Exclusive! Fishbowl-fired Kate Coe fires back!

After we told you yesterday that Los Angeles journalist Kate Coe parted company on less than happy terms with MediaBistro’s FishbowlLA blog, Kevin Roderick's essential LA Observed picked up the story with a far less friendly spin:

“Kate Coe was fired as co-editor in a dispute over money, says her friend and former colleague who blogs as Tabloid Baby. He's glowing about her, but I'm surprised it took this long for Coe and Mediabistro to part ways. She used Fishbowl LA to push friends and carry out grudges, made a lot of errors and borrowed to excess from LA Observed. (Low point: In January she passed off one of my observations about the LAT as something she read in the Times.) Mediabistro's sites in New York and Washington are respected, and FBLA should be just as smart and savvy…”

This morning, on her way to greater heights, Kate fires back. We nabbed our friend and former colleague for this exclusive.

Kate, what happened?

As a paid blogger for FishbowlLA, I was supposed to blog about the LA media and entertainment industry. But when I was hired by Dorian Benkoil in 2006, I warned him that I wasn't ever going to jeopardize my actual career in TV and documentary production for a blog post.

Evidently, Chris Ariens, MediaBistro’s new editorial honcho, didn't get that information.

It all started when the managing editor, Rebecca Fox, suggested a story about Sue Naegle, the new head of HBO Entertainment.

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Here’s the original email:

"get comment from new pres. Naegle on the morass she's entering at beleaguered HBO, wher Showtime's now superior programming is devouring its breakfast lunch and dinner, and it's now best known for a woman-beating former exec (Abrecht)

“Also, prev. ent. pres Carolyn Strauss left that post but is still affiliated w/ HBO in some undisclosed role.

“Our orig. angle could be what exactly is that, and what's she got to say about the shitshow Naegle's inheriting from her?"

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Chris passed on the note on to FBLA. He’s a TV news veteran, so he must have known what a ludicrous request this was.

What’s so ludicrous?

It’s uninformed, first of all. Strauss has an HBO production deal! It's not a story angle calculated to get any response from HBO.

Usually I ignored these requests for HQ, but this time, I replied. Don’t ask me why.

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Kate wrote:

“I've worked for HBO and have a lot of contacts there, but I'm not willing to call in a favor for a post."

----

There goes my next question.

And I was fired.

That post, by the way, pays under $20.

Twenty dollars?

Yeah. Unlike other sites, like Gawker and Defamer, Mediabistro's bloggers work only for a per-post rate. On the other hand, at least they paid that-- unlike Kevin Roderick, who gets established writers to write for free.

Ouch!

It's true. We dubbed Roderick “KRod.” He never understood that FBLA's readership is about half the age of LAObserved readers.

He said you used the Fishbowl to carry out grudges.

Grudges? Let's not forget Roderick's ongoing feud with Jill Stewart, which I mocked last June.

I also mocked him for gushing over Theresa Duncan, whom he'd never met.

So you guys have a history.

I'm a little surprised that KRod even bothered to notice my departure, but then again, at least he got a post out of it.

So what’s next for SuperBlogger Kate Coe? You’ve got heat now!

Heat schmeat.

Exclusive! Kate Coe ankles Fishbowl LA

Kate Coe, one of L.A.’s most influential Internet journalists and critics, has parted ways with MediaBistro’s Fishbowl LA website. The ankling amid a dispute over money (Kate says she was "fired") could be an indication of a revolt within MediaBistro similar to the one that led to an exodus from Nick Denton’s Gawker Media company earlier this year, and is a clear indicator of the battle now shaping up between Internet entrepreneurs like MB's Laurel Touby and experienced journos and writers who are used to, and rely on, getting paid for their work.

Kate is not only among the brightest lights in the online industry of combining pithy comments with links to other people's news stories, she's also a wicked and witty media critic and brave investigative reporter whose groundbreaking coverage of the mysterious pretty artist suicides of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake led to smear attacks that labeled her “a CIA mockingbird” with “’Jackie Collins Presents’ on her resume”-- which sound to us like a solid enough basis for KateCoe.com to move in where other local websites haven’t gone-- because they won't pay people to do the work.

Kate Coe is back with DeepGlamour.net

Kate Coe is back with a new mission and an exciting new website.

Kate, the Tabloid Baby pal and influential Internet investigative journalist, has been lying low since she split from Media Bistro's FishBowlLA website in April.

Her new turf is fashion, design, and adverts and media and-- Kate explains in the release for Deep Glamour:

"As of Monday, Virgina Postrel (The Atlantic, author of The Substance of Style) and I can be found blogging at DeepGlamour.net.

"We'll be writing about glamour, allure and all the seductive images that bombard us in the media and culture and what they really mean. We'll have exclusive interviews with mysterious and important figures like The Manolo, Simon Doonan, and everyone else we can seduce.

"Please feel free to post about our launch and link to us.

"We can promise provocative, witty posts with Virginia's astute analysis and my tart commentary on everything from Barack Obama to Bravo's Top Design, as well as brilliant writing from guest editors not found all over the internet.

"A woman can go farther with a lipstick
than a man with a Winchester
and a side of bacon."

Kate Coe gets jump on artist suicide mystery

The mysterious suicides of artsy couple Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake have spawned Internet rumours and conspiracy theories since her body was found in her NYC apartment last month and he apparently walked into the sea.

Now, the day after police identified Blake's washed-up corpse, our pal Kate Coe from Fishbowl LA has already gotten to the bottom of the mystery and cut through a lot of the the myths about the writer-game designer and her video artist boyfriend in paragraphs like this:

In a written exchange in 2006, Duncan and I discussed how people create personal façades. She wrote, “I said I had the last credits of my B.A. on résumés when I did not. I shave a couple years off my age sometimes, which is the only thing I regret.” In the same exchange, she explained that having arrived in Hollywood, “I tell the truth about all these things all the time. The fantasy is handled in my day job. Plus, my profile is raised and I don’t want any fodder for making me look unreliable when I have to handle large crews and budgets.”

Paranoia. Lies. Dark pasts. Strange rants. The article paints a very personal, surprising picture of the couple (Kate knew Duncan) and could very well be the outline for a book.

Read the story here.

Tina Fey's new movie looks funny all of a sudden

Ha! Tabloid Baby pal Kate Coe, the controversial investigative reporter, writer, media critic and until recently, star blogger for the FishBowl LA until she left the MediaBistro sweatshop-- er, family-- over a small issue like pay, is still making waves, and as we await that KateCoe.com site we keep pushing her to unroll, she sends us this, and credits her kid.

Cathy Seipp

Condolences to the family and friends of Cathy Seipp, the LA writer and web personality who died today of cancer at 49. We knew her only by her work and reputation, but she was a personal friend to many of Tabloid Baby's Internet pals, like Ray Richmond, Luke Ford and Kate Coe at Fishbowl LA. We knew she was a great writer. They've said she was a great person to know.

Cathy Seipp's LA Times obit is here.

Cathy Seipp gets her NY Times obituary

The New York Times has its biases and quirks in determining whose life is deserving of mention in its obituaries of record and often leaves us disgusted by its decisions to ignore culturally important figures in New York City and elsewhere. So since her passing on Wednesday, we've kept watch to see if the Times recognized LA-based Internet journalist and commentator Cathy Seipp. We've seen the Times dedicate space to Letterman character Larry (Bud) Melman, child development specialist Dr. Stella Chess, blind federal judge Richard Conway Casey, and moody horror and science fiction score composer Herman Stein, among others. We'd given up. Too LA. Too conservative. But in Monday's edition, she gets her due-- probably because of her East Coast media connections, although two of LA's major Internet journalism figures also get a mention:

Cathy Seipp, 49, Noted Columnist and Blogger, Dies

By DENNIS HEVESI

Cathy Seipp, a columnist and blogger who became widely known for poking fun at the liberal leanings popularly associated with her hometown, Los Angeles, died there on Wednesday. She was 49 and lived in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles.

The cause was lung cancer, said her daughter, Maia Lazar.

Ms. Seipp was widely read on her blog, “Cathy’s World,” which she started in 2003; in a weekly column for National Review Online called “From the Left Coast,” and in a monthly column for the conservative online magazine Independent Women’s Forum.

She also wrote for Mediaweek and Salon and made guest appearances on Dennis Miller’s talk show on CNBC.

Her favorite targets included political correctness, global warming, same-sex marriage, abortion and gun control — and the Hollywood luminaries who espoused those causes.

“She would laugh about being to the right of Attila the Hun,” Kate Coe, a blogger at Mediabistro.com, said yesterday, “but she wasn’t really that doctrinaire.”

Ms. Seipp was born Nov. 17, 1957, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her family moved to California when she was 4. Besides her daughter, of San Diego, she is survived by her father, Harvey Seipp of Los Angeles; her mother, Claire Ungerleider of Los Alamitos, Calif.; and a sister, Michele Seipp of Beverly Hills. Her marriage to Jerry Lazar of Los Angeles ended in divorce.

After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1977, Ms. Seipp worked for The Associated Press, The California Apparel News and The Daily News in Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, she began writing a column for Buzz magazine called “Our Times,” offering piercing looks at the inner workings of The Los Angeles Times, which she considered overly politically correct.

“In Medialand,” Ms. Seipp said during a 2002 interview on the Web site lukeford.net, “people often look at you uncomprehendingly if you explain that not everyone in America agrees with the received media wisdom.”

She added, “People with different ideas are not necessarily evil bigots, even if some of them do go to church.”