Why NYmag's decision to cut pay, keep staff writers is a good one.

We've all seen the headlines.

"Editor Bob Jones laid off." "Conde Nast freezes salaries." "NYTimes lays off staffers."

It's a tough time to be in the publishing industry, whatever the medium.

It's easy to hate on management for this, since they're the ones throwing the switch. Yet the most responsible (public) handling of the economic crisis yet by a media company has been that of New York magazine's, who decided to keep the money flowing toward its dedicated staff, rather than cutting it off.

It's not as much of a cost-saving move, but to the staff writers who were affected, it's everything. It's a job, albeit not enough of one, in an expensive city. It's the opportunity not to serve lattes while you're planning out your next freelance pitch. It's a safety net. Some money will come in.

At least some money will come in.

It's tough being cut if you're editorial. Your job is to create a publication, not sell ads. Sure, what you produce shouldn't be ad-averse, but when the sales side doesn't make enough cash, you're just as much at risk as they are of termination. And that's a tough pill to swallow, especially when (with a global recession) the whole thing is out of their hands, too.

So I commend New York for hanging in there. It's not a popular move from the top -- hell, if they weren't a private company, they probably wouldn't have been able to make such a move -- but to a writer, it's an incredible display of understanding.

You will continue to receive some sort of paycheck. You will continue to have your work published under our notable masthead somehow.

So owner Bruce Wasserstein, editor-in-chief Adam Moss, managing editor Ann Clarke, and whoever else was involved in the discussion, you've shown considerable tact in this move. Everyone expects something to happen, and everyone hopes it isn't them who is affected, but this is saving a lot of face in a lot of places -- even if it's a small staff to begin with.

(It should be noted that not everyone made it this year: there were a handful of layoffs in December, including senior editor Jesse Oxfeld and restaurant critic Gael Greene.)

When every publication in New York City is fighting for the best talent, it's also a good way to keep it in house. I'm continually impressed at the quality of magazine that staff puts out each week (!). Here's hoping keeping most people on board will continue that trend.

Why Aren't Magazines Themselves On The Web? A Letter To Publishers.

Every time I visit a magazine's website, I'm disappointed.

Why?

Because I don't get the same experience that I appreciate getting as a reader of the print publication.

Normally, that's fine. The success of a magazine's website isn't to emulate the print publication. It can't, too, since it's generally accepted that magazines can't be as easily replaced as newspapers in an online format.

So why am I disappointed, then?

Because most magazines' websites are cluttered. Obscenely so. Ads scream at you "above the fold" and keep on screaming until the fifth or sixth scroll down. Featured articles are rarely featured. Less-than-quality content is given the same weight as the cover story. And for God's sake, I don't even know where I am on this damn website.

Get what I'm saying? Magazine websites don't feature their content the way they do in the printed format. And that is what I think makes a magazine so enjoyable to read in the first place.

I understand that most big-time publishers haven't put "enough resources" (as their web editors might say under their collective breath) toward the development of the online platform. They pay for a template, a content management system, and a couple peoples' salaries to keep the thing going. The focus is still on the moneymaker -- the printed magazine. And I get that.

But they're hurting themselves so very much.

A website is the online face of the magazine. For most, it looks as if that face has way, way too much makeup. The problem with this is, despite a lack of significant ad revenue, there are on average five times as many readers online as there are for the printed publication. Five times as many eyeballs -- which means a vast majority who don't subscribe to the site (there is, on average, about 10-20 percent overlap with the printed publication). And what do these readers have to greet them?

An information overload, a vague identity and no reason to subscribe. When online subscriptions cost the publisher the least amount of money, what benefit is that, exactly?

Let's take an example of a magazine I read regularly: New York, a weekly publication.

The magazine serves a distinct purpose as a "in-the-know" magazine for a wide swath of audience living in the New York area. It's service-y, it's big-J journalism-y, it's trashy, it's classy.

In the printed pages, it's easy to see why New York wins all the National Magazine Awards. In terms of stories, the writing's usually top-notch, and when it isn't, they make the best they can of it with great art or infographics. In terms of design, the typography is fantastic, the use of white space is daring and it's distinctive. On the whole, it just drips the New York identity. Which it's supposed to.

But on the web -- even though it's come a long way recently -- it's a complete overload. The typography is there -- unusual for most magazines -- but there's no white space in sight. Ads fight for stories. The cover stories are not always the featured story -- and New York offers almost all of its content free on the web (most national magazines do not). It obliterates my senses -- in a bad way.

I like the New York magazine website, but I much prefer it on my RSS reader. That way, I don't have socialites and Diane Von Furstenberg ads fighting for eyeball attention with the latest story about John McCain. About the only part of the website I can stomach for long is the restaurant reviews, which aren't littered with as much distraction. The Intelligencer blog is wonderful, but it can't hold my eye too long before the ads and other stories overcome my attention.

The worst part about this is that, compared to other national and regional magazines, New York's website is fairly ahead of the game. About the only websites it can't compete with in terms of sheer usefulness are tech-centric magazines, whose audience is a natural transition from print to web (and in fact, they probably fight to move online readers to the printed publication and not the other way around).

But take a look at some national magazine websites: Vogue. InStyle. O, The Oprah Magazine. Elle. Esquire. The list goes on. On them all, their identities are not distinct. Your eyeball is having a hard time adjusting with each passing second. And if you already have something in mind to find, forget it. Have you ever tried to find a specific piece of content on the GQ website? It's like pulling your own teeth with a skinny striped silk-knit tie, sans anesthesia. Jesus.

Magazines, it seems, have given up on the idea that they can drive traffic from the website to the printed publication. And I think that's baloney -- so long as bigwigs give up the notion that such migration will only happen if people will come from the website to the printed publication for the exact same reason.

The website serves a purpose. The magazine also serves a purpose. They should be distinct; but they shouldn't be so different that the other wouldn't be attractive to read. In other words, we should think less in an "either/or" fashion and more in a "primary/secondary." Some of our readers are first printed edition readers, than online edition readers. Some are the opposite.

Many of our most celebrated national magazines have spent years and incalculable amounts of money marketing and positioning the mission of their magazine portfolio. Why aren't we doing the same for each publication's website?

For all of the labyrinthine webpages that magazine websites have, they sure can't manage their own content well. It's embarrassing. Really, they're ignoring the lessons they spent a century figuring out: how to draw and direct the eye with typography. How to keep it trained on something with white space. How to exude identity with design cues and pacing. Online, there is none of this. About the only thing that's the same is the writing, and I bet someone could make an argument that the online-exclusive content pales in comparison to the editorial triumph that the printed version has.

To bring it back to New York with a recent example: Why wasn't a nude Lindsay Lohan-as-Marilyn Monroe front and center for the last week and a half? She's your big moneymaker, right? The placement of her 100-by-200 pixels link was admirable, but the vast majority of the website's readers came for her recently. It took me two extra clicks to get to Lindsay, and when I got there, there was nothing on that page to take me elsewhere once I was done browsing the photo shoot. The original link that I described above should have been the one used to reap leftover traffic once the weekly switches content; not as the primary directive.

I'm the reader. Don't make me work.

Sure, magazine websites are still in their infancy. But I'd say that they're really in their teenage years -- misdirected, trying to be someone (everyone) else, and ignoring their own notable qualities.

Mitchel Stevens’ Guide to Employment and Liveblogs

Editor's Note: The following column is part of an anonymous weekly humor column chronicling the struggle of a new, young journalist out in the working world. You may find the author's previous posts in the archives. --The Ed.

Hey gang. A funny thing happened on the way to the Internet today. It turns out that New York magazine ran a little feature this week on a certain lil’ snarky weblog-that-begat-all-blogs: Gawker (proper.)

Traditionally, this sort of “eye on the media” is left to The Editorialiste since this is what he goes to school for. However, we had a brief discussion and realized that this is in fact my area of expertise. You may say, “But Mitchel! How do you do media analysis, aside from poorly?”

And I say, “But reader! This revenge-feature is totally focusing on the common man affected and thus empowered by new media — eye ee, me, Mitchel Stevens. Do you see what I did there?”

And so, perhaps in homage to another great mind of our times, I have decided to liveblog my reading off New York magazine’s latest feature, “Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass.”

7:00 a.m.: Wake up. Mouth tastes like gin, again. Fuck. Promised self I wouldn’t do that on a Sunday night anymore. It’s not the good gin, either, but the shitty type that comes in the same bottle as the good stuff. Fuck. Head hurts.

7:30 a.m.: Wake up again after falling back to sleep. Mouth tastes like cigarettes, gin and ass. Ugh.

8:00 a.m.: Finally get out of bed.

8:05 a.m.: Do morning online job. Open Gmail.

8:06 a.m.: Open link to New York magazine piece.

8:08 a.m.: Wait, aren’t I the “creative underclass?”

8:10 a.m.: Jesus Christ, Vanessa “GRIG” Grigoriadis is a whiny person. I once worked as a researcher for her. Like talking to an early morning stoner.

---
SAMPLE:

MS: So, what are you looking for?

VG: Ok, so I need the stuff no one else knows.

MS: Ok.

VG: Seriously, the kind of things no one checks for.

MS: Ok.

VG: Stuff on message boards, on MySpace pages. If it’s on there, I need it.

MS: Ok. So mainly the Internet stuff.

VG: Yeah.

MS: Ok, got it.

3 DAYS LATER…

VG: Why did you forward me all these MySpace pages?

MS: You wanted the MySpace stuff.

VG: I already know this. God, listen, I need stuff from the MySpace pages that people don’t know about. I need the real stuff.

MS: …like?

VG: You know, the underground.

---

Right. OK, back to liveblogging.

8:12 a.m.: This entire opening is a disclosure about how THE GRIG was burned by Gawker and had to explain to her mother-in-law what a blog was? WTF.

8:13 a.m.: Maybe she forgot about how she exploited her husband’s own weight for a story. Hm, I wonder if her mother-in-law Googled that. (Totes via Gawker).

8:15 a.m.: “Like most journalists, I tend to have a defeatist attitude about Gawker, dismissing it as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of journalism,” in the not too distant future, about 2007 A.D., there was a shitty trend piece, about bloggers like you and me….LA LA LA.

8:20 a.m.: blah blah blah, Gawker once was written by someone else... "Sicha, a handsome ex-gallerist who spends his downtime gardening on Fire Island, is generally warm and even-tempered, but on this last point, he looks truly disgusted. ‘Not a week goes by I don’t want to quit this job,” he says, “because staring at New York this way makes me sick.’” Ooh! How daring! Next week in New York magazine, people dislike their jobs! Followed the week after by: “My Husband Isn’t Fat Anymore and DON’T YOU GOOGLE HIM!!!!!” (By Vanessa Grigoriadis).

8:21 a.m.: Make coffee.

8:34 a.m.: Page two of the online article has Emily “Hey, guise, totally edgy since I give the middle fi—LOOK AT MY BREASTS. I AM NEEDY” Gould, Choire Sicha and Julia Allison. Is it bad I mock Emily? Shit, now I really feel bad. Because she’s moody, guys. Working is hard. Fuck. I feel bad. Sorry, Emily. I mean, I don’t mean to be bitchy. Your work is tough, I know. I freelance too. And blah blah, Josh made fun of Neal Pollack’s kid. Whatever, it takes a proud iPhone clad douche to knock on a little kid. But I really feel like a prick. I know the rooftop photoshoot was probably after days of convincing by Nikola “Teh L Magazine Greatest Photog” Tamindzic. And omg, all you ever knew how to do was write! Me too! Oh, man, I think we’d totally be friends. Do you notice how THE GRIG is making you out to be the human side of OMG GAWKER because you are the soulful one, Em. You’re totes the human side.

And you know, fuck Jimmy Kimmel fo…wait.

Wait.

Hold the fuck on.

9:20 a.m.: No, wait, it’s still there. You make $55,000 a year? Seriously. You make $55,000 a year, wrote a book and are complaining that you have to work? I understand you have to pay freelancer’s taxes. I know what that is. I get receipts every time I buy a MetroCard.

But you are COMPLAINING about making that much money? What the fuck? You’re like every other punk kid I knew: oh boo hoo, life is hard—except for this shit-load amount of money I make! Oh, life is hard! I need to go have appetizers at a classy restaurant! Life is pain! I need to have a Pink Panty Dropper.

9:24 a.m.: Seriously. WTF. Why don’t you complain about your job more.

9:26 a.m.: Yeah, Denton looks like Morrissey. Speaking of, why hasn’t Gawker posted about this yet?

9:30 a.m.: I’m on page 3 of the online article. What does this article have to do with the “creative underclass?” So far, this has been about THE GRIG being pissed her mother-in-law googled her son and blames THE GRIG. Not to mention—and I skipped ahead here—that THE GRIG made friends with Emily Gould and loves Choire Sicha’s sexy underwear. Well, we all love Choire’s underwear. It’s what we see when we “apply” for work at Gawker. Whatever.

But this article? It’s a pity. This is the prime example of old media trying attack online. Especially when online outlets such as this—and especially with the reasoning that Alex Balk didn’t mean to leave for Radar magazine, but was forced to leave regarding a post me made—show that online is indeed better.

Shit, I give up on this whole “liveblogging” thing. I can’t stomach THE GRIG’s story, nor how she attempts to humanize poor Emily as the scarred, lonely little girl in a big scary man’s second life. Maybe THE GRIG forgot that most people in media make below $28 K when it comes to work. After all, how much did she make for this corporate blowjob? Maybe she cut off some cash for her tubby hubby.

It should be no surprise that Gawker has yet to comment on the article that cites some in the office are drug users or like to have sex. What a shock! At least we know one thing—Richard Blakely, one of Gawker’s videographers, doesn’t wear tight white pants. Right, Alex Goldberg?

But I digress. I tried to get in contact* with the kids at Gawker in the interest of journalism and integrity and web 2.0. Sadly, no amount of uppers, downers or gin could attract Sicha, the guy with a Serge Gainsborough tat or Lil’ Miss “I make 55 K. SO DEPRESSING. WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE.”

Sigh. Anyway, the Gawker kids haven’t even discussed the piece on their site yet. So far it was just “omg, alex pareene is here. Omg, these things are going on. Omg, we are not going to acknowledge the 500-lb pink elephant in the room. Omg, CMJ is so totally for young people!”

Oh, Gawker. You’re so adorable. Like a $55,000 worth of adorable. But not nearly as adorable as how tubby THE GRIG’s husband is.

-MS

*Note: Mitchel Stevens did not try at all to talk to the editors at Gawker. In fact, he sort of just played Bona Drag for an hour, drank some gin and then sat around refreshing his Gmail while googling himself. Mitchel Stevens really didn’t feel inspired this time. Mitchel Stevens wants breakfast.