Rachel Sklar

Is the Huffington Post's media and special projects editor Rachel Sklar giving up media criticism for a career as a coffeehouse chanteuse? Heck, if Portfolio's Matt Cooper could be named Washington's Funniest Celebrity (a decade ago, back when there was something to laugh about in that town), anything's possible.

In a video Ms. Sklar posted on YouTube, the Eat the Press editor performs a parody of Don McLean's "American Pie" with Lisa Loeb. In lyrics she wrote herself, Ms. Sklar sings about the joys and fears of summer camp to co-promote the book Camp Camp and Camp Lisa, Ms. Loeb's latest CD.  read more »

Emily Gould's New York Times Magazine cover story hasn't even landed with a thud on front porches and newsstands yet, but it's already garnering a ton of criticism online.

Some of the critical outlets weren't surprising.

Like Gawker, for example, since Ms. Gould's article is in many ways a rebuke of the site.

Gawker's first post officially linked to Ms. Gould's Times Magazine story received 9,133 views and 170 comments.

A follow-up post clocked in at 8,814 views with 149 comments, while a post announcing comments had closed on NYTimes.com received only 4,150 views and 83 comments.

Sadly, another, about the article's photos, topped out at only 2,556 views and 55 comments.

Finally, it seemed, for Gawker, the horse had been kicked to death.

New York magazine's Daily Intel had a wonkishly incisive post in which its editors calculated how many dollars Ms. Gould was presumed to have been paid for the words "I" and "me" in the 7,937-word article. (Eight hundred and sixty dollars, by Daily Intel's math. One wonders how many I's and me's were in New York's equally controversial first person cover story this week.)  read more »

A little after 6 p.m. at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Condé Nast president Richard Beckman was sharing a drink—vodka, olives—with Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend. The two were discussing the same thing everyone in the lobby of Jazz at Lincoln Center at the Time Warner Center was talking about: What the National Magazine Awards can do, or not do, for a magazine.  read more »

The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar -- who's actually, you know, a lawyer -- has taken a close look at Dan Rather's lawsuit and CBS's motion to dismiss it, and concluded that it has merit enough not to get thrown out before discovery.  She writes:

The lawsuit isn't without merit and CBS knows that, and Rather does, too, even if his expectations about the kind of damages he's entitled to or his perception of his own lack of responsibility are all seriously off the mark. The best solution for both sides, ultimately, is to settle — and to close this ugly chapter once and for all.

True, maybe, but the best solution for the rest of us is obviously for this thing to go to trial so we can learn all about CBS's (alleged) nefarious plot to team up with Karl Rove and destroy investigative journalism.

Taxes, weight gain, depression, loneliness—book advances are like lottery payoffs.  read more »

At today's luncheon for the American Society of Magazine Editors, on the second floor of The Princeton Club and starring the former editors of Spy magazine, a Q&A session got complicated.

Susan Morrison--a former Spy editor, and so friendly with former co-worker Graydon Carter, and now an editor at the New Yorker--made a wee gibe about a new piece by Christopher Hitchens, which was just published in Mr. Carter's magazine, Vanity Fair. That piece explains why women aren't funny.

Salad and chicken and a roll were served, as well as a fluffy cheesecake.

The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar was seated at a table with Conde Nast's director of public relations, Maurie Perl. Mr. Carter was talking about how it was difficult to grow up, and become friendly with people, and still manage to make fun of them. It was easier when we were young, he was saying, and when you're older, you find people are people.

Rachel Sklar had her hand up and, in preface to her question, made a seque comment about women being people too.

She wanted Graydon Carter to tell her why Vanity Fair had published the article that Mr. Hitchens had written.

"You just proved my point," Mr. Carter told her, according to people who were present. He meant that she was humorless.

And so Ms. Sklar had inserted herself into the big feminist bear-trap Mr. Hitchens had set. (The game, which dates to at least the mid-70's, is traditionally played like this: You write an article like that, and those who humorlessly complain are then treated as the proof in the pudding of the article. Which doesn't of course make the complainers any less humorless.)

(Oddly enough, the game doesn't work on black people.)

"And I really wanted to hear him talk about why he published that because he's sitting up there as an arbiter of All Things Funny," Ms. Sklar explained later.

Graydon Carter didn't know who she was. They weren't friends. They'd never worked together. "Who are you?" he asked. She told him she'd already written about the Hitchens piece and offered to send him some links. He wanted to know if she was funny for the Huffington Post.

Ms. Sklar called the Hitchens piece "ungood."

Mr. Carter did not in the end answer her question.

Kurt Andersen entered the fray. Someone present noted that people had gotten that look where they're looking at the floor and smiling in an interesting way.

Mr. Andersen asked Ms. Sklar, what was Mr. Carter supposed to do? If a columnist wrote a piece, and if he's supposed to kill it....? Ms. Sklar said she had thought that editors evaluated pieces before they ran.

After the exchange, the next questioner wanted the Spy alums to talk about Separated at Birth, a feature in which pictures of two or more unlikely people who are found to carry some noticeable physical attribute are juxtaposed.

"I always thought we'd bond over being Canadian," Ms. Sklar said later, via Google Chat, of Mr. Carter. "Oh well."

Former FishbowlNY editor and Tomato aficionado Rachel Sklar has accepted a position in The Huffington Post's New York office. Working from the company's base in Silicon Alley 2.0 (aka, Soho), she'll be lending a hand as an editor and developing several projects for the site.

Fans of Sklar's unique writing style (featuring show tunes and coinages like "blog synchronicity") have nothing to fear: besides editing, she'll also be joining Larry David, Rep. John Murtha, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and contributors to Arianna's virtual cocktail party. In an email to Media Mob, Sklar reports, "I will also be blogging, which I'm extremely excited about."

—Matt Haber

Everything does move faster in blogland: Last Wednesday, Fishbowl NY editor Rachel Sklar posted an item marking the media blog's one-year anniversary. "[I]it's been a very good year," she wrote. "Thanks to all of you and here's to many more!"

That night, Sklar gave notice she would be leaving Jan. 31 to pursue a freelance career. "I'll be returning to the wild and wonderful world of freelancing and seeing daylight," Sklar wrote via e-mail. "Can't wait."  read more »

Sklar, an unusually sunny voice in the media-blog world, had been with Fishbowl NY 10 months. Founding editor Elizabeth Spiers left Nov. 1 of last year, to work on a novel.