Topic category:  Other/General

I am honored to bestow the Duranty-Blair Award for Journalistic Infamy on “reporter” Carron Phillips and editor-in-chief Jim Rich of deadspin, and variety “reporter” Todd Spangler, chairman & ceo Jay Penske, the editor of variety.com William Earl, co-editors-in-chief Cynthia Littleton and Ramin Setoodeh, and executive editor Brent Lang.

I did not bestow a D-B on deadspin’s publisher, because whoever was in charge had the good sense to fire the entire staff and sell the cyber-rag, which cnn described as “irreverent,” which is racial socialist code for pc, just as “merit” has been turned into racial socialist code for affirmative action.

On november 27, 2023, deadspin’s racist, affirmative action hire Carron Phillips (black) wrote a defamatory attack on a nine-year-old child, and editor-in-chief Jim Rich (White), ok’ed said defamation, in which Phillips called the child a “racist” for wearing the colors of the kansas city chiefs at an nfl game. Carron Phillips assumed the child was White, and so that he had carte blanche to ruin his life, and Rich concurred. As it turned out, the child is a (partial?) American indian, and so his parents are suing. However, the point is that Carron Phillips and Jim Rich assumed that they can destroy the lives of White children to their hearts’ content.

It was difficult to hunt down Phillips’ “thing,” as virtually nobody who condemned it would link to it.

After Phillips was almost universally condemned for what he did, he and his employer engaged in a CYA maneuver, lying and asserting that the story had meant to criticize the NFL, not the child, and removing the child’s photograph.

However, Phillips figured ‘I’m AA/AA, I’m double protected,’ and doubled down, saying in a twit, which he has since memory-holed,

“for the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse.
“Y’all are the ones who hate mexicans but wear sombreros on cinco,’ Phillips added.

On March 11, variety posted a “thing” on the destruction and sale of deadspin which, instead of reporting on the development, was nothing but a big distraction intended to mislead readers. [“deadspin’s Entire Staff Laid Off as G/O Media Sells Sports News Site to European Startup,” by Todd Spangler, variety, March 11, 2024.]

I tried to post the following comment at variety, which used to be the irreverent Bible of show biz and media news, but the Gauleiter blocked me:

This “thing” is like so many other msm “things”: It purports to tell a story, explaining a development or incident, but does no such thing.
The development was the sale of deadspin, which content provider Todd Spangler did nothing to explain. g/o media unloaded deadspin, because of the lawsuit its staff, specifically affirmative action hire Carron Phillips, and editor-in-chief Jim Rich, had provoked from the family of the American indian kid, whom they’d defamed (the kid, that is) as a “racist.” Of course, the new owner fired all of the staff. (Actually, it's not at all clear who fired them. A less than enlightening cnn report on the sale asserted that the previous owner, g/o media, had laid off the entire staff of 11 AFTER selling the property, but you can't make any personnel moves after you've sold a property. Only the new owner can do that.) Those were the people who had shamelessly defamed the kid. Several had had the opportunity to put the brakes to the defamatory “thing” by Carron Phillips, but did nothing. Carron Phillips, for his part, assumed that his victim was White, and that he had carte blanche to harm White children. And I guess he was right.
And as far as I’m aware, none of the staffers had shown any remorse.

But what of variety? I had to look up Carron Phillips’ name elsewhere. Even at censorious google’s cover page, all sorts of media outlets explicitly said that variety and Carron Phillips’ defamation had directly caused the blog’s sale.

But not variety. That makes the once legendarily irreverent variety one of the last places one would go to for media news.

But today’s variety is less a newspaper than it is a corporate behemoth. Its masthead lists no fewer than 49 “associate vice presidents,” “vice presidents,” “senior vice presidents” and “managing vice presidents.” And that’s not even counting its “directors” and “heads of industry”—yes, at variety, “head of industry” is a job title for four suspects. It’s all chiefs, and no braves! And yet, somebody is doing the work, only they have been rendered invisible.

Jay Penske is variety’s chairman & ceo, William Earl is the editor of variety.com, Cynthia Littleton and Ramin Setoodeh are variety co-editors-in-chief, and Brent Lang is its executive editor.

“About Us

“variety is the most authoritative and trusted source of entertainment business news, recognized and respected throughout the world. Since 1905, influential producers, executives and talent in entertainment and beyond have turned to variety for award-winning daily breaking news reports, insightful award-season coverage, must-read feature spotlights and intelligent analysis of the industry’s most prominent players. As the leading publication covering film, television, theater and tech with a global perspective [?], variety is the vital read in every entertainment capital in over 84 countries….”

The Duranty-Blair Award recognizes those journalists whose work embodies the spirit of Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair, two of the most notorious scoundrels in the history of the Fourth Estate. It is no accident that both men worked for the new york times.

Although I have often meant to issue many more D-Bs since 2018, amid the constant blizzard of fraudulent scribbling, thanks to “j-schools,” which only exist, in order to cull students showing any decent and honest tendencies from the so-called news business, and racial socialist newsroom enforcers, in which only the exceptional piece of media stuff does not deserve a D-B, I have frequently neglected to do so. However, as arbitrary as the business may have become, I still must issue these raspberries.

Walter Duranty wrote a series of early 1930s dispatches from the Soviet Union, where he was times Moscow bureau chief, in which he lied about the Ukrainian Holocaust, in which Stalin deliberately starved millions of Kulaks (farmers/peasants) to death, through a man-made famine. Instead of reporting the truth, Duranty reported that the peasants were happy and well-fed, and was rewarded for his lies with a Pulitzer Prize.

Jayson Blair (here, here, and here) was an early 2000s black affirmative action hire, who alternately plagiarized reporters at other newspapers, and fabricated articles out of whole cloth, all for stories set hundreds and even thousands of miles away, while he sat in New York City cafés.

Previous Duranty-Blair winners are:

• CBS News producer Mary Mapes in 2004;

• Seven reporters and editors at the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2006;

• ABC News reporter Brian Ross in 2012;

• Peter Berger (not the brilliant sociologist), of The American Interest, in 2013;

• Associated Press operative Tom Hays, in 2014;

• New York Times operative Farhad Manjoo in September, 2016;

• CNN’s Symone Sanders (2), Don Lemon, and Kate Bolduan (2) (P.S. and Jeff Zucker [5]), in November 2016;

• New York Times Propaganda Officer Francis X. Clines in March 2017;

• CNN Activist Jim Sciutto and Jeff Zucker, in May 2017;

• Associated Press “Reporter” Duncan Mansfield (posthumous), in September 2017;

• CBS Sports operative Jack Maloney, Chairman Sean McManus, and President David Berson, in October 2017;

• Associated Press operative Julie Pace, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, and Managing Editor Brian Carovillano, in October 2017 ;

• Associated Press Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and Managing Editor Brian Carovillano, in November 2017;

• “New York Times Operatives Richard Fausset (Alleged Reporter), Executive Editor Dean Baquet, and Managing Editor Joseph Kahn,” in December 2017;

• Foreign Policy’s Max Boot, Jonathan Tepperman, and Ben Pauker, in January 2018;

• Sports “Reporter” Les Carpenter, January 6, 2018;

• People Magazine “Reporter” Steve Helling and Editor Jess Cagle, August 3, 2018;

• Vanity Fair’s William D. Cohan and Graydon Carter, August 13, 2018;

• Vox Media Gang Member Zack Beauchamp, August 13, 2018;

• Politico Gang Member Daniel Lippman, September 18, 2018;

• CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeff Zucker, on October 13, 2018;

• CNN’s Ana Cabrera, Marc Lamont Hill, and Jeff Zucker on October 18, 2018; and

• CNN’s Kirsten Powers and Jeff Zucker, and USA Today’s Nicole Carroll, on October 27, 2018.

• “Seven at the new criterion and pj media win the Duranty-Blair award for journalistic infamy!,” on January 22, 2024.

Nicholas Stix
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored

Biography - Nicholas Stix

Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1989-93). Stix has written for Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men's News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son's diapers.