Take a good look at the old Phawker, it’s your last chance. Later today Phawker will be unveiling a radical site re-design. Bold. Clean. Sharp. Uncluttered. Easier to use, easier to read, and easier to tell all your little friends about. Great taste, less filling. Even better than the real thing. No, this isn’t the new look, it’s a full-page, four-color ad trumpeting our makeover on page 40 of this week’s issue of the City Paper which hits the street today. See you on the other side.
THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO DIED: Photos Of The 77 Unarmed (Mostly) Teenagers Norwegian White Supremacist Anders Breivik Killed In ‘Self-Defense’
DAILY MAIL: Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik broke down in tears on the first day of his terror trial today — when a video clip he had created, mentioning Vlad the Impaler, was screened. The 33-year-old, who admits killing eight in an Oslo bomb blast and 69 in a shooting spree on the island of Utoya last July, remained emotionless as prosecutors spent two hours describing in graphic detail how each of his victims died. But he suddenly became emotional when shown an anti-Muslim 12-minute video he had posted on YouTube before the carnage, wiping away tears with trembling […]
NEW YORK TIMES ASKS: WTF Is Up With The People Running The Inquirer/Daily News?
NEW YORK TIMES: The new owners installed Mr. Osberg, who had been the president and publisher of Newsweek magazine, but the financial picture has continued to decline. According to sales documents obtained by The New York Times — marked as “highly confidential” — the company had a 13.9 percent drop in advertising revenues last year and earnings were less than $5 million. On Wednesday, the company announced a round of buyouts and potential layoffs that will eliminate 37 positions. MORE MEDIAWIRE: Philadelphia Media Network executives announced at a meeting with Guild leaders today that they will reduce the newsrooms of […]
THE DREAM POLICE: Q&A With Ray Lewis, Retired Philadelphia Police Captain & OWS Protester
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally ran back in December. We are re-running it today on the occasion of Captain Ray Lewis speaking today at a noontime OccupyPhilly rally at Independence Mall. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia Police captain with 24 years of service under his belt, created some of the most iconic imagery of the Occupy Wall Street protests by showing up at Zuccotti Park in his uniform with a sign that read: NYPD, WATCH ‘INSIDE JOB,’ JOIN US. Footage of his high profile arrest outside the New York Stock Exchange went viral, and he quickly became […]
Q&A: With Online Privacy Expert Lori Andrews
The take away from I Know Who You Are And Saw What You Did is this: As an Internet user your rights are exactly none. Actually, that’s not true, you do have the right not to use it. But assuming you have waived that right, know that you are being watched, probed and profiled, your footprints are being tracked from your front door to the furthest reaches of the digital ether and back. They know who you are and what you did. Somewhere there is a file being kept on you. They know a thousand things about you. Preferences, locations, […]
REWIND 2011: BEST OF Q&A: The Year In Questions And Answers
THE TESTIFIER [Illustrations by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of her recent reading at the Free Library to promote her new book Reimagining Equality: Stories Of Race, Gender And Finding A Home, we present a conversation with Anita Hill, professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University. Discussed: The fantasia of a Post-Racial America; the mendacity, narcissism and hypocrisy of Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain; the right wing’s racializing the blame for the 2008 financial crisis; how she passed the lie detector test Clarence Thomas refused to take; the emancipation of her grandfather from slavery; […]
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MIDDLE-AGED MAN: A Q&A With Cartoonist Dan Clowes
EDITOR’S NOTE: To mark the occasion of yet another swell New Yorker cover by Mr. Clowes, we are re-running our interview with him from last spring. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Daniel Clowes’ 30-plus-year career as a cartoonist/graphic novelist/screenwriter has seen some remarkable reversals of fortune. Back in the mid-80s, when Clowes was fresh out of Pratt and looking to take the graphic design/illustration world by storm, he couldn’t get art directors to return his phone calls. These days, post-Ghost World, the New Yorker and The New York Times plead with him to return their calls. When not busy cranking out […]
MEDIA: Life After Death Magnetic
INQUIRER: “The music industry was in the toilet, and we were able to weather that,” says Magnet editor Eric T. Miller, who in 1993 cofounded the magazine. (John Cusack was reading it in publicity shots for the 2000 movie adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. “And then the magazine industry was in the toilet, and we were able to weather that — for a while.” And then, in 2008, the economy crashed. “You’re able to weather 90 things going wrong, but 100 things . . . .” In a shrinking market where online music sites and blogs such as Pitchfork […]
LIFE LESSONS: A Pep Talk For OccupyPhilly
AP TICKER: I’m getting lots of letters about why I haven’t shown my face at any of the Occupy Philly protests. I wholeheartedly, endorse and support their endeavors and while I talk a good game about revolution and overthrow of this plutocracy, the sad truth of the matter is……..I’m a very very lazy man. As I have said many times before, my favorite hobbies are as follows, lying on my couch and being very very quiet. I and my couch bound brethren, represent a subset of The Greatest Generation that I have coined “The Lazy Generation” This true silent majority […]
WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME: A Conversation With Dana Priest Of The Washington Post
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last December, The Washington Post published a multi-part investigative series by Dana Priest and William Arkin that attempted to quantify the astonishing growth of the security-industrial complex in the wake of 9/11 and found that the exact parameters of that massive expansion are effectively unknowable. The series, which has been expanded into book form and recently published as Top Secret America: The Rise Of The New American Security State, boils down to this: The national security state “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many […]
RIP: Vaya Con Dios Jose Vento
From our partners in media crime over at Scrapple TV.
The Other Reason We Vote Against Our Best Interests
THE ECONOMIST: Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and […]
Christine O’Donnell Storms Off Set Of Piers Morgan
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: The trouble started when Morgan asked O’Donnell about a part of her book that discussed gay marriage. That’s when O’Donnell accused him of “borderline being a little bit rude.” O’Donnell repeatedly urged Morgan to drop the topic of gay rights, but Morgan would not back down, asking another question about the Pentagon’s repeal of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Morgan at one point looked as though he was trying to hold back a smile, and insisted, “I think I’m being rather charming and respectful.” O’Donnell said the gay marriage issue is not relevant or what she […]