From Amazon To Airbnb: Jay Carney Googles "Can A House Join A Union?"
Cuts at MEL, Audrey Gelman (sort of) returns, and free social optimization tips from two car nerds.
And This Bird You Cannot Change
What Gelman does—be it the Six Bells or The Wing or a political campaign or a TV show—has never mattered as much in drawing people’s interest as the fact of Gelman doing it. She is an astute reader of rooms, a generationally gifted flack, a connector of people, willful enough in her control that before I had made a single call for this piece, I got a call from a mutual friend telling me that Gelman heard that I was writing a story about her. She is a storytelling capitalist and a builder of worlds who understands what her customers want before they know they want it—Don Draper if he’d put himself in the ads. She is pretty and rich, unfailingly pulled together, and friends with everyone you hate-watch on the internet. She is not a household name, but if the name Audrey Gelman does ring a bell, you have an opinion about her. She is highly conductive, radiating heat in the current era of guilty pleasure. “I can’t explain it,” she tells me when I ask her why she thinks people have such a strong reaction to her. “I guess I am just not for everyone.”
It takes a certain something to be able to garner attention even in repose. I will always appreciate, from the couple of times I attended meetings at The Wing, the alienation and discomfort I felt being in a space clearly not meant for me. Making men uncomfortable and aware of what women must feel like in male-dominated spaces was not the purpose of The Wing, but it was a side-effect that I am thankful to have experienced.
I still have a mint The Wing-branded Zippo around here somewhere. Maybe I should do a giveaway.
Audrey Gelman on Life After The Wing [Vanity Fair]
Hope-y, Change-y Jobs
There are two ways to consider Jay Carney, the former journalist turned White House spokesperson turned corporate mega-flack: one is as exemplar of the neoliberal core beneath the Obama administration’s progressive veneer, an amble that found Carney fighting off unionization efforts for Amazon; the other is of a guy that never believed any of those things in the first place.
This was likely an ouster. Losing to Chris Smalls—one of the most effective union organizers of the 21st century—and a tendency to engage on Twitter while Amazon was on the ropes wasn’t the best judgement. (Jay, call me.)
Exclusive: Jay Carney to join Airbnb [Axios]
Sons Out, Guns Out
First, I made sure the gun’s silver lever was in the “off” position to take off the lug. Then I hit it and removed the 48-pound wheel with my right hand while holding the 11-pound gun in my left, sinking my hips deeper between my feet to move out of its way. As a new wheel went on, I slammed the gun into “on” to tighten it.
“Want to try a live pit gun?” Hall asked. “You’ll scream.”
“No I won’t,” I responded.
I did.
Alanis’s King’s wonderful feature about going through NASCAR pit stop crew training is worth your time. (If you can read it in under 10 seconds you might be a great pit tech.)
NASCAR Pit Stop Training Will Break You [Road & Track]
A Free Report About 2022 Social Media Practices From A Successful Podcast
I’m not sure exactly why Matt Farah and Zack Klapman dedicated several minutes of their car podcast to talk about social media optimization, but I’m glad they did.
In summary? It’s all video now. Static images are dead on social. Use yellow text and lots of exclamation marks in your title cards. Write about rich-people things.
Razor Thin Margins
The entire editorial staff of Mel Magazine––roughly 15 people, including editor in chief Josh Schollmeyer and general manager of the lifestyle division Ryan Brown––was laid off on Friday, one year exactly after the title was acquired in July 2021 by Recurrent Ventures, a media company backed by the venture equity firm North Equity.
The layoffs were announced by Recurrent Ventures chief executive Lance Johnson during the publisher’s daily editorial meeting, which occurs at 12pm ET. The meeting ended abruptly, as Recurrent Ventures cut off the staff’s access to its Slack and company email. As a result, staff were unclear as to why Recurrent Ventures made the decision to lay them off.
Man, MEL can’t catch a break. Smart, hardworking crew. Snap them up.
Recurrent Ventures Lays Off Entire Mel Magazine Staff [AdWeek]