Smear job smeared
The convoluted story of who was trying to discredit The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer with claims of plagiarism took another bizarre turn last week.
Salon.com speculated Friday that the Daily Caller, the conservative Web site headed by Tucker Carlson, was indeed trying to embarrass The New Yorker into not submitting the story for a National Magazine Award by planning to break the story last week right before the Jan. 6 deadline for entries.
If so, that mission failed too.
The Daily Caller spiked its story because it did not hold water — as Media Ink revealed in its Jan. 5 story.
Sources close to the American Society of Magazine Editors, which gives out the awards, called Ellies, said that The New Yorker has indeed entered Mayer’s smackdown story on the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch into the annual competition.
Still not known is who ginned up the now-discredited claims against Mayer in the first place. There are whispers of dirty tricks and political operatives and the list of potential suspects is short. As Media Ink reported, all the allegations we checked out were shot down by the very journalists whose work was allegedly “borrowed.”
On Salon.com’s charge, Carlson says, “That’s insane.”
If anything, the latest flurry of reporting brought a new round of attention to the story, which first appeared in the Aug. 30 New Yorker. Handicappers said Mayer’s story has an excellent chance of emerging as one of the finalists, which will be announced on April 4, generating even more publicity for it.
It will probably have a hard time derailing the presumed favorite in the category, the Rolling Stone article by Michael Hasting, “The Runaway General,” which forced General Stanley McChrytal’s resignation. Keith J. Kelly
Going dark
You’ll be seeing a whole lot less of Wall Street bank analyst Dick Bove.
The outspoken Rochdale Securities financial institutions researcher plans on scaling back TV interviews and putting the clamps on his proprietary research on banks, brokers and investment firms, which he once offered up to media outlets gratis.
Bove joins a growing list of analysts who are curtailing their media moments.
Meredith Whitney, who left Oppenheimer Securities in 2009 to open her own boutique research firm, had to balance publicizing her new gig with TV appearances and keeping her clients happy with a flow of exclusive information.
Bove, who frequently appears on business shows on CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg TV, told On The Money that the move, in part, is also in response to Rochdale clients, who’ve been grous ing that the high- profile talking head has been giving away in formation for free that they pay hand somely for.
“There were some complaints that my re search was getting to the media before it was even getting to clients,” Bove told The Post.
Bove also said that the non- stop interviews were taking time away from his sometimes offbeat and controversial reports.
“It would take an hour and a half out of my day to do an interview that lasted three minutes,” he explained. The analyst’s decision to scale back was decided over dinner with Rochdale’s President Daniel Crowley, Bove said.
At this point, Bove’s interviews must be conducted via phone and one-on-one and they must last longer than 5 minutes, according to a memo issued by the analyst’s office.Mark DeCambre
Ryan air
High-flying movie money guy, Ryan Kavanaugh, who runs Relativity Media, has been bragging to people that he learned to pilot a helicopter about as fast as you can.
Indeed sources close to the producer confirmed Kavanaugh did indeed get his private helicopter license in 30 days, and his commercial helicopter license in 70 days.
His Hollywood pals told On The Money they’re not impressed and would rather he had slightly more flying time under his belt before they let him buzz them through the clouds.
A friend said Ryan’s been flying for months and said they shouldn’t be afraid; he’s already flown “friends, family and business associates,” without incident.
Kavanaugh, who has recently been fighting to get a producer credit on Oscar contender “The Fighter,” will be on hand on Saturday Jan. 15 to host his charity event, the “Art of Elysium” gala. The charity aims to bring art to hospitalized kids.
Oscar co-host James Franco will also be in attendance. Claire Atkinson