Joe Dolce, Former ‘Star’ Editor, Gets a Taste of ‘Culture’MEDIA
• Former Star editor-in-chief Joe Dolce resurfaces, bringing Culture & Travel magazine back into the spotlight. [WWD]
• Former Seventeen editrix Atoosa Rubenstein resurfaces, bringing Alpha Kitty back into the spotlight. [HuffPo]
• And for those wondering how to keep tabs on colleagues who are masthead hopping, check out e-newsletter Gorkana, brought to your in-box by friendly PR people. [NYT]
gossipmonger
Atoosa to Spawn!Rush Limbaugh is catching flak for using the phrase “anal poisoning” in conjunction with John McCain and his potential running mate, Senator Lindsey Graham. Heather Mills will represent herself in divorce court next week. Nicky Hilton couldn’t get into a Fashion Week party at the Gramercy Park Hotel’s Rose Bar, perhaps because owner Ian Schrager doesn’t like her or her sister. Woody Allen wants Scarlett Johansson to be like Meryl Streep and not go the “‘Page Six’–party route.” Also, he calls her “sexy,” which is gross. Former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein is expecting a baby in July.
in other news
Jane Pratt Is ‘Uglier’ Than Brandon Holley and Atoosa RubensteinOh, how the mighty have fallen. Today in his column on Portfolio’s Website, Jeff Bercovici tells us that former Sassy and Jane magazine editor Jane Pratt only got the lead in her new VH1 show, American Ugly after Brandon Holley, who was hired to replace her at Jane, and Atoosa Rubenstein, her former Sassy intern, turned it down. Yeoch. We bet she was all “Victory is mine” after that. We couldn’t reach VH1 to see when the show, a sort of reality version of Ugly Betty in which Jane and co-star mustachioed nineties stylist Phillip Bloch “advise unfashionable women on how to run a fashion magazine,” was coming out; but according to the MySpace blog of an Australian girl called Cherie Lucas, who sounds like she was a contestant, it’s already wrapped: “To say it was an amazing experience would be an understatement … I got to work with amazing people, we had a beautiful set and a wardrobe to die for … hahahah!!! they put me in some crazy stuff! all in the name of reality TV!” Indeed. Our question: Does Pratt + Bloch + 2008 + a weird premise + hyperventilating Australians = a sucky show or an awesome one? “I got to meet Gloria Gaynor (I will survive/amazing singer and writter),” Cherie writes on her blog. “She sang for us then we sang for her! she blew me away!” We’re starting to think maybe awesome?
Mixed Media [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
Cherie Lucas [MySpace]
Update: Boo, Jane is not going to be on the show, after all.
party lines
Jack and Suzy Welch Envy Each Other
Last night moguls and media types gathered to celebrate the revamp of Business Week. Henry Kissinger, Dylan Lauren, Atoosa Rubenstein, and Alexis Stewart (Martha’s daughter) all rallied at Guastavino’s to toast editor-in-chief Stephen Adler. Michael Eisner praised the redesign and then got down to business with us about — what else? — the Fox Business Network.”When you have Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes doing a project, you can’t discount it,” he told us. “So I suspect it will be competitive and successful.” Eisner reminded us that he has his own show on CNBC, a network he thinks is “pretty entrenched and well done.” “I think it will be a long time before they’re taken over the way CNN was taken over by Fox News,” he said. “It’s not really analogous.”
intel
Jane Pratt Spurns Hagiographers, Disses AtoosaJane Pratt can’t seem to take a compliment. Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer are the authors of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, a just-published 128-page mash note to the dearly departed title founded by the precocious Pratt in 1988. They sent a galley copy to Pratt and might have hoped for a few kind words. Didn’t happen. “There has been no ‘good job,’ or ‘I love the book,”” says Jesella. “She spoke to our editor. And she did have a bunch of [factual] changes that we eagerly changed. And then there were some matters of, um, opinion. Which we did not change.” But Pratt did make one thing clear when she was interviewed for the project: She — and not former Sassy intern and Seventeen topper Atoosa Rubenstein, whom the authors dub “Jane Pratt #2” — was the younger editor-in-chief. “[Pratt] would note that she was only 24 and Atoosa was, what, 26?” said Meltzer. And another onetime Sassy editor is quoted noting that Rubenstein “was rejected for every position” she applied for at Sassy. Now you know. —Emma Pearse
in other news
Atoosa Watch: Still Unstable, Updating Blog FrequentlyWe know, we know: We care way too much about the latest updates to former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubinstein’s MySpace blog. (You know, that launching pad for her TK-soon domination of the Internet.) But the thing is, there’s just such good stuff there each time we check. Last week, there was the announcement of Atoosa.com. And then when we looked this morning, there was this:
I lived my whole life just trying to be the perfect girl my mother wanted me to be: I never let on when I was struggling. I realize now that’s why I became a cutter — I’d gone through a very serious trauma but kept it completely to myself instead of imposing it on my parents — so instead I used the razor to do my crying for me.
Two reactions. First: Wow, Atoosa was a cutter. Second: Are weeping rainbows supposed to make us think she’s cured?
The Dangers of Protecting Your Parents TOO Much [Atoosa’s MySpace]
intel
Atoosa.com Launches, America Rejoices!Because we obsessively monitor Atoosa Rubenstein’s MySpace page to find out how her plan for Internet domination is faring — from her departure from Seventeen through last week, it consisted of ten blog posts, 43,000-plus friends, and a Psychic Kitty initiative we’re not even going to get into — we were thrilled to learn when we checked in this morning that the Toos has launched the first phase of Atoosa.com. So far the site consists only of the purty homepage you see at right and, if you follow the sign-up link, a place to, well, sign up. Why should you sign up? She explains:
Join My Tribe
I’m building a new home for our tribe: A place where we can be our fierce, unique and powerful selves - and have each other’s backs. Give me your deets (see below) and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. I know we’ll have fun. And sister? I can’t wait! You are the power behind this … and me. I will honor our relationship every step of the way.
You know something, sister? Neither can we.
Atoosa.com [Official site]
in other news
On the Internet, They Still Know You’re Atoosa (Not That the Journey Music Is Helping)Former Seventeen EIC Atoosa Rubinstein, who has famously brought solace to teen girls everywhere by never exiting her own awkward stage, officially pulled up stakes in the corporeal world today and incorporated Big Momma LLC, the first media empire to launch on a MySpace page. But what does a queen-teen mogul taking the Internet by storm look like, anyway? We headed over to her MySpace to witness the blazing possibilities, and we discovered, first, “Don’t Stop Believin’” and, second, that she’d posted the results of one of those auto-generated online personality polls:
Ouch! Pretty much junior high all over again, right? But don’t worry, ‘Toos. Your mom called the principal, and the Internet is totally getting a week of detention.
‘Toos Moves [WWD]
Atoosa [MySpace]
