Observer among the watchdogs

So perhaps it wouldn8217;t be too snarky to observe that the paper revels in juicy gossip about the high and mighty, but gives its targets a chance to respond. 8216;8216;For all the back-and-forth about the Observer8217;s alleged mean streak, fundamentally we8217;re about doing intelligent journalism,8217;8217; says television writer Jason Gay, who just quit to join GQ.

The Observer8217;s circulation of 55,000 is centred mainly in Manhattan. Its 15 reporters and a handful of editors, operating out of an Upper East Side townhouse, are mostly twentysomethings toiling for modest pay. 8216;8216;It8217;s covering people like you and me,8217;8217; Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak tells a reporter, 8216;8216;and we all want to read about ourselves and the industries we care about. And they discover new talent.8217;8217; 8216;8216;We haven8217;t been happy with everything they8217;ve written,8217;8217; says Fox News spokesman Brian Lewis. But, he says, 8216;8216;it8217;s the first thing I go to every Wednesday morning. They serve a certain clientele. They serve the media. It8217;s a very inside paper.8217;8217; Lewis calls the coverage, yes, 8216;8216;snarky,8217;8217; which 8216;8216;I mean as a compliment,8217;8217; he adds. And there8217;s always the chance of hitting it big. Kaplan helped launch Candce Bushnell in the early 8217;90s with a column christened Sex and the City, which became a monster hit for Sarah Jessica Parker and HBO.

Michael Powell, now The Washington Post8217;s New York bureau chief, spent a year at the Observer. During an earlier stint at New York Newsday, 8216;8216;I would call and call Felix Rohatyn and could never get him on the phone,8217;8217; he says of the Manhattan financier. 8216;8216;I went to the Observer and all of a sudden Rohatyn would call me back in an instant 8212; because it was his class and his group that read it.8217;8217; The paper8217;s two biggest quarries are Conde Nast, which Kaplan likens to 8216;8216;a big old Hollywood studio,8217;8217; and the Times, which is 8216;8216;like reporting on the Kremlin.8217;8217; So Blair was a huge 8216;8216;get8217;8217; for the Observer.

Media writer Sridhar Pappu says he and a colleague thought they had lined up an interview but then couldn8217;t get hold of the fallen Timesman. 8216;8216;I just kept calling him and calling him and calling him,8217;8217; Pappu says. A couple of weeks later, he scored an extensive discussion with Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

The 15-year-old Observer, which features columnists such as Joe Conason, Rex Reed, Hilton Kramer and Ron Rosenbaum and cartoonist Robert Grossman, also throws its weight around in New York politics. The paper trumpeted a front-page editorial calling for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign during the flap over whether she and her husband improperly took gifts from the White House. It also runs such features as a spread on 8216;8216;Superdames8217;8217; 8212; the 8216;8216;professionally accomplished, middle-aged sex bombs who can do a balance sheet and set a lovely dinner table.8217;8217; Staffers credit the magazine-quality writing to Kaplan, who briefly wrote for The Post8217;s Style section in the early 1980s and later co-founded manhattan inc., a brilliant but short-lived city magazine.

8216;8216;Peter is as perfection-driven as anyone I8217;ve ever met in journalism,8217;8217; Gay says. Kaplan insists the Observer, which is overseen and subsidised by publisher Arthur Carter, is not far from turning a profit, although it dropped from three to two sections after the post-9/11 downturn. The paper attracts 20,000 to 30,000 daily readers online, drawn by the media-savvy tone. 8216;8216;We tell the reporters to talk to the reader like they were talking to another reporter,8217;8217; Kaplan says.

LA Times-Washington Post