PaidContent's Rafat Ali advised Lazard's Bruce Wasserstein to get his shit together before he starts messing around with BusinessWeek. Just a little not-so-friendly advice.

The Hollywood Reporter's Matt Belloni caught Fox News' Dennis Miller at the Comi-Con geekfest. We presume Miller's on-air report will go something like, ""The place is crawling with freakazoids, Chachi. I haven't seen this many virgins in one place since the Jonas Brothers' VH1 Behind the Music. Heh-heeeeehh."

Salon's Joan Walsh worried for G. Gordon Liddy's mental health. Specifically, that he might be getting it back.

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan found CBS' Andy Rooney to be the most "eloquent" eulogizer in a group of journalists.

Brian Stelter confirmed: There are waking moments when Brian Stelter won't tweet.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

After the Guardian Media Group announced it had bought Ali's company, ContentNext Media, for a reported $30 million last stummer, Ali became a hero to the ranks of bloggers hoping to turn their blathering into bucks. In announcing the sale, he thanked his wife, Najmia Manjoo-Ali, "who hardly ever saw me for the last four years."

But if anything, she's seen less of him since the acquisition, as he's traveled around the world trying to make the collection of media-business blogs pay off for his new owners. Far from clearing millions, Ali saw an initial payout from the deal that was in the six-figure range, we hear — and he has ambitious targets to meet to realize the full value of the acquisition.

Even over that reduced sum, there are rumors of financial shenanigans between the two. One tale had Manjoo-Ali clearing out the couple's joint bank account. But a source close to Manjoo-Ali says that she only took half of the money — and that was after Ali had moved to take her name off the account. Ali and Manjoo-Ali did not respond to emails requesting comment.

So much for the fairy tale of blogging for dollars: One doesn't start a blog, flip it, get the girl, and live happily ever after. At the end of the story, our hero has the blog. And the blog has him.

(Photo by Rafat Ali)

Aside from that small triumph, the sale is odd in many ways. Ali had showed every signs of trying to bulk up PaidContent's parent company, ContentNext Media, with a CEO and venture-capital financing. The Guardian group, which runs successful websites for its newspapers, may bring some U.K. media savvy, but has very little U.S. infraastructure to help PaidContent's ad sales or operations.

But it does resolve one thing: PaidContent's odd domain name. Insiders have long been quizzical about the ".org", supposedly reserved for nonprofits, on a plainly capitalist blog. Guardian Media Group is owned by a nonprofit trust. Blogging not-for-profit? An apt description of the enterprise for the vast majority of its players.

I emailed my old boss Om Malik and he demurred, "Hah, sure... i can only hope to do a good job one day at a time." As for Arrington? While the TechCrunch editor laments that "it's getting lonely as an independent blogging startup," I overheard him fantasize about cashing out and moving to Hawaii at a cloud computing discussion put on by Malik. However, the list of potential buyers is dwindling — CBS bought CNET, the Wall Street Journal already has its hands on AllThingsD, the Washington Post is syndicating TechCrunch for free or nearly so, but the New York Times could use some help covering technology, even if they won't admit it. (Photo by )

(Photos by NewYorkInsider and NYFoundersClub)

The big market for us is the trade media. Companies like Reed Elsevier, Nielsen, Incisive and Informa play in this market, not these blogs.

And Ali is putting forward this odd ambition even as Hollywood solons are looking at an industrywide downturn, and their spokesrag Variety is for sale by Reed Elsevier. To quote another So. Cal.-based journo who's made a name for herself chasing personal foibles on a blog, Nikki Finke, "[W]hat if someone buys Variety and turns it into a real news-gathering operation and not just an echo chamber for the powers-that-be that control showbiz?" Seems both Ali and Arrington are aiming for the weakest members of the herd.

The other new hire will be a senior sales manager, who previously worked in a similar position at Forbes according to a source familiar with the company. (Forbes sales contact Kevin Getzel is my wild guess.) Also, the board of directors will be adding a new member, "a well known name in entertainment and media." And what convinced Richardson to give up his good works in Africa? Death threats from armed rebels. Sounds to me like a smart move. (Photo by John Abbott)

For the record, Valleywag is seeking to raise $10 million. What? For an equity stake in this blog? Are you an idiot? Nick Denton doesn't toss around shares like that Craig Newmark twit. We're hoping someone will just give us the goddamn money and go away.

Swisher, aggrieved at the lack of recognition for her scoop, accused BusinessWeek and the Times of running "hand-fed" stories, a charge Lacy and Stone's editor denied. (Lacy told me she'd known since the previous Sunday, but had held the information for her column; Stone's editor told Swisher his meeting with Slide that morning was previously scheduled.)

PaidContent.org clearly felt left out. After one of its writers filed a me-too post, editor Rafat Ali skewered Lacy in a followup post, calling her a "doting, in-awe poseur."

On Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget, Lacy's cohost on Yahoo's soon-to-be-launched TechTicker finance show, came to her defense, dismissing PaidContent as an "aging, LA-based digital news blog."

Oh, and somewhere along the way, I managed to write a story on the subject without calling anyone names.

All of which shows how petty bloggers can be, and none of which answers the question of whether this matters to readers. My suspicion: Only to the extent that they may pass over a story they feel they've read elsewhere first. Google News actively punishes scoops, presenting news on a given subject by the most recent article written, a practice which encourages follow-on news articles and blog posts — and, for that matter, makes it hard to discover who actually broke a given story. Techmeme tends to favor the person who writes with most authority, drawing links from other blogs.

PaidContent.org founder Rafat Ali threw an NYC media party last night to celebrate his blog's first investment round. The "guys in nametags making pitches" reminded media pundit Jeff Jarvis of the bashes of the dot-com boom. The Gawker Media overlords were bouncing biz-dev people back and forth like Web 2.0 ping-pong. "All the hookups had the blandness of lesbian sex," said one attendee. "Nobody has any money, so there's no penetration."

Not everyone felt the same queasy deja vu. ZDNet writer Donna Bogatin felt the party was, well, too boring and productive to match those "just-for-fun" free-for-alls of the 90s. (Or Bogatin's learned to network since then.) Valleywag asked expert socialites: What makes a party a sign of the tech bubble? It boils down to the food, the drink, the entertainers, the partiers, and the scene.

The food
Spot On editor Chris Nolan (who welcomes Ali and GigaOM blogger Om Malik to the funded-content-site fold, which Spot On entered a year ago), has attended (and thrown) parties since her days as the Valley's gossip columnist. "You need free sushi," says Nolan, "and lots of it. And not veggie sushi, free raw fish. Made before your eyes by real Japanese guys."

"An entire table devoted to cheese, preferably with a cheese sommelier," says Business 2.0 online editor Owen Thomas, who wrote for the snarkzine Suck during the Bubble.

The drink
"It can't be a 90s bubble party without Absolut," says Dot-com marketer David Parmet. "Could we say Stormhoek is the new Absolut?" With marketing blogger Hugh MacLeod pimping this wine in the Valley through branded prints, blogging, and sponsored geek dinners, Stormhoek is the official drink of the Valley alcoholic.

The entertainers
Everyone agrees, the bands have to be cool. "Ask Jeeves had Elvis Costello," says Nolan. "AMD had Bob Dylan and his son's band, the Wallflowers. RSA had RunDMC. So you need some bought-and-paid-for musical talent. Or someone like Courtney Love, who showed up at TED one year."

Judging by that, the five-year party hasn't even started. "The bubble's on the way back," Nolan says. "But until I see Diana Krall cooing to the Flckr kids, I wouldn't get too excited."

Slate and Wired writer Paul Boutin says, "It's not a bubble-era blowout unless The Who's on first."

The partiers
Who shows up in a bubble party? "Hot chicks," says Thomas. "Specifically, hot chicks there to pick up free drinks and Internet billionaires. God, you're giving me flashbacks, STOP!"

Thomas also cites "the presence of anyone whose business card includes the words 'business development.' More than half the crowd works in public relations. The rest is looking for a new job."

Parmet goes glassy-eyed. "When you see Jeff Daschis of [profligate Internet marketer] Razorfish appear with Kyle and Chan of Agency.com on the balcony, kind of like Gatsby...then it's a bubble."

The scene
In the end, it's all about the memories. "The most over-the-top private party I went to," says Nolan, "was the one Amy and Ted Barnett threw at their house on [San Fran's] Dolores Street. Valet parking in the Mission District. Oyster in champagne shooters and everyone getting stoned in the backyard."

"When I'm using a piece of corporate shwag to funnel candy up my nose," says one tipster, "then the bubble is upon us."

Party like it's 1999: LAUNCH PARTY: Betting on One Big Night [Industry Standard]
Photo: Dance floor laugh [Mr. Wright at Flickr]