Scott Dadich.Photo: Larry Busacca/WireImage Last year, former Observer scribe John Koblin was telling us breathlessly how Condé Nast's executive director of digital magazine development, Scott Dadich, was going to save magazines. In Koblin's words, the guy was "scary-smart" and "widely seen as the guy who can bridge magazine design and technology, and bring the business one step closer to sa... more.

Tom Minnery is the executive director of CitizenLink, the political arm of Christian group Focus on the Family. Though Focus on the Family has sort of toned down its anti-gay agenda, CitizenLink boasts on its website about playing a key role in passing the 30-odd state constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage. So it's natural that he'd be on the Hill today defending the Defense of Marri... more.

Tina Brown, star of screen and screen.Photo: Patrick McMullan The Daily Beast will launch an online talk show, harnessing the talents of the handful of television producers Tina Brown has hired since her website merged with Newsweek. It will supposedly be a little something like The View and is not at all meant as a redo of Brown's last foray into talk television, Topic , which "aired after a blo... more.

A woman shreds the scourge of paper that reappears in her mailbox each day.Photo: iStockphoto Mail, as you probably have noticed, is mostly useless. You can pay your bills online. You can send greeting cards and correspond with friends online. You can read magazines online. (But you should read New York in print anyway, because ... just keep doing it!) Most of your mail these days is probably com... more.

You, people of the Internet, are no longer quite so beloved at Time. They did the same thing a year ago, but at some point apparently largely stopped putting magazine content behind a wall. The magazine is also rolling out an all-access digital and print subscription package, apparently in hopes that potential subscribers won't have great memories. Given the relatively geriatric skew of its audie... more.

You'd think you could ask Paris Hilton anything. After all, she's talked about her sex tape, she's talked about her many loves, and she's starred in seemingly endless reality shows about her personal life. But there's one thing she won't stand for — questions about her fame, of all things. "Do you worry at times that the people that have followed in your footsteps are overshadowing you?" Goo... more.

When Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, protected him from a shaving-cream-wielding assailant during his News of the World hearings yesterday, she was launched into Internet infamy via animated GIFs and earned a new nickname: Smackdown Sister. Now, it seems, more attention is being paid to Deng's right hook than phone-hacking allegations. New York's Gabriel Sherman visited the Today show to discu... more.

Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images With less than two weeks remaining until Ceilingmageddon commences (we'll have to come up with a better name before then, when we're not stockpiling canned goods), even Republican voters are starting to get annoyed with the GOP's unwillingness to budge even a little in order to reach an agreement. To be fair, it looks like Republican senators are getting kind of ex... more.

An unidentified man just rushed the table where James and Rupert Murdoch were seated answering questions before a Parliament committee. He appeared to fling a white plate full of some sort of foam or cream at Rupert's face before being apprehended by security. As they grabbed him, Wendi Murdoch managed to get in a firm swat at the man's head. (On Twitter, a comedian and "activist" named Johnnie Ma... more.

Fourth-wife type activities.Photo: Ben Hider/Getty Images A Manhattan federal judge sentenced Kenneth Starr to seven and a half years in prison for an elaborate Ponzi scheme to bilk his celebrity investors, like Al Pacino, Uma Thurman, and Lauren Bacall, out of $33 million. Despite the jail time, Starr, who used the $33 million to pay for things like a $400,000 bill at Jacob the Jeweler, caught a... more.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images John Boehner's debt plan may be "dead on arrival" in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but how is it faring in the House? Also not well! Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, the chairman of the far-right Republican Study Committee, said today that "as of this morning ... there were not 218 Republicans in support of this plan." The backlash from House conservatives, many of... more.

It's hard to criticize Bill O'Reilly for using coded language, because I do actually think he believes what he's saying. I don't think, as I do with some on the left and on the right, that he is using common-sense-sounding language to try and trick people. But the way O'Reilly talks about Muslim people versus Christian people is fundamentally flawed, and last night on The Factor he demonstrated th... more.

Time and again, the meager minds of the common people have proven woefully incompatible with the higher-plane mental capabilities of Newt Gingrich. Yet another example of this phenomenon was brought to light earlier today when Gingrich, talking to a New Hampshire radio station, explained the real message he was conveying in a famous 2008 climate change ad featuring himself and Nancy Pelosi. "I was... more.

Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, has filed a legal brief challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Just two days after New York started marrying gay couples, Schneiderman challenged the constitutionality of the law, which he says violates the equal protection rights of gay and lesbian couples. The brief was submitted in the federal case Windso... more.

Photo: ABC On ABC's The View this morning, Bill O'Reilly offered the ground-zero mosque as an example of the "widening gulf between the president" and patriots. O'Reilly said the developers had a right to create it, but invoked the 9/11 families to make a point. "A lot of the 9/11 families — who I know — say 'Look, we don't want that.'" When the discussion turned heated as the hosts ob... more.

David Wu. Whenever a congressional sex scandal breaks, members of the opposing party revel in the details of the implicated official’s misdeeds: Though the story of Representative David Wu’s unsavory sexual encounter with a teenage girl might have gotten more press had it come to light while Washington wasn’t focused on the debt-ceiling crisis, there was at least a cackle or two... more.

Is this the party to whom I am speaking?Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Capital switchboards that direct to House offices were overwhelmed this morning. People might hate talking on the phone these days, and perhaps only take to it once the Internet option goes down, but apparently the threat of utter financial disaster makes the dial worth it. Long-suffering mothers across America ̵... more.

An ATM.Photo: iStockphoto One Marque Gumbs, a receiving clerk and creative thinker employed, until recently, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has admitted to embezzling $1.2 million from the hospital via a rather ingenious method: He ordered printer toner on the company dime, intercepted the packages, and then resold them for personal profit. Now, as anyone who has ever been in charge o... more.

The Washington, D.C. skylinePhoto: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Adam: Hi, Frank. So for the last several weeks in Washington, as Congress and the President raced toward the debt-ceiling deadline, we've seen walkouts, hissy fits, phony votes, pouting, and vitriol — the complete "three-ring circus," as the President called it last night (using everybody's favorite cliche about Washington.) "But... more.

Photo: iStockphoto When President Obama implored the American public to contact their representatives and urge them to reach a compromise on the debt ceiling, he probably didn't expect them to actually do it. Well, he's going to be impressed when he wakes up to find out that a handful of congressional websites went down in the hours following the speech. The sites for Mitch McConnell, John Boehne... more.