And, On the Far Side of the Newspaper Recession, the WSJ Hedcutters @12:21 PM
"A busy day consists of two 'live' hedcuts, drawings that are due to run in the next day's paper….. Each intricate portrait can take up to five hours to complete, with countless little dots. But in an emergency, artists can produce one in as little as two hours, with more lines and fewer specks….
'Because we are essentially tracing the photograph, a lot of people think it's not a big deal,' says [Hai] Knafo. 'But it is.'
'We have our little tricks,' says Noli Novak, who has been with the Journal since 1987. 'A portrait with less dots will take less time.'
'People at the Journal don't even know there's a whole department doing this,' says Novak."
—Never before have I read a piece about working commercial artists that, instead of making me either envious or awed, makes me instead suspect of their entire line of work! And yet here we are. 6
Rich People Things: Flowers of Evil @11:30 AM
It’s a funny thing, fidelity. Last week’s enormous bankruptcy-report filing on shady financial practices at the late Lehman Brothers investment house depicts an internal braintrust desperate to conceal reckless debt transactions and deceptive accounting practices from public view. The court-appointed examiner in the firm’s bankruptcy proceedings, Anton Valukas, found that senior Lehman officials tried to alert their bosses of blatant efforts to reclassify debt as “sales” under a recondite accounting trick known in house as “Repo 105”—so named because it permitted the company to assess buy-back transactions of assets sold for cash at a value representing 105% or more of the cash the company actually pulled in. And presto, Valukas observes: “Unbeknownst to the investing public, rating agencies, Government regulators, and Lehman's Board of Directors, Lehman reverse engineered the firm's net leverage ratio for public consumption.” READ MORE 12
Rich People Things: The New Robber Barons Also Robbers @11:30 AM
It was only a matter of time. First, the histrionic cry of “socialism” at the merest suggestion of a more equitable distribution of the social good known as health care. Then, the robust trade in New Deal denialism on the right–the economic version of intelligent design theory, only without the intelligence. And now, unsatisfied with turning the clock back to 1929, Wall Street Journal editorial hand Daniel Henninger has called for the resuscitation of the Robber Barons. Henninger derides the incremental efforts of the Obama administration to boost job creation with tax credits and stimulus funds. That’s all just bootless government meddling in the masterful free market, he announces; in lieu of that we need “industries no one thought of before”—and that means, in turn, that “we need vision, vitality, and commercial moxie. The government is draining it [sic] away.” READ MORE 11
The Heart of the Andes @11:30 AM
This weekend's Wall Street Journal had a nice appreciation of Frederic Edwin Church's "The Heart of the Andes," which happens to be my favorite painting. I have spent countless hours at the Met just sitting in front of it and taking it in, and I never get tired of it. No matter how perfect your computer's resolution, seeing it on the screen does it no justice; the next time you're uptown you should definitely go take a look. 10
WSJ Nose Hair Trimming Video Is Culmination Of Barney Kilgore's Legacy @2:00 PM
You know what? I actually enjoyed this. But being both massively hirsute and encumbered with an enormous proboscis I already trim my nose hair with a scythe, so it didn't really help me any. Though I do need to find me a barber shop that serves liquor. 14
Paper: Nation's Smokers Half-Lunging It @9:20 AM
Who still smokes, the Wall Street Journal wonders this morning. Turns out it's a bunch of folks. You got your social smokers, your secret smokers, your stress smokers, your emotional smokers, your weight-averse smokers, and your too-afraid-to-quit smokers, apparently. But there is also a new breed of cigarette-enjoyer out there: the intermittent smoker. READ MORE 43
Jerkface Finally Gets His Moment In The Sun @11:30 AM
It's a day I never thought I would live long enough to witness, but here we are: The mainstream media—in this case, the august Wall Street Journal—has finally seen fit to cast its gaze on Jerkface. I hope the attention doesn't go to his head. From the article (about how online reviews are not critical enough): "Amazon reviewer Marc Schenker in Vancouver has become a Web-ratings vigilante. For the past several years, he has left nothing but one-star reviews for products. He has called men's magazine Maxim a 'bacchanalia of hedonism,' and described 'The Diary of Anne Frank' as 'very, very, very disappointing.' READ MORE 12
[Insert New Techonology Here] Is Destroying [Insert Generation Younger Than Your Own] @9:47 AM
"We live in a culture where young people-outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another-are ever less likely to develop the 'silent fluency' that comes from face-to-face interaction. It is a skill that we all must learn, in actual social settings, from people (often older) who are adept in the idiom. As text-centered messaging increases, such occasions diminish. The digital natives improve their adroitness at the keyboard, but when it comes to their capacity to 'read' the behavior of others, they are all thumbs."
I have mixed feelings about this Wall Street Journal op-ed. I mean, is it even true? Are we really living in a world where those damned kids never interact socially with others? It seems unlikely! And if we actually accept that premise, doesn't it follow that eventually they won't need to develop 'silent fluency' because at some point all the old people will be dead an no one will have it? On the other hand, screw the kids today, with their slouching and their emo music and all the sexting. And it is fair to acknowledge that constantly playing around with your BlackBerry can have disastrous consequences. I'm conflicted! I'm gonna IM some friends and see what they think. 5
Mark Penn: Not Fired! @12:25 PM
The Wall Street Journal gave Gawker a statement today, about their columnist Mark Penn, whose firm uses his column there to get clients! "Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop." I am… amused? Angered? Skeeved? No wait: unimpressed. 2
The Mark Penn Getting Fired Watch: We're Waiting! @4:32 PM
There's two shocking things regarding this news item about how political operative and "pollster" Mark Penn's company sprang into action to pitch to new clients on the back of the topics mentioned in Penn's Wall Street Journal column. One: that it's been up for two hours and the Journal hasn't fired Penn yet. Two: is that it's been two hours and it only has 2446 pageviews. I guess Gawker is sort of working on the HBO model—like how HBO documentary films head Sheila Nevins is always explaining how "Cathouse" and "Real Sex" essentially pays for documentaries about Iraq and poor people and stuff. So: their no-sex sex tapes pay for actual real things! Yay, I guess! Go read it! Which leads to another question: Why are a bunch of us running around saying that "news is the killer product" as a business model if actually maybe it's not? Ruh roh. In conclusion: Mark Penn sucks. 4
Toward A More Detailed Work-Safety Warning @11:00 AM
The Wall Street Journal has another "Oh no, people need to learn text/Internet acronyms" piece today, which opens with the following anecdote:
Kate Washburn didn't know what to make of the email a friend sent to her office with the abbreviation "NSFW" written at the bottom. Then she clicked through the attached sideshow, titled "Awkward Family Photos." It included shots of a family in furry "nude" suits and of another family alongside a male walrus in a revealing pose.
After looking up NSFW on NetLingo.com-a Web site that provides definitions of Internet and texting terms-she discovered what it stood for: "Not safe for work."
This Day In History: The 'Wall Street Journal' in 1930 @1:30 PM
The Wall Street Journal, in 1930, in a front-page editorial: "This is America. Piffling talkers would turn back the calendar to the nineties and destroy the economic progress of thirty years. Vicious rumors spread for selfish purposes; flippant predictions of a five-year slump in business; wholesale demands for the cutting of wages are unworthy of American intelligence. Credit is super-abundant. Business is no worse than three months ago. Twelve months of declining volume is behind us. Many adjustments have been all but completed. Engineering and marketing brains are as fertile as ever. Problems there have always been. To proclaim their insurmountability is childish." LOL, 1930! "Flippant predictions"! 1
Twee The People @12:52 PM
Choire and I send each other links to stories throughout the day, usually because we figure they might be of interest, sometimes because we're completely unwilling to write about the stories ourselves and hope that we can trick the other guy into doing it, sometimes it's just out of spite, like this mammoth thing about Don Rumsfeld I was tricked into looking at today. Anyway, this morning he sent me that Wall Street Journal story about the kid in Prospect Heights who makes people come to his apartment if they want to hear the Sufjan Stevens song which he alone has access to. READ MORE 12
Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street Journal @4:33 PM
Hoo, boy, I didn't read Matt Taibbi's latest from yesterday until just now. "Can you imagine what a craven, bumlicking ass-goblin you'd have to be to get a job working for the Wall Street Journal, not mention up front that you used to be a Goldman, Sachs managing director, and then write a lengthy article calling your former boss a "national hero" – in the middle of a sweeping financial crisis, one in which half the world is in a panic and the unemployment rate just hit a 25-year high?" OH IT GOES ON. And quite rightly! 14
Rich People Things: Our General Motors And The Bond Market @11:00 AM
Welcome to the unthinkable: General Motors, which used to be the metric of what was good for America, is now a liability on the taxpayers' books. As long predicted, the flailing auto giant filed for bankruptcy yesterday, amid the sort of regimented pundit hand-wringing about the sinister Meaning of It All that you could set your odometer to. READ MORE 9
WSJ Culture Blog Live, Wacky, Hard To Find! @12:30 PM
The long-rumored Wall Street Journal pan-culture blog is up and running. Called Speakeasy, it is very different for the Wall Street Journal! Although only we on the Internet will know that. You can find it by clicking on "Life & Style" on the newspaper's website front page, and then by clicking "Speakeasy" on that page's sub-menu. 4
Pills 'n' Grillz and Bellyaches @11:08 AM
Disturbing news from the WSJ Bling desk:
In an attempt to keep up appearances, celebrity jewelers say rappers are asking them to make medallions with less-precious stones and metals. Some even whisper that the artists have begun requesting cubic zirconia, the synthetic diamond stand-in and QVC staple. Hip-hop luminaries with the cash to keep it real are appalled. Bling aficionados fret that the art of "ice" is being watered down.
It's gotten so bad that people are actually selling their grillz for the meltdown value. Help us, Gucci Mane, you're our only hope! 1
WSJ: Web News Just One Big Popularity Contest @10:50 AM
The WSJ runs what must be the millionth piece on how Web metrics and Internet readers' affinity for lists result in world where the "most popular" stories gain traction through a combination of vapidity and sensationalism and by dint of being on the "most popular" list in the first place. (Titled "Look at This Article. It's One of Our Most Popular," the story itself will no doubt soon be appearing in the Journal's own most-read box). There's nothing really new here, but we do take issue with the implied assessment in the chart above: If you're someone who gets your news from AOL, it's a pretty fair bet that these are the most consequential stories in your world. 4
When Mormons attack, only rock and roll will save you. @9:29 AM
Your subhead of the day: "Tiny Tuscarora Counts on Stereos Arrayed In Desert to Repel Hungry Mormon Crickets." The story's actually pretty good, but you're forgiven for thinking "what the hell is going on with the world?" 9
Golfers and Alzheimer's @11:30 AM
This Wall Street Journal story about the use of golf outings as behavioral therapy for Alzheimer's sufferers is both touching and interesting. And this is coming from someone who has never found anything about golf interesting ever. Have a read. 0
