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Proust, eat my dust jacket! Writers obsess over Amazon.com's sales ranking numbers
By Susan Lehman
Plus: Musical chairs at women's mags, Hillary hits up Drudge and much more
(10/29/98)

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BY SUSAN LEHMAN

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Michael Lewis has filed his last Slate dispatch from the Microsoft trial. Days after writing, "At the end of the day came the moment the lawyers will look back on and say: 'That's when the judge made up his mind that Microsoft was going down,'" Lewis was replaced by regular Slate contributor Herbert Stein, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors under Nixon and Ford.

Asked about Lewis' sudden departure, Slate editors provided contradictory explanations. "He got sick of the trial and moved on of his own accord," said Slate deputy editor Jack Shafer. "Michael only had three weeks to spare for the trial. He was always planning to stop to work on a book," said editor Michael Kinsley. "Michael Lewis couldn't take it anymore," read a note on top of Stein's first dispatch. As for the little squib stating that Lewis would file occasional dispatches from the trial, it has disappeared. (One of the beauties of online publishing is that the archival record can be altered at will or whim!)

Kinsley, who on Oct. 24 posted one of those unfathomably ironic, infinite-regress editor's notes he pens whenever the subject of Microsoft comes up (after telling Slate readers that Lewis' views were not reflective of the Microsoft-owned magazine or its editors, he went on to add that no one at the magazine could even remember assigning Lewis anything or exchanging any words with him before his "absurd reports" began appearing), dismisses suggestions Microsoft pressured Slate to dump Lewis. "Stein is in there bashing Microsoft," Kinsley says.

Maybe, but stewardship of an esteemed council of economic wise men isn't necessarily a great writing credential. In the narrative gift department, Stein is no match for the highly entertaining Lewis, who described Bill Gates as looking "like he had swallowed a bad oyster" in his taped testimony and wrote of Microsoft lawyer Theodore Edelman that "if the courtroom population were asked to vote who in the chamber were most likely to be a vampire, he'd win by a landslide."

Is Stein a permanent replacement? "Michael [Lewis] wrote about the hard wooden seats in the courtroom," says Kinsley. "Herb's in his 80s. He's probably good for another day or two. We'll just keep sending them in."

Also on the radar in Redmond

You probably thought the old Harvard Crimson alumni network didn't work. Ah, but gentle reader, it does. Recently deposed U.S. News & World Report editor James Fallows has been talking to his old Crimson pal, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, about teaming up with Gates & Co. to develop software that will make it easier to connect writers, thinkers and non-computer geeks to information. "It's something I've had in mind for many years," says Fallows, who also has a contract with the New Yorker. The Microsoft project, which Fallows stresses is "not a done deal," will be a full-time post for a couple of months.

Make that a double frappuccino, please, Peter

When they're not sending coffee and doughnuts out to locked-out tech workers picketing ABC News offices, the on-air talent is sporting pro-union jewelry on ABC programs.

"Peter Jennings sent the coffee and donuts," said NABET (National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians) spokesman Tom Donahue, "George Stephanopoulos wore a NABET pin on ABC this week on Sunday, and soap opera stars have given contributions and letters of support."

Ted Koppel and "Good Morning America" anchors Lisa McRee and Kevin Newman "brought coffee too," confirms ABC spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. "These people are an important part of our world." Nonetheless, Murphy cautioned against reading too much into these friendly gestures. "They are signs of support for the individuals involved and should not be seen as signs of support for the union," she said.

Stephanopoulos says he did wear the pin as a sign of support for the union. "I think a lockout is unwise," he said. Other involved ABC personnel did not return calls.

Nearly 2,400 people were locked out after NABET initiated a 24-hour strike on Election Day meant to pressure the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, into supplying information about the health plan Disney wants the union to adopt. The union says it needs the information so that it can evaluate the new health program before dropping the old one; Disney reportedly says it has supplied all available information.

"A lot of people are losing their livelihood because this 'family values' company has locked them out of work," says Donahue. Hip to the source of real power in contemporary America, the union has enlisted help from celebrities. Danny Aiello, Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore recently joined the workers' picket line, and Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg and Tony Bennett refused to cross the line for scheduled appearances on "Good Morning America" and "The View."

Prostitute, runaway, schoolteacher, saint, whatever

That's why they make the big bucks. Lawyers for the "Sally Jesse Raphael Show," which is facing a several hundred-million dollar lawsuit in connection with its recruitment of a 15-year-old runaway girl who was presented as a prostitute on the show, have cooked up a newfangled defense: Talk shows are "a distinct genre of broadcasting, with standards and procedures particular to the form." Well, duh -- in no other genre do transvestite ex-girlfriends hurl chairs quite as unconvincingly as on the talks. But do the rules of the "distinct genre" permit producers to broadcast any damn thing they please, regardless of its relation to reality? Yes, say Sally's lawyers, so long as they don't have any reason to believe their guests are spouting falsehoods or confabulations.

Misty Weber has filed suit against the show, Gannett Broadcasting and related parties seeking damages for emotional and other harm she says she suffered as a result of the show's false portrayal of her. Weber's lawyers say she was minding her own runaway business in Los Angeles when a Sally producer offered her $200 to appear as a prostitute on TV, flew her to New York, put her in a midtown hotel with a man named "Frostbite" (who was stoned on heroin and Valium and who appeared as Weber's pimp on the show) and supplied her with a line of credit for room service and telephone calls, a short skirt, high-heeled shoes and a blond wig. Weber's team contends that though they knew she wasn't a prostitute, the show's producers proceeded to teach her how to walk like a prostitute and made a film of her approaching cars on 57th Street that they used on the show.

"If the First Amendment condones this as newsworthy, it's the end of any real function this amendment has," says Weber's lawyer, George Zelma, "because this program is intended to deceive the public and violate the public trust."

Cashing out at Dow Jones

"Voluntary Separation Inducements." That's what the Wall Street Journal calls the buyout plans it offered workers earlier this month, right after it announced declining revenue and ad pages. Journal spokesman Dick Tofel says the buyout plan, which was sketched up while revenue was still ascending, is purely a cost-cutting measure, but people familiar with the plan say it's also meant to drum some of the paper's older and less productive workers out of the office so the Journal can start moving younger stars -- like foreign editor John Bussey, news editor Larry Ingrassia and editor Mike Miller -- up the ranks.

Meanwhile, the Journal has suffered the loss of key reporters and editors. Jeff Cole, the paper's star aviation reporter, left for a Seattle newspaper. Top technology editor Dennis Kneale left for Forbes, technology writer Jerod Sandberg left for Newsweek and John Keller, the Journal's chief telecom reporter, left journalism altogether. If they don't stop the flow of journalistic talent from the paper's renowned news side, the only people left at the Journal will be the scary Visigoths of the Op-Ed page.
SALON | Nov. 12, 1998

Susan Lehman's Media Circus column appears every Thursday.