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Kat Stoeffel

Kat Stoeffel is a media reporter at The New York Observer. She tweets as @kstoeffel. She would be delighted to hear from you at kstoeffel@observer.com or 212-407-9332.

By Kat Stoeffel 2/22 2:30pm

TIMES OF THE TIMES

Bought-Out New York Times Banking Reporter Eric Dash Lands at Treasury Department

Former New York Times banking reporter Eric Dash has taken a job in the U.S. Department of the Treasury's communications department.

A tipster forwarded us this message, posted to his Facebook account:

"Some of you have asked me about my next move. I'm excited to report that I've joined the Treasury Department as a Senior Advisor for Policy and Communications. In this new role, I will be working with the public affairs team to help drive the Treasury's ongoing efforts to provide fact-based, data-driven content on the Administration's economic policies. I've always been interested in public service and can't think of a more relevant and interesting job at such a critical time for our country." Read More
By Kat Stoeffel 2/22 10:29am

off the record

GLAMOUR

Glamour‘s Fashion Week Makeover Montage

At first we thought it was an elaborate social experiment. A few days before New York Fashion Week, Condé Nast’s populist women’s magazine, Glamour, announced it had teamed up with hipster depot Opening Ceremony to bring readers an exclusive and stylish offer: a cat sweater—that is, a sweater embroidered with face of a cat—available in black and white, which would retail online for an affordable $99.

Was the joke that the Opening Ceremony imprimatur and Glamour’s platform could convince fashion lemmings like us that cat sweaters are cool? Come next Fashion Week, would we be reading a Glamour tell-all about how it gamed the fashion marketing machine to trick us into spending $99 on a garment most often found in a Midwestern Salvation Army?

Not likely.

It turns out the cat sweater was just one of a slew of unconventional but earnest marketing experiments Condé Nast’s stumbling cash cow debuted at Fashion Week—foremost its redesign. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 2/22 9:19am

books

SMendelsonPBogaards_040407

Bogie’s Burn Book: There’s a Tumblin’, Tweetin’ Bull in the Knopf China Shop

A few weeks ago, Paul Bogaards did something few good publicists, let alone the head of public relations at New York’s most patrician publishing house, would suggest their client do.

In the early hours of Jan. 24, the 51-year-old executive director of publicity and marketing for Knopf posted “The Hierarchy of Book Publishing,” a top-100 ranking of his colleagues and competitors, on his personal Tumblr. Far from a fawning Forbes-style list, Mr. Bogaards’s blog post was a gallows-humor-inflected schematic of an industry in collapse. Books are so screwed, it suggested, that a self-published genre geek (J.A. Konrath, #2), the father of a 4-year-old child who has purportedly been to heaven (Todd Burpo, #4) and the intern running the company Twitter feed (#6) all faced sunnier futures than a feared industry veteran like Andrew Wylie (#11).

A couple hundred publishing-industry observers liked and reblogged the post, including the official Tumblr accounts of Vintage/Anchor, Penguin Press and Pantheon Books.

“It’s funny because it’s true,” Kathryn Ratcliffe-Lee, a HarperCollins assistant, commented.

“AHHHHH PERFECTION,” wrote Emma Straub, the bookstore-clerk-turned-fiction-writer. “And I don’t even get half the jokes.” Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 2/21 10:03am

Reviews of Reviews

theobamas

The New York Times Calls Times Correspondent Jodi Kantor’s Book ‘Chick Nonfiction’

You have to love The New York Times' ridiculously ethical refusal to look out for their own in reviews. If you haven't already, check out Rice history professor Douglas Brinkley's review of Times correspondent Jodi Kantor's The Obamas in this week's New York Times Book Review, one of the more condescending and (sorry) gendered reviews we've seen in a long time.

With weeks of media hype and White House blowback muddying the water surrounding The Obamas, one can imagine how the freelancer assigned to review it might not be able to pass up the opportunity to flay a Times reporter in her own backyard. (See Michael Kinsley's review of Times documentary Page One.) But Mr. Brinkley's review wasn't negative, it was just dismissive.

"Call it chick nonfiction, if you will," he wrote. (We probably won't, thanks.) "This book is not about politics, it’s about marriage, or at least one marriage, and a notably successful one at that." Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 2/20 9:30am

The Best Defense

rupertmurdoch

Rupert Murdoch Will Personally Oversee The Sun on Sunday in London

The Sun on Sunday launches next week, making Rupert Murdoch's first UK newspaper available seven days a week, even as its masthead is plagued by arrests and allegations of bribery. Here is a vintage pic of Mr. Murdoch released by The Sun for the occasion.

In a memo obtained by the Guardian, the News Corp. boss pledged his "unwavering support" to the new publication, which is staffed at least in part by employees of the shuttered News of the World.

Memo below, emphasis ours.

Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 2/17 12:19pm

Summits

womenintheworld

Men Moderate Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit

Tina Brown is securing the the lineup for her annual Women in the World summit, which kicks off early next month. On opening night, March 8, CBS This Morning host Charlie Rose will moderate a  conversation between Secretary Madeleine Albright and Angelina Jolie on how women rebuilt communities after wars in Congo, Kosovo and Bosnia. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 2/17 11:11am

The Schmear

Morning Links: Remembering Anthony Shadid

Here's a comprehensive round-up of tributes to and remembrances of Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times foreign correspondent who died suddenly of an apparent asthma attack while reporting in Syria yesterday. He was 43. [Poynter]

BuzzFeed is looking for someone to man their Twitter. [@BuzzFeedBen]

Patch feel-good feature subject accused of robbing a bank one day prior to interview. [Romenesko] Read More

1 By Kat Stoeffel 2/16 11:21am

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Kim-Dotcom-007

What’s Inside Kim Dotcom’s Panic Room?

Before Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was arrested last month, he was living in $18 million mansion in New Zealand, which he was renting.

He had purchased $8 million in New Zealand government bonds in an attempt to get the nonresident permission he needed to buy the place but he failed the country's "good character" test, according to a profile of Mr. Dotcom in  Businessweek today. Read More