Murdoch Hacked Us Too

When I was offered a job as a film critic for the New York Post in 1975, it had just been labeled “a terrible newspaper” by Nora Ephron in her media column for Esquire. Having been a Post reporter, she knew whereof she spoke. Dolly Schiff, the paper’s legendary dowager-in-chief, was notorious for being cheap, petty, whimsical, and, somewhat more fetchingly, a rumored onetime paramour of FDR. Her paper was a rapidly declining asset—a staunchly liberal tabloid chasing after a hypothetical middlebrow afternoon readership too highfalutin for the Daily News and yet insufficiently titillated by the sober New York Times. I knew Nora and asked her if I should really take the plunge into a newsroom she had so convincingly portrayed as a hellhole. She advised, wisely: Well, why not? I was 25 that spring and had nothing to lose except my innocence. Which I would lose soon enough. I liked and looked up to my colleagues at the Post, many of them talented, hardworking, and ingenious at circumventing the obstacles imposed by the owner. They soon inducted me into the gallows humor of the joint. Everyone knew the ax would fall one day. We just didn’t know which day, or who would be wielding it. When the moment finally arrived, shortly before Thanksgiving in 1976, with the announcement that Schiff would sell her paper to a foreign mogul almost no one had ever heard of, it was greeted as good news. “Nobody was crying,” one reporter told the Times. “It was a rebirth. The Post is an orphan that has been adopted.” Our Daddy Warbucks would not only pour money into the paper’s impoverished coffers but also, as he told the Times, preserve its “essential characteristics,” “style of reporting,” and “political policies.” The Post would continue to be a “serious newspaper.”

A day or two later, I was walking across the South Street newsroom when I ran into a young Australian reporter on the staff, Jane Perlez. You must know something about Rupert Murdoch, I said, feeling quite upbeat about our white knight from Down Under. Jane would have none of it. “He’s bloody why I left Australia!” she replied...

Continue reading

Frank Rich @'NY Mag'

What lies beneath the ruins of the News of the World?

Radiohead TKOL RMX 4

Via

'Nike trainers, ladders, Boris Johnson's arse...'

The Artist Taxi Driver

How Teen Rap Group Odd Future Turned a Posse of Nerdy White Male Critics Into Rape Apologists

Lester Bangs - Let It Blurt

Download @'Achilles In The Alley'

Richard Hell on Lester Bangs 'The Right to Be Wrong'

Patti Smith setlist, Castle Clinton NYC, 7.14.11

Via

Hell in Paradise (1978)

After posting the above ad for the famous Hell In Paradise show (June 1978, Paradise Garage) last month, I invited Pat Ivers (of Nightclubbing video fame, along with Emily Armstrong) to write a remembrance of the night since I've never read, or heard, anything about the show. In fact, the only reason I know about it is because of Pat & Emily. I've been lucky enough to see some of their footage from this evening, and the idea of these acts playing in the hallowed disco ground of the Paradise Garage is reason enough to get the story...I hope you enjoy this, and a huge thank you to Pat! Be sure to visit their website - link below. Take it away, Pat...

Continue reading

Pat Ivers @'Stupefaction'

'If you're as much of an ephemera or original source geek as me, you'll be happy to see this photo of the actual tapes from the Nightclubbing collection of that infamous show.'

Chelsea Hotel changes hands, closes for renovations

Sign of the end times: A bitter reminder to tourists and tenants. Photo by Sam Spokony
“The utopia is gone,” said Michele Zalopany — a resident of the Chelsea Hotel for 22 years — as she stood outside its plaque-ridden façade on the afternoon of August 1. Later that evening, the hotel was finally sold (in a deal reportedly worth around $80 million) to real estate mogul Joseph Chetrit.
The hotel currently has a sign on its front door announcing its “temporary” closure (which occurred on August 2, to make way for a year-long series of renovations). While the exterior of the world-famous building at 222 West 23rd Street is officially landmarked by the city — as well as having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the federal government — Chetrit has the latitude to remodel the interior as he sees fit for future business (a process that began almost immediately after the building changed hands).
With almost no indication of the impending sale (stalled for weeks due to Chetrit’s difficulty in financing his purchase of the building from the previous owner, BD Hotels, LLC) and with no prior warning, management began removing short-term guests from the hotel on July 31. A state of confusion reigned as tenants and union workers watched the mass exodus of first-time tourists and perennial visitors. Some did not go quietly.
Jeffery Stewart, a British actor who had just attended the Manhattan Film Festival (where he won the award for Best Actor) and was scheduled to stay until August 2, felt as if he was being hounded. After being woken at 9a.m. on August 1 by phone calls from the front desk and pounding on the door from security, Stewart called the police for protection — but was forced to leave after a manager read him the fine print in his reservation contract. The fact that he was reimbursed for the cost of two nights in exchange for losing his last was little consolation.
“I’ve been coming to the Chelsea for ten years,” Stewart said as he checked in at the Savoy Hotel down the street. “The word sad gets used for so many things, but honestly, this is just incredibly sad...”

Continue reading

Sam Spokony @'downtown express'

♪♫ Alejandro Escovedo - Chelsea Hotel '78

Carmine Street Shop Makes Guitars From Hotel Chelsea's 'Bones'

...In (Rick) Kelly's 42 Carmine St. shop, he turned wood from both sites into a guitar for former Chelsea Hotel resident Bob Dylan, he said.
"[Dylan] loved the combination of Chumley's body wood and Chelsea Hotel neck wood," Kelly said.

Mark Duggan death: IPCC 'may have misled journalists'

The police watchdog has admitted it may have misled journalists into believing police shooting victim Mark Duggan fired at officers before he was killed.

Mr Duggan, 29, was shot by officers last Thursday in Tottenham.
His death sparked the initial riots in London which were followed by disorder in other English cities.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission later released a statement to make it clear that Mr Duggan did not fire a gun at police.
Ballistic tests found that a bullet which lodged itself in one officer's radio was police issue.
In other developments surrounding the riots in England:

A 68-year-old man who was critically injured while he tried to stamp out a fire during riots in west London has died. A 22-year-old man has been arrested.
A clearer picture is emerging of the people who were involved in rioting and looting as magistrates' courts continue to sit throughout the night in London and late into the evening in Birmingham and Manchester. An Olympic Games ambassador and a care worker are among those in the docks
Association of Chief Police Officers president Sir Hugh Orde has denied a rift with ministers, saying it was the police and not MPs who devised the "more robust" approach that restored calm after four nights of rioting in England
Ed Miliband has blamed the riots that swept English cities on a "me first" culture and accepted Labour must share the blame for creating it.
More than 1,000 arrests have now been made in London alone and more than 1,500 across England since the unrest began on Saturday
An 18-year-old man from Salford is charged with criminal damage, recklessly endangering life after a fire at a Miss Selfridge store in Manchester city centre.
The inquest into the deaths of Haroon Jahan, 21, Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, will be opened and adjourned at Birmingham Coroner's Court later
More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive - becoming the first such petition to be considered for a Commons debate
The government has launched a website with advice to the public on how to cope with the unrest

The IPCC said in a statement on Friday: "Analysis of media coverage and queries raised on Twitter have alerted us to the possibility that we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists when responding to very early media queries following the shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police Service officers on the evening of 4 August."
Police-issue bullet It said the IPCC's first statement made no reference to shots fired at police.
But it said: "However, having reviewed the information the IPCC received and gave out during the very early hours of the unfolding incident, before any documentation had been received, it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged, as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot and taken to hospital.
"Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident."
Mr Duggan was a passenger in a minicab which was stopped by police near Tottenham Hale Tube station.
A non-police issue handgun, converted from a blank-firing pistol to one that shoots live rounds, was recovered close to the scene of his death.
The bullet lodged in the police radio was a "jacketed round", a police-issue bullet consistent with being fired from a Metropolitan Police Heckler and Koch MP5, the IPCC said.
An inquest into Mr Duggan's death, which opened at North London Coroner's Court in High Barnet on Tuesday, heard the father of four died from a single gunshot wound to the chest.
@'BBC'