Longreads

"The most powerful newspaper in Great Britain." A history of the Daily Mail, founded in 1896 as reading material "by office-boys for office-boys," as a former prime minister said dismissively. Its daily readership is now four and a half million, and its website recently surpassed the New York Times in traffic, with 52 million unique visitors per month:

"On January 25th, the model Kate Moss went to some parties in Paris. The next morning’s Mail read, 'The Croydon beauty had very obvious crow’s feet and lines beneath her eyes as well as blemished skin from years of smoking and drinking.' Another journalist, interviewing her that day, asked why she thought the Mail was so focussed on her aging.

"'I don’t know. ’Cause it’s the Daily Mail ?' Moss replied. 'They just get on everyone’s tits, don’t they?'"

Jay-Z, an investor in the Spotted Pig, and a frequent patron, wanted the smoked-trout salad, but the kitchen was out. He and his group settled on the house specialty—burgers, which the restaurant’s chef, April Bloomfield, serves one way: char-grilled, on a brioche bun, topped with crumbled Roquefort. Only Lou Reed, a fixture in the neighborhood, is allowed to have his burger with onions, and that is owing to precedent: an awestruck employee took his order one afternoon when Bloomfield was out.

Sonia Sotomayor’s high-profile début.

Dish is her capital—the means by which she makes connections and maintains them. Because she defines the agenda for the Huffington Post, which defines the agenda for so many readers, passing a tidbit her way is, in a sense, an investment. Proprietary hints are the dividend. “She knows the best of everything, from the best person to do yoga with to the best person to do your facials,” Laurie David, the environmental activist, said recently. “If you need anything, you ask Arianna.”