Radio Alert: Brian Lehrer April 24

I’m going to be on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show tomorrow morning at 11:30 discussing my New York Magazine cover story “The Wail of the 1%”. Tune in!

Matt Drudge, Underground Man

I have a New Republic piece out this week on the Howard Hughes life of Matt Drudge. In recent years, the mercurial operator of the Drudge Report has gone underground. According to one source, the only people Drudge still speaks with include Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. He’s spent a considerable time on the road, traveling to such locales as Tel Aviv, Geneva and South America.

From the piece:

Drudge owes both his stature and his accompanying fortune–sources believe he makes millions per year off his site–essentially to one thing: his appetite, during the Lewinsky era and afterward, for rummaging further into the lives of public figures than mainstream journalists were willing to go. And that’s ironic when you consider the reason that his appearance at the Clinton concession speech created such a frenzy: For the past few years, Matt Drudge has gone almost completely underground.

Read the full piece HERE

The Rage of the Rich

In this week’s New York Magazine, I report on the anger felt by many on Wall Street. Deprived of their bonuses and Master of the Universe status, there’s a deep resentment and woundedness on Wall Street. As hard as it might be to imagine sometimes, yes, rich people have feelings. From the piece:

In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too. As populist rage has erupted around the country, stoked by canny politicians, an opposite rage has built on Wall Street and other arenas where the wealthy hold sway. Its expression is more furtive and it’s often mixed with a kind of sublimated shame, but it can be every bit as vitriolic. “AIG pissed some people off, and now you’re gonna screw everyone on Wall Street?” rails a laid-off JPMorgan vice-president.”

Read the full piece HERE

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The Hunter: Barry Bonds

I have a piece in the April issue of GQ on Barry Bonds. I report on his fate after leaving baseball and his experience being the target of baseball’s efforts to purge the steroids era from its past. The embattled former Giants slugger has been unsuccessful in his attempts to get back into the game. But more so, the piece is a portrait of a man whose life is at an inflection point, between his past and an uncertain future. And I also report on Bonds’ newfound passion: hunting. From the piece:

He pulls out his binoculars and surveys the field. Soon a giant whitetail emerges out of the woods, and Mogle gets excited. “This guy is big!”

“Oh, without question,” Bonds says as the camera remains fixed on the deer. “He’d be pretty tough to pass up right there.”

As he lifts his gun, his expression turns cold and clinical. Here’s a glimmer of the old Barry Bonds, the fearsome slugger who once wore this same look as he hulked over the batter’s box, daring pitchers to confront him head-on. He cradles the rifle in his shoulder and sights the deer through the scope. It’s strange, in one sense, that the most hunted man in baseball is now an avid hunter, but not so surprising that he still gets the jones to take aim at something. “He’s coming in, he’s coming in right now,” Bonds says as the whitetail approaches. “Okay, get ready.”

He puts his finger on the trigger. The image goes split screen—Bonds on the left, the buck on the right. The picture closes in and steadies on Bonds before suddenly turning dark. Silence. And then…CRACK!

Read the full piece HERE

And watch Barry shoot a whitetail buck:

Horace Mann Revolt Update

I have a New York Magazine piece out this week that revisits my March 2008 cover story on Horace Mann. The school continues to be buffeted by a crisis of authority. Students complain the faculty, led by the upper school head David Schiller, is clamping down on their rights. Schiller, for his part, was outraged earlier this year when the current student president and vice president attacked his plans to exert more control over student assemblies.

The issue burst into public last week when Charles Stam, the former student body president who is now a freshman at Columbia, wrote a letter to the entire Horace Mann student body and faculty that was leaked to Gawker. Charles, who I gave the pseudonym “Jeffrey Robbins” in my New York piece, wrote in his letter attacking Horace Mann’s newspaper, the Record, after he was informed they wouldn’t publish it on campus. Stam also defended the current student leadership and excoriated the administration for taking more control over student affairs.

Stam told me he still feels passionately about Horace Mann and said he’s not the conservative caricature that he feels Gawker and others make him out to be. For more on Stam’s first interview since my piece ran, read the full thing HERE

TNR on Politico: Inside the Scoop Factory

I have a feature in the upcoming New Republic that looks at Politico, the Washington-based political website/newspaper. As print media faces its biggest crisis ever, with readers and advertisers migrating increasingly online, Politico is thriving.

From the piece:

That Politico was helped by the collapse of print journalism goes without saying. That it was also helped by cable news’ insatiable appetite for the tabloid and the personal is also clear. But, two years into the Politico experiment, there is fascination around Washington with what could be considered the first Internet newspaper, and whether it represents a way to make a business out of political reporting. As traditional newspapers jettison staff, Politico is holding steady. This month, Allbritton told me the venture will turn a profit in six months. “We’re way ahead of budget,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the profit this year would count in the millions of dollars.”

Read the full piece HERE

Why Steve Jobs Won’t Save Newspapers

I have a piece out this morning at Slate’s The Big Money that looks at the issue of micropayments for online content. Last week, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson wrote a cover story in Time that argued that newspapers should adopt the micropayment model–charging readers pennies for individual articles or a nominal monthly subscription. The idea is to create an iTunes like service for news. In my piece, I explain why Steve Jobs isn’t going to come to the newspaper industry’s rescue anytime soon.

Read the full piece HERE:

Clash of the Utopias: Tishman Speyer, BlackRock and the $5.4 billion Battle for Stuyvesant Town

In this week’s New York Magazine, I report on the unfolding meltdown of the biggest real-estate deal in American history. In 2006, Tishman Speyer and BlackRock bought Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion. It was the highest price ever paid for a single real-estate transaction. Now, the deal is being buffeted by a cratering market, crushing leverage and a brewing feud with thousands of rent-stabilized tenants.

From the piece:

But by 2006, the sun seemed to be setting on the middle class in Manhattan. The blasting real-estate scene gave a whole new meaning to “market rate” apartments, and fewer and fewer people in the city believed in rent stabilization as a core value. The complex seemed a kind of anachronism—and, to the Speyers, a huge opportunity. To start with, the phrase “80 acres of Manhattan” is, to real-estate men like Rob Speyer and his father, a talismanic incantation. But it was more than just the acreage. Rob had a vision. He believed that by adding amenities and remodeling apartments—and forcing out longtime tenants who held on to their apartments in violation of rent-stabilization law—they could make Stuy Town hospitable to the new armies that were increasingly populating Manhattan, the recent college graduates with jobs in marketing and finance who worked long hours and wanted a full-service experience (including even a putting green).

Read the full piece HERE

Joe Scarborough on the New York Times, Obama and McCain

This morning, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski hosted me on their WABC radio program to talk about my New York Magazine piece on the Times‘ Obama-inauguration party. As Michael Calderone blogged at Politico, Joe raised an interesting question when he suggested that former John McCain aide Vin Weber (who worked for Mitt Romney’s exploratory committee) may have been the Times‘ source for their now infamous A1 piece that reported on worries within McCain’s inner circle that the Senator and the lobbyist Vicki Iseman were romantically involved.

Listen to the program HERE:

New York Times Parties for Obama

I have a New York Magazine piece out on the Times‘ inauguration party held last night at the New Museum, in Soho. From the piece:

Though the  Times hasn’t taken a pronounced pro-Obama line (the paper endorsed Hillary, after all), it certainly has found many synergies with the new administration. For one, Obama is a Niebuhr-quoting intellectual who provides the most powerful possible endorsement for the paper’s cerebral sensibilities. The return of an ardent reader and a published author to the White House reaffirms what the Times stands for — as a Columbia grad, he’s steeped in the values of the Upper West Side.

But there are also economic benefits to an Obama presidency. The Times — like most media outlets that saw traffic spike during this campaign — stands to gain, at least financially, from an Obama presidency. His celebrity, and power to inspire the audience, is even a profit center — selling papers ($29.95 for the “Inauguration and Election Newspaper Set”) and photographs ($1,129 for a 20-by-24 Damon Winter image) — at a moment when the paper must find new ways to market itself and make money. (For readers who want their Obama first thing in the morning, there’s a $24.95 set of Obama “Victory Mugs,” part of a extensive collection of Obama memorabilia available at the paper’s online store.)
Hence the party.

Read the full piece HERE