Salon Media Circus | Morale lunch, anyone?


R E C E N T L Y The last temptation of Kinsley By Bruce Barcott Did Slate's editor blow the New Yorker editor's job by not leaping immediately into S.I. Newhouse's lap? (07/14/98) Lights, camera ... Miami! By Robin Dougherty With his new CityVision, Barry Diller is gambling that a city can be a star (07/13/98) Under the Covers By James Poniewozik Brown and out in New York (07/09/98) Buzzing about the buzz machine By Susan Lehman Colleagues offer kisses and poison darts for the departing Tina Brown (07/09/98) Rotten banana By Bruce Shapiro While the media race to condemn the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who hacked into Chiquita's voice mail, they're forgetting who the real villain is (07/08/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVE		Morale lunch, anyone? THE REAL KINSLEY E-MAIL. \| BY DANIEL RADOSH - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FROM: Michael Kinsley SENT: Sunday, July 12, 1998 7:32 PM TO: Slate Magazine Team; The Entire Goddamn World SUBJECT: My Career As Editor of The New Yorker 9:55 pm edt Sunday July 12, 1998 Friday about 11:00 am pdt, roughly corresponding to 2:00 pm real time. We are about to have a SLATE staff meeting and "morale lunch," which is what the permatemps who work here get instead of medical coverage. I get a message to call Si Newhouse. I call him. The phone rings. He answers. He wants to see me the next day. I race home and to the airport as fast as my legs will carry me, perhaps unintentionally giving the appearance that I am desperate to flee my job. So much for the morale lunch, not to mention the morale. Also for the weekend hike I was dressed for -- in an REI red flannel shirt and yellow rain slicker. Also for the large salmon I was posing with. Saturday 11 am. I meet Si at his apartment. We talk there for a couple hours and at lunch at a nearby restaurant for another hour or so, during which period he frequently pulls out his cell phone and confers with an unknown person in Russian. Then he says, "How would you react if I offered you X?" I say, I would probably experience a profound feeling of well-being, empathy with other people and a pleasurable heightening of the senses, perhaps accompanied by dryness of mouth, teeth grinding or nystagmus (eye wiggles). Instead he offers me a job. I say I will tell him yes or no w/in 48 hours, maybe w/in 72, followed by yes or no again w/in 86, &c. He is unhappy with that, so I say we'll settle this like men and slap him. (It worked with John Podhoretz.) He then invites me to dinner with his brother and family. I say I would make a counterproposal at that time. He believes me. Sunday. We talk by phone and I send him a fax about various things, just to prove that I do know how to work the fax machine. He says come by the apartment before dinner at 6:30. I present my counterproposal: I won't be hungry at 6:30, make it 7. He wants to talk about the job again, like it's important to him or something. I say that sounds fine, I probably accept, but I promised Bill Gates (Microsoft CEO) I'd check with him before definitely accepting and I needed a night to sleep it over and I needed two tickets to "The Lion King" and some more of that X. He says fine. I believe him. We go to dinner with his wife, son, brother, brother's wife and son, and the wacky next-door neighbor. Talk virtually no business, except the part where he keeps saying, "So do you want the job or not, asshole?" Parting at the restaurant door, I help myself to some of those mints and say, I'll call you first thing tomorrow morning. What time do you get in? He says, I'm in by 6. And drunk by 8:15. I say I'll call you at 7:30. He says, not if I call you first. Maybe 15 minutes later I get back to the hotel room and there's a message: Call Si Newhouse. Which is weird, 'cause I just had dinner with him. And his wife, son, brother, brother's wife and son, &c. I call and he says, You seem reluctant. I say, It's a big decision, but if I do it I assure you I'll be energetic and enthusiastic and take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. He says, I'm starting to think I don't want to work with you any more than you want to work with me. Let's call the whole thing off. No apology. Some apoplexy. After some stunned mumbling that sounds not unlike one of my Read Me columns, I say, This is going to be embarrassing to both of us. He says, Yeah, but I'm not the one who has to go back to Seattle. I say I'm not going to lie about it, but I'll decline to discuss it. He mumbles something about me fumbling something and we hang up and I hang myself. On reflection (about two pints' reflection), I decided I was not inclined to do myself the favor of salvaging any hope I still had left of ever getting a job at a real magazine, as of today. SALON \| July 16, 1998 Daniel Radosh placed somewhere between David Remnick and Stephen Glass on Si Newhouse's list.