By Hype Stalker

Anyone who was paying attention to the blog space before it became hot (that would be anytime before 2004) is probably aware of a rather interesting trend at the New York Times. When it comes to blog coverage, the Times seems to only have eyes for Nick Denton (Gawker, Wonkette, Gizmodo). The day Denton’s blog nemesis, Jason Calacanis, closed a $25 million deal with Time Warner to purchase Weblogs Inc., the New York Times held up its nose and refused to make any mention of the spectacular media occurrence until a full two months later. Even then the paper only made a passing reference to the deal in an off-hand reference to a feud between Business 2.0’s Om Malik and Calacanis (“What’s Online: Eyeballs Are Back, or Maybe Not,” December 3, 2005). That’s what makes the Times’ most recent blog article so interesting (and by interesting, we mean obvious). This week Times writer David Carr spent a good deal of dead trees (“A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs,” July 3, 2006) on the fact the Denton—drum roll—fired an employee (Jesse Oxfeld) and closed two little-known websites. And although we mentioned last week that Calacanis is certainly no charmer, Denton is not exactly known for going out of his way to make nice with the media. Therefore it’s hard to overlook such over-the-top-fawning by Carr when he writes, “Sitting in his apartment on Spring Street, he appears to be the epitome of the new media aesthetic, with the buzzing Sidekick and a wireless laptop on a metal counter surrounded by appliances that seem to be made out of titanium. The antithesis of the schmoozer—human beings are, at best, companion media to Mr. Denton—he stares at traffic numbers and incoming emails as he talks.” Stopping just short of calling him God, Carr’s sloppy text blowjob is embarrassing. Either Calacanis really pissed someone off at the Times, or the Old Grey Lady is scared to death of weathering yet another swipe from one of Denton’s mean machine blog meat grinders. Meanwhile, a funny thing happened to Calacanis on the way to selling out to get in…he wants more. While most placed bets on how long the serial entrepreneur would pretend to continue to care about Weblogs Inc. before bolting, the fact is that he now appears to be aiming for Dick Parsons’ (head mucky-muck at Time Warner) job. On several occasions Calacanis has whispered the notion of taking over Time Warner via his blog and elsewhere, usually resulting in eyerolls and guffaws all around. But as his various in-house experiments within the company begin to bear fruit (or at least hype), Parsons may indeed have to watch his back.