FRIDAY'S LINKS: FishbowlNY Blogs 'E&P' Confab, Page Six Scandal to U.S. Atty, 'NYT' Reporter Wins Kelly Award

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, former New York Daily News Ed Kosner blasts the paper's owner in his new memoir, and investigation into the Page Six payola scandal is forwarded to the U.S. Attorney General's office, and a New York Times reporter wins the 2006 Michael Kelly award.


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New York 'Daily News' Owner Zuckerman Blasted in Former Editor's Memoir
Ed Kosner?s memoir doesn?t come out until September, but staffers at the New York Daily News who have seen galleys are already buzzing about the book?s unsparing portrayal of their owner, Mort Zuckerman. A former top editor of Newsweek, New York and Esquire, Kosner ran the Daily News from 2000 to 2003. In his memoir, "It's News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor," Kosner depicts Zuckerman as a "notorious screamer" who "nickel-and-dimed his editors" and "ran the paper like a corner candy store."


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U.S. Attorney General Reviewing Information in 'Page Six' Scandal
Results of a federal probe into a New York Post Page Six staffer's alleged shakedown of a billionaire investor have been forwarded to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for final review, it was learned yesterday. Gonzales will decide whether Page Six writer Jared Paul Stern will be prosecuted on extortion, wire fraud and other charges for soliciting $220,000 from investor Ron Burkle.


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FishbowlNY Coverage of E&P's Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas
"It somehow seems appropriate that the Interactive Media Conference & Trade Show being held by Editor & Publisher and MediaWeek is being held on the outskirts of Vegas," writes Mediabistro.com Editorial Director Dorian Benkoil. "With topics like 'What's Wrong with Media' (moderated by friend and mentor Vin Crosbie, with whom we shared sushi last night), 'Newsroom Convergence: For Real This Time?' and 'If You Could Build Your Website From Scratch, What Would You Do Differently?' it makes all this digital media stuff sound like maybe something of a crapshoot."


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Rupert Murdoch, Ever the Pragmatist
"He is a good handicapper and he smells a winner," writes James Brady. "Any assiduous reader of the New York Post over the last year or so could read into the paper's stories about Hillary Clinton -- their placement, their number, their tone--a political sea change, a shift in coverage. Earlier on, Hillary had been the newspaper?s "Dragon Lady," their pet peeve, their la belle dame sans merci. Then the paper began ripping her then Senate opponent, Republican Jeanine Pirro, and puffing Hills."


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The Media, the Market, and McClatchy
The company's CEO Gary Pruitt, one of the newspaper industry's most admired chief executives, has risked both his professional reputation and his company's fortunes on the $6.5 billion deal. If Pruitt succeeds, his status as industry golden boy will be secured, along with the legacy of the McClatchy family. ... However, success is by no means guaranteed.


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Behind the Verdict in the Klebnikov Trial
"Last week, in a darkened Moscow courtroom, hopes for justice [in the case] were quashed in similar mystery with the acquittal of the two suspected Chechen hit men -- Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhaev," writes Richard Behar. "If the verdict hasn't exactly created shockwaves, that's because few people know the details. The Klebnikov trial was closed to the press and the public, with all the participants under a strict gag order imposed by the judge. "


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The New World of News
"[The ancient traditions of newspapering are] so routinized and formal, it can seem silly," writes William Powers. "Besides, who cares what a bunch of inch-deep, self-important journalists think is important? Online media are, in a way, the culture's answer to this question. For reasons both practical and philosophical, they present the news in a much less hierarchical fashion. On the practical level, a computer screen is just a two-dimensional surface, with far fewer potentially symbolic nooks and crannies than a thick sheaf of pages printed on both sides."


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Where's the Outrage Over Spying on Reporters?
"In the paranoid and secretive style of the Bush administration, it requires little imagination to progress to a program such as warrantless telephone surveillance or an aggressive leak investigation aimed at the enemy press," writes Eric Alterman. "What is surprising is how little follow up we?ve seen and heard from the rest of the media and how little outrage we?re observing from the potential victims. While the story itself may be difficult to advance, where, for goodness sakes are our nation?s leading editorial pages?"


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'NY Times' Reporter LaFranier Wins 2006 Michael Kelly Award
New York Times reporter Sharon LaFraniere is this year's recipient of the Michael Kelly Award. She won the award for her reporting from Southern Africa on the struggles faced by the women in the region. The $25,000 award is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003.