Aaron Swartz speaking at a protest against SOPA and PIPA bills in New York City.

Phillip Stearns via Compfight cc

It's at once terribly exciting and infinitely sad: This morning, the New Yorker announced the arrival of Strongbox, a new tool for receiving sensitive documents and messages from readers. Commissioned by Kevin Poulsen, the investigations editor at Wired, Strongbox was one of the projects that Aaron Swartz had developed before he committed suicide in January.

Swartz and Poulsen met in 2006, when Swartz, along with the other co-founders of Reddit, sold the online platform to Condé Nast and took root in a conference room at Wired's headquarters. Swartz wrote a piece for Poulsen about Kahle v. Gonzales, one of Lawrence Lessig's legal battles in the larger fight for copyright freedom, after which Poulsen asked Swartz to develop a secure-submission tool.

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​Today in Press Clips, people in media are doing what they do: tweeting, e-booking, getting sued, and drinking, though not together and certainly not on Bill Keller's dime. NPR's prolific tweeter Andy Carvin got even more prolific, the New Yorker is entering the e-book game, Eliot Spitzer may have done a little defaming, and Bill Keller will not stand his employees a drink. More »

"From the office of Donald J. Trump" reads the accompanying card clipped to a printed-out blog post from VanityFair.com, mailed to that magazine's editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. A veteran of covering (and mocking) the rich and famous, some his friends and some less so, Carter and Trump go way back, with the magazine baron's old Spy magazine counting the billionaire among its favorite targets. (Vanity Fair recommends the May 1989 issue.) Today, the fake presidential candidate won himself even more press -- but how can we ignore this, really -- by mailing Carter his handwritten edits targeting Vanity Fair's young, hilarious blogger Juli Weiner. Again: that's one of the richest (and most obnoxious) men in the world devoting ink, of both the pen and printer cartridge variety, to a blogger. More inside Press Clips, our daily media column.

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At the beginning of 2011, the writer and reader Anne Hays published a much-discussed open letter to The New Yorker, decrying the lack of female voices in recent issues and demanding a refund should the gender imbalance not at least move toward righting itself. In the weeks since, the women's literary group Vida published a report detailing "the truth of publishing disparities" across the media landscape at magazines and journals like The Atlantic, Harper's and the New York Review of Books. (In short: women are criminally unrepresented.) But the growing chorus of voices, especially online, hit a rather pleasant high note today when it comes to intelligent discussion on the matter, as writer and editor Megan Carpentier writes fairly on "the media glass ceiling," while another editor launches a new blog called Lady Journos, which "highlights the work of journalists who happen to be women." More positivity -- plus, how Britney Spears and homosexuals combined to confuse journalists (and much more!) -- inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up.

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Yesterday, we praised Lawrence Wright's cover story in The New Yorker, a 24,195-word mega-exposé about Hollywood writer/producer/director Paul Haggis' defection from the corrupt and crazy Church of Scientology after 35 years. Today, NPR's Fresh Air has a behind-the-scenes look at the magazine's journalistic process, including just how many fact checkers were required and how many queries the Church was given to make sure the notoriously litigious group could be reported on accurately. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post, newly in the money, is way more reader-friendly than the New York Times, over-argues one media writer. Paywall politics, the Tea Party's new magazine and more, inside Press Clips, our daily media round-up. (Tips about media goings on? Talk here.)

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"It was great," Mayor Mike Bloomberg told reporters on Thursday about a new cover of The New Yorker, which mocks him. "I thought it was cute looking into the mirror." Barry Blitt's "Bloom in Love" features New York City's long-time mayor gazing longingly at himself, hands coyly resting on his chin, while champagne and chocolates sit by his elbows on a vanity. "It was a Valentine idea before it was a Bloomberg idea," the artist assured the New York Times' City Room blog. But we're still proud of the guy! He should tag himself on Facebook.

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Anne Hays is not happy with her subscription to The New Yorker. Hays, a Brooklyn resident, Sarah Lawrence MFA graduate and the founding editor of Storyscape Journal, posted yesterday, as a Facebook note, a letter she sent to the magazine's editors at 4 Times Square, complaining of a gender imbalance in recent issues and demanding a refund or replacement. "You may either extend our subscription by one month, or you can replace this issue with a back issue containing a more equitable ratio of male to female voices," she wrote. "I plan to return every issue that contains fewer than five women writers." Check out the full text after the jump. (Plus an update from Hays below.)

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​As it's been noted, News Corp's daily newspaper built just for the iPad -- The Daily -- is on the way. It is Rupert Murdoch's newest child, the Draco Malfoy to his Voldemort. As such, they're hiring or trying to hire every editorial staffer this side of the Bangkok Bugle Tribune, which I just invented. Who made the list? Who gave them the cold shoulder? Press Clips, Day 23, News Corp's Kill Dossier of The Daily Edition. It's time to name names.More »

​VICTORY! for a New York City newspaper, while the rest are going down, down, in an earlier round. A new, familiar byline at New York's Vulture, and a new, familiar byline at AgencySpy. The iPad is still just The iPad, but Twitter is definitely still Twitter. Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast is still Howard Kurtz. Let's all hack the New Yorker! Press Clips, Day 15, Late and Mostly Scandal-Free Edition, right here. More »

​Well, last night, The New Yorker dropped their long-anticipated (at least by us) profile of Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton. We did the quotability run-down, but: how're the reactions? And what did Denton himself think?

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