Toronto Life: Spectator

Spectator

Posts with category ‘Over the Border’


Magazine maven Bonnie Fuller poised to market her toughest brand yet: Herself

The gap between Canada Day and the star-spangled Fourth is a good time to reflect on the differences, similarities and absurdities that define the decidedly imbalanced relation between our “two great nations.” (My colleague Andrew Clark, The Guardian’s man in New York, full of ill-informed good cheer, saluted our national day thusly: “Happy St. Canada’s Day. Hope the turkey and cheesy fries go down well.”) And while I’m sure it was inadvertent, The New York Times did devote rather a lot of space—the lead feature in last Sunday’s business section—to one of our own: the inevitable Bonnie Fuller. The writer was David Carr, the Times’s go-to guy on the media biz, who contends that Fuller—whose peripatetic risings and fallings in the New York magazine world are the stuff of endless clucking—is to our celebutante-inebriated culture as Einstein was to quantum theory. (That’s a, er, rough analogy, but you get my drift.) To wit: “Through nearly two decades of vision and relentlessness, Ms. Fuller created a way of objectifying the A- and B-list that turned celebrities into not only our ‘friends,’ but also American royals, unelected gods who walk among us.”

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Received wisdom not yet in place for the Internet

Lately, I spent some time talking to a guy whose job it is to advise another guy (one with more money) exactly what the future holds for the media. In that kind of job, it’s important to have forceful, reasoned views that point the way to concrete action. Why else would the latter pay the former to tell him what to do with his money? As required, the former went out and did scads of research into the future of the Internet—most importantly how to “monetize” content, which is the question pretty much everyone’s asking at the moment. At one point, he patted a stack of papers in front of him and announced that research shows people don’t want to watch TV on the Internet; they want to watch TV on their TVs. He said this in an effort to buttress his argument that people don’t “migrate” from one media to another (radio to TV, TV to the Internet, the Internet to another solar system, etc., etc.). Why then is The New York Times reporting that Google—one of the experts on how to monetize the Web—has just signed a deal with the creator of the cartoon Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, to provide Web-only distribution for original material?

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Falling over ourselves to pay tribute to Tim Russert

Tim Russert, in case you hadn’t noticed, is dead. The longest serving host of the NBC political chat show Meet the Press passed to his eternal reward recently, and the Excited States of America lived up (or down) to its somewhat sardonic anglophilic nickname. At his memorial service, Bruce Springsteen sang and eulogized via video hookup. This in tribute to Russert’s working-class roots in benighted Buffalo (a city rapidly overtaking Detroit as a symbol of rust belt decline). At the “request of the family,” McCain and Obama sat together at the funeral, implying that, even in death, only Tim could reconcile America’s political divide. And more or less anyone in the media who deemed his passing worth mentioning was slavering in their praise. Even the New Yorker’s cleverer-than-thou David Remnick heaped on the praise with just the right touch of superiority.

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In the debate over Google’s effect on humanity, everyone is missing one big issue

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For the second time this week, I’m taking my lead from The Atlantic (it’s the best magazine in the world right now, making even The New Yorker appear precious and overwrought). Unsurprisingly, the two articles that stirred me to blog were both (a) about the Web and (b) rife with fundamental, flummoxing misperception. I’ve already written about Mark Bowden’s piece on the Web-induced demise of The Wall Street Journal. Now for the big kahuna: Nicholas Carr’s take on Google. Titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” this cover story has been sticking in bloggers’ craws all week, inspiring them to pee on hydrants to mark their view on the current state of media, the Web and the human condition. Carr’s view is clear: the hypertext world of Google is slowly eroding our capacity for sustained contemplation, thereby flattening our collective intelligence. One thing is also clear: the piece has an enormous blind spot.

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As long as the CBC is losing things…

OK, so CBC lost Hockey Night in Canada’s theme music. Now, having set that happy precedent, perhaps the Ceeb brain trust might, for the sake of good taste and our collective sanity, consider losing this jacket (and maybe even the guy in it).

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Pot calls kettle black in ongoing feud between print and Web journalists

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The July-August issue of The Atlantic includes a piece by lead features scribbler Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on the recent goings-on at the Wall Street Journal. In it, Bowden writes a predictable lament regarding the demise of long-form, responsible journalism in newspapers. The cause? The Web, of course, and Web-enabling buccaneer capitalists like Rupert Murdoch. All of which is fine, after a fusty Luddite fashion. But when Bowden gets up on his hind legs and announces that the Web “has yet to develop institutions capable of replacing print newspapers as vehicles for great in-depth journalism, or conscious of themselves as upholding a public trust,” I tend to get a little pissy. My debunking, after the jump.

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Fallout continues after Conrad Black’s contentious appeals hearing

The fallout from Lord Black’s contentious appeals hearing included the now-familiar bumptious rebuttal from his Lordship, backed up by the usual ventriloquism offered up by George Jonas of the National Post. In all this, there was the assertion that judges Posner and Sykes were, as Black put it, “essentially part of the prosecution.” Whatever his motivation throughout the hearing, Posner was by turns caustic, sarcastic, incredulous and dismissive. Afterwards, Andrew Frey noted that it’s an appeals judge’s job to be skeptical and that it was unlikely that Posner would come off the bench and give him a hug.

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How Mark Steyn got Canada on the cover of the New York Times

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Whenever our home and native land gets a mention in the mighty New York Times, we feel that concomitant frisson of recognition. For a moment, we’re a little closer to the centre of things. Today we made the front page above the fold, and not in a way that was especially flattering. The subject, in part, is the discrimination complaint before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal involving a piece Mark Steyn wrote for Maclean’s. I’ve written before about this sorry situation and expressed my opinion that the sooner we put paid to this sort of frivolous prosecution, the better. While Times legal reporter Adam Liptak takes seriously the Supreme Court’s efforts to balance speech rights with other societal concerns, he appears to imply that the situation in B.C. is the bridge too far. His argument, after the jump.

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Margaret Wente “reports” on the misery of latte lovers

Writing a regular column for a major newspaper is unbelievably hard work. And far be it from me to gainsay the efforts of someone who manages to crank out that much content several times a week. The best columnists appear to be satisfied with ignoring the currency or “newsworthiness” of their observations in favour of broader themes that, irrespective of the news, make the column relevant.

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Lesson #18,330,424 from the Conrad Black trial: Simplify

For as long as he remains a guest of the United States—and perhaps right to the gates of Paradise—I suspect Conrad Black will hear ringing in his ears the following exchange between Judge Richard Posner and Andrew Frey recorded at Black’s oral appeal to the Seventh Circuit (I’ve edited the exchange for the purposes of clarity):

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Conrad Black’s last kick at the can

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals calendar has it listed for 9:30 a.m. Central Time this morning: Conrad Black’s last kick at the can (short of an appeal to the Supreme Court), “07-4080, 08-1030, 08-1072 & 08-1106; USA v. Black 30 min.”

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Might Thomson Reuters try to buy The New York Times?

As noted yesterday by my august colleague Philip Preville, the Globe and Mail has, in its infinite wisdom, eliminated one of the ways it annoys the readers of its print manifestation. They have officially ended the idiotic practice of charging for double-dipping—that is, charging for Web access to their premium material. The New York Times, a somewhat more essential read, has been free since September and the Wall Street Journal—from which the Globe still takes sloppy seconds in the business section—is moving more and more in that direction. The Globe’s archive is another matter; it remains behind a pay wall whereas the Times is mostly gratis. Still, for the Globe, it’s a start.

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Conrad Black looking to teach, rewrite history

He haunts us still. Conrad Black—newly minted instructor of American history at Coleman Federal Correctional Institute—takes his case before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals this Thursday, with the help of his able appeals lawyer, Andrew Frey. Oral arguments are limited to a half-hour on both sides, with yellow and red lights aflashin’ to ensure a timely disposal of the arguments. Steve Skurka has a piece on the National Post’s Web site that neatly summarizes the case on both sides.

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When it comes to the ethics of embedding journalists, Christie Blatchford misses the big picture (again)

I spent last week working in L.A.—an experience like no other, one that could make even the most deluded dreamer crave Toronto’s low-ceilinged ambitions. On Monday, seeking to inoculate myself against the general lunacy abroad in the land, I attended a sober Memorial Day ceremony at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. And while even this event had its share of native nuttiness (among the colour guard was an outfit called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, complete with period costume and a confederate flag), I was still struck by the unironic and severe atmosphere that is central to such American commemorations. During the Pledge of Allegiance, every person present (save the odd interloper) enunciated the national creed loudly and clearly, right hand draped over heart: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

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On the hook for Conrad Black’s legal bills

There’s a thick vein of irony running through the tortuously long odyssey of United States v. Conrad Black, et al. And with the final chapter to be written June 5 (when oral arguments are made before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals), Judge Leo Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery offers one of the richest paradoxes to date. Strine, you might remember, effectively blocked Black’s efforts to sell the Telegraph out from under Hollinger International shareholders. Regarding that case of corporate litigation, Strine wrote: “It became almost impossible for me to credit his word…. I found Black evasive and unreliable. His explanations of key events and of his own motivations do not have the ring of truth.”

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“Legal problems” may delay Conrad Black’s memoir of his legal problems

There are rumours floating around concerning delays in the publishing date for Conrad Black’s much-ballyhooed trial memoir The Fight of My Life. Until as recently as last week, his Lordship’s publisher, McClelland & Stewart president Douglas Pepper, was saying the doorstopper would be out this October. However, a source close to Black reports that “legal problems” could push it out a year to fall 2009. Black’s busy litigation schedule may have something to do with it.

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Yanks trump Canucks on bloggish hockey coverage

OK, this isn’t exactly earth-shattering news, but if you care at all about hockey in the frozen north, it’s a bit of a head scratcher. Throughout the International Ice Hockey Federation championship final on Sunday, it was the New York Times that offered the only live blog during the game.

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Toronto Star editors asleep at the switch

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Star on the march—the annals of editing: in an otherwise tedious exercise in dull normal reportage (Shania Twain is getting separated blah-dee-blah), an editor at the Toronto Star (or was it a writer looking for a buyout?) inadvertently added a line for the ages. The piece appeared this afternoon on their Web site and will surely be taken down by the time you read this. In the interest of amusement and giggles, though, we’ve saved it so that future generations might know the truth.

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New York’s newspaper war shifts its battleground from Manhattan to Myanmar

In keeping a weather eye on the ongoing newspaper war over New York, today’s front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are instructive. The Journal, given its earlier deadlines, led with the Myanmar cyclone and, for cover art, used a map to illustrate the extent of the damage. The Times split its headlines between last night’s primaries and the cyclone, giving more coverage to the former and devoting its art to Obama and Clinton. Initially, it bothered me that the Times would give more prime real estate to a parochial political story. Then I got into their coverage and my head turned round.

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Conrad Black’s legal tormentor gets new job, salary bump

The Chicago Tribune notes today that Conrad Black’s tormentor-in-chief, Eric Sussman, has moved on to head up the regulatory enforcement and white-collar litigation practice at Chicago firm Kaye Scholer, a top-tier U.S. litigation shop. Sussman is all atwitter at his new prospects and considerable salary bump:

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Cue the madness—Drabinsky and Gottlieb are now on trial

After a mere decade of delays and distractions, former theatre impresario and alleged fraudster Garth Drabinsky will finally see the inside of a Canadian courtroom. He and his Livent Inc. partner Myron Gottlieb are facing criminal charges before Ontario Superior Court Judge Mary Lou Benotto—she of the tainted blood trial. Reporting on CBC Radio this morning, Mike Hornbrook pointed out that it’s considered “Canada’s largest ever prosecution of corporate fraud”—a good thing, too, considering the Americans were ready to prosecute these two as long ago as 1999. Unlike their former board member Conrad Black, Gottlieb and Drabinsky had the good sense to hole up in Canada and wait for the RCMP to conduct its investigation (an indictment took three years). As for the subsequent delay in the case coming to trial, Drabinsky can thank (in part) a certain aforementioned peer of the realm: the Crown was only too happy to accommodate Eddie Greenspan’s crowded calendar as he flew about the continent defending Black.

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Miller vs. Johnson in Spectator’s first blond-off

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It works for Fox News; why can’t it work for us? We report, you decide. Whose hair is more—how to put it?—blindingly blond? The nearly minted mayor of London, Boris Johnson, or Hogtown’s own two-term pasha, David Miller? Either one would put Marilyn Monroe to shame, so we leave it to you. Who among these peroxide twins is likely to have more fun?

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Conrad Black’s spirits downgraded from ‘happy’ to ‘healthy’ despite attending prison seminars on American politics

A smattering of news on the Conrad Black front this morning. Last evening, Patrick Fitzgerald et al. responded to Andrew Frey’s pleading that the Hollinger four’s conviction be set aside in a 127-page brief. June 5 has been set as the date for oral arguments before the 7th Circuit with a final decision expected in the fall.

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Requiem for a newspaper: The Wall Street Journal falls into the Murdoch trap

Flipping the Rolodex of descriptors this morning, I pause at P for “plus ça change” and W for “waddya think was going to happen?” Rupert Murdoch has pulled the wool yet again. The Times and the Journal have been full of stories this week suggesting that the WSJ’s new owner is interfering with his newspaper’s editorial independence—first by foisting changes so that it might compete more directly with The New York Times (more politics, shorter stories), then by firing the ancien régime editor Marcus Brauchli, who wasn’t moving fast enough to make those changes. And this time, Rupe’s chinless, coupon-clipping victims (the Bancroft family) are so thoroughly bumfuzzled that it barely merits the usual blah blah blah about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then…oh, you know the drill.

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Thomson Reuters would like its employees to stop blogging, socializing

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In case you’d forgotten or ever cared, 40 per cent of The Globe and Mail is owned by the Thomson family through their holding company Woodbridge. Woodbridge also owns, as the result of last year’s multibillion-dollar merger of Thomson Corporation and Reuters, 53 per cent of the new (and aptly named) entity Thomson Reuters. Lately, this new enterprise has started rolling out its new brand, including a near bottomless, fancy-pants Web site and a full-page ad on A6 of Monday’s Globe. Here’s an excerpt from the Web site:

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Push comes to shove for Conrad Black

Conrad Black’s latest misadventure, a lawsuit brought by a Chicago cameraman seeking punitive and compensatory damages issuing from Lord Black’s alleged attempt to remove him from his shoulder, was much reported in the Canadian press recently. Each occasion of its telling included a standard piece of now-hilarious legal bulletproofing: “None of the allegations have been proven in court.”

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Why not lionize Canada’s captains of industry? Here’s why

Friday’s cover story in the Globe’s Report on Business magazine is a laudatory profile of Mike Lazaridis—the co-founder of RIM Ltd., manufacturer of the ubiquitous BlackBerry. The piece tells us that Lazaridis’s personal fortune is $3.6 billion and that the company’s market value is $67 billion on revenue of $6 billion last year. Despite this, the profiler (David Fielding) never mentions the fact that RIM has been the subject of an SEC investigation into backdating stock options—hardly a small detail, considering the investigation led to Lazaridis’s partner Jim Balsillie stepping down as chairman last year. Efforts to establish whether the SEC investigation is ongoing proved fruitless. The SEC, as a matter of principle, will not comment. RIM has yet to respond to our inquiries.

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Peter C. Newman weighs in on “Robber Baron” and Conrad’s prison publishing

Peter Newman, my colleague and Black scribe extraordinaire, dropped me a line this morning. Always a joy, especially since parts of the message are well worth sharing:

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Rays of sanity in an otherwise crazy campaign

A few days ago, in response to my post on the Clinton-Obama debate in Philadelphia, the following note from Princeton politics professor Peter Meyers was forwarded to me. It read in part:

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Newspaper war update: The New York Times cannot be bought

Not surprisingly, Arthur Sulzberger is already up on his hind legs denying that the New York Times is for sale. Mike Bloomberg also issued a denial. That should put a stop to all those nasty rumours.

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Times 2, Journal 1: Murdoch takes a page from Conrad Black’s “The Art of Newspaper War”

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Newsweek’s latest has a mammoth take out on New York’s newspaper war. Titled “Murdoch, Ink,” the dek on the article reads, “With a redesigned Wall Street Journal, mogul Rupert Murdoch is launching an old-fashioned newspaper war against The New York Times. Not since William Randolph Hearst took on Joseph Pulitzer have we seen such a fight.” And from there on in, it’s all Rupert all the time, punctuated by a series of delicious quotes straight from the horse’s mouth.

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Bill C-10 sucks, report Ang Lee, Trailer Park Boy

Following in the footsteps of Sarah Polley’s C-10 protestations, it’s practically the march on Montgomery these days up Ottawa way. Robb Wells, better known as the comically Machiavellian Ricky on Trailer Park Boys, went before the CRTC last week to demand more Canadian content on our TV screens. While he was at it, the Star reported that he took an overdue shot at cable maven Jim Shaw, the Alberta tight-ass whose complaints about Trailer Park Boys merge with C-10 to form a nexus of idiocy.

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Conrad Black roundup: A finger, a fiction, a fallacy and a foundation

While things may be workaday at Florida’s FCI Coleman, the last several news cycles have seen an eclectic array of press coverage. It was announced over the weekend that David Chidley’s oft-printed photograph of Conrad Black flipping the bird to a gaggle of preying vermin during the Trial of the Millennial Epoch has won a Canadian award for spot news photograph of the year—trumping, I might add, 2,200 other entries. Dare I say that the photo and its recognition neatly capture the essence of our national press’s love-hate obsession with Prisoner #18330-424? We loathe and mock him. We bait him. And yet we yearn for, if not his affections, at least his attention. And God bless him: he always seems to return the favour in spades.

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Hillary Clinton: one part Susan B. Anthony, one part Carly Simon and one part Joe McCarthy

In the aftermath of what was, by just about anybody’s estimation, a rout of Barack Obama in Wednesday night’s primary debate, Hillary Clinton moved to the horsey hills of Philadelphia college country to conduct a town hall in front of an adoring crowd at Haverford College (the oldest college of Quaker origin in the United States—who knew?). Hillary kicked back in front of a mostly female audience, sharing a stage with her mother and daughter and, for the better part of 90 minutes, conducted a sisterly love-in whose subtext was “Sisters, we certainly kicked some ass last night.”

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Dispatches from the surreal calamity of last night’s Democratic leadership debate

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Last night, in a massive Philadelphia museum devoted to the American Constitution, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hammered away at each other—gladiators in the great Democratic political contest. The debate itself, part of the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, took place in a smallish TV theatre and was moderated by ABC correspondents Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Outside that small room, though, in a massive cathedral of spin, looking out 30-foot-high windows at Independence Hall, a thousand journos banged away at laptops, murmured into microphones and adjusted their ties and blouses before the camera. This horde represented an array of newspapers, Web sites, blogs, and radio and TV stations bearing a Dadaesque constellation of acronyms from throughout the world—ABC, NBC, CBS, WLS, WLAY, WABC, WDKA, WSYR, BBC, CNN, C-SPAN—most of which were repeated out along 6th Street, where satellite trucks stretched into the distance like a futuristic trailer park and news helicopters floated above. It was American madness pure and thick, and I wandered through it, as Leonard Cohen would say, like a lost Canadian.

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The Rezko affair resurfaces after testimony about Obama and Auchi

You may remember that, five weeks ago, I wondered out loud why one of Rupert Murdoch’s lead investigative reporters, The Times of London’s James Bone, was sniffing around the Chicago corruption trial of Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko. Moreover, I linked Rezko to the Iraqi-born British billionaire/Bond villain Nadhmi Auchi. Murdoch had, at one time, thrown in his lot with Hillary Clinton and I put two and two together. Now, you may also remember that hard on the heels of that post came not one but two missives from Bone asserting that, in linking his reporting to Murdoch’s political interests, your loyal correspondent was full of shit.

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Wall Street Journal’s parody paranoia proves that truth is stranger (and funnier) than fiction

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Here’s a reason to get up this morning. A who’s who of New York satire—including Richard Belzer, Andy Borowitz, Tony Hendra, Joe Queenan and writers from The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and The Onion—has, of late, created My Wall Street Journal, a parody of its sober namesake. The front-page headline? “Bush Abolishes Death, Taxes; Move Will Benefit McCain.”

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NYC newspaper war now playing out in the Post, Observer and Vanity Fair

Over at the Department of Double Standards we find Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff writing one of those self-fulfilling-prophecy pieces about how dim-witted the Sulzbergers are. The item is in the May issue and muses on how the family will inevitably sell The New York Times to Warren Buffett or the Washington Post Company or Michael Bloomberg or the highest bidder. And that whoever gets it will deserve it more than the Sulzbergers because whoever it is isn’t—how to put it?—as stupid as the Sulzbergers.

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Can Rupert Murdoch steal the thunder of Microhoo?

Whatever you might imagine Conrad Black is up to today—washing floors, dishes or laundry, mowing a lawn or teaching a fellow inmate to speak French—spare a moment to empathize with the resentment and envy his Lordship must feel at the prospects of his tormentor and vanquisher Mighty Murdoch. I’ve argued before in this space that it was Rupert who knocked over the first domino leading to the great man’s demise. This morning in The Globe and Mail, Black biographer Richard Siklos (whose sage counsel led my thinking in this regard) writes about the many complex scenarios revolving around the current Internet-based plays that will shape the broader media landscape for the foreseeable future.

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Mark Penn’s sleaze machine links Clinton to Canada

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Yesterday’s coverage of Hillary Clinton tossing her chief strategist, Mark Penn, includes—shock of shocks—a Canadian angle. Penn, acting in his role as CEO of global flacks Burson-Marsteller, was jettisoned for personally servicing a contract with the Colombian government that would help grease the wheels for a pending free trade deal with the States (a deal that Hillary, in an effort to suck up to working-class voters, has repudiated vociferously). Turns out that Burson-Marsteller is the same outfit that contracted with a Canadian company, Spin Master (yes, that’s really their name), to do damage control over a toy they were distributing.

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Times 2, Journal 0: The newspaper war heats up over Tom Cruise, Bear Stearns and Murdoch’s henchman

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In a feature piece last Monday, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz offered an overview of Manhattan’s current newspaper war: The New York Times versus The Wall Street Journal. Interviewed therein was the Journal’s new publisher—former Times of London editor and Murdoch henchman Robert Thomson—who took the opportunity to aim several broadsides at his uptown rival:

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American election predictions from Conrad Black

The Globe reported on its Web site yesterday that Lord Black of Crossharbour has sent a Dear Paul letter to Paul Waldie (the Globe’s lead Conrad reporter), assuring him that, despite his current condition, he continues to assert his stalwart, undying commitment to being, well, himself.

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The gorier details of the Hollinger Five

For those of you who continue to be interested in the gorier details of the Hollinger Five, last night, a financial Web site called Seekingalpha.com posted the transcript of Sun-Times Media Group’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call with investors and analysts from March 11 of this year. Among the juicier bits: CEO and president Cyrus Freidheim Jr. reports that “During 2007, Mr. Black and his associates were advanced $48 million in legal fees under the company’s indemnification provisions. The company is attempting to recover advancements related to guilty verdicts but must continue to make advancements for their appeals.”

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“This is my life”

Whether you’re Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat; no matter how high-minded your campaign; no matter how clever your tactics; whether you’re running for parliament, city council, president, senate, congress or dog catcher—in the end, there’s only one thing that matters in electoral politics: money. And getting it—even giving it—can be pretty unpleasant (just ask Eliot Spitzer’s dad or Tony Rezko).

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Hey, Toronto, why should we take Richard Florida’s word for it?

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A while back, my colleague Philip Preville and Toronto’s newly minted urban affairs media guru Richard Florida crossed swords over the perils and opportunities of civic boosterism in T.O. On the whole, they grudgingly agreed to disagree. Florida acknowledged that he was something of an optimist: “I have been wondering for some time now why people like Preville are so negative and insecure about what Jane Jacobs said is North America’s greatest city.” And Preville agreed that “being a negative kind of guy, I’d rather focus on problems and prod people toward solutions.” I raise all this because I spent part of the weekend traipsing around Philadelphia and came across a column by Florida in The Inquirer titled “Why Philadelphia’s economic future looks so bright.” It’s essentially a love letter to the city:

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Conrad Black ignored by the OSC, embraced by the New York Sun

Sure it’s well worn, but to my mind it forever bears repetition: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Karl Marx certainly knew a thing or two about capitalism’s foibles didn’t he? Just ask Conrad Black. There he sits in a tropical hoosegow, and still the poor guy has to fend off the Ontario Securities Commission, which, having deferred to just about every American regulatory body save the Nevada State Gaming Commission, has postponed—yet again—a hearing into the malfeasances of Hollinger Inc et al.

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Advice for Democrats from an unlikely place

In case you’re ever in doubt as to how much more extreme, fevered and just plain nuts the American political discourse is than our own (Flaherty versus McGuinty notwithstanding), I offer the following: This past Monday, a certain John Yoo wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, complaining about the democratic party’s undemocratic practice of appointing superdelegates to their upcoming nominating convention:

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Jim Himes provides much-need realism, free beer

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It’s 8:30 p.m. in Stamford, Connecticut, and the reclamation of America is progressing one stultifying trivia question at a time. Forty-something Jim Himes—slim, energetic, whip smart, democratic and electable—is running for Congress in the Connecticut 4th District. He needs support and money, and what better way to find those than by sponsoring (with free beer and pizza) a pub trivia night upstairs at Bradford’s, an ersatz pub on a twee shopping drag. If you happen to know who went on from the Governor’s mansion in Hartford to become U.S. ambassador to India then, buddy, your night is made. Mine, not so much.

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The Globe shines with Khadr coverage

In the Canadian media’s ongoing effort to cover the looking-glass war on terror, yesterday was a banner day. The Globe led with the strange case of Omar Khadr. Kirk Makin was all over the Ottawa Supremes, taking the government’s lawyers to task for essentially consigning Khadr to hell in Guantanamo, then—Pilate like—washing their hands of the entire grim mess.

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$20 million later, it’s all over but the crying (and the appeal)

The last fag-ends of the frayed mess left by the Hollinger Five are finally being clipped away. With Black and Radler in the pokey, Atkinson and Boultbee nervously awaiting their appeal and Mark Kipnis relatively free and clear, Hollinger Inc. cut its tattered umbilical cord to Sun-Times Media Group Inc. in one fell swoop. Yesterday, the company relinquished its super-voting shares and replaced them with common stock (consequently, the six board members appointed by Hollinger last July will resign) and settled with the SEC to the tune of $20-odd-million.

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Clinton, Obama, McCain star in Sheila Heti’s presidential dream team

I’m in New Jersey at the moment, preparing to gorge myself on a revealing slice of the American political pie. Before I get started, though, I thought I’d try a Canadian appetizer—a phenomenon affecting in a minor key the political scene down here. I speak of Sheila Heti, the whimsical Toronto novelist and all-around cultural entrepreneur whose blogs I Dream of Barack, I Dream of Hillary and I Dream of McCain have generated a mountain of press down here. Heti transcribes, more or less verbatim, the nocturnal imaginings of her readers and turns them into blog posts describing dreams of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. These dreams are not of the political variety—or at least not as “politics” is conventionally understood. To wit:

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How to change the Wall Street Journal without pissing off bankers

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The battle for the hearts and minds of New York newspaper readers (and every other elite reader in North America) was further joined yesterday as the Times reported on the ongoing efforts at the Journal to cut the Times’ grass: “The Wall Street Journal’s transition to more breaking news and shorter articles will continue in the coming weeks with a make-over of its Marketplace section.”

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E-mail now among Conrad Black’s luxuries

Conrad Black’s recent missive to the Canadian Press, much bruited upon by this blog over the Easter weekend, reveals the weirdly Janus-faced attitude that the United States adopts toward the free speech of the two million of its own citizens (reportedly the highest rate of incarceration per capita of any nation on earth) it now imprisons.

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Mark Kipnis is competent 99 per cent of the time

The top story on law.com today reprises the strange case of Mark Kipnis, former Hollinger International corporate counsel and, pending appeal, convicted felon. Kipnis—who benefited not at all from the scheme that paid out millions to his bosses—was convicted essentially of negligence. In pleading to stay out of jail (successfully, it turns out), Kipnis admitted that “ninety-nine per cent of my time, Judge, I believe I was competent. I believe I did do a good job. It was that one per cent—the compliance aspect—that should have taken much more of my time. I admit…I did not fully understand the magnitude of those responsibilities.”

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David Frum compliments lefty bloggers—watch for flying pigs

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The January-February issue of National Interest, a mainstay of America’s neo-con commentariat, has two aspects of note. First, it is the last issue listing Conrad Black as a member of its advisory council. The reason for his departure, other than the obvious, may include the fact that his decidedly former pal Henry Kissinger is the publication’s honorary chairman. The second aspect, much as it galls me to say, is an intriguing piece on the influence of the blogosphere on American foreign policy debates written by former White House speech scribbler and big-time Conrad Black apologist David Frum.

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Nutbar Puritanism alive and well at the FCC, Stephen Harper’s cabinet table

“The issue of vulgar speech on the nation’s regulated airwaves, a flash point for decades, reached the Supreme Court again on Monday,” reported yesterday morning’s New York Times.

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Erosion of the First Amendment, thy name is libel

In a fit of self congratulation, the Globe editorialized this morning on the merits of an appeals court decision that tossed out the contempt charge against Hamilton Spectator’s Kenneth Peters for failing to report his sources to a lower court (a cut-and-dry case of spiteful judicial overreach). Meanwhile, a darker, more consequential, case plays out south of the border. There was a piece in The New York Times yesterday on the ongoing case of Dr. Steven Hatfill. Hatfill, you might remember, is the government scientist wrongly identified as a “person of interest” in connection with the sending of anthrax-laced letters to U.S. senators in the early part of the decade. Hatfill sued the government for violating his privacy by leaking information about him to the press. He also sued The New York Times (among others) for publishing that information and thereby libelling him.

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Jonathan Black rear-ends celebrity status

Well, it’s not exactly Britney Spears shaving her head, but when Jonathan Black allegedly bounced his vehicle—what the Toronto Star characterized as his “luxury” car—off the back of a GMC Safari van last Thursday, he verged, however briefly, into the tawdry world of Lindsay Lohan, celebutantes, the paparazzi and whatever else it is that fuels the 24/7 not-so-beau monde of TMZ, Perez Hilton and X17online. Jonathan hasn’t hit Brangelina status quite yet, but the reach of the story should give the Canadian media pause. The story has made it all the way to The Sydney Morning Herald and the Malaysia Star.

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Hollinger four submits appeal, argues St. Eve gave prosecution “evidentiary shortcuts”

At this hour, there are reports from Bloomberg, AP and the Canadian Press that Conrad Black’s appeal has been submitted to judges Easterbrook, Bauer and Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court. The appeal is a joint submission from the Hollinger four (Mark Kipnis mustn’t be finding house arrest as congenial as he thought it would be).

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The trouble with Eliot Spitzer (and Conrad Black?)

David Brooks, whose twice-weekly column in The New York Times is, along with Frank Rich’s Sunday column, the best thing in that newspaper, hits a towering shot this morning. Without using his name once, Brooks neatly dissects exactly the trouble with Eliot Spitzer. For those of my interlocutors drawing comparisons to his Lordship, there’s plenty here for you, too.

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New York’s newspaper war: Times one, Journal bupkis

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Recently, I spoke with an editor at The New York Times who grew up on Canadian journalism and plied his trade here until the late ’90s about the nostalgia that grips his former colleagues when they discuss the early days of the National Post. “They get all weepy when they talk about it. You’d think it was Paris in the ’20s or something.” Well, yes, it was—if by Paris in the ’20s you mean Don Mills in the late ’90s. Sure, there were fewer good restaurants and the architecture was a little less je ne sais quoi, but for writers, “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven.”

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The New York Times smells blood, opens wallet

If you’ve ever wondered what sort of resources the Times throws at a story when it smells blood, then check out the bottom of this A1 story that ran in Tuesday’s paper. Is that a battalion or a brigade? I can never remember...

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Conrad Black’s legacy: $200,000,000 in legal fees

If you like numbers—and who doesn’t?—this one’s a beaut. The Chicago Tribune, in reporting on the ongoing catastrophic losses at Conrad Black’s former holding company Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (formerly Hollinger International), reveals that:

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