Page A21, band across bottom: Gagosian Gallery (Monet Late Work exhibit)
Page A22, third of page at left: Saks Fifth Avenue
Page A23, half page bottom: First Republic Bank
Page A24, quarter page, bottom left: Cathay Pacific
Page A25, full page: Macy’s
Page A26, small ad, bottom left: Duxiana (bedding)
Page A27, full page: Delta (flat bed service to London)
Page A28: No ad
Page A29, full page: NYU (School of Continuing and Professional Studies)
Page A30, band across bottom: Wempe (official Rolex jeweler)
Page A31, full page: Jersey Boys
Page A32, bottom half of page: The Rushmore (condo, 64th & Riverside)
Page A33, 75% of page at right: Time Warner Cable (Business Class)
Page A34: No ad
Page A35, quarter page across bottom: DKNY
Page A36, full page: Bloomingdale’s

How to turn your nicely appointed, if slightly boring, kennel into a lightning rod for righteous class-based/lefty-aimed/etc. anger: Christen it a “nightclub for dogs,” muse about your plans to hang a disco ball somewhere, and be sure to note to the poor Post reporter dispatched to cover your opening that dog owners who need to check their e-mail can use — gasp — an iPad! Et voila: “Of course it is some Dumbo, liberal, PETA, gay, progressive, Green, environmentalist idiot that has come up with this idea to attract other similar New York ilk! My only surprise is that it isn’t in Pelosi or Boxers San Francisco district!” Bless.

Sony has announced that it will cease production of the 3.5-inch floppy disc in Japan by March 2011. Japan was one of the last markets where Sony was producing the relatively small-storage discs (they’re still for sale in the States, but an Amazon listing for a 10-pack of discs notes that the answer to the “Discontinued By Manufacturer” question is “yes”). I’d guess that the floppy serving as the preferred iconography for the “save” command is probably safe despite production ceasing, because changing that horse in mid-stream is probably more trouble than it’s worth. Plus, what would you replace the tiny disc image with? A picture of a CD? Haaaaahahahaha!

Times

publisher Arthur Sulzberger and his trusty CEO Janet Robinson sent out a snide, braggy memo congratulating the Wall Street Journal on the launch of its New York section. It is wildly out of whack in terms of tone; yet it is sort of admirably hostile, in a way? Except that then doesn’t one figure that such a hostile “big barking dog” strategy really just mean you’re weaker than anyone expects? Read for yourself and decide. I guess I least enjoy having the ad demographics displayed as a measure of worth. I’m sure the paper does have rich readers! And here’s the rest of us, dragging down your market demo. Sorry!

Subject: A note from Arthur and Janet about the Wall Street Journal launch

On the Record . . . From Arthur + Janet

Vol. 4 2010: A New Competitor Arrives

Some folks just have a different learning curve.

After 120 years of existence, The Wall Street Journal this morning has finally decided to cover New York north of Wall Street. In the spirit of journalistic camaraderie, we welcome the Journal’s new local section. The New York Times has been the paper of record in New York for nearly 160 years, and we know just how difficult it can be for start-ups to develop a following.

While there will be much sound and fury to this new endeavor, we thought we would take this opportunity to remind everyone about our position of strength in the New York marketplace. We will include a series of numbers that, to borrow a phrase often misused, are “fair and balanced.”

Let us start with our audience in The New York Times. As our straightforward and accurate ad campaign points out (and if you get a chance, take a look at our dynamite new commercial: http://nytimes.whsites.net/nyt_centercut/index.html):

o On weekdays, The Times newspaper reaches over 900,000 affluent adults in the New York market (2009, Scarborough NYR2, Weekday). The median household income for a reader of the Sunday New York Times is over $118,000 (Fall 2009, MRI). In fact, The New York Times in print delivers an outstanding household net worth of almost $800 billion in the New York DMA alone (2009 Mendelsohn Affluent Head of Household Survey, HHI, $100,000+).

o The weekday Times reaches 827,000 business professionals, 1,149,255 art enthusiasts and 1,734,360 women in the New York market.

o Our audience is the most influential; The New York Times weekday edition ranks Number One of 129 U.S. print, cable and broadcast media, reaching 61% of all U.S. opinion readers (Erdos & Morgan 2008–2009 U.S. Opinion Leaders Study).

Of course, The New York Times remains the definitive advertising vehicle in the New York marketplace for reaching a diverse audience:

o The New York Times has a 49% print share among the three national newspapers (Kantar Media, full year through December 2009; excludes in-house ads). The others happen to be The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

o Across key measures for advertising effectiveness, NYTimes.com scores above industry averages — readers remember New York Times ads and are more likely to consider buying products advertised on the site (Dynamic Logic Market Norms, Q4 2008).

o We dominate the luxury advertising market with lush, brand-appropriate retail and editorial environments like T: The New York Times Style Magazine and the Style, Travel, Dining and Home sections.

Advertisers know that Times readers are significant consumers of, well, everything:

o New York Times readers spend $3.2 billion on apparel and accessories; $698 million on jewelry; and $373 million on fragrance, cosmetics and skin care products (Mendelsohn Affluent Head of Household Survey, HHI $100,000+).

o Times readers, who attend live entertainment events, go on average to four Broadway plays a year (2008–2009 Broadway League Demographics Study and NYT Customer Insight Group, January 2010).

o And book advertisers constantly tell us that nothing raises awareness like a New York Times review. Our readers purchased almost 56 million books in 2008 (MRI Spring 2009).

We could go on and on with favorable reader and advertising comparisons. We could also talk forever about our award-winning, agenda-changing journalism and how we set the standard in New York in so many different areas, from art, health and real estate to fashion, entertainment and politics.

The Wall Street Journal already knows our readers and advertisers are very loyal to The New York Times and it will soon discover the intensity of that dedication, as The Times is a great newspaper, a great Web site and a great advertising vehicle.

So as our welcome gift to New York, we pass on a few helpful hints to our Journal colleagues: the Dodgers now play in Los Angeles, Soho is the acronym for South of Houston, Fashion Week has moved to Lincoln Center, Idlewild is now JFK and Cats is no longer playing on Broadway.

If you happen to know anyone who works for the Journal’s new section and he or she wants any additional information about the greater New York region, tell them to check out NYTimes.com’s always very helpful archive.

Arthur and Janet

by Foster Kamer

Numbers, charts, and graphs are all around us. What do they mean? What connections can we make from them? Who will help us understand the things they say? Our resident statisticians, that’s who! They will attempt to explain the digits that shape your world. This week: We take a look at the data for a website that has recently celebrated its one year anniversary.

“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 20th. 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:Â 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: âˆž

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!

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told a caller on a radio show that his telling Pat Leahy (D-VT) to “fuck yourself” on the floor of the United States Senate was “sort of the best thing I ever did.” A quick perusal of Cheney’s other credits indicates that this is a remarkably accurate assessment.

by T. J. Clarke

I am awake but all is still sleep.

Last night. I don’t remember much about last night. I know that Dree fell asleep on the couch. I know I had left Nan’s house in a bad mood. There was a lot of wine. I must have looked a fool, sulking at the dinner table, pouring myself fuller and fuller glasses of wine, until there was none left in the bottle. No one said anything. Devon ate quickly and left. Nan ate as she always did, slowly and deliberately, cutting her food into neat, small pieces. I didn’t eat much.

I helped Nan clear the table, load the dishwasher. We didn’t say a word to each other. She stood at the sink, scrubbing the cast iron pot while wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves that reached past her elbow. I leaned in to kiss her neck, but she didn’t respond.

“Thank you for having me for dinner. It was delicious.”

Then I closed the door.

I remember now the voicemail message from Dree: “Hi. I just smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Can I come and sleep in your apartment tonight? Jason won’t return my phone calls.” Her voice sounded tinny, like the yelping of a caged cat.

There was more wine. No, it was beer, then a few hours later, gin. Andrew was there, going on and on about some big bankruptcy case at work. He was trying to be as good of a friend as he could, by distracting me from my problems with legalese and alcohol. Debtor in possession. Creditors committees. Another round of beers. Plan confirmation. Schemes and rules to keep a company’s dissolution orderly. Similar rules exist for taking apart people.

“Love is a creepy hunter,” I said to Andrew after two more pints of Guinness. The bar was full of people by then. It is always the same crowd: guys wearing plaid shirts and the girls who think that’s sexy. Andrew ignored me and kept talking. The center of main interests. Intangible assets. Andrew doesn’t get tired of talking about the law. He runs on it. His passion makes me jealous. I want to have something to dive into, dedicate my life to its study, to love and cherish; I want to find a cause worthy of my time and devotion. Instead all I have are people.

“What if this means I love her?” It wasn’t a question for anyone to answer.

That was when the phone rang. It was Dree. I let it go to voicemail. Then another text message: I am downstairs.

“No matter what, don’t have sex with her.” Andrew waved me off when I tried to put down some money for the beers. He wasn’t ready to leave yet. His nights only began after a shot of Jack. His mind wasn’t built with an “off” button, so he manufactures one every night with Jack and Smirnoff.

Dree looked impossibly cute in a short yellow sundress and a cardigan. She walked in front of me up the narrow stair case to my apartment. The hemline of her dress grazed her thigh each time she took a step. My nose was only inches away.

“I hope you have gin. I need a drink,” she said.

T. J. Clarke is the pen name of a struggling writer. She lives in Brooklyn.

Here’s former Alaska governor Sarah Palin talking to reporters in Knoxville, TN, today after testifying at the trial of David Kernell, the college student who allegedly hacked into Palin’s e-mail account during the 2008 campaign. If convicted, Kernell could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison, which seems kind of harsh when you consider the penalties for certain other tech-related crimes.

The Problem With Writing About Music In 2010 Is Very Similar To The Problems With Writing And Music In 2010

“The essential complaint is about what you can and can’t get paid to do in 2010.”

After a stock shot from a helicopter-mounted camera zooming over green woods towards a lake nestled in the mountains, the characters of the Twilight saga once again come stumbling forth to present drama and turn into wolves and, apparently, get engaged to vampires. The script, chopped up for the trailer, is a mix of dramatic statement and narrative exposition. To understand it in written form, you would need to have completed the third grade, according to readability tests.

Here are the words, in order, from the trailer.

“Jacob. What are you doing.”

“I’m here to warn you.”

“Just leave now.”

“She has the right to know.”

“What.”

“We’ve been tracking the situation in Seattle for a while. Unexplained disappearances. Killings.”

“Someone’s creating an army.”

“An army of vampires?”

“They’re coming here.”

“This means an ugly fight, with lives lost.”

“We’re in.”

“As long as we get to kill some vampires.”

“It’s time.”

“Yes it is.”

Average number of characters per word: 4.32.
Average number of syllables per word : 1.38.
Average number of words per sentence: 4.

On the Gunning-Fogg index, which evaluates the number of years of education needed for comprehesion, it scores a 3.95, just slightly higher than the text of “Rock-a-bye Baby.” Four other different tests give it a reading level appropriate for grades 0, 2, 2 and 6.

Also Jacob is only briefly shirtless once. IT’S TIME! YES IT IS!