At Least Sam Zell Is Pragmatic About the Fact That Most Journalists Are Functional AlcoholicsMEDIA
• Sam Zell, the real-estate tycoon turned media mogul, took his brusque, fake-folksy style to his minions at the Tribune with a new employee manual. A few samples: “7.1. If you use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated. … Coming to work drunk is bad judgment. 7.2. If you do not use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated.” Also, “You may want to think twice before you enter into an intimate relationship with a co-worker. When you start, it might seem like a good idea. It’s when you stop, or the wrong people find out (and they will) that you could discover that perhaps it wasn’t.” [WP, Tribune]
• Judith Regan on Giuliani: “Is he getting uglier? Is his face looking more twisted? What happened to him?” Don’t feel too bad, Rudy. You know what they say: When someone teases you like this, it means she likes you. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• Facebook threatened to revoke Nick Denton’s account after the blog-lord posted pics of Steve Brill’s recent-college-grad daughter Emily. [Gawker, Daily Brief/Portfolio]
in other news
Proenza Schouler, Guy Trebay Think AlikeEarlier this week in their clever guest blog for the Times, Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez interviewed photographer Terry Richardson.
There used to be a hard line between the word of art photography and fashion photography. You seem to have disregarded this boundary. One day we’ll swing by PS1 and see a huge installation of your work, and the next day we’ll open French Vogue and see a story you have shot. Have these traditional boundaries ever meant anything to you?
Richardson gave a lame answer, and we wished we heard more about the increasingly blurred line between fashion and art photography. What an interesting and timely subject to ask about! We didn’t have to wait long, though. Today, Guy Trebay tackles that exact topic in “Thursday Styles.” With interviews from Christie’s experts, an editor at W, and a gallery curator, Trebay really blows it up. For which we are, of course, very appreciative. Both for the art lesson, and for the knowledge that it’s fully okay to recycle ideas from your own company.
Work With Me Baby [NYT]
For the Moment [NYT]
in other news
Is Guy Trebay Partaking in ‘the Chic of Drug Abuse?’We are big fans of New York Times’ Guy Trebay, and we especially like it when, every once and a while, he goes and totally loses his shit, as he does in today’s Thursday Styles. In what is probably the best story we have read in that section ever, Trebay goes backstage at the Marc Jacobs show and casually yet charmingly shivs all of the celebrities and hangers-on there — Courtney Love, Lady Bunny, Padma Lakshmi, John Currin, etc. — right off the bat, by referring to them in the first paragraph as high school losers who have “avenged themselves on the Heathers of the world by becoming famous for something, sort of.” (Which is totally true by the way, but then, what does that make reporters?) It gets better from there.