"Speak no ill of a former Gawker writer," Denton once wrote, citing a longstanding, "unspoken rule" at his company, apparently intended to keep his loose confederation of caustic writers from turning on one another and collapsing his profit-making enterprise into an online black hole of self-reference and backbiting.

But some snark slaves couldn't help themselves — and Denton, it turns out, was foremost among them, especially after the CEO took direct control of his flagship website and started churning out blog posts. Breaking the directive in a lengthy item on his predecessor Gould's bed-hopping allowed the gossip merchant to surface some juicy (and worthwhile) dirt on wunderkind novelist Keith Gessen, even if it did betray a certain fascination with the Brooklyn literary set from whom the former business reporter believed himself to be reclaiming Gawker.

The goal posts had been moved: Speaking ill of a former Gawker writer was now allowed, it seemed, if confined to activities undertaken since leaving the company. This allowed any number of further items on Gould, who was turning into a bona fide fameball (and worthy subject of coverage).

But it turned out Denton had broken more sharply with the old Gawker norms than was readily apparent. Recapping Gould's story on Vanity Fair's website today, Jim Windolf reveals that the blog mogul last spring planted an embarrassing video of Gould that was shot at at Gawker Media event while she worked at the company, in which the blogger peformed "mock fellatio on a plastic tube:"

"When I finally met Emily," [onetime "Gawker Mascot" Andrew Krucoff] says, "I felt so bad about posting the blowjob video and I took it down. Yes, it came from within Gawker. Denton fed it to me and I was too eager to play his lapdog on that one."

Perhaps Denton's intent was more mischievous than vengeful; Gould herself once called him "a pranksterish rapscallion" of a boss. But in the same post, Gould also presaged the less charming, "much less okay" ways Denton might treat her, especially once she was out the door. (Denton had begged her to stay and offered an $80,000-$90,000 annual salary, former Gawker editor Choire Sicha told Windolf. Denton disputes that account.)

Gould left little question how the leak of the video felt from her side of things:

"That was the point where I was like, ‘Wow, I am actually kind of scared of this person,'" Gould says. "I had never during my time at Gawker witnessed Gawker being used as a tool to try to take someone down. It was more like, people take themselves down, and you watch, and you write about it. This was different. This was him having an agenda, and to watch people fall in line with it, it's very creepy."

We — oh fuck it, I — don't buy Gould's premise that Gawker coverage of her has been part of a filthy, inaccurate and somehow evil attack campaign. This is (and always has been) a gossip website, and Gould became a significant player in the world we write about long before she appeared on the cover of the Times magazine or signed a six-figure book deal.

That said: leaking an embarrassing in-house video — if that is what in fact actually happened — shot at a company event, to visit a sort of vengeance on an ex-employee is beyond the pale and beneath the man I ultimately work for.

(Especially because I got fairly plastered at the last company event. And acted really obnoxious with Ian Spiegelman. And may or may not have invited Richard Blakeley up to my place. To crash on the couch, I SWEAR.)

[Vanity Fair]

A Bloomberg press release called Andy Lack a "news legend" upon his arrival in October to head TV, radio and Web operations at the financial news wire. Pearlstine promptly fêted the former Sony Music CEO at a high-profile meal at Le Cirque

Perhaps all the attention went to his head. Lack, one tipster writes, regressed to what we're told is a 10+ year old habit from his NBC News days: complaining about tiny limousines.

That whine would be in terribly bad taste for a man who just laid off 100 of his own people — the first mass firing in company history.

The story, per a tipster:

Upon arriving at Tokyo this weekend, Bloomberg TV honcho Andy Lack threw a shitfit worthy in comparison to his fellow co-news potentate Matt Winkler.

The limousine Lack had his Manhattan-based minions order from the aptly namedImperial Hotel to pick him up at the airport was too small for his liking. Theformer Sony music hatchet man, who fired hundreds of Bloomberg TV staffers thisyear, including a whole division and then some in Tokyo, screamed at the driverwho didn't understand his engrish. Ever cost conscious and environmentallyaware, the Ugry Amelican poo-bah then demanded that another larger, lessfuel-efficient tank be dispatched to the airport to pick him up.

Alas, that big boat didn't satisfy the Get Shorty lookalike. So after thehour-long plus ride into the city, "Limo" Lack stormed into the hoteland demanded that the very aporogetic general manager come out to the foyerentrance with a measuring tape to compare vehicle sizes.

The measuring tape trick apparently dates to Lack's NBC days. Back then, though, he had his own aide he'd send fetch the device, the tipster recalled. The bad economy, it would seem, affects everyone.

UPDATE: A Bloomberg spokesperson calls the story "completely false," adding:

The alleged "incident" you refer to never happened. The only true statement in your report is that Andy Lack visited Tokyo for a few days this week. He arrived from the airport in a standard hotel car and had a very pleasant ride to the hotel. Andy walked to the office every day from the hotel, which is a few blocks away from the Tokyo office. No arguments, disagreements or fuss at all. What you describe may have happened to someone else, but it wasn't a Bloomberg employee or manager.

A job-hunting tipster found the Popcorn job description (above) posted on LinkedIn. The bits about the "60+ hour workweek," "wild pace" and needing to "thrive on stress" were sufficient to drive this person away in terror.

Popcorn doesn't appear to have updated the job description in years; she mentions "a four-year-old Chinese girl" even though her own Chinese daughter — Georgica Sawn Pond Rose Petal Qi Xin, for reals — should be 11 by now and have long since settled on a primary "Gifted and Talented school."

Then again, maybe Popcorn doesn't need to adapt her corporate materials as the years go by. As she no doubt appreciates, today's job market bears a closer resemblance to the futurist's recessionary heyday of nearly two decades ago than to any economic period of recent memory.

True Tales From The Toxic Trenches [NYPost]
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We've spent the last few weeks sharing your stories of unpleasant employers. But what of the man and woman on the street? Surely they have equally tragic tales to share. We sent The Assimilated Negro and Richard Blakeley onto the streets of New York to find out.

Previously: St. Patrick's Day

InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller is one of the people we'd initially thought too obvious to include on this list, which is supposed to be for small-time bad bosses, not the legends. And if there's one thing Diller's not, it's small-time: the man raked in $469 million in the 2005-2006 fiscal year, prompting Nick Kristof to award him the not-coveted Michael Eisner award for laziness and corporate rapacity. Diller called critics of his pay package "birdbrains." He really likes the word birdbrain! But that's not why he's included in this roundup.

The intriguing thing about Diller is how many emails we got—lots!—that said, essentially, 'Barry Diller is the worst boss, please investigate' or some other detail-free variation on that theme. In fact, some tipsters seemed leery of even spelling out Diller's full name.

Perhaps a number of them have signed some nondisclosure agreements. Or maybe they're just too shellshocked to speak? Our least-terse (but still pretty terse!) tipster indicated that this is the case, citing PTSD-like symptoms: nightmares, unbidden flashbacks. Literally. One former employee reports stopping on the street sometimes and losing himself in recollection of horrors past.

But is it PTSD that's keeping former employees from speaking out, or something more akin to Stockholm Syndrome? That same tipster is careful to mention that Diller "does often come through with an apology or act of graciousness." Maybe, behind his famed impatience and bluster he's actually sort of a nice guy after all—how tough can someone who calls Diane Von Furstenberg "cabbage" be, anyway?

Clearly we'll never know, though, if someone doesn't speak up. —Emily

Nick Denton is the publisher of Gawker Media, a company that includes the websites Gizmodo, Fleshbot, Valleywag, Defamer, Consumerist, Wonkette, Kotaku, Idolator, Lifehacker, Deadspin, Gridskipper, and... oh! Right. Gawker. The website you're reading right now. How meta! Or, well, how lame. Or, as one former Gawker employee puts it, "How wryly self-deprecatory. And therefore charmingly innoculating. He's good." Hey, he wasn't the one nominating him. And in some ways, he is good!

For one thing, according to some former employees, he's a pranksterish rapscallion, which is always a fun quality in a boss. Really. "Nick's like a four year old. You tell him not to touch something and he HAS to touch it. It's quite fun," says one, while another echoes, "He encourages insolence. He wants his editors to make mischief, to create a stir—and if you're fine with being in that role, it can be incredibly fun. It's a (not necessarily respectable but still kinda awesome) mandate that you won't really find elsewhere." And compared to working for almost any publisher, there's a shocking amount of autonomy.

But is there a darker side to Denton's whimsicality? Maybe. Well, YES. See, mischief becomes less fun when you're the target. One former editor remembers a time when Denton wanted to start "an unannounced (but not actually hidden or pword-protected) blog" that detailed all the editors' mistakes and the reprimands they'd received." Ha ... ha? This same former editor also mentions the "comments he leaves to undermine his editors" as a source of job dissatisfaction. Well, yes. Being publicly hung out to dry by one's boss is never fun. But is it funny? Actually, sometimes yes! And sometimes no. In any case, one editor hastens to clarify that sometimes Denton's 'mischief' can veer off in a much less okay direction, especially after a blogger has left for greener pastures: "Making shit up whole cloth is not mischief making. It's just being a jerk."

So what else is bad? Well. There was the Radar pie throwing incident (pictured). What happened, according to a former editor, was that Radar was having a party to celebrate its latest launch, and Denton attended. Someone thought it would be funny to throw a pie. According to the former editor, after the party Denton wrote on his personal blog that the pie had missed him, prompting Matt Drudge (huh, finding a lot of dead links! Suspicious!) to set the record straight. But already at 8:48 p.m., quite soon after the incident, a Gawker editor was compelled to post about the pie missing Denton's mug—and later had to correct the record. And yet! "He was able to convince a lot of people that the pie missed him, despite the hundred or so eyewitnesses and photographic evidence is really indicative of one of Nick's more pronounced talents: managing his own PR."

But the real question is—was the pie incident Denton's idea in the first place? We still don't know. That PR was expertly managed. And he's doing it right now! It's like he's inside our brain. ARRRGH. DENTON GOOD!

She is one of the smartest people I've ever worked with (in fact, I'm sure she'd find a way not to end that sentence with "with"). She has one of the hardest jobs in the nonprofit biz, and does it far, far better than anyone else could.

Has she fired some people? Yes. Were they incompetent? Yes ... and she gave them more chances than they deserved. If anything, she made a couple of bad hires — that's it.

But here are some facts:
(1) She promoted at least one former assistant, who is now in a substantive position
(2) Another one of her employees has been there for 3-plus years, with multiple raises and increases in responsibility
(3) She has a tiny staff — about four people to do all the ACLU media work. Much smaller and less significant organizations have twice that and do much, much less
(4) She regularly takes her staff to drinks after work and picks up the tab (without mentioning it or making a big deal out of it)
(5) She juggles people's work so that they get to handle projects that interest them personally
(6) She remembers people's birthdays and other important life events, and asks about them with true interest
(7) She helps connect her staff with outside professional associations, colleagues, and other kinds of networking opportunities (that a less secure or "evil" boss would never even think of letting their staff near)

Everyone who works with her (or for her) learns and grows. She can be tough, but she has a tough job. Frankly, I prefer to have a tough, smart person fighting the Bush Spin Machine, day in and day out.

Well, when you put it that way, we begin to feel pretty guilty. Pays for drinks?! Hot! Maybe this free speech thing isn't such a good idea. Sometimes it can be so tricky!

Earlier: Emily Whitfield

American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman Emily Whitfield has been a busy beaver of late. Over the summer, she had to issue a great many hedgy statements about the ACLU's controversial attempt to limit its board members' ability to criticize its leadership. Then she had to do even more damage control when 30 longtime ACLU supporters called for an ouster of said leadership. It's enough to make anyone a little testy.

A caveat: based on what we hear, Whitfield isn't mean so much as she is 'nonprofit-mean,' which is sort of like 'book-hot.' We hear she screams sometimes, and fires people, and goes through assistants rapidly. More interesting, though, is that "a specific producer at CNN will beg like a baby to not have to speak with her." Also, that she's the "most feared and least favorite staff member at the entire ACLU as well as among other impact litigation and social justice nonprofits in the NYC area." We're promised that the "floodgates will open" when we publish her name, so let's have your takes on Whitfield—as a boss and a co-worker only, please—both pro and con. Don't be afraid! Free speech and all, right?

Earlier: Evil Bosses
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Earlier: Peter Arnell

Peter Arnell is founder and chief creative officer of Arnell Group, a PR firm that's a wholly owned subsidiary of PR megacorp Omnicom. Arnell Group has clients like Donna Karan, DKNY, ConEd, and Samsung. Arnell is known as a branding guru. He's also known as a big meanie.

After Arnell's name was mentioned in the bad boss comments, a tipster wrote to defend the man. "It's all true. Arnell is a difficult boss as well as a sadist with a lower case, sans serif s. He's also a crude bully, a terrible coward and famously insincere. But, in his favor, when he's not pretending to kiss the ass of insipid rich, famous and powerful, he shows a refreshing contempt for authority and takes an anarchistic delight in creative destruction. His saving grace is that the man is ultimately an aesthete. Of his many fetishes, his love of beauty has compelled him to create some of the most beautiful advertising work in the last twenty years."

You can judge for yourself on that "most beautiful advertising work" score. We're more interested in what Arnell needs to be defended against. On the 'sadist' tip, we hear that he made one assistant lean over while he played her behind like bongo drums. A tipster says that he has seriously arm-twisted fired employees into staying on to train their replacements. (Ah, what won't wage-slaves do for a good recommendation?) And he's also been accused of "trashing" studios solely for the pleasure of forcing underlings to clean up.

How's this: "Once he freaked out in a meeting because a CD did not work in the CD player, so he took the CD out and smashed it in to pieces on the conference room table. The IT guy , who was standing behind him, ended up going to the hospital because the shards from the CD flew into his eyes." Carnage!

This is fun too: " When you go to a meeting in his office, he makes everyone wait at the door, then directs each person where to sit by hierarchy and whatever mood he's feeling."

He does sound like a little bit of a sadist, and those glasses do strike us as fetishy. But if anyone else has anything to contribute on that "with a lower case, sans serif s" tip, we're all ears!

Earlier: Evil Bosses

According to Jossip, ARTNews executive editor Robin Cembalest is the defender of the "bitchiest non-famous editor" title. But you don't have to take their word for it!

ARTNews, according to their website, is "the oldest and most widely circulated art magazine in the world," and has a circ of 200,000 internationally. Cembalest reports to ARTNews editor and publisher Milton Esterow, who has been with the magazine for three decades. As our tipsters have it, Esterow "has relinquished all but token oversight," leaving Cembalest running the show. Some people aren't so enthusiastic about the way she's running it, though: rumor has it that one young employee was so truamatized by her tenure there, she had to be committed! But why?

Maybe it's because of Cembalest's verbally abusive management techniques, which one tipster likened to those used to train dogs. Or maybe it's because frequent firings are part of Cembalest's signature style. Specifically, "So many firings ... that sluice grates should be installed underfoot to catch the spilled blood," which seems apt if it's true that, as we hear, the body count includes one managing editor, one senior editor, four associate editors, one copy editor, and one editorial assistant within the last two years. This doesn't sound impressive until you realize that there are only ten people on ARTNews's entire editorial staff. And it's not clear why those who've stuck around have chosen to do so: one former employee terms Cembalest an "unreasonable, irrational, bipolar, psychotic bitch. And that's on her nice days." Also, it's ARTNews. Seriously, is it worth it?

Earlier: Evil Bosses

We admit it: we've been frying up some small fish lately, bad boss-wise. But today's boss is pretty much a 4,000 pound ahi tuna. Allegedly!

It's probably not news to anyone that movie producer Scott Rudin is rumored to be difficult to work for. When there's a subsection of someone's Wikipedia entry just entitled "Scott Rudin and his assistants," that's sort of a sign, no? Purportedly the model for the evil producer played by Kevin Spacey in Swimming With Sharks, Rudin is responsible for many a hit movie — The Queen, Venus, and Notes on A Scandal were this year's highest-profile successes. Rudin also has a taste for literary adaptations: he's acquired film rights to The Corrections, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and most recently Special Topics in Calamity Physics. On another high-profile adaptation, The Hours, he famously collaborated with goes-without-saying bad boss Hall of Famer Harvey Weinstein. This team effort went so well that Rudin famously sent Weinstein, a chain-smoker, a sweet thank you gift: a crate of cigarettes! But based on what we hear, working with Rudin is nothing compared to working for him.

As our tipsters have it, Rudin neatly nails every bad boss cliche, especially the one about throwing things. When he recently at long last got a Blackberry, it was viewed with mixed relief and terror by his five (yes) assistants because of the likelihood that it would soon become a projectile. Allegedly, it did. The assistants, one of whom is tasked solely with making theater reservations for Rudin, are frequently fired. Sometimes all are fired simultaneously, and when this happens they traditionally go across the street to a cafe where they await a call from the office manager to let them know they're rehired. Despite the admirably thorough division of labor, the assistants are, according to a tipster, still horribly overworked. They're also meant to be on call 24/7, and are banned from taking the subway because this renders them unreachable.

A 2005 Wall Street Journal article entitled Boss-Zilla (subscribers only) delved into Rudin's antics, but according to a tipster, barely scratched the surface, with good reason: while it was being researched, one of Rudin's employees was tasked with compiling a list of every single individual who had ever worked for him. This list was then called and told which stories they were permitted to share. Ostensibly they complied because of Rudin's industry clout, which makes sense to us: there is no telling what someone who will send a crate of cigarettes to Harvey Weinstein is capable of. Shiver.

Earlier: Evil Bosses

Previously, publicist cum boutique owner Claudine Gumbel was only known to us for opening a new branch of her shop, Caravan, that was so exclusive it would even admit Jeff Probst. Oh, and also for firing the ass of socialthing and self-styled stylist Kristian Laliberte. Oh! And also for having a nice wedding to a probably gay man! Anyway, as it turns out, some say the lady is also a bad boss.

Gumbel is a co-founder of boutique fashion PR agency Think PR, whose Flashy website boasts of clients like Everlast, DKNY Men's Underwear, and Rock & Republic. Wait ... what's this past tense w/r/t Rock & Republic, though? "Think PR launched this premium denim company and worked closely with them for over 3 1/2 years ... We have a full case study that we can provide to you for our work during this time." Defensive much? According to one tipster, they've got cause to be: "she lost rock and republic (i meAN thats sad!) and they leak employs faster than people dying on the titanic [sic]." Sad indeed!

Another ex-employee says she "makes Pol Pot look like a saint." How so? One ex-Think flack says it's because of Gumbel's unclassy background: "Claudine always thinks people are trying to use her, or outshine her. She's a nobody from Staten Island, resplete with the whipped husband, tacky apartment way to uptown for the fake accent she uses to try and disguise her tacky SI drawl ... She tries to pay everyone with "exposure" even though she steals it for herself. She calls her employees incomptent fools and thieves." Mrowr! It sounds like the contents of this bag of fighting cats all sorta deserve each other.

Earlier: New York's Worst Bosses

Oh, Conde Nast exec Richard Beckman. Woo boy. This one is a doozy. For starters, let's talk about that time, back when he was publisher of Vogue, that he allegedly tried to get staffers Carol Matthews and Emily Jahncke Davis to kiss at a party, and ended up (allegedly!) breaking Matthews' cheekbone!

So where are they now? Matthews, who needed "extensive reconstructive surgery" according to Media Life, sued Conde Nast and won over a million; she resigned and, according to a tipster, has been "fairly blackballed from a lot of NY media." Davis is the ad director of Vanity Fair. And Beckman, who was ordered to get counseling (our tipster claims he never did!), is head of corporate sales and media group president for Conde Nast.

Stunner: we hear he's still misbehaving. A co-worker says "the tales of terror are far too numerous to list." Overall, his infractions these days are now more minor— "An assistant for a couple of Sales Reps was leaving after having been there for about 6 months and he wrote a nice e-mail thanking everyone, so on and so forth. The kid sent it to the whole department, including Richard. Not two minutes later Richard sends back a reply-all, simply saying 'Who?'"

Aw, c'mon, that's not so bad! Maybe he did go to counseling after all. You think?

When Push Comes To Shove, The Shoved Leave Vogue [Media Life]

My favorite MG quote: she walked into the office in a huff one day and said "The most unpleasant thing just happened to me. This overweight woman on the elevator just started talking to me." END OF SENTENCE.

Earlier: New York's Worst Bosses: Mireille Guiliano

Earlier: Faith Popcorn Pins One On

French Women Don't Get Fat is the bestselling advice and cookery book that gave false hope to millions of Brie-loving American women who so do, but before Mireille Guiliano wrote that masterpiece—and its cashin'-in follow-up, French Women For All Seasons—she was the CEO of wine importer Cliquot, Inc. She wasn't stingy with the slimming secrets in that position either, apparently!

According to one tipster, she would routinely write out "diet plans" for girls in the office who got "too fat, like more than 125 lbs." The same lady claims that Guiliano didn't have the strongest of work ethics, often indulging in ultralong champers-laden business lunches (well, duh!) But she didn't encourage similar laxity in her staff, it seems. "When 9/11 went down it didn't really affect her and she went to work like half the city was not on fire or anything on 9/12. On 9/13 we got a note in our inboxes about NOT COMING INTO WORK ON 9/12. It reprimanded us and detailed the procedure to follow about calling in to let HR know we wouldn't make it. One of the girls had lost a cousin in the first plane to hit the tower and everyone else was affected in some way. Not a word in the email about the disaster, nothing, just a 'If I can make it to work you can too attitude.'"

Oh, but worse still: we hear she can't cook! Like, at all.

Earlier: We Are Looking For Some Bad Bosses!