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    Joseph FinnMax Rivlin-Nadler
    11/30/13 12:05pm

    Kaplan was a master at attracting gifted reporters and editors, convincing them to work for next to nothing

    Wait, that's a good thing?

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      A Media DudeJoseph Finn
      11/30/13 12:32pm

      It wasn't so much that he convinced them to work for shitty wages as he was such an amazing editor and mentor to your writers that he could convince them to work for a paper that paid shitty wages.

      But Kaplan was fiercely protective of his writers.

      He resigned from the Observer, in part, because Kushner (the douchey real estate heir who had purchased the paper a few years earlier) demanded that he lay people off. At first, Kaplan took a 5% pay cut and convinced his top editors to do so as well, to avoid having to let anyone go. When Kushner continued to insist that Kaplan cut staff, and argued that the paper's stories should be shorter and punchier, Kaplan realized it was time to go.

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      westsidewhoreyA Media Dude
      11/30/13 12:46pm

      He was a man, not a new found thing we see today, he was a true New Yorker.

      Take note to the words in this comment you late twenty something's being pressured by affluent investors and cheap entrepreneurs attacking true products. Be true to staffers not new investors with hooker cocaine breath at 9am status meetings.

      YOU AINT GOT THE ANSWERS SWAY.

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    mimmlyMax Rivlin-Nadler
    11/30/13 12:43pm

    I didn't know him personally, but through his kids with who I am friends. I only know that anybody who raised kids as awesome and kind and smart as that must have been a wonderful man and father.

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      tartakovskyMax Rivlin-Nadler
      11/30/13 2:30pm

      "Kaplan, who was appointed editor in 1994, helped the Observer become a must-read for those interested in both the machinations and pettiness of a city with a vibrant and highly entertaining overclass. "

      No knocks against Kaplan, I'm sure he was a great editor, but how can anyone read this line without getting depressed? Are we all just proles to be entertained with stories of people 'prettier,' wealthier, and more influential than ourselves, with no pushback against this state of affairs? Global warming, insane levels of income inequality, legalized corruption, a system of government barely capable of holding this whole wreck together, our tax dollars being used to fuck both ourselves and the rest of the world...next to that, following "the machinations and pettiness of a city with a vibrant and highly entertaining overclass" seems like a giant waste of time and attention just when those commodities are particularly scarce.

      In any event, RIP, god knows this world could use more good editors.

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        Elizabeth Spierstartakovsky
        11/30/13 5:09pm

        I think you misunderstand what the Observer was. It didn't kowtow to the elites; it kept them in check. It reveled in afflicting the comfortable. And that is what journalism is fundamentally supposed to do.

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        kumfinemyytartakovsky
        11/30/13 5:25pm

        Just had to write, I kinda feel the same way. What was the NY Observer? The must read for the elite society folks? The Page Six for the wealthy?

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      DennyCraneMax Rivlin-Nadler
      11/30/13 12:02pm

      The man. Period the end.

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        ManceMax Rivlin-Nadler
        11/30/13 11:56am
        CrankyKaplan ‏@CrankyKaplan1 Nov

        IT'S GIN O'CLOCK SOMEWHERE. FUCK YOU.

        Enjoy those celestial junipers, Peter.

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          PsyOpsMax Rivlin-Nadler
          11/30/13 7:02pm

          I wasn't paying attention to the names, just the tweets, and I am surprised that Nikki Finke's struck me the most; it was the first one that prompted me to look at who wrote it.

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