By Steve Rhodes
A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.
Vanity Ad Fair
* P. 185: “Knowing the Rules Makes Her a Schooled Musician. BREAKING THE RULES Makes Her a Jazz Musician.”
– Diana Krall for Rolex
* P. 253: “Whatever’s on your list of things to do in life, do it better with Visa Signature.”
– Elvis Costello for Visa
Do they really need the money that bad?
Fashion Fair
From the “Fashion Rocks” fashion supplement to the new Vanity Fair (isn’t that redundant?):
* Mall punk Avril Lavigne in an $1,845 top and $980 Christian Louboutin Madison boots. Photographed with skateboard and skull helmet.
* Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy in a $725 Calvin Klein sweater.
* Alicia Keys in a $1,800 Junya Watanabe coat.
* Carrie Underwood in a $2,825 circus skirt.
* Sean Lennon in a $1,565 Dolce & Gabbana suit.
* Amy Winehouse in a $1,235 Blumarine dress.
* Model in Punk spread: $1,250 Vivienne Westwood Sex Pistols T-shirt.
* Model in Goth spread: $21,475 Calvin Klein dress.
* Model in Rave spread: $1,495 Manish Arora Space Station short-sleeved jacket.
* Model in Mod spread: $3,910 Thom Browne stripe wool jacket.
* Model posing as Janis Japlin, “Folk Hero”: More than $1,300 in jewelry.
Fashion Rocks TV special hosted by Jeremy Piven on Sept. 7. Brought to you by Chevrolet, Citi, Dillard’s, Nexxus, and Revlon.
Secret Tech
The new Victoria’s Secret catalog (hey, it landed in my mailbox by accident) introduces “The world’s first bra of its kind to provide both coverage and lift.”
Huh, I would’ve thought they’d have invented that by now.
Newlywed Game
Fair Warning: The payoff to The New York Times Magazine’s cover story, “Can This Marriage Be Saved? A year in the life of a couples-therapy group” is disappointing.
Chicago Sub
“So I’m a substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools,” Mr. E writes Lumpen 105. “It pays a little under a hundred bucks a day, you only have to work when you want to and all you need is a degree in whatever. It’s either sort of hard which means it’s hard but you’re kind of good at it and you like it, or it’s really hard which means you should do something else. I’m really glad I do it; it’s one of the least evil steady paying jobs I can think of. There is some evil around, though.”
Duke Debacle
“The roar began on March 24, 2006, when Raleigh’s News & Observer broke the news on its front page that ‘all but one member of the Duke lacrosse team had reported to the Durham police crime lab’ for DNA testing,” American Journalism Review reports in an examination of what went wrong with the media coverage of the Duke debacle.
Whatever happened to the rule that you don’t report on investigations and allegations until someone is actually charged? That’s what I was taught, and the reason is because of just what we’ve seen over and over again, whether in this case or, say, Richard Jewell and many others. Any of us can be investigated. There has to be a threshold for making it news, and actually being charged ought to be that threshold.
Public Information Officers
“Among [Chinese] party officials responsible for media content, the word xuanchuan, or ‘propaganda’ does not have a negative connotation,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reports in Falling Short. “In recognition of the discomfort it evokes among foreigners, however, the department overseeing China’s media was renamed in 1998 – in English only – from Central Propaganda Department to Central Publicity Department.”
How cute. They’re learning.
*
Journalists imprisoned in China. (pdf)
Posted on August 15, 2007