All the news that shits. With your host, A.P. Ticker.
WAIT: Inky/DN Auction Postponed For A Week
INQUIRER: An auction of the operating assets of Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C. scheduled for Wednesday will be postponed at least a week as a result of a ruling yesterday by U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno. Robreno had ruled Tuesday that the newspaper company’s senior lenders did not have a right to bid the value of about $318 million in loans in the auction, which is designed to determine the fair-market value of the company’s assets. That ruling overturned a decision by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich, who had authorized a so-called credit bid by the lenders, a group that includes […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity With Pants On Fire
MEDIA MATTERS: Citing no evidence, Sean Hannity twice stated that 20,000 people gathered to protest health care reform at a GOP rally on Capitol Hill — a claim he later walked back drastically — while MSNBC reported that Capitol police estimated the crowd at only 4,000; prior to the rally, Hannity said crowds at the event — which he and other Fox News figures heavily promoted — would be “massive.” Conservative media previously inflated crowd estimates for the 9-12 March on Washington. MORE
WEEK IN REVIEW: Scrapple TV News
All the news that shits. With your host, A.P. Ticker.
TV: Shit My Dad Says Twitterer Gets CBS Deal
THRFEED: Twitter sensation Shit My Dad Says is headed to television. CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern [NOT pictured, above], an Internet star. “Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment. The comedy’s title will […]
THE WORM TURNS: Judge Rules Against Credit Bid In Inky/DN Auction, Paving Way For Local Ownership
INQUIRER: Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C. can bar its lenders from using $300 million in debt they are owed to try to purchase the company at auction next week, a federal judge ruled today. The decision by U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno reverses a ruling by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich. Lawyers for the company’s senior lenders — which include Angelo, Gordon & Co., the CIT Group, Wells Fargo and Eaton Vance (Citizens Bank put the deal together) — had argued that it would be unfair if they had to bid cash, like other potential buyers, for property that served as […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR As an American journalist in Japan, Jake Adelstein uncovered a world unknown to many of the Japanese public, let alone to foreigners: the world of organized crime. For 12 years, he investigated for Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun. In his final story, Adelstein went toe-to-toe with one of the country’s most notorious crime bosses, a discovery that led to death threats for him and his family — death threats that have yet to be lifted. His new memoir about his experiences is called Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan. After leaving the […]
THE INTERWEBS: Jim Carrey Has A Badass Web Site
[Click image to activate Internets] No, really.
FIRST AMENDMENT: Fox News And Glenn Beck Lose Case Against GLENNBECKRAPEDAGIRLIN1990.COM
THR, ESQ: Fox News’ Glenn Beck has lost a claim that a website called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com was registered in bad faith and in violation of his trademark rights. The website was founded by Isaac Eiland-Hall earlier this year in response to a joke on odd-news site Fark about Beck’s lack of denial for a non-existent murder/rape. Eiland-Hall argued to WIPO hat he registered the website as a satirical critique of Beck’s conspiratorial politics. WIPO’s arbitration panel agreed that the website appeared “to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that (Eiland-Hall) appears genuinely to believe is employed by […]
MEDIA: Rupert Murdoch Vs. The Internets
THE GUARDIAN: Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google’s search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online. In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web. In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of “kleptomania” and acting as a “parasite” for including News Corp […]
Q&A: Ask The Yes Men
The Yes Men is a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call “identity correction” by pretending to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations. From their offices in Milwaukee, they create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows. Their newfound, self-proclaimed authority to express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public has met both positively and negatively with political overtones. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the […]