Maggie Shnayerson

I'll be hanging out with the Shitcanned Media Elites over at ASSME.org for awhile—you know, a little blogging, a little this, a little that.

Should your Tuesday afternoon be getting you down, by all means swing by and check out the pink slippers—a change is a-coming, hallelujah. Etcetera, so on, and so forth too.

Which is excellent! For the aforementioned recently laid-off Miss McClear, that is. Who says? Why, the New York State Department of Labor, in its concerted two-year effort to crack down on employers who misclassify their workers as independent contractors!

To wit:

"UI and Independent Contractors: If an employer-employee relationship exists, it does not matter how the relationship is described by the person engaging the services. For example, if an employer issues individuals a 1099 form rather than a W-2 form, the workers may still be considered employees. Even if the workers sign a statement claiming independent contractor status and waiving any rights as employees, or if they are required to obtain a DBA in order to work for that employer, those individuals may still be considered employees under the law. The Unemployment Insurance Law provides that no agreement by employees to waive their rights under the law is valid." [NYDOL, itals all moi.]

The irony. Really.

[Gawker: How To Tell If You're A Freelancer Or An Employee]

doree:

Sure, Sheila wasn’t fired. But she also wasn’t, technically, an employee. Gawker staffers are all contractors and as far as I know she will not be eligible for unemployment.

youngmanhattanite:

Oh, can we stop saying Sheila was fired? It’s a layoff.

You can debate the semantics but the New York State Department of Labor has a glossary for this stuff...Clearly she wasn’t “fired.” She wasn’t escorted from the building by an HR goon and told never to return (though obviously that can happen with a layoff too) but instead was given a month’s notice due to the company’s reorganization and cost-cutting. The terms of separation mean something very specific when filing for unemployment benefits and while you can collect unemployment for being “fired” under certain circumstances, Sheila’s situation is cut and dry, if also high and dry...

I’m guessing that it’s not a good thing that, of late, most urges of mine to be “creative” (by which I mean subjecting whichever idiot happens to fall into this site in his search for a terrible terrible Rod Stewart song to the random trappings of my brain) have been inspired only by the creative acts of others. Good Lord, did you see that run-on sentence? I’m so glad we both made it safely out.

As such, I don’t have anything to add to Michael Duff’s Friday column during which he raised a pen up to Alex Balk and Choire Sicha, among other Bloggers Missing In Recession. (Well, maybe that the “superstar bloggers” Duff’s doffing his cap to would (and did) get a good chuckle out of that oxymoronic description. Superstars are supposed to get paid, no?) Duff’s right and God (and I) love him for it.

Hey, wouldn’t it be fucking hilarious if someone threw a startup website of the canned and laid-off bloggers who have talked about doing that very thing for years together at various Manhattan gin mills and everyone came and it was awesome? Just saying.

Finest Writers On The Web Are Ready to Work For Coffee, Beer [Michael Duff]

"Choire Sicha Joins Radar: Last Media Job In New York City Gladly Taken"

...Very good indeed. I mean, thank God. About time, for chrissakes.

In other news, since Choire is otherwise occupied (presumably looking for a white suit and spats to go with his fancy new title), I'll be guest-blogging at Radar this week. I can neither confirm nor deny that Doree Shafrir, Emily Gould and Joshua David Stein will also be joining me. Disgusting, it all is, isn't it?

If Alex Pareene and Doree Shafrir think they can go around taking all the blame for Gawker ignoring the John Edwards story last fall, they've got another think coming.

The day the National Enquirer story broke on the Edwards affair (almost two weeks after Mediabistro did a nice pointed little Rielle Roundup), I had this IM conversation with a Beltway reporter:

It went on from there. We dug around a little, but not enough. By the time we started getting anything actually new on the story, Pareene (at the time still mired at swampy Wonkette) was all over it. When you're working for a stable of niche blogs, the thinking is it doesn't make sense to have two sites running down the same story when they could be using that time to produce unique content. Seems reasonable, if frustrating and limiting.

Sooooo we let it go, barring the arrival of an email from Rielle Hunter herself delivering photographic evidence of her affair with the senior Senator from North Carolina. Which would have been pretty fucking sweet.

Wait! Could this mean it's still Pareene's fault—that speedy little devil—that Gawker didn't stay on the story? Sigh. No such luck.

So: Why didn't we or anyone else stalk this juicy, potentially huge story for all it was worth, like the Enquirer? It certainly wasn't out of party loyalty or our undying John Edwards crush—the guy's a dick and always has been. Son-of-a-millworker, my foot and ass.

The press is stumbling all over itself to give its readers an explanation (sort of like the one I just gave above!) They run the gamut from diminishing resources and manpower to cutbacks, layoffs, the primaries, the dubious credibility of both Hunter and the Enquirer, and the fact that nobody knows a politician who hasn't fucked around, so how is that news?

Well, it's sure as hell news once someone sluttier than you hits it out of the park. The best excuses so far are detailed descriptions of the reporter's long-standing personal knowledge of Hunter and her flimsy connection to the Edwards campaign. Super job! You tooootally knew! You were on the inside, man! And you did...what? Nothing? Nothing.

The reason we ignored this story is that we are idiots. I even apologize, actually. There. Now (and yes, I am that chick), as Jed Bartlett/Aaron Sorkin used to say: What's next?