Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Johnny Depp has been accused of domestic violence by his estranged wife of 15 months, Amber Heard. The story is only a few days old, and it’s already unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the gossip press — as Lainey Gossip points out, typically these kinds of allegations don’t touch the A-list. Though Depp’s publicity…
“I don’t think they had a choice. I mean, probably they didn’t have a choice,” Donald Trump said of the Cincinnati Zoo’s decision to shoot and kill a gorilla. Usually when reporters ask about the gorilla in the room, it’s not an actual gorilla. Not so Tuesday, when between reporter queries about his potential running…
In the grand scheme of things, eight seconds doesn’t sound like much, especially in the context of a long documentary about a complex issue like gun control. But in the current highly-charged political environment, nothing is as simple as it might seem at first, and former TV news anchor Katie Couric is learning that lesson…
Many of the world’s largest Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, rely heavily on advertising to finance their online empires. But that business model is increasingly coming under threat, with one in five smartphone users, or almost 420 million people worldwide, blocking advertising when browsing the web on cellphones. That represents a 90 percent annual…
Start Article Post Content Variety has named Sonia Saraiya as TV critic. Saraiya, who was most recently the TV critic at Salon, will be based in Variety’s New York offices starting on June 13. In her new post, she will provide expert reviews and analysis alongside chief TV critic Maureen Ryan. “I’m delighted to welcome Sonia…
I HAVE been attacked pretty much my entire career by Gawker. I made its list of “least important writers” twice, and it put me in 62nd place on its “worst 100 white men” list, which also included Judas Iscariot and Joe Paterno. Gawker writers have called me a “terrible writer” and a “terrible sexist” and…
Photo Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal. It was revealed this week that he had bankrolled the wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. Credit Robyn Twomey SAN FRANCISCO — After the news that one of Silicon Valley’s stars secretly funded a lawsuit to bring down a gossip site, the overwhelming response in the…
No major American cultural force is more opposed to examination and more active in suppressing it today than Silicon Valley. So when it was revealed this week that Facebook board member Peter Thiel had been secretly bankrolling a lawsuit to inflict financial ruin on the news and gossip site Gawker, Silicon Valley cheered. The investor…
Defenders of litigation finance claim noble motives: They are merely equalizing access to a legal system that leaves too many on the wrong side of the courthouse doors. (It’s hard not to hear echoes here of Thiel’s claim that he’s spent millions to after Gawker for “philanthropic” reasons.) According to a post at Burford Capital,…
On Monday, The New York Times published a report that Gawker founder Nick Denton believed it was highly likely that the lawsuit brought against his company by Hulk Hogan was being financed by a secret backer. Then, on Tuesday night, Forbes reported that Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel has been the man secretly bankrolling the Hulkster’s…