The Only Acceptable Take On The Story Behind The Story Behind That One Story
The smart person's guide to That Big Media-Taylor Scandal, plus: more private clubs, cool kid curbs, noise complaints, how to breakfast like a Hollywood executive, and the weather in Cap Ferrat.
Today is Friday, August 16th, 2024.
It’s the 13th Summer Friday of the year, two to go until Labor Day.
Adriano Celentano’s ”Prisencolinensinainciusol” is on the radio.
New in theaters this weekend is Alien: Romulus, which is unfortunate for literally anything else.
In sports, some decent Premier League action all weekend, culminating in Chelsea at Manchester City on Sunday morning.
Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 86/73, clear with period clouds • Cap Ferrat: 86/75, clear • Oslo: 71/51, clear • Galapagos: 78/67, cloudy • Hvar: 89/76, partl—
—oh wait, shit, look at that: A whole bunch of new people are here! To our new friends, hi, welcome, I’m Foster, here’s the deal: Inside you, there are two Fridays. There’s the one on the calendar and then the one where it’s summer, forever. This newsletter exists, astrally (and literally) in the latter (as do its extremely offshore bank accounts). Sunning on the yacht deck that is your beautiful, smooth sailing psyche, it concerns, primarily, that which is important, luxurious, smart, beautiful, rich, and philosophically and ideologically fulfilling, and relevant to letting UV rays vaporizing your overworked brain cells. Broadly, it’s also whatever I want it to be. Which this week, is short, sweet, brilliant, and mostly, for you. Our three-item special begins…right now:
The Hottest Journalism Scandal Involving a Taylor Of Summer 2024
Much as I’ve tried to keep this newsletter exclusively a bastion of Summer Vibes and stay away from the media beat, you’re receiving this late on account of a late-week media story that’s nothing if not a spicy beach read unto itself.
Basically: Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz — the Jane Mayer of TikTok, and probably one of the few reporters for a print newspaper someone under the age of 30 could name offhand — is in trouble. This time, for a photo she took of Joe Biden and seemingly captioned with the words war criminal :(, which she posted on Instagram to her “Close Friends” (not so much!) while attending some kind of confab for influencers at the White House earlier this week. Someone leaked a screengrab of it to one of the more proudly odious reporters at the New York Post (and that’s saying something!), and now we have mess.
She’s since been called to answer for herself in front of Post brass, who are no doubt apoplectic. There’s already a Polymarket spread on her being ousted from her gig at the paper. So there’s that.
Lorenz has, per NPR, “since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.” Did you get all that? She was not actually calling Biden a war criminal, her friend was. And really, neither was her friend, because posting war criminal :( is a meme.
Whether you buy all of that or not — and there is a lot for sale, there — it’s true that it’s a meme, as war criminal :( is how Lucy Dacus once responded to a Boygenius song making Barack Obama’s summer playlist. It’s kind of been a thing ever since1.
And all that, she might’ve actually scraped by on as far as plausible excuses go! Except: When the screenshot starting making the rounds on Twitter (per NPR media reporter David Folkenflik’s piece on all this) Lorenz (seemingly) compounded the issue by deleting that “close friends” story, and posting the same photo sans-caption to her public Instagram channel, then (seemingly) attempted to get one of the Tweets about it annotated as fake news (when, by all appearances, it very clearly wasn’t). And as they say: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
All that said! A few things here:
The Washington Post is, historically, institutionally shit at handling HR issues with their reporters. From Felicia Sonmez to Dave Weigel to the Journolist scandal to Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza calling Hillary Clinton a “mad bitch” (that actually happened) and getting a slap on the wrist, the Washington Post makes the worst scandals at the New York Times look like lessons via Emily Post. And their scandals don’t just net reporters — recent hires at the very top have had to face down scrutiny (new publisher Will Lewis, accused in British courts of abiding phone hacking) or been forced to
resignnot even start their new job (Lewis crony Robert Winnett). I’m not exaggerating when I say that by any reasonable measure it is a shitshow over there. They’re also notoriously bad at managing any kind of talent that doesn’t fit the orthodox mold of journalism, which they don’t wholly understand (see: that time they let Ezra Klein take his idea for Vox and his entire brand elsewhere).Taylor Lorenz, historically, comes with some next-level shit for her capital-I journalism Institution employers. Whether it’s parrying with her trolls on Twitter or being a part of interoffice contretemps, where Taylor Lorenz goes, some drama may, in fact, follow (and before Day 1 at the Post, very much did).
But where Taylor Lorenz goes, historically, so does an audience. A massive one, at that. As far as reporters of youth culture and online trends go, she’s second to none, and there’s absolutely zero disputing that when she’s diligently producing the actual reporting, she’s a best-in-class reporter who dominates her beat. It’s why the Washington Post hired her in the first place. But moreover, finally:
Make no mistake, joke or not, meme or not, screengrab of your friend’s screengrab of your post with your friend’s ironic joke on it or not (?!?!?), it is very fucking dumb to caption a photo with a meme calling the president a war criminal when you work at the Washington Post. And that’s to say nothing of that fact that you are the world’s preeminent Internet Culture Beat Reporter and thus you should be well acquainted with the first rule of the Internet which is that once it’s on the internet IT IS ON THE INTERNET so DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET. That said? It would probably be an even dumber move to fire your reporter for doing so, as your chief executive remains employed while under investigation for (wait for it) destroying evidence related to an exponentially more deranged journalism scandal.
Right. Said Post executive, Will Lewis, has ridden out accusations far worse than anything Lorenz has done. It’s why you should expect Lorenz to survive this one relatively unscathed.
Taylor’s got half a million followers on TikTok and 31,000 subscribers on Substack. That she hasn’t already struck out on her own is…surprising? As much as the way she’s tied her fate to a journalism institution seemingly diametrically opposed to the way she comports herself in all but the most basic aspects of the journalism business. Maybe she just doesn’t want to work as much as pure play entrepreneurship entails, or maybe the credibility of these institutions still grants her access to spaces that being an independent operator doesn’t.
Why doesn’t the Post just relegate her to being an opinion columnist who reports, or some special, cordoned-off part of the business, where she can’t stir as much shit? She clearly doesn’t have much truck with the orthodoxies and manners of traditional journalism jobs. So, if you’re a journalism institution, why even allow her to be held to the same standards as everyone else? The answer to that question would also answer a sheer tonnage of questions about the fundamental problems facing the Post that they’re incapable of doing.
Maybe the better question is: Why doesn’t some enterprising media owner with a bunch of money just give her the resources and free reign to build her publication with a profit split? Open memo to Nicholas White, over at Fragment, who owns The Daily Dot — where Lorenz got her start — boy, do I have a free idea for you.
London’s Private Club Scene, As Explained by the Creators of “Industry”
comes to us from deep within their recent podcast appearance on Throwing Fits.2 See! Some people actually do listen to podcasts:
OUT: Legendary London spot Annabel’s! Please enjoy the Siberian-Ossetra-On-A-Lays-Potato-Chip sentence of the week: “This is going to sound so cunty, but when they removed the Picasso from the front, you knew it was about to go downhill — the guy who owns it put it in his house.” Tell me you don’t feel alive inside reading that. It reminds me of something my friend, a longtime Londoner, sighed at me after I excitedly explained to her the tableside martini service at The Connaught Bar: “There are countless ways to be a cunt in London.” Amen, sister — London’s the best.
Anyway, the guys say it’s become a bad hang, a little Eastern Promises-y, and also that the price point has ascended to the extent where taste goes out the door (kleptocrats ruin everything). Also, Mickey Down went and the person he was with got charged 280 pounds after asking for “a glass of Chardonnay.”
IN: The members club above the nightclub of the same name, Koko, in Camden. “It’s still fun.” Looks like it.
Also, they note that “every guy in LA who comes to take a meeting with us wants to get breakfast at Chiltern [Firehouse]” which is a bone-chillingly accurate portrayal of agents and production execs from LA going anywhere — but especially to London — and feeling the need to go, of all places, to what is literally the (also Andre Balazs-owned) Chateau Marmont of London in all but name (but without a pool, the most fundamentally fun part of Chateau Marmont). The paucity of original ideas produced by Hollywood even extends to where development execs get their breakfast, christ. Going to breakfast at Chiltern is fine if you’re on someone else’s dime I guess but if you’re not a bicostal afreet with the desperate need to assert status but instead a human of respectable taste it is your moral duty to go to E. Pellicci or the Regency Cafe (perhaps one of the only lines in the world actually worth standing on, with easily the greatest restaurant website of all time) or, if you’re truly nasty, Hide. There, Bob’s your guncle, god save the chippy man, etc.
PREVIOUSLY: Trendlines: Private Clubs.
The New Downtown Epicenter of This Unholy Earth Ever Spinning Into The Cosmos As It Is
….is — as documented by a new GQ piece with the hilariously Stefon-pilled title of “The Hottest Club In NYC Is a Parking Lot On Canal Street” — Time Again. Or the sidewalk in front of it, hereby officially anointed as Time Square. It’s a bar which was reconceived from its past life as an omakase spot, which was its re-conception from its first life as a cafe, owned by rapper Despot and art world multi-hyphenate Nick Poe. The place has been A Whole Situation for a while, but recently reached fever pitch over these last few months. In a brilliant turn of self-awareness, GQ’s Sam(uel!) Hine writes:
The Time boom follows a New York nightlife cycle as old as McSorley’s. Most of these photogenic barflies spent last summer posted up a few blocks down Canal outside the hotspots of Dimes Square, which they now agree has become overrun with French tourists and guys wearing white sneakers. Once the spot gets blown, you sniff out the next one. […] But on this Tuesday night, everyone is having too much fun to worry about whether Time Again’s magic will last. Reinstein tells me he’s going to keep the party going through the winter with heat lamps. Nearby, a writer explains the concept of “SABS-ing”—seeing and being seen—to a friend. Right now, at least, Time Again might be the SABS epicenter of the world.
It is, of course, a wonderfully fun read that strikes me as a particularly creative way to yeet oneself into the ether to find another gathering spot now that the one you once enjoyed is beginning to become cooked (see: “well, that was fun while it lasted (a few weeks)”).
And yet: As the kind of sociological scholar who understands that what’s actually the most self-actualized way to present socially in New York City is to always be ALPELEWYS-ing (arrive last, peace early, leave ‘em wishing you stayed), I feel I’m not the best person to comment on the matter of the SABS epicenter of the world, and thus, must herein recuse myself from the matter. But you know who can?
The most important downtown reporter in the history of New York City (and, naturally, a Summer Fridays correspondent), The Guy Who Invented The Term “Dimes Square.”3
Live, from the East Broadway Witness Protection Program, papal decree:
And now you know: Time Square, possibly the next Dimes Square, which is now basically this. Related: This sign, as seen on the corner the other night. I will, and I am not even remotely joking, vote for whoever makes this the key tenet of their mayoral run platform to primary Eric Adams:
Jane Jacobs, eat your heart out.
Okay, that’s it. Sorry! Busy week, busy day, busy summer. Look at that, we’ve only got two Summer Fridays left. You think I want you wasting them on SUBSTACK? Christ, no. Anyway, takeaways from this one: Go to London, get a proper breakfast, flood Canal Street, don’t worry about where you think supposedly cool people hang out because the second anyone is even inclined to think that it’s already washed on some level and also more importantly it can’t be that cool because you’re not there. That said, if you’re a member at Koko, call me, let’s hang. As ever, -f.
Dacus, however, has deleted the Tweet since then.
Fun fact, the Throwing Fits guys were among the very first to talk about how great Industry is and thus turned the entirety of the New York Culture Media Industrial Complex onto it — the Industry guys have dropped multiple Throwing Fits references on the show as a nod back. So of course when they podcast together, great stuff happens, listen to the entire thing.
No, really, this person coined the term “Dimes Square.” It’s not that they actually need be anonymous over it but that it’s sacred knowledge too great to be litigated or disputed, and saying this person’s holy appellation in this context is akin to speaking the Tetragrammaton, do it at risk of having your face Lost Arc’d.
We loved our angel Eric Wareheim being the sleeper star of the Time Square article... just saying.
Loved the Time Square article. My favorite part:
"'Everyone over there looks like they’re currently in the Beastie Boys—like 56 and married to a riot grrrl, twins in the stroller,' notes a baby-faced frontman of a local indie-pop band."