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Last week's news that General Motors lost more than $38 billion wasn't pretty. And it has some readers scratching their heads and wondering: Just how much longer can this keep up before the company goes out of business?
How can GM post a loss of $38.6 billion when the company is only worth $19.2 billion? News like this makes me think of Enron and all the creative accounting they did. Is GM trying similar tactics?
— A. J., Rochester, Minn.
Without an audit —which is only required once a year — you never really know what's on a company's books. But there is no reason to believe that General Motors is using anything other than standard accounting rules. And there's certainly nothing to indicate that the company is trying to deceive investors with the kind of byzantine web of interlocking shell companies to hide losses that the folks at Enron turned into an art form.
In GM's case, the company is "worth" quite a bit more than $19.2 billion; it looks like you're referring to the "market capitalization." That term is used to describe the total market value of all of GM's common shares outstanding. (Since we got your mail, that market cap number had dropped to $18.7 billion at this writing.)
While common stockholders technically "own" a company, the total value of a company's shares is almost always less than full value of all of its assets if you were to sell off those assets tomorrow. (If not, the company is insolvent. Unfortunately, when that happens, shareholders usually get nothing, because bond holders get paid first.)
The list of assets on a company's books includes things like plants and equipment, parts in inventory, bills that haven't been collected, and money stashed away for a rainy day in short-term investments. In GM's case, that came to $149.5 billion as of Sept. 30, the most recent balance sheet available. The balance sheet is the basic financial statement used by every public company to account for its assets and liabilities; it's called that because the two totals have to "balance" out.
Though GM faces huge financial challenges, it's also important to keep in mind that the $38.6 billion "loss" was from a one-time accounting charge — not from its operations. In this case, the charge represented a bundle of tax credits in the U.S., Canada and Germany that GM found it couldn't use. For you and me, that's like the difference between taking a cut in our salary and losing a big deduction on our tax return.
GM is still losing plenty of real dollars from operations: some $1.6 billion in the third quarter alone. But it is still taking in more than $40 billion in revenues each quarter and was sitting on $25 billion in cash as of Sept. 30 to help it ride out the storm. At that rate, GM could keep losing $1.6 billion every quarter for the next four years (not that anyone expects it to) before it had to sell other assets to stay afloat.
What happened to the reports on oil companies making record profits? They must be through the roof right now.
— Mary, Wisconsin
Actually, oil company profits these days are only through the stairway to the attic.
You don't need to worry about oil companies posting losses like GM. Profits in the latest quarter were sizeable for both Chevron ($3.7 billion) and ExxonMobil ($9.4 billion). But those profits were down 30 percent from a year ago for Chevron and 10 percent for Exxon.
Wait minute: with oil prices zooming toward $100 a barrel, how can that be?
The answer is that, in late summer and early fall, gasoline prices didn't go up as fast as crude oil prices. So the oil industry's refining operations weren't able to pass along the higher cost of crude.
Though U.S. pump prices are headed higher again, the drop in gasoline demand that follows the end of the summer driving season left refiners and wholesales with plenty of inventory, as it usually does every year. With all that gas sloshing around the system, and gasoline retailers competing for business, pump prices were kept in check. But global demand for oil remained strong, and competition from oil buyers in other parts of the world drove prices higher.
The reason you haven't heard much about this is that "Oil Industry Profit Margins Fall" just isn't as interesting a story as "ExxonMobil Posts Record Profits." But it serves to illustrate a point that a lot of readers have trouble accepting — that oil companies don't control the price of oil and they don't set the retail price of gasoline. Those prices are determined by the markets, which ultimately consist of consumers of the product like you and me.
The best way to "rein in" gasoline prices is to figure out how to use less of it. Once we do that, the markets will take care of the rest. Until we do, there's little point in blaming oil companies for producing a product we all want more of.
I have never understood what Dow points stand for. The Dow fell 350 points. What do the points represent? When the Dow first broke 10,000 it was a big, big deal. But 10,000 what? What does it represent in layman's terms? I hate to bore you with such a basic question, but I've searched for an answer online, and not had much luck.
— Matt,Seattle, Wash.
We like basic questions. And the fact that so many people find them "boring" helps keep us in business.
The Dow Jones Industrial index is a formula created by Dow Jones and Company, the publishers of The Wall Street Journal. It was created 101 years ago when you could pick 30 of the biggest stocks and use those to represent the ups and downs of the broader market. This was before computers did the calculating, so it also had the advantage of providing a quick check on "the stock market" by adding up the price of just 30 stocks and then dividing by 30.
Over time, most of the original stocks were replaced, and many of the remaining stocks "split" — which has the effect of cutting the share price. (A $100 stock split "two-for-one," for example, creates two shares worth $50 each.)
Every time a Dow stock splits, you have to adjust the so-called "divisor" — the number that's used to calculate the Dow Jones average. The current divisor is: 0.123017848, which means if you add up the 30 Dow stocks and divide by 0.123017848, you'll get the Dow Jones Industrial average. (For extra credit, you can calculate the divisor on your own, using the formula on Dow Jones Web site.)
So each "point" on the Dow is just a notch on a scale that is still widely followed around the world — sort of like a "degree" on a thermometer.
Which raises another question: With computers now available to instantaneously track the thousands of companies that make up the U.S. stock market, or even broader indexes like the Standard and Poor's 500, how come everyone still asks about an index that follows just 30 stocks?
The answer, we suspect, is that for all the talk about embracing the latest technology, the competition for the hottest new investment ideas and the desire to discover the Next Big Thing, the folks on Wall Street are still a pretty conservative bunch.
But that's just a hunch.


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About Us
Guarantee Real Estate
With it began a long-line of companies whose primary focus was to help families in the Central San Joaquin Valley buy and sell their homes.
Over the years Americans have experienced many troubling economic times; including the Great Depression and World War II. It was during these hard times that Guarantee became recognized and appreciated by homeowners in the Central Valley for putting its clients' needs first. Because of this business philosophy Guarantee evolved into the Valley's most trusted Savings and Loan company.
In 1984 Guarantee Savings recognized a need for a high-quality real estate brokerage firm in the Fresno community. Guarantee Real Estate was established by purchasing an existing mid-sized real estate company with 30 Associates.
Guarantee Real Estate President, Scott Leonard, has provided leadership to the firm since 1985. Having adopted the Savings and Loan's philosophy of providing quality customer service, Guarantee Real Estate has prospered and grown to nearly 400 Associates with thirteen offices in Fresno, Clovis, Prather, Shaver Lake, Reedley, Selma, and Visalia.
With an interest in doing business in the Central Valley, Glendale Federal Bank purchased the successful Guarantee Savings and Guarantee Real Estate in 1987.
In 1991, new banking regulations prohibited banks from owning real estate brokerages and Guarantee Real Estate was sold to Leonard, Joan Eaton, and Paul Gibson.
Guarantee's roots run deep in the Central Valley. With a dedication to giving back to the communities they serve, the Guarantee Good Will Network was established in 2007. Through this charitable giving fund, Guarantee, its Associates, and employees have combined efforts to support local nonprofits that improve quality of life or provide shelter to people in need.
As the company grew locally, Leonard, Eaton, and Gibson continued to look for ways to expand and enhance services to their clients and Associates. In 2013 Guarantee Real Estate became a wholly-owned subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. HomeServices is the second-largest full-service independent residential real estate brokerage firm.
Guarantee continues to attract the most professional and knowledgeable Sales Associates in the region. On-going education, state-of-the-art technology, advanced marketing, and seasoned management support allow its Associates to provide the best real estate services available. Since opening, Guarantee Real Estate has represented more homebuyers and sellers than any other real estate firm in the Central Valley. Going forward Guarantee will continue to focus on the same values it has held for over 100 years: To deliver exceptional client services, to provide an encouraging work environment for its associates, and to remain generous in giving back to our community.

subset: commoncrawl


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McDonald Positioned to Oversee Jail Operations
LOS ANGELES — Terri McDonald has a long history with California corrections and is now continuing her journey in Los Angeles.
McDonald was recently named the new assistant sheriff for Los Angeles County, the nation's largest jail system, holding more than 19,000 inmates. The introduction was made public this week by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca during a news conference. Baca described her as a "consummate professional" and a "great humanitarian" with "expansive experience."
Her experience spans over two decades with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), where she spent her last 24 years. Her most recent position with the CDCR was as the undersecretary for operations.
Her appointment as the new assistant sheriff of L.A. County comes at the right time for the county, according to Baca. Also, her expertise and history in corrections make her more than ideal for the position.
"I believe that Assistant Sheriff McDonald and myself are people who want to run the safest and most humane jails in America," Baca said.
Although the sheriff has high hopes for McDonald, he stressed the environment is not always going to lend itself to change.
"There's no corrections department or jail system in America that is ever going to be perfect. We're dealing with an imperfect population," Baca said in the news conference.
Despite the challenges in front of McDonald, she emphasized her commitments and willingness to see change in the system during the news conference.
"I've had the opportunity to work in the largest state jail system in the nation during one of the most challenging times that California's ever faced, and over the years I've been exposed to everything that the L.A. County jail system is going through today," she said. "I've been able to work through and lead through significant reforms in the California systems and I think many of the things I learned there will translate to the L.A. County jail system."
McDonald's key responsibilities will be to oversee custody, management and general oversight of the jails, while reporting directly to the sheriff.
Miriam Krinsky, executive director of the Citizen's Commission on Jail Violence said that McDonald, "will need to signal from day one her commitment to zero tolerance for excessive force, dishonesty and lax discipline that allowed violence and aggressive deputy misconduct to fester for too long in our community's jails."
"It's heartening to see that reform is under way but much work remains to be done," she added.
In an interview with Southern California Public Radio, McDonald explained her excitement about her new position in Los Angeles.
"I think it's just an incredible opportunity for me to learn and work with an organization that really is on the cutting edge of implementing new changes," McDonald said.
In terms of Krinsky's argument that "much work remains to be done," McDonald, along with Baca, agree with the commission's recommendations for reducing staff-on-inmate violence in the jails, according to Southern California Public Radio.
"They did a very good job in reviewing factors in L.A. jails and coming up with recommendations that are appropriate and I think reasonable to implement for an agency," McDonald said in the interview.
Baca addressed the excessive force issue during the news conference and explained that after an investigation found that only three cases were "problematic," out a total of 130 reviewed cases.
Many still believe the allegations to be troubling but now with McDonald on the job, those concerned will have a direct official to lean on.
County Supervisor Michael Antonovich said McDonald's appointment "will restore the public's trust in the Sheriff's Department."
"To have this new assistant sheriff is a big deal for us because it's a new person to sit down and negotiate with at the table," said Patrisse Cullors, project director of End Sheriff Violence in L.A. Jails Coalition, in a statement.
Those who have worked with McDonald know that she will be a great addition to L.A. County, including former secretary of CDCR and current head of the California State Association of Counties, Matt Cate.
"She worked her way up in corrections when it was not easy," Cate said to Southern California Public Radio. "She doesn't suffer fools well, I'll put it that way."
The news of McDonald's position comes in the midst of other big news for L.A. county jails. Baca is currently in talks with the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to discuss his plans to build a new $932 million jail, which if approved, could look at completion some time in 2019 or 2020.


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Texas Government Code, Chapter 552, gives you the right to access government records; and an officer for public information and the officer's agent may not ask why you want them. All government information is presumed to be available to the public. Certain exceptions may apply to the disclosure of the information. Governmental bodies shall promptly release requested information that is not confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision, or information for which an exception to disclosure has not been sought.
You may submit your request the following ways to Communications ([email protected]):
Mail: College Station ISD ATTN: Cari Horn 1812 Welsh College Station, Texas 77840
Board Legal Policy - Requests for Information
Open Records Request Form


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The strange thing about horror movies of the last 10 years is that they've rarely been scary. They've been grotesque – take, please, "Evil Dead" from earlier this year – but few of them have been legitimately frightening. "The Conjuring," on the other hand, understands that violence is not horror, and delivers a truly disturbing viewing experience. It may use a little Hollywood pixie dust to make it to the finish line, but the pre-Hollywood psychodrama is positively chilling, and the use of old-school techniques only adds to the creep factor.
It's the fall of 1971, and Roger and Carolyn Petton (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor), along with their five daughters, are moving into an old farm house in Rhode Island. From the very beginning, the place seems a little off (the dog won't go in the house, the basement is boarded up), but the family puts up with all of the seemingly unrelated annoyances (cold, the occasional foul stench, youngest daughter April's new imaginary friend) and attributes it to, well, something rational, something explainable. It is not long, though, before the "house" ramps up the offensive, and an exasperated Carolyn asks local paranormal researchers Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) to come to the house and evaluate their problem. Lorraine, a clairvoyant, gets bad vibes from the very beginning, and after doing a little research on the former homeowners, she is fearful for the lives of the entire Perron family, Carolyn in particular.
Screenwriting twins Chad and Carey Hayes wrote the script of their lives here – though to be fair, one look at their IMDb profile and you'll see that that is a backhanded compliment – by framing the 'A' story (the Perrons) and the 'B' story (the Warrens) side by side until such time that the families can come together organically. It's a shrewd move, because it gives the audience the occasional, much-needed break from the terror that the Perrons are suffering, while slowly allowing the audience to get to know the Warrens and the, um, ghosts of their past that they bring with them to this case. That, plus Wan's refusal to resort to the cheap 'boo' scare, gets the audience emotionally invested early, and never lets them go.
Lorraine makes several decisions of the 'don't you go in there' variety, and it's actually awesome to see, because they make sense; she's not afraid of what she's dealing with, so of course she would do what she does here. Likewise, Roger and Carolyn walk into a boarded basement because, hey, it's 1971. The age of irony hasn't happened yet, and they have no reason to suspect that they just bought a haunted house. Present-day audiences may scoff – and ours did – but they forget: the people they're watching don't realize they're in a horror movie.
Director James Wan must be a big fan of "Poltergeist," because similarities abound between the two films, right down to the shot of the static-filled TV screen. And really, if you're going to pay homage to a scary movie, that's as good as they get. His effects are simple and direct, with only a handful of CGI involved. There is also a minimal amount of language and blood, meaning that this movie earned its 'R' rating the hard way. That's downright noble anymore.
Having said that, the final act is a bit over the top. There are children in peril, an unlikely hero, the protagonists staring into the face of evil…these are all cornerstones of thrillers and horror movies, and artistic license was surely taken with both the events and the timing of said events. Still, it's an easy thing to forgive that late in the game, and any filmmaker will tell you not to let the truth get in the way of a good story, since the truth would almost certainly have been a lot less interesting. With any luck, "The Conjuring" will lead potential future horror filmmakers raised on a diet of torture porn and slasher films to rethink their approach. One can hope, at least.
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Posted in: Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Movies
Tags: James Wan, Patrick Wilson, The Conjuring, The Conjuring review, Vera Farmiga


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When Harpaul Nandhra—a mother of three who lives in Cobble Hill on Vancouver Island—heard about the disappearance of Cache Creek Fire Chief Clayton Cassidy in May 2017, and how he was found three weeks later, she knew she had to do something.
"I didn't know the family, but I read about it online when they were searching, and then when they found him," she says. "I felt I really needed to do something for the family."
Nandhra says that art has been a hobby of hers for many years. "I've been drawing since I was a kid. And I enjoy doing portraits."
She did a pencil portrait of Cassidy based on a picture of him that she saw online. When she finished the portrait, she reached out as to how she could send it to Cassidy's wife Rose.
"I sent the portrait to Rose, and heard back from her that she loved it," says Nandhra. "It was very touching. I got quite a few messages back from family members saying 'Thank you.' Clayton's son Derek got in touch with me and said I'd captured his father's eyes and smile perfectly. That was what I'd wanted to do; and I started crying.
"I could tell there was so much love in that family, and could feel how great his loss was."
Nandhra lost her own partner suddenly several years ago, and says she knew what the family would be feeling. "I felt their loss, felt for Rose, and wanted to reach out to them."
"Friends asked me why I would do that [the portrait of Clayton] for someone I don't know. When you've experienced that loss, and then hear of someone else losing someone, you feel that loss, you feel for them. You know what they're going through, because you've been through that yourself."
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And we're back with our twenty-ninth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Makezine, our Facebook page, and Twitter.
In response to Intern's Corner: My First Faire, Manny Laracuente says:
It is moments like the one you had that makes me more intuitive to spread more knowledge so that we can have more Christmas days like the on you had at the faire.(P.S. I too haven't gone to a faire yet but am going to Kansas City cant wait)^_^
In the piece on the Gorgeous 1940s Lathe Restoration, Fritoeata remarks:
His 10EE is a LOT cleaner looking than mine!
You simply cannot beat these 10EE's for rigidity! They will pound the floor instead of chattering… they're amazing.
In response to the How-To: Lily Pad Pool Warmers piece, user Nathan (@Moriash) has a novel idea:
Or to make it massively more complicated and expensive for little benefit (beyond cool points), make them hexagonal, to fill in the voids when the breeze close-packs them against one side of the pool. (What? You don't have hexagonal hula hoops at your local Toys R Us? Suppose you could make do with PVC pipes, six 60 degree elbows each.) Maybe embed strong rare earth magnets in the sides, perhaps two magnets per side, with the north side of one magnet a few inches from the left end and the south side of the other magnet a few inches from the right end. Provided you kept them all with the correct face upward, that would tend to snap them into the close packed configuration as the sides slid past each other. Probably wouldn't work so well in the curved pool, though. Very silly, and next-to-no concrete benefit to doing that, but it's fun to think about.
In the piece RobotGrrl's Heathkit Build Continues, glenn147 says:
Many Years Ago, in a Land Far, Far Away. This was the First Analog Meter, that I made at Home…
In the article How to Start a Tool Lending Library, Co-Founder of the West Seattle Tool Lending Library Gene Homicki responds to commenters:
dylanboyce, we found that a lot of people were less willing (scared even) to loan person to person, but are willing to donate tools, time and skills to a more formal library so they can be available for other people to use. Honestly, we get more tools than we know what to do with (ok, we know what to do with them – we sell the excess to buy more of what we need, or we donate them to other local tool libraries).
rageahol, it looks like they only loan out to community groups rather than individuals (more of the "tool bank" than "tool library" model). I'd love to see more tool libraries directly in SF, and a big part of the reason we created the "starter kit" and went a little overboard on the lending library management system, was to make it a lot easier to get started.
Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week's column.
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Fabulous Souvenirs on Sanibel Island Florida |
TO OUR WEBSITE! Bob Tuttle and his wife, Pauline, have owned and operated Tuttle's Seahorse Shell Shop on Periwinkle Way in historic Old Town Sanibel since 1973. "We're one of the oldest shops on the Island", Bob says, "and we continue to present an eclectic array of tropical treasures and trinkets at very affordable prices." Tuttle's has expanded its fabulous selection of 14 kt. gold - "literally hundreds and hundreds of charms," plus bracelets, earrings, omega sliders and chains...and a delightful selection of golden rings with dolphin and shell themes. "We also carry a big inventory of sterling silver jewelry - including popular ankle bracelets and toe rings. Check out our catalog for photos and don't miss our monthly specials." When it comes to Sanibel Island logo shirts, everything at Tuttle's is first class. Quality cotton tees, sweatshirts, denim shirts and jackets - in unisex styles and sizes - are welcome gifts for yourself as well as others. Check out our catalog for a sampling of what we offer! Islanders and visitors are talking about the hand painted wooden benches sporting bright beach scenes - they're coated with marine varnish and perfect for patio pool or porch. We have the best selection of Nautical Gifts on the Island. Check our catalog or take a NEW STORE TOUR to see our selection. If you don't see what you are looking for, call us on our toll-free number. We can find most anything you are looking for! Delicate hand-carved wooden birds, charming bird houses, lighthouse oil lamps, 'gator heads, Sanibel coffee mugs and etched wine glasses... it's all waiting at Tuttle's Seahorse Shell Shop. Of course you'll want to scope out the big selection of seashells! Our catalog page show a sampling of what we offer. Be sure to enjoy Bob's personal collection of Hopalong Cassidy collectibles. When you visit allow plenty of time for browsing. "This is a fun store," Bob says, "and we have a good time here." The new "spice and hot sauce" corner offers lots of exciting products - including souvenir hats, ties, trivets and magnets - plus "Roadkill" sauce, "Crazy Jerry's Margarita Salsa," "Billy Bob's Blistering Pepper Sauce" and other tasty condiments from around the world. There's even Bob's own recipe for Hot Sauce and refreshing Key Lime candy! As you can see, we have a great selection of nautical-related items in our little store. To give you a better idea of the scope of our selections, please feel free to take a tour of our store by visiting our Tour page.
Please feel free to E-Mail us for current prices for our 14 kt. gold and sterling silver charms. We also carry authentic Atocha Treasure coins (Gold or Silver)! All diamond cut 14 kt. gold - at market value. UPS service daily! We accept Master Card, Visa, American Express and Discover. For Charge Card Sales please call 239-472-0707 (Toll Free: 866-472-0707) between the hours of 10 a.m. through 5 p.m. ET, Monday thru Saturday. Catalog | Related Links | Product Info | New Store Tour Tuttle's Sea Horse Shell Shop Website designed by |


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BBB Advises Students: Secure Your Identity
College students often feel they have enough to juggle when it comes to school, work and their social life. Protecting their identities and credit ratings often doesn't make the list of their priorities. Because college students are so susceptible to identity theft, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) recommends that they take several simple steps to help protect themselves on campus.
According to the 2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report released by Javelin Strategy and Research, more than 8.1 million people became victims of identity theft in 2010. For young adults, "friendly fraud" is on the rise. This is fraud perpetrated by people known to the victim, such as a relative or roommate. "Friendly Fraud" grew seven percent last year.
"Identity thieves don't care if you're a struggling student and don't have a penny to your name. Sometimes all they want is to exploit your clean credit record," said Patrick Bennett, BBB Director of Community Relations. "Young adults, who establish good habits for protecting their identities, as well as monitoring for fraud, are laying a foundation for a healthy financial road during the rest of their lives."
The BBB recommends the following tips for students to help fight identity theft on campus:
Never loan your credit or debit card to anyone, even if they are a friend. Also, just say no if a friend wants you to co-sign a loan or finance agreement for items like TVs or computers.
Don't share too much on social networks. People using social networking for five or more years are twice as likely to suffer identity fraud as those newer to these sites. Javelin research found that 36 percent of people aged 65+ do not use the privacy settings on their network, potentially exposing crucial information to fraudsters. The good news is 89 percent of 25-34 year olds were actively using the privacy settings on social network sites.
Make sure your computer has up-to-date antivirus and spyware software. Be diligent with installing updates and patches to your computer's operating system or browser software, which help keep your computer safe from hacking attempts by online identity thieves.
Important documents should be stored under lock and key. These include social security card, passport, and bank and credit card statements. Shred any paper documents that have sensitive financial information rather than simply tossing them in the garbage.
Always check your credit or debit card statements closely for any suspicious activity. The sooner you identify any potential fraud, the less you'll suffer in the long run.
School mailboxes are not always secure, and mailboxes in a dorm or apartment can often be easily accessed. To combat sticky fingers in the mailroom, have sensitive mail sent to a permanent address, such as the parents' home or a PO Box.
When shopping on unfamiliar web sites, always check the company out first with BBB at www.bbb.org. Also look for the BBB Accredited Business seal along with other trust seals and click on the seals to confirm that they are legitimate.
Check your credit report at least once a year with all three reporting bureaus for any suspicious activity or inaccuracies. You can do this for free by visiting www.annualcreditreport.com.


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The Beatles in 1964, back when ringtones were... What's a ringtone? © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis
The Beatles were slow to board the iTunes train, but they're quickly making up for lost time. Today, that most iconic of iconic bands made available 27 of their songs - all number one hits, that is - available as ringtones via Apple's iTunes.
The songs are culled from The Beatles' 31-milliion 2000 compilation album 1, which told The Beatles' story in 'toppermost of the poppermost' fashion, putting all of the group's number one songs on a two-disc package.
So now with ringtones, fans fan answer their phones to Love Me Do, Ticket To Ride, Help!, I Feel Fine and on and on.
Because the songs are all culled from the album 1, ringtones-appropriate numbers such as Good Day Sunshine, Goodnight, and Good Morning, Good Morning aren't yet available. But here's hoping they will be soon. And hey, imagine sitting on the bus and hearing You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)... talk about strange!


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As a nurse, Sandra Begly-Brown wanted to add a healthier food alternative to the shopping mall offerings she saw, so she combined her interest in nutrition with a love of baking and an entrepreneurial spirit to create Didoughs Twisted Pretzel Company.
"I wanted a healthy product on the market," Begly-Brown says. "Something I'd feel good about feeding my own family. Our pretzels contain only natural ingredients and no hydrogenated oils."
Didoughs' best seller is a traditional butter-and-salt pretzel, which Begly-Brown says outsells the other flavors eight to one. Other pretzel seasonings include sour cream and onion, cinnamon sugar, and garlic. The pretzels are made all day long from scratch in each location.
"The dry ingredients come preblended from a company that has our proprietary recipe," Begly-Brown says. "They are then mixed and allowed to rise in the store. People can see the whole process."
Dipping sauces are available for an extra 49 cents and include cream cheese that's whipped in store, cheddar cheese sauce, jalapeño cheese sauce, marinara, and hot fudge. The most traditional offering, cheddar cheese sauce, leads sales.
She says Didoughs is also compulsive about freshness. Stores keep track of how long each pretzel has been out of the oven and in the warmer with timers placed above each row of pretzels.
"I can look at every product in the warmer and tell how long they've been in there," Begly-Brown says. "If pretzels sit too long, they lose some of their texture, so we have a 30-minute guarantee. When the timer goes off, you might see us throw a whole row away. That's rare because we understand the traffic flow, but we will throw it away if we have to. The pretzels need to be at a certain standard."
To make sure those standards are met, Didoughs has a training program where potential pretzel makers have to pass every category on a seven-page checklist. Categories include making dough, dipping the dough in butter, and salting them just right.
"They have to learn step by step," Begly-Brown says. "Some might be fully trained in four days; one person took two weeks."
Didoughs' first location opened in 2003 in Peru, Illinois. The company started franchising in 2006 with a second Illinois location, followed by a Texas location. All three Didoughs are located in malls.
"The original store is tiny, only 200 square feet," Begly-Brown says. "But we'll sell 10,000 pretzels a month out of it in a mall that does barely 1 million in foot traffic a month. We only sell pretzels and pretzel-wrapped hotdogs there."
The other two Didoughs, both franchised locations, are considerably larger—about 1,500 square feet—with an expanded menu that includes pretzels, pretzel-wrapped hot dogs, and a line of pretzel sandwiches that includes Ham and Cheese, Turkey and Cheese, Roast Beef, and a BLT, all on pretzel buns.
"We use the highest-quality branded meat we can get," Begly-Brown says. "And the homemade buns use the same dough as the pretzels, but we twirl almost like a cinnamon roll."
Didoughs Twisted Pretzel Company
President: Sandra Begly-Brown
HQ: Morton, Illinois
Year Started: 2003
Annual Sales: Undisclosed
Total Units: 3
Franchise Units: 2
The beverages offered at Didoughs were also selected by Begly-Brown for their wholesomeness. Choices include bottled water and lemonade.
"Everyone seems to like lemonade with pretzels," she says. "And we have fresh-pressed lemonade. The stuff you buy in a bag or box is made with corn syrup, so we use hand-squeezed lemons and sugar, but we reduce the sugar as much as is palatable."
Pretzels at Didoughs run $2.29–$2.49. An average ticket for a pretzel and beverage is $3.99. Sandwiches are $4.29, making a meal of a sandwich, chips, and a drink between $6–$6.50.
Begly-Brown says while many shopping malls are taking an economic hit, Didoughs stores are "doing a remarkable job maintaining [business]."
"Right now our time, effort, and money is going toward supporting our franchisees and streamlining operations," she says. But she does want to grow the chain.
One of Begly-Brown's goals for Didoughs is to streamline operations enough to be able to offer franchisees an affordable alternative to a full in-line store. The Didoughs Express would be a kiosk with all the capabilities of an in-line store, except for storage.
"Off-site storage works to our advantage, though, because we would be paying much less per square foot to store supplies than we would in our prime location," Begly-Brown says.
She adds that a kiosk allows foot traffic from all sides and is half the price of an in-line store to build. A Didoughs Express kiosk would be about 12 feet by 12 feet in size, which translates into much lower rent.
"It is also movable, so if the location is doing poorly it can be moved to another location," Begly-Brown says.
She envisions Didoughs Express locations both inside and outside malls. An outdoor kiosk could even have drive-thru capabilities.
"This concept is ready to go," Begly-Brown says. "I just need franchisees."


text:
What happens, then, when more and more of our interaction takes place at a distance, mediated by mobile phones, text messages, computer posts to a network of perhaps thousands of persons? When interaction is mediated rather than face-to-face, the bodily component of IRs is missing. In the history of social life up until recently, IRs have been the source of solidarity, symbolic values, moral standards, and emotional enthusiasm (what IR theory calls Emotional Energy, EE). Without bodily assembly to set off the process of building IRs, what can happen in a mediated, disembodied world?
There are at least 3 possibilities. First, new kinds of IRs may be created, with new forms of solidarity, symbolism, and morality. In this case, we would need an entirely new theory. Second, IRs fail; solidarity and the other outcomes of IRs disappear in a wholly mediated world. Third, IRs continue to be carried out over distance media, but their effects are weaker; collective effervescence never rises to very high levels; and solidarity, commitment to symbolism, and other consequences continue to exist but at a weakened level.
Empirical research is now taking up these questions. The answer that is emerging seems to be the third alternative: it is possible to achieve solidarity through media communications, but it is weaker than bodily, face-to-face interaction. I argued in Interaction Ritual Chains, chapter 2 [2004] that mediated communications that already existed during the 20th century-- such as telephones-- did not replace IRs. Although it has been possible to talk to your friends and lovers over the phone, that did not replace meeting them; a phone call does not substitute for a kiss; and telephone sex services are an adjunct to masturbation, not a substitute for intercourse. When meaningful ceremonies are carried out-- such as a wedding or funeral-- people still assemble bodily, even though the technology exists to attend by phone-plus-video hookup. Research now under way on conference calls indicates that although organizational meetings can be done conveniently by telephone, nevertheless most participants prefer a face-to-face meeting, because both the solidarity and the political maneuvering are done better when people are bodily present.
The pattern turns out to be that mediated connections supplement face-to-face encounters. Rich Ling, in New Tech, New Ties [MIT Press, 2008] shows that mobile phone users talk most frequently with persons whom they also see personally; mobile phones increase the amount of contact in a bodily network that already exists. We have no good evidence for alternative number two-- solidarity disappearing in a solely mediated world-- because it appears that hardly anyone communicates entirely by distance media, lacking embodied contact. It may be that such a person would be debilitated, as we know that physical contact is good for health and emotional support. The comparative research still needs to be been done, looking at the amount of both mediated and bodily contact that people have; moreover, such research would have to measure how successful the IRs are which take place, in terms of their amount of mutual focus, shared emotion, and rhythmic coordination. Face-to-face encounters can fail as well as succeed; so we should not expect that failed face-to-face IRs are superior to mediated interactions in producing solidarity, commitment to symbols, morality, and EE.
Compare now different kinds of personal media: voice (phones); textual; multi-media (combination of text and images). Voice media in real time allow for some aspects of a successful IR, such as rhythmic coordination of speaking; voice messages, on the other hand, because there is no rapid flow of back-and-forth, should produce less solidarity. There is even less rhythmic coordination in exchanging messages by text; even if one answers quickly, this is far from the level of micro-rhythms that is found in mutually attuned speech, taking place at the level of tenths of seconds and even more fine-grained micro-frequencies of voice tones which produce the felt bodily and emotional experiences of talk. Adding visual images does not necessarily increase the micro-coordination; still photographs do not convey bodily alignments in real time, and in fact often depict a very different moment than the one taking place during the communication; they are more in the nature of image-manipulation than spontaneous mutual orientation. Real time video plus voice is closest to a real IR, and should be expected to produce higher results on the outcome side (solidarity, etc.), although this remains to be tested.
Many people, especially youth, spend many hours a day on mediated communication. Is this evidence that mediated interactions are successful IRs, or a substitute for them? I suggest a different hypothesis: since mediated IRs are weaker than bodily face-to-face IRs, people who have relatively few embodied IRs try to increase the frequency of mediated IRs to make up for them. Some people spend a great deal of time checking their email, even apart from what is necessary for work; some spend much time posting and reading posts on social network media. I suggest that this is like an addiction; specifically, the type of drug addiction which produces "tolerance," where the effect of the drug weakens with habituation, so that the addict needs to take larger and larger dosages to get the pleasurable effect. To state this more clearly: mediated communications are weaker than embodied IRs; to the extent that someone relies on mediated rather than embodied IRs, they are getting the equivalent of a weak drug high; so they increase their consumption to try to make up for the weak dosage. Here again is an area for research. New kinds of electronic media appear rapidly, and are greeted with enthusiasm when they first spread, hence most of what is reported about them is wild rhetoric. The actual effects on people's experience of social interaction are harder to measure, and require better comparisons: people with different amounts of mediated communication, in relation to different amounts of embodied IRs (and at different levels of IR success and failure); and all this needs to be correlated with the outcome variables (solidarity, symbolism, etc.)
Theory of IRs is closely connected with sociological theory of networks. Networks are usually conceived on the macro or meso-level, as if it were an actual set of connecting lines. But seen from the micro-level, a connection or tie is just a metaphor, for the amount and quality of micro-interaction which takes place between particular individual nodes. What we call a "strong tie" generally means people who converse with each other frequently about important matters-- which is to say, people who frequently have successful IRs with each other. A "weak tie" is some amount of repeated contact, but with less strong solidarity and emotion--- i.e. moderate IRs. With this perspective in mind, let us consider two kinds of electronic network structures: those which are node-to-node (an individual sends a message to another specific individual-- such as email); and those which are broadcast, one to many (such as posts on a blog or social media site). Popular social media in recent years have created a type of network structure that is called "friends", but which differs considerably from traditional friendships as taking place through embodied IRs.
Traditional embodied IRs can be one-to-one. This is typically what exists in the most intimate kinds of friendships, such as lovers, partners, or close friends. In Goffman's terms, they share a common backstage, where the nuances and troubles of how they carry out frontstage social performances are shared in secret. In my formulation, close friends are backstage friends. An intermediate type of friend might be called a "sociable friend", someone who meets with others in an informal group (such as at a dinner table or a party); here the conversation is less intimate, more focused on items of entertainment, or in more serious circles, discussing politics or work. Research on networks indicates that most people have a very few intimate friends (sharing backstage secrets), and perhaps a few dozen sociable friends.
What then is the status of "friends" defined as those with whom one exchanges posts on a social media site, typically with hundreds or thousands of persons? This is a broadcast network structure, not one-to-one; thus it eliminates the possibility of strong specific ties. In addition, because these interactions do not take place in real time, micro-coordination does not exist; no strong IRs are created. It is true that persons may post a good deal of detail about their daily activities, but this does not necessarily lead to shared emotions, at the intensity of emotional effervescence that is generated in successful IRs. Pending the results of more micro-sociological research, I would suggest that broadcast-style social media networks have generated a new category of "friendship" that is somewhere on the continuum between "sociable friend" [itself a weaker tie than backstage friend/strong tie] and "acquaintance" [the traditional network concept of "weak tie"]. The "social-media friend" has more content than an "acquaintance tie", since the former gives much more personal information about oneself.
As yet it is unclear what are the effects of this kind of sharing personal information. The information on the whole is superficial, Goffmanian frontstage; one possibility that needs to be considered is that the social media presentation of self is manipulated and contrived, rather than intimate and honest. This is nothing new; Goffman argued that everyone in traditional face-to-face interaction tries to present a favorable image of oneself, although this is mostly done by appearance and gesture, whereas social media self-presentation is based more on verbal statements, as well as photo images selected for the purpose. One could argue that Goffmanian everyday life interaction makes it harder to keep up a fake impression because flaws can leak through one's performance, especially as emotions are expressed and embarrassment may result; whereas a social media self-presentation gives more opportunity to deliberately contrive the self one wants to present. It is so to speak Goffmanian pseudo-intimacy, a carefully selected view of what purports to be one's backstage.
It is true that young people often post things about themselves that would not be revealed by circumspect adults (sex, drugs, fights, etc.). But this is not necessarily showing the intimate backstage self; generally the things which are revealed are a form of bragging, claiming antinomian status-- the reverse status hierarchy of youth cultures in which official laws and restrictions are challenged. Nevertheless, talking about illicit things is not the same as intimate backstage revelation. To say that one has gotten into a fight can be a form of bragging; more intimate would be to say you were threatened by a fight and felt afraid, fought badly, or ran away. (The latter is a much more common occurrence, as documented in Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, Princeton Univ. Press, 2008.) To brag about one's sex life is not the same as talking about the failures of a sexual attempt (again, a very common occurrence: David Grazian, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008). The antinomian selves posted by many young people are a cultural ideal within those groups, not a revelation of their intimate selves. In fact research here would be a good site for studying the contrived aspect of the presentation of self.
Let us consider now the relationship between IR theory and social conflict; and ask whether the new electronic media change anything. Consider first the personal level, as individuals get into conflicts with other individuals, or small groups quarrel and fight each other. In the early days of the Internet, people used to frequently insult each other, in so-called "flame wars". The practice seems to have declined as participation in the Internet has become extremely widespread, and people configure their networks for favorable contacts (or at least favorable pretences, as in spamming). Insulting strangers whom one does not know face-to-face fits quite well with the patterns of violent conflict [Collins, Violence]: violence is in fact quite difficult for persons to carry out when they are close together, and is much easier at a distance. Thus in warfare, artillery or long-distance snipers using telescopes are much more accurate in killing the enemy than soldiers in close confrontation. Contrary to the usual entertainment media mythology about violence, closeness makes antagonists incompetent; they often miss with their weapons even if only a few meters away, and most antagonists are unable to use their weapons at all.
I have called this emotional pattern "confrontational tension/fear", and have argued that this difficulty in face-to-face violence comes from the fact that violence goes against the grain of IRs. Humans are hard-wired in their nervous systems to become easily entrained with the bodily rhythms and emotions of persons they encounter in full-channel communication; hence the effort to do violence cuts across the tendency for mutual rhythmic coordination; it literally produces tension which makes people's hands shake and their guns not to shoot straight. Professionals at violence get around this barrier of confrontational tension/fear by techniques which lower the focus of the confrontation: attacking their enemy from the rear; or avoiding the face and above all eye contact, such as by wearing masks or hoods.
Thus, to return to the case of conflict over the Internet, it is easier to get into a quarrel and to deliver insults from a distance, against a person whom you cannot see. Internet quarrels also have an easy resolution: one simply cuts off the connection. This is similar to conflict in everyday life, where people try to avoid conflicts as much as possible by leaving the scene. (The style of tough guys who go looking for fights applies only to a minority of persons; and even the tough guys operate by micro-interactional techniques which enable them to circumvent confrontational tension, especially by attacking weak victims. The fearless tough guy is mostly a myth.)
On the individual level, then, electronic media generally conform to larger patterns of conflict. What about on the level of small groups? Little groups of friends and supporters may get into conflicts in a bar or place of entertainment, and sometimes this results in a brawl. The equivalent of this in the electronic media seems hardly to exist. There are fantasy games in which the player enacts a role in a violent conflict--- but this is not a conflict with other real people; and furthermore it is in a contrived medium which lacks the most basic features of violence, such as confrontational tension/fear. Violent games only serve to perpetuate mythologies about how easy violence really is. In my judgment, such games are more of a fantasy escape or compensation for the real world than a form of preparation for it.
It is not clear from sociological evidence that gangs use the social media much. A major component of the everyday life of a criminal gang is the atmosphere of physical threat. Although gang members do not engage in a lot of violence statistically-- contrary to journalistic impressions, murders even in very active gang areas hardly happen at a rate of about 1 per 100 gang members per year [evidence in Collins, Violence p. 373]-- but gangs spend a great deal of time talking about violence, recalling incidents, bragging and planning retaliation. Moreover, gang members have territory, a street or place they control; they must be there physically, and most of their contacts are with other persons in their own gang, or its immediate surroundings. Gang members are very far from being cosmopolitans, and do not have wide networks. Studies of network usage rarely show gang members involved. (There are some incidents of gangs monitoring a neighbourhood information network, to see who is away from home so that their houses could be burglarized; but this is more in the nature of using the Internet to locate victims, rather than for ties within the gang.) I would conclude that gangs are too concerned about maintaining a high level of solidarity inside their group, and with physical threat against outsiders, to be much concerned with weak-IR media.
Let us consider another level of conflict, that involving official or formal organizations. On one side are hackers, individuals who use their electronic expertise to hack into an organization, either purely for the sake of disruption, or for financial gain. Sociologists and criminologists know relatively little about hackers. They do not appear to be the same kinds of people who belong to gangs; as indicated, gangs are very concerned about their territorial presence, and are most concerned to fight against rival gangs; hackers seem to be from a different social class and are more likely to be isolated individuals. (This needs investigation-- do hackers connect with each other via the internet? Are they underground groups of close friends? Some are probably more isolated than others; which type does the most hacking and the most damage?)
On the other side, officials also use electronic media to attack and counter-attack. Leaving aside the issue of how organizations defend themselves against hacking and cyberwar, the point I want to emphasize is that official agencies of control have an abundance of information about individuals who most use electronic media. Especially social networking sites, where young people post all sorts of information about themselves, are vulnerable to police, as well as employers and investigators; as many naïve youth have discovered to their disadvantage, their antinomian bragging can get them disqualified from jobs, or even arrested (for example, by contact with forbidden porn sites.).
Sociologically, it is best to conceive of the electronic media as a terrain on which conflict can take place between different forces. For many people, especially youth in the first flush of enthusiasm for new possibilities of connections and self-presentation, the electronic media seem to be a place of freedom. But this depends on the extent to which official agencies are constrained from invading the same media channels in search of incriminating information. Here the electronic media have to be seen in the perspective of surrounding social organization: political and legal processes influence how much leeway each side of the conflict has in being able to operate against the other.
The technology of the media is not a wholly autonomous force; it is chiefly in democracies with strong legal restrictions on government agencies that the electronic media give the greatest freedom for popular networks to operate. It is sometimes argued that network media favor social movements, allowing them to mobilize quickly for protests and political campaigns; thus it is claimed that the network media favor rebellions against authoritarian regimes such as China or Iran. But these same cases show the limits of electronic networks.
One weakness is that networks among strangers are not actually very easy to mobilize; social movement researchers have demonstrated that the great majority of persons who take part in movements and assemble for demonstrations do not come as isolates, but accompanied by friends; a big crowd is always made up of knots of personal supporters. It is this intimate structure of clusters in the network that makes political movements succeed; and their lack makes them fail. Thus electronic media are useful for activating personal networks, but are not a substitute for them. (This parallels Ling's conclusion about mobile phone: that they supplement existing personal contacts rather than replacing them.)
A second weakness of electronic networks for mobilizing political protests is that a sufficiently authoritarian government has little difficulty in shutting down the network. China and Iran have shown that a government can cut off computer servers and mobile phone connections. The more democratic part of the world can protest; and the commercial importance of the Internet gives the protests some economic allies. But mere disapproval from the outside has not been a deterrent for authoritarian regimes in the past. It is not at all impossible that a Stalinist type of totalitarian dictatorship could emerge in various countries. The multiple connections of the electronic media would not prevent such a development; and indeed a determined authoritarian government would find the Internet a convenient way of spying on people. Especially as the tendency of technology and capitalist consolidation in the media industries is to bring all the media together into one device, it would be possible for government super-computers to track considerable details about people's lives, expressed beliefs, and their social connections. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (published in 1948), the television set is not something you watch but something that watches you, at the behest of the secret police. The new media make this increasingly easier for a government to do. Whether a government will do this or not, does not depend on the media themselves. It is a matter for the larger politics of the society. In that respect, too, the findings of sociology, both for micro-sociology and macro-sociology, remain relevant for the electronic network age of the future.
I will conclude with an even more futuristic possibility. Up to now, the electronic media produce only weak IRs, because they lack most of the ingredients that make IRs successful: bodily presence is important because so many of the channels of micro-coordination happen bodily, in the quick interplay of voice rhythms and tones, emotional expressions, gestures, and more intense moments, bodily touch. It is possible that the electronic media will learn from IR theory, and try to incorporate these features into electronic devices. For instance, communication devices could include special amplification of voice rhythms, perhaps artificially making them more coordinated. Persons on both ends of the line could be fitted with devices to measure heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, perhaps eventually even brain waves, and to transmit these to special receivers on the other end-- individuals would receive physiological input electronically from the other person into one's own physiology. Several lines of development could occur: first, to make electronic media more like real multi-physiological channel IRs; hence mediated interaction would become more successful in producing IRs, and could tend to replace bodily interaction since the latter would no longer be superior. Second, is the possibility of manipulating these electronic feeds, so that one could present a Goffmanian electronic frontstage, so to speak, making oneself appear to send a physiological response that is contrived rather than genuine. Ironically, this implies that traditional patterns of micro-interaction are still possible even if they take place via electronic media. More solidarity might be created; but also it might be faked. Interaction Rituals have at least these two aspects: social solidarity, but also the manipulated presentation of self. The dialectic between the two seems likely to continue for a long time.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Civil War Two, Part 1
by Randall Collins
Giveaway ends May 24, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy


text:
Cousins Subs is bringing back three menu items for a limited time only this summer: pretzel bread, the Wisconsin Steak & Brat, and the Pulled Pork & Slaw subs.
Back by popular demand, the items are available in stores now through September.
Pretzel bread originally debuted with Cousins' Twisted Subs for a limited time last winter.
"The response to our pretzel bread was overwhelmingly positive," says Justin McCoy, vice president of marketing at Cousins Subs. "Both our franchisees and our guests have been anticipating its return ever since."
The Wisconsin Steak & Brat and Pulled Pork & Slaw return with equal fanfare.
"These subs are two of our most popular limited-time offerings of all time," McCoy says. "Nothing says summer like these unique flavor profiles."
The Wisconsin Steak & Brat features bratwurst slices, steak, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickles, sautéed onions, tomatoes, and brown mustard. The Pulled Pork & Slaw features pulled pork, barbecue sauce, and coleslaw.


text:
The meet-uncute of Nikki Finke, scourge of Hollywood, and Jay Penske, automotive scion, happened through the matchmaking services of mutual friend A. Scott Berg, the Pulitzer-winning biographer whose brother Jeff is a powerful Hollywood agent. Finke had interviewed Berg, and Berg had written about Penske. This was in 2008, when Finke's entertainment-news blog Deadline had become an essential, compulsive read in Hollywood, drawing impressive web traffic. Over a two-year period, Finke says, some 25 potential buyers, reportedly including Variety owner Reed Elsevier, the Huffington Post, IFC, and the billionaire Haim Saban, began "kicking the tires." Berg and another intermediary, Dani Janssen, the host of a prominent Oscars party, reached out to Finke to tell her that Penske was interested, too. "Scott said, 'He's the real thing,' " Finke remembers.
Finke was reluctant to sell to anyone, but her father, stricken with bladder cancer, urged her to seize the moment: It might pass, and here was a chance to become financially secure. He died in January 2009, and Finke spent the next six months negotiating with Penske. She was impressed by his knowledge of the Internet, by what she calls "one of the most agile, bright, and articulate minds I've encountered," and by what seemed like their shared vision for how to grow the site. "He was relentless," Finke says. "We fought like cats and dogs during the negotiations. I cried. I got mad at him. I called it off at least a few times. It was always, 'I don't want a boss. I love being my own boss.' " Finke warned Penske she'd be "the worst employee you'll ever have."
Coming from Finke, who turns 60 next month, this was not hyperbole. The news she surfaced aside, what made Deadline a thrilling, guilty pleasure was her savage keyboard persona—the banner headlines screaming "SHOCKER!" and "TOLDJA!," the invitation to antagonists to "stick this up your asses" and "get the fuck out of my face," the takedowns of studio executives so vicious they sent the cowed victims scurrying to Internet-reputation companies to have the stories buried on Google. Her behind-the-scenes tactics were no less brutal: She would threaten people to get them to cooperate with her, punish those who helped her competitors, and exact revenge on anyone she perceived as having wronged her. Hollywood lived in fear of Finke and was all the more intrigued because of her Thomas Pynchon act: Only a couple of photos of her existed on the Internet, and no one had seen her at an industry event in years.
Penske, the youngest son of Detroit billionaire Roger Penske, wasn't an obvious match. He had started out in business making a cell phone for children that had parental controls. Now 34, he is handsome, with blue eyes and product-gleamed hair, and has dated actresses like Devon Aoki, Gina Gershon, and Lara Flynn Boyle, who got a shoulder tattoo of a jaybird (from her nickname for him); last year, he married Elaine Irwin, the former Victoria's Secret model, with whom he has a baby. When not on a plane, where he spends much of his time seeing to his far-flung business and extracurricular interests, Penske is chauffeured around L.A. in his gray Aston Martin DB9 by a driver named Raoul. He owns an IndyCar team, Dragon Racing, and an antiquarian bookstore in Los Angeles, Dragon Books. (The dragon thing: The first book he loved was John Gardner's Dragon, Dragon.) He seems to share some of Finke's privacy concerns: Behind the desk in his office in Inglewood is a bank of surveillance screens, and despite running a media company, he rarely speaks on the record to the press; he met with me at Variety's offices only on the condition that I not quote him. He has told people that he has never taken a penny from his father, but depending on whom you ask, he is either an entrepreneurial Renaissance man or a dilettantish bro with a rich dad. Before attending Wharton, he was kicked out of a series of prep schools and was a star lacrosse player. Last year, he and his brother Mark were arrested at the Nantucket Yacht Club for trespassing and urinating on a woman's feet. (The Penskes were sentenced to a year of probation.)
When Penske started discussions with Finke, he was in the process of building a collection of websites, many based around personal brands. They came to terms in the summer of 2009—he bought Deadline for an amount that would ultimately pay out a minimum of $14 million. This made Finke rich. (In 1982, she had walked away from a brief marriage to Jeffrey Greenberg, the son of AIG CEO Hank, with just enough to pay back her parents for the wedding; her father left her a "decent" inheritance, but "there's decent, and then there's decent.") Penske, for his part, got attention, appearing on the front page of the New York Times and making Vanity Fair's "Next Establishment" list. With Penske's resources, the site's staff grew, and Deadline's web traffic surpassed the combined traffic of The Hollywood Reporter's and Variety's websites.
For a time, the odd-couple partnership worked out better than expected. Penske found his thuggish new investment amusing and took to calling her "the Don." Finke: "He calls me three or four months ago, says, 'I had a dream about you last night. I was at your memorial service; it was my turn to speak.' I say, 'Wait, was I dead?' 'Yeah,' he says. 'It was my turn to speak, and I don't know what to say, so I repeat all the things you've called me over the years.' 'Snake-oil salesman?' 'Yep.' 'Con artist?' 'Yep.' 'Little Lord Fauntleroy?' 'Yep.' We both started laughing. I said, 'At least you were accurate.' " He insisted that she should live somewhere better and said he'd buy her an apartment; she found a condo in West Hollywood, which he ended up renting to her. The day he got in trouble in Nantucket, he called her repeatedly to vent about the media frenzy. "I felt awful for him," Finke says. "I was flattered he turned to me. It drew us closer." But Penske may not have reckoned just how high-maintenance Finke could be. "He didn't have to come up the corporate ladder," says a former colleague from Penske's company, PMC. "He's used to being catered to. He's not used to having to eat shit. Now all of a sudden it's I'm beholden to Nikki Finke, who wants me to eat her shit."
When Penske decided in 2010 to put out special awards-season Deadline print editions, Finke bristled at the extra work, citing health problems (she is an insulin-dependent diabetic). In February 2011, after Finke's lawyer accused Penske of violating her contract, two LAPD officers showed up at her door saying 911 had received a call that she might be intending to harm herself; Finke was perplexed, until they told her that one of Penske's executives had placed the call. (At the insistence of Finke's lawyer, the executive later wrote an apology to the police for inconveniencing them: "The seriousness of the situation might have been overstated.") Then, on a Sunday night in May, after Penske had, according to Finke, withheld some ad-commission money owed to her, he personally delivered a care package. Penske somehow got into Finke's building without being buzzed in, and suddenly, shortly after 11 p.m., appeared outside her door. "I was so mad that I would not open my door," she says. "I was furious, so furious at my privacy being violated." Finke says that for fifteen minutes Penske "kept yelling my name and banging on the door, loud enough to wake the entire building. He kept saying, 'I want to come in, I want to talk.' " Finke threatened to call the police. "Eventually he leaves. I see this package. I'm curious. I open it up. There's the check for the money he owed me. And there is like a little medley of Beverly Hills Hotel desserts."
Finke threw them in the trash and fired off an e-mail to PMC's HR person, complaining that the visit constituted stalking and that the food could have seriously harmed her.
"Who does this to a diabetic?" Finke says now, quasi fuming.
In June, the co-dependency was revealed to have curdled into something worse when Sharon Waxman ran a post on her rival site, the Wrap, headlined "SHOCKER," which claimed Penske had kicked Finke to the curb. It was false, but reflected a truth: For the past year, Finke and Penske have been on a collision course, and the Nikki Finke–Jay Penske show, live on multiple platforms, including Twitter and Deadline, has become one of the more compelling unscripted entertainments in Hollywood. See, for instance, Finke's retweet of @ZacharySire's "Is Penske the CEO of a multimillion dollar company or a high school girl?" Earlier this month, Waxman's scoop became belatedly true, sort of, when Deadline suddenly announced: "Deadline.com and Nikki Finke Parting Ways." Or, as Waxman couldn't resist putting it, on the Wrap: "TOLDJA!"
Though Penske disagrees and is pursuing binding arbitration on the subject, Finke adamantly believes she is now free to reboot her career, independently, and pick up where she left off before the Penske drama consumed her. Then, way back in 2009, Finke loomed over Hollywood as a groundbreaking historical figure, a disrupter who'd changed how the entertainment business talked to itself. Her own story was kind of inspirational (a David to the Goliath duopoly of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter), kind of idealistic (a truth-teller among the hacks), and kind of horrific (she could be mercilessly cruel, and has idiosyncratic ethics).
Earning Finke high reviews among those who read her religiously: She got some big scoops, like executive firings before the executives knew, and the impending merger of William Morris and Endeavor. During the 2007 Writers Guild strike, Deadline served as an essential counterweight for the writers, while the old trades carried water for the studios. Her "live-snarking" of the Oscars could be hilarious. And on a regular basis Deadline's comments section gave anonymous cover to Hollywood's little people. "It was a huge game-changer in our business," says a leading agency executive. "I don't want to overstate it, but I feel like it affected how people behave. If you're a real dick, the comments section will go crazy when that name is mentioned."
Less well received: Finke's irony-free style of self-promotion; her shakedown tactics, including extending protection to favored sources; her insouciant revisionism, like when she'd change posts after the fact without acknowledging she'd done so.
Then there were the mutilated bodies, which got mixed reviews, depending on how you felt about the victims. There was Marc Shmuger, news of whose imminent firing as Universal Pictures co-chairman Finke broke in a long post that called him "a polarizing asshole" and "thin-skinned crybaby" who'd been "embarrassing himself." Ben Silverman, when he headed up NBC's entertainment division, was "an incredible pussy" who was "prone to flop sweat" and had a "record of abject failure." Of Silverman's boss at NBC, Jeff Zucker—a "thin-skinned humorless bully" and "overpaid blowhard"—Finke delighted in reporting that the "putz" had "cried" during his final days at the company. All of this added up to a character Hollywood couldn't resist. HBO put a half-hour sitcom based on her, Tilda, into development. (The pilot, starring Diane Keaton, wasn't picked up.)
Key to Finke's mystique is her peculiar brand of reclusiveness. Considering her fearsome reputation, she is unexpectedly engaging, by turns serious and funny, and readily accessible by phone. Over the past few months, we spoke more than a dozen times. Calls with Finke often ran two hours, and usually I was the one who brought the conversation to a close. She is fond of the rhetorical question—"Can we deal in reality, please?"—and of landing her sentences with high-pitched overstatement, wherein various things are CRAZY or NUTS or UNBELIEVABLE or HILARIOUS (if there is a way to communicate block caps using sound, Finke has found it). She was selectively transparent, disclosing seemingly revealing things about her health ("I was wandering around the Mayo Clinic for three weeks"), her early childhood growing up on Long Island's North Shore ("I had no friends; I had books"), and her money ("Twice a day I call up all my accounts and look at them lovingly; I love looking at my money"). Finke's attention would take sudden swerves. One minute she'd be talking about some mogul's duplicity, the next she'd be free-associating about an image of Michael Bay ("Making himself look like some kind of Norse god … make me puke"), a TV news report of a shark attack ("Holy shit, the sharks are turning on the humans"), or her thirst ("Hang on a second, I want to pour myself some iced tea"). And she wanted to set the record straight about something: "People think I have 25 cats. I have no cats." The one she used to own, Blue, now lives with a couple in Santa Maria, California, "near Driscoll strawberry fields. That is not a euphemism for Heaven. I get regular photos of him."
Finke also choked up a few times, like when speaking of her father's death or about her difficult relationship with her mother. She told me a story about how, when she boarded at Miss Hewitt's Classes, the girls' prep school on East 75th Street, the housemother called her into her office one day and asked what went through her mind when she took a shower. "Do you realize," the woman said, "that every time you take a shower, you weep?" Nikki pooh-poohed the idea, but the woman said: "We have to get to the root of why you do this, what is so painful that you can't even face it." As Finke recounted this story to me, she began sobbing, then said, "She diagnosed that it was my family and my mother, and she forbade my mother from talking to me during the week, and I slowly stopped crying."
Finke says she has mellowed, and professes to be self-aware, and there was some evidence, in our conversations, to support this. "When you're a control freak, you want to control everything, and there's a point where you can't," she said. Of her reputation as a bully, she said: "Eighty percent of the time, when I'm mad at someone in Hollywood, it's because they treated my staff horribly. Ten percent of the time, I'm not asking for special treatment, I just want equal treatment. And then 10 percent is, I had a bad day, my blood sugars are out of whack, I've worked all night, I'm tired, and I'm an asshole. And what people don't realize is I'll apologize. I know when I've been an asshole."
And yet, though loquacious on the phone, Finke is exceedingly guarded about her physical privacy and public image. PMC's employment contracts include a clause per which the undersigned agrees to keep confidential "any information relating to Nikki Finke, her persona, likeness, and any and all personal and business activities." Most of Finke's employees have never met her, though Nellie Andreeva, her TV reporter, insisted on a face-to-face meeting, had dinner with Finke at a restaurant, and is said to have told people afterward that "she's not like what you think she'd look like; she's very normal-looking."
Finke says she spent five months in Hawaii this year and two weeks in Europe. She also claims that while she doesn't do lunch at the Ivy or take meetings at the studios, moguls, agents, and executives come to her home office "all the time." (Not a single person I spoke to at a studio or agency had ever been to Finke's home office or even heard of anyone else's going there.)
In any case, Finke has her reasons. She's shy. Her parents were private people, speaking French in public to thwart eavesdropping. She gets claustrophobic when she's around a lot of people. She has been cyberstalked. She needs to conserve energy. But it's also clear that she has benefited from her enigmatic aura. "All of that is a frickin' playbook right out of Hollywood, by the way," says a prominent industry publicist. "We invented mystery, and we know the power of it and the importance of holding on to it."
This power was threatened in October 2009, when Gawker offered a $1,000 bounty for a new photo of Finke. Around that time, a young reporter at the Wrap named Hunter Walker half-seriously proposed staking out Finke, and one day, after Finke had bullied various executives planning to appear at a conference Waxman was hosting, an exercised Waxman made the assignment. She knew where Finke lived. "It was a crappy condo in Westwood," Walker recalls.
Walker began his stakeout, but the Wrap aborted the mission the next day. Walker recommenced his surveillance later, when he left the Wrap to work for Rupert Murdoch's Daily. He'd arrive at Casa Finke at 6 a.m., park across the street, and keep his eyes on Finke's building until 10 p.m. After four days, a professional paparazzo took over, and a few days later he got the picture.
The photo that ran in the Daily, under the heavily lawyered headline "Is This the Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood?," showed an attractive, scowling blonde woman behind the wheel of a car with her hand raised as if to block the picture. Finke flat-out denied that it was her. Two people who'd known Finke for years, blogger Anne Thompson and Waxman, both publicly insisted it wasn't her. But the Daily team was almost certain they had their woman. Richard Johnson, the Daily's gossip editor, called Finke to tell her they had her picture and had a two-hour phone conversation in which he offered to show her the picture himself to verify it. Finke rejected the deal, instead offering, Walker says, "to give us unspecified scoops she claimed were massive, in exchange for our agreeing not to print the photo."
When Waxman was the New York Times' Hollywood correspondent, she and Finke were friends. Waxman would have Finke over for Shabbat dinner. After Finke's mother died, Finke gave Waxman two of her chairs. Finke says she helped Waxman write book proposals and, after she left the Times, supported her expressed interest in starting a politics website. Then Finke started hearing that Waxman was in fact planning to launch a rival entertainment-business-news site and had "told everyone she was going to put Nikki Finke out of business." Finke says she called Waxman and confronted her. "I said, 'I've helped you. You know I have had a struggle. Why?' Her answer was: 'I tried to do something else, and I can't get work unless I do Hollywood.' I said, 'Look, if that's your definition of friendship, you're no longer my friend.' I can't stand people who lie to me. That was it."
Waxman launched the Wrap in 2009, backed by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Though it has yet to attract enough traffic or clout to challenge Deadline, it has enjoyed dazzling success as a pebble in Finke's shoe. Finke, for a time, would write disparaging items about the Wrap without using its name, referring to it only as "a blog." Later, she switched to referring to it always as "the Crap." She accused it of stealing scoops, repeatedly mentioned its high staff turnover, and invariably qualified any reference to Waxman with an adjective like "desperate," "clueless," or "error-prone." Waxman, for her part, has run items with headlines that start "Hey, Nikki" or "Memo to Nikki" (as in, "Memo to Nikki: Stop Saying the Wrap Isn't Breaking Stories"). She's hurled insults over Twitter with the hashtag #pathetic.
Of more concern to Finke, and certainly to Penske, has been the rehabilitation of The Hollywood Reporter, which was purchased in 2010 by a private-equity group that included Guggenheim Partners, and which installed the former Condé Nast executive Richard Beckman as CEO. Now edited by Janice Min, formerly of Us Weekly, the magazine has been transformed into a glossy weekly that does a very good job glamorizing the less sexy parts of Hollywood. Min also redirected the website toward breaking news, so it now competes directly with Deadline for scoops. This year, The Hollywood Reporter became the media sponsor of the prominent "Night Before" Oscars party, which had for years been a Variety event.
All of this seemed to unnerve Penske, who is as competitive as Finke—and who suddenly found the brand he'd bought displaced in Hollywood's imagination. According to a former PMC executive, Penske became "obsessed" with The Hollywood Reporter, poring over every new issue. He sent out cease-and-desist letters to the magazine, accusing it of poaching Deadline employees and recycling its content, and ultimately sued THR's owners, claiming copyright infringement. When word spread in fall 2011 that THR's archrival Variety might be in play, he asked Finke whether he should buy it. She was encouraging.
Finke says that they strategized about how Variety should be run and that, while she never expected to be its editor, she did believe she'd have a hand in its overhaul. She thought there might be synergies, with staff who worked for both Deadline and Variety and regular meetings to make sure the publications weren't overlapping. In December 2011, Penske got Finke to sign an addendum to her contract. At the same time, without her asking, he gave her the enhanced title of editorial adviser to PMC. She took this as confirmation that she'd have some kind of oversight of Variety. "It was always 'we' … 'When "we" take over Variety.' " When it finally went on the block in the spring, Finke says she advised Penske on how to game the bidding by telling friendly reporters the other bidders were overpaying for it, in order to scare them off. Soon after a Los Angeles Times article to this effect was published, Ron Burkle dropped out.
She was incensed, then, when she learned that Penske had succeeded in buying Variety for $25 million, in October 2012, by reading about it in the L.A. Times. "We never even got a press release," Finke says. "We're looking around, going, 'What the fuck is this?' " The L.A. Times story also said that Finke would have nothing to do with running Variety, and at a town hall with Variety's staff that afternoon, the first slide Penske put up said: "Nikki Finke will have nothing to do with Variety." "I'm hearing this secondhand," Finke says. "I'm like, what?" A Deadline reporter detailed to cover the meeting was expelled by security. Finke couldn't get Penske on the phone over the next several weeks, and then she learned that a number of PMC executives would be moving into Variety's headquarters. Finke says Penske promised to reassign five Variety staff to Deadline, but that this kept not happening, until finally, in mid-December, he said she wouldn't get them. Finke dates the start of her real unhappiness with Penske to that moment. "We were gobsmacked. He wouldn't give us a reason. We were waiting for the cavalry."
Finke went into the hospital two days later, "sick as a dog." Her doctors told her she needed to work fewer hours, to take vacations. She says that when she told Penske this, she received a lawyer letter stating that under her contract she was required to be working. The indignities, as Finke saw them, kept coming. In February, she heard that Penske was going to hire Claudia Eller, a respected L.A. Times editor, to edit Variety, but when Finke asked Penske about it, she claims he lied to her. "That was the nadir." She refused to take down a Deadline post about how he'd lied, and she said he owed her the entire remaining value of her contract. He fired her. He un-fired her. This was their relationship.
In March, Variety relaunched as a weekly, and its website dropped its paywall. Penske told people that the reenergized trade magazine was going to be "The Economist of Hollywood." It's still a duller read than The Hollywood Reporter ("Hollywood doesn't read The Economist," says one industry publicist), but as Variety increasingly became Penske's focus, Finke's aggression turned inward, and she became consumed with her own role at PMC. "I really think in some weird, warped way, Jay likes to pretend that he's in my corner, but what he really is, is he feels in competition with me," Finke says. "He's never going to give Deadline what it wants, because he's never going to get credit for it."
It's a plausible theory. But it's also possible that Penske bought Variety as a hedge. The arrival of Min—and the free-spending money behind her—has redrawn the landscape in which Finke built her power, and it's an open question whether she'll ever be as feared or powerful as she was when Penske bought Deadline.
For one thing, people are no longer afraid to ask that question. Last June, the novelist Bret Easton Ellis casually tweeted that he'd learned he lives in the same building as Finke. What followed, according to multiple reports, was a classic Nikki Finke psychodrama. First, she called the office of Ellis's literary agent, Amanda "Binky" Urban, and gave Urban's assistant an "epic, otherworldly screaming-at" (New York Observer), later demanding that ICM fire her. Finke also, according to these reports, told prominent West Coast ICM agents that Deadline would print various damaging (and, they said, false) things about them and would also reveal their addresses and where their children went to school. At that point, ICM hired top litigators. Finke: "Anything ICM says about this is so colored by the fact that they hate me because I have reported the truth about their internal shake-ups." She claims, to this day, not to know whether Ellis lives in her building, though Ellis finds this ridiculous: "I don't know how she would think that I might not live in her building. I was called in by building management and asked to sign something, as were all members of the staff of the building."
What's not classic is the blunt assertion Ellis made in a tweet, mid-brawl: "Anyone in the movie industry who fears they have to 'watch out' for Nikki Finke is a complete and total old-school fucking Hollywood loser." This was new. The idea that Finke, far from having to be feared, might not even matter was seconded two weeks later, when producer Gavin Polone, in a post on this magazine's website headlined "Apocalypse Nikki," suggested there was little evidence that Finke had any real power and publicly challenged Hollywood to ignore her.
While Finke resented Polone's post, she agreed with him in one sense. "Being powerful in Hollywood was everyone else's characterization of me. It was never mine. I only cared about telling the unvarnished truth about Hollywood."
Since the wrap's false-alarm "SHOCKER" story—a popular view in Hollywood is that Finke herself planted it; "I would never plant anything with Sharon Waxman," Finke says—some of Finke v. Penske has played out in private, some of it all too publicly. On Deadline, Finke repeatedly took aim at hedge-funder Daniel Loeb, calling him "the most hated man in Hollywood," and Loeb, an investor in Variety with Penske, pressed him on three occasions to fire her, according to a recent report.
Finke was so down on Penske that he could do no right. She was even pissed when Penske and Mike Fleming Jr., a veteran Hollywood trade reporter whom Finke had hired away from Variety, both defended her publicly against Waxman's post. ("It was sweet, but he's not supposed to talk about my contract or my relationship with Penske.") She was pissed, too, when Penske hired Stacey Farish from the Wrap as PMC publisher. ("We had a policy not to hire anyone from the Crap.")
Finally, Finke, who'd banked nineteen weeks of vacation, decided to take one and headed to Hawaii. Even from her vacation redoubt, the shrapnel continued to fly. Letters flew between lawyers. Grievances were aired in the press. There were internal-control skirmishes at Deadline.
The endgame began on October 23, when Finke received an eight-page letter from Penske's lawyers that was by turns accusatory and conciliatory. Penske called her several times that day, "begging to work out a settlement with me," Finke claims. "He likes to call me at eleven, twelve, one in the morning. I resent it. He then falls asleep in the conversation. You go, 'Jay, are you there?' You hear this soft breathing."
In the evening, they spoke by phone. Penske said he thought they could work things out, and after two hours they agreed to continue their conversation the next day. Before that could happen, Finke awoke on Thursday to learn that Penske had rerouted Deadline's Twitter feed away from Finke's much more popular feed, saying Finke had "too many followers."
That night, Finke tweeted: "I am building out NikkiFinke.com and will unveil it right after the new year. Can't wait to report the real truth about Hollywood." When I spoke to Finke by phone later that evening, she said Penske had threatened to "rain nuclear war on me if I left." She said she was dancing around the house to Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which she also played into Penske's cell-phone voice-mail.
The next morning, her tweets resumed: "Penske keeps sending me legal letters since I began giving interviews. Latest one this am demands I remove and retract my tweets." On Friday: "Earth to Penske: Hollywood tried and failed to intimidate me. Big Media tried and failed to intimidate me. I like to brawl, remember?"
When Finke tried that day to post an exclusive to Deadline about a former WB executive, she found that it was shunted to the site's trash file. She then put up a post on the site—"NIKKI FINKE LOCKED OUT OF DEADLINE"—which was seemingly self-refuting but was true in a sense: She'd lost her administrator access. The post ended with "what an extremely sad day." Sad, in Finke's world, can quickly flip into devilish, and within hours, she was retweeting @MassholeRob's "So glad @NikkiFinke got her balls back. They weren't doing anyone any good rattling around in Jay Penske's manpurse."
At this point, the lines between Penske and Finke were clearly drawn. He believed he had her locked into an ironclad contract that required her to work for him through 2016. She wanted out, and believed the contract was no longer valid. Her lawyer and Penske's agreed to enter mediation with a retired judge the following week. When Finke and Penske showed up for the mediation around 8:30 a.m. that Monday, they were put in separate rooms while the judge shuttled back and forth between their lawyers. By late afternoon, the mediation broke up, with no resolution reached.
In the four and a half years they'd been business partners, and friends of a sort, Penske and Finke had never met in person, even during the pre-sale courtship. On this day of mediation, though, when they left around 5 p.m., there was a mix-up, and Finke and Penske exited the building at the same time. Suddenly, they found themselves face-to-face for the first time.
"It was very uncomfortable," Finke says.
It's been about a month since then. There's been movement, or maybe not. Deadline's report that Finke was leaving provided a moment of clarity, but this soon dissolved in a fog of contract conflict—in particular, over whether Finke is subject to noncompete restrictions. Then came Peske's announcement last week that he would be taking her to arbitration.
It's unclear what happens to a Finke-less Deadline. Some of the writers Finke hired have dabbled with mimicking her operatic tabloidese (Fleming's anti-Waxman post over the summer included the line: "The Wrap couldn't carry Deadline's jockstrap"), but the efforts have felt like warmed-over Finke. In what looks like an attempt to inject some Finke-style brashness into its reporting, Deadline announced the hiring of Anita Busch, an aggressive Hollywood reporter who's been out of the business since 2004, when her life and career were derailed amid threats by the since-convicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano.
It's equally uncertain, and much more interesting, what happens to a Deadline-less Finke. Her weekly box-office analysis is widely respected, and that's something she can take with her. But the world in which Finke came to power is long gone. What was new ten years ago—the voice and instantaneousness of blogging—has become a given. What was then an open field is now crowded with competitors.
In our recent conversations, Finke swung from despondent to euphoric. She said she was exhausted. Her voice sounded strained. She said, starting to cry, that she is going blind; in January, she was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy, and she attributes her deteriorating eyesight to the burdens of working for Penske. Her assistant, the daughter of her longtime housekeeper, had recently said, "You were so much happier when doing Deadline Hollywood Daily in the L.A. Weekly days" of the mid-aughts. "I said, 'You know, you're right.' " She was looking forward to being on her own again, just a girl and her blog. "I just think of myself, not to romanticize, sitting at two in the morning, chuckling to myself, writing what I consider to be the truth, and just having fun. There's something so fantastic about having your own site and doing it all."
She says she wants to leave the scoop-chasing micro-newsbreaks to others and return to the thing she did best: the big insider pieces, and "not being part of the Hollywood publicity machine." She says she has roughly a dozen offers of various sorts of financial backing, which she has narrowed to three serious offers to buy nikkifinke.com, with her attached as the sole writer. She has a book deal, and has sold the film rights. Last week, she was weighing two possible designs for her site, one "sleek and cool," the other red and black, which she was calling Pirate Nikki. "Like, Arggghhh, Nikki."
Even after all that has happened, though, Finke still isn't ready to deem her partnership with Penske definitively kaput. "I really can't imagine not having Jay in my life," Finke had said just a few weeks earlier. More recently she'd said: "This is as bad a relationship as I've experienced." She seemed sad, when not angry, about the turn their relationship had taken, and it's hard not to see the last few weeks as the grand culmination of a chaste romance between two people who were improbably well suited to each other.
Then, on November 18, she told me: "Never say never. It's entirely possible that Jay and I make up, and he runs nikkifinke.com. Anything is possible."
*This article originally appeared in the December 2, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.


text:
Langdon CHEVES, Congress, SC (1776-1857)
CHEVES Langdon , a Representative from South Carolina; born September 17, 1776, in Bulltown Fort, near Rocky River, Ninety-sixth District (now Abbeville County), S.C., where the settlers had taken refuge from the onslaught of the Cherokee Indians; received his early education at his home and Andrew Weed's School near Abbeville, S.C.; joined his father in Charleston, S.C., in 1786 and continued his schooling in that city; studied law; was admitted to the bar October 14, 1797, and commenced practice in Charleston; city alderman in 1802; member of the State house of representatives 1802-1804 and 1806-1808; elected attorney general of the State in 1808; elected as a Republican to the Eleventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Robert Marion, having previously been elected to the Twelfth Congress; reelected to the Thirteenth Congress, and served from December 31, 1810, to March 3, 1815; succeeded Henry Clay as Speaker of the House of Representatives during the second session of the Thirteenth Congress; chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Twelfth Congress), Committee on the Naval Establishment (Twelfth Congress); declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1814 to the Fourteenth Congress and also the position of Secretary of the Treasury tendered by President Madison; resumed the practice of law; elected associate justice of law and appeal in December 1816; resigned in 1819; declined to accept an appointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; elected president of the Bank of the United States March 6, 1819, and held this office until 1822, when he resigned; chief commissioner of claims under the treaty of Ghent; resided in Philadelphia and Washington 1819-1826 and in Lancaster, Pa., 1826-1829; returned to South Carolina in 1829; engaged extensively in the cultivation of rice in South Carolina and Georgia; tendered an appointment by the Governor of South Carolina to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John C. Calhoun, but declined; delegate to the Southern convention at Nashville, Tenn., in 1850 and to the State convention at Columbia, S.C., in 1852; died in Columbia, S.C., June 26, 1857; interment in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C.
Huff, Archie Vernon. Langdon Cheves of South Carolina. Tricentennial Studies, No. 11. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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