinch-O-Meter: $24.16 (November 7, 2006)
• NYT Stock Price at most recent Pinch-O-Meter: $4.94 (April 22, 2009)
• Significant Loss In Stock Price in conjunction with PO'M: A $0.56 loss with an estimated 86.5 on the PO'M.
• Significant Gain in Stock Price against PO'M: A $0.24 gain with an 80 on the PO'M.
• Most Telling Shift In Stock Price against PO'M: A "No Change" with an 88 on the PO'M.

Results:

1. The Pinch-O-Meter does move accordingly with stories. All it takes is a look: the arrow definitely moves. But take a story like "Times Dodges Bullet With Costly HQ Sale" (March 10, 2009), about the Times getting some financial relief: the score's an 80 on the meter, no question. An "80" is the lowest score the Pinch O' Meter's going to get. Visible change: "$1.3B Debt Rattle" (April 22, 2008), which scores an "88" on the meter, on a story about the Times only having "$35M left in the bank." I guess they're waiting to run the full-on KO'd Pinch O' Meter when Sulzberger gets suckerpunched by some editorial assistant (or, you know, when the Times gets a loan collected on/purchased by a Mexican Dude named "Slim," happening any day now).

2. There sadly appears to be no direct, concrete correlation between the Pinch-O-Meter and the stock price of the New York Times. This is good: it means that people controlling media stock values don't read the fucking Post.

3. Though there might be some kind of "voodoo factor" in the Pinch-O-Meter (like that island on "Lost") whose mystical properties have yet to be fully understood by the Godless Denizens of the Post. If we want to stretch for something, totaled over nine Pinch-O-Meters, the NYT stock price did actually drop over the course of the studied meters. Of the nine meters, there was a total $0.05 drop before the market opened after each respective morning's meters came out (meaning: people who read the Post before the markets open, whoever those people are. Bi-Polar bankers?). There was an $0.82 drop from close to close (meaning: people with E-Trade accounts?). If we're being honest with ourselves, though, this just means the Times' stock price is invariably fucked, New York Post or no New York Post.

4. Our findings in graph form!

Further Reading:

A banker-type working at a Big Important Banking Place explained to me the following about the Times' stock via IM.

Banker Chick: ha, yeah, i was going to say i definitely take zero action. funny enough, one of our managers was like pounding the table on the ny times. i wouldn't touch that stock.
Me: because you're a Post reader?
Banker Chick: if anything because i'm an Old Gawker reader.

She also explained that this clown was also "pounding the table" on the New York Times stock, citing reasons like inherent worth in TimesSelect and the Times' archives that have yet to blossom into real moneymaking machines (as opposed to going straight to figurative menopause, which is exactly what-as investments- they did). Homie recently hung up his boots and retired from the Bad Media Stock Picking Game.

Lesson Learned: The Post graphics are funny and awesome but mostly serve no purpose other than to entertain (and kind of: inform) Post readers. The Post would definitely pull some voodoo shit on the Times if they knew how. Fuck protractors, of the electronic or tangible stripe. And don't invest in media stocks unless you enjoy the succinct thrill of watching your money go away.

I hereby declare this study signed, certified, sworn for, and closed.

*Nadeska Alexis, a real intern somewhere. Give her a job, New York Media. She might save your stock prices. Doubtful, but worth a shot.

Got math questions that need investigation? Send them here!

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