SIXTH BOROUGH JUSTICE: City Paper Bags Hipster Grifter; Blogs Set Up & Takedown; Deeney Not Amused

CP: Kari Ferrell lies. She has lied about having cancer. She has lied about booking for Golden Voice. It’s been reported that she called the Philadelphia Police Department to turn herself in. I don’t know where that story originated, but that’s a lie, too. How do I know? I’ve been setting her up for the last few weeks. I had her arrested. Here’s how…MORE
DEENEY: My name is Jeff Deeney, I’m also occasionally a contributor to the CP. I think the tone of this article is smug and self-congratulatory. I think this is a completely sensational story printed solely to attract page views, both with the newspaper’s hope of getting linked by more heavily trafficked media sites in NYC and for Sam to draw attention to his band. I think this piece is braindead, the lowest possible sort of article that seeks to capitalize both on the suffering this girl created and the suffering she will experience in prison. The clear expectation on the paper’s part that I as a reader would want to mindlessly join in the mobs cheering this girl’s frog march into incarceration is unfortunate, and I think is at odds with the paper’s historical stance on the prison system as a cruel and inhumane institution that is unfit for nonviolent offenders. I won’t even get into the clear gender bias involved, where all spurned boys everywhere are invited to high five over the cute chick who took advantage getting her just desserts. This is a seriously sad moment in Philly’s alternative press…MORE
PHILLY GRRL: With all due respect, sir, I fail to understand what is wrong with highlighting an original, dramatic story. It’s a Philly story. Why not correct the obvious inaccuracies in K.’s “confession”? Set the record straight. If Phawker or any other Philly mag/webzine/weekly/daily would’ve gotten hold of it, they would’ve done the same exact thing. [She's right. -- The Ed.] She didn’t turn herself in. (She’s certainly not helping matters what with her compulsive lying and all.) Sam did. That’s news. Sam’s a hero. He’s not a journalist. He’s not a professional writer….but he did something commendable. Maybe he’s not proud of it, but I think honest citizens everywhere should be. I know I am. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: To be honest, we couldn’t give a shit about haven’t had the time to keep up with the the wacky exploits of the The Hipster Grifter, whose obligatory 15 minutes of Internet infamy came to an end Sunday with her arrest here in Philadelphia. But judging by your cards and letters, we can tell this is just the kind of meaningless story that brings meaning to your lives. And so we give you the arrest docket. May it serve you well.
TANGENTIALLY RELATED: Joey Sweeney Is The Dwight Shrute Of Philly Media
Today the PW mothership rolled out a cover story I wrote about Big City Philadelphia, a rapper now living in Northeast Philly who recently made a name for himself by taking down so-called “hipster rappers” in a song/video called “How To Rob an Industry Hipster.” Predictably, this prompted Joey “Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians” Sweeney to write a self-serving take down of the story on his increasingly-irrelevant, sinking ship, Philebrity.MORE
THE GRIFTERS: The Oranges
Yeah, this grifter stuff is all shits and giggles until somebody gets The Oranges. Brutal.











Phawker.com's
May 6th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
If Phawker or any other Philly mag/webzine/weekly/daily would’ve gotten hold of it, they would’ve done the same exact thing. [She’s right. — The Ed.]
Pffff, ha, well no shit, but you’re not exactly Captain JOURNALISM SERIOUS BUSINESS, Jon. Doron is strangely silent today, I think if the Weekly had run this story he would have immediately posted a 3600 word blog post on JOURNALISM SERIOUS BUSINESS and why this story is completely fucked up. So, like the kids say, WEVS, I guess next week we’ll get back to business as usual with the CP critiquing everyone else’s journalistic integrity while publishing stories about the inhumanity of the prison system while the hipster grifter sits in the bowels of Riverside on $250,000 bail waiting to be extradited. I was in a courtroom earlier this afternoon and heard someone with a sexual assault charge get a bail one tenth that. Nooooo, the media didn’t have any influence on that outcome. There’s no a responsibility to consider here, FUCK IT LET’S PILE ON BITCH GOT HERS WOOOOOOOOOOOO.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:15 am
So Deeney appears to have a beard in his cartoon.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Love you Deeney
May 7th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I’m just not seeing what you’re seeing here, Jeff. At all. I don’t think the story celebrates the prison system. I actually think that’s kind of crazy. It’s a straightforward narrative of how Sam helped catch a fugitive, which is interesting. I also think it’s crazy to suggest that I, or City Paper, generally condemn anything that’s not of the utmost social import.
If PW (or Phawker) had this story, I would have told myself that a) they just got lucky (as we did), and b) it’s not that important a story. I would have secretly been a little jealous.
April 5th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
[...] Now I don’t exactly condone Jeff’s approach. Heck, we only became friends after we got into a not-so-friendly debate about the hipster grafter. But I do understand the frustration that comes with not being paid for [...]