SPIN CYCLE Brendan Nyhan is a Duke University graduate student. Bryan Keefer is assistant managing editor of Columbia Journalism’s Review’s Campaign Desk, which monitors the press’s coverage of politics. Along with their friend Ben Fritz, who works in Los Angeles for Variety magazine, they are editors of the Web siteSpinsanity.com, a nonpartisan watchdog web site devoted to analyzing political spin and fact-checking the press from a non-partisan perspective.

The authors told the Knickerbocker thatSpinsanity.comdoes not focus on bias, which is “speculation about motives,” but rather examines rhetorical devices in the press and looks for distortions of facts. The Web site is adept at examining why mainstream press is so ineffective at countering political spin, and how surprising formats such as political satire, ideological press outlets, and web logs can break through the spin.

They have co-authored the book “All the President’s Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth” (Touchstone). While the book does scrutinize both sides of the aisle, it mainly criticizes the Bush Administration for spin, strategically ambiguous language, and half-truths.

Messrs. Nyhan and Keefer were on hand on Tuesday at a book party atop the Gramercy Park Hotel, where a crowd came out to fete them. MediaTank, a group of young professionals in the television, film, and entertainment industries, sponsored the event. MediaTank was founded last year and this was its first large event.

Seen wereTouchstone/Fireside senior publicist Lisa Sciambra, Amy Paul,development director of Alliance Agency; Court TV publicist Barry Rosenberg, and MediaTank president Dan Shear, who works at the William Morris Agency.

The room was filled with 20- and 30-somethings who conduct business on the phone but seldom get to meet each other.They’re the ones who may be running the show, so to speak, in a decade or two.

***

FLY LIFE At Crosby Painting Studio, the Artist known as Fly sat near the front of the gallery as art lovers stopped in for a show of her portraits and stories. She has documented the lives of people, many of whom are, as she describes them, “under the radar” of the press. Some are squatters in buildings or other artists.

A number of friends whose portraits she drew showed up for the show. The portrait subjects are also included in

her book, called “Peops: Portraits & Stories of People by Fly” (Soft Skull).

Her talents include music as well. In previous years she has toured with the band “God Is My Co-Pilot.”

Seen were Seth Tobocman, Craig Flanigan, Barbara Lee, Sasha Dubrul, Karl Rosenstien, and Kent Meredith, who is an animation director.

The artist calls Mr. Meredith “Professor Q.” Why this appellation? “Because he’s constantly lecturing her” on things, he said.

***

NIAGARA NOTES A mural of Joe Strummer, the late singer of the Clash, adorns a wall opposite Tompkins Square Park. It is on the outside of Niagara bar, located at Avenue A and Seventh Street. In previous in carnations it was called A7 and King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut, where bands such as the Beastie Boys, Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, Heart Attack, and the Bad Brains have played.

Niagara bar co-owners Jesse Malin and Johnny T, who was a drummer for Ryan Adams, is making a bronze plaque to commemorate the storied history of punk bands and music that have played at the location.

“It’s a marginal history,” the latter explains, “But to the people who are interested, it’s very important.”

***

VICTORIA’S VIEWERS Executive Vice President and General Manager of the A &E network, Abbe Raven, thanked the crowd for coming out to Gotham Hall in bad weather for the launch party of the channel’s new reality series “Growing Up Gotti.”

Victoria Gotti told the Knickerbocker that A &E approached her and asked her to do a reality show about a working mother dealing with her children with everyday problems. She liked the idea and decided to go for it.

“There were many humorous incidents that happened while making the show,” she said, “especially my blind date.”

***

KNICK-KNACKS Brooklyn artists Rise Wilson and Takema Robinson have been awarded a fellowship from Echoing Green for their efforts to combine arts education with a forprofit Laundromat in their Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood …StoryCorps has a booth in Grand Central Terminal that is designed to inspire people to record each other’s stories. The Knickerbocker hears that they are planning to open another booth near Ground Zero for collecting oral history … Actress Ellen Burstyn will receive the lifetime achievement award at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Huntington, L.I., on August 4 … the Grolier Club is having a show that opens on September 15 relating to arguably the finest hand bindery to ever operate in America. The show is described as “bound” to be great … The basketball Hall of Fame has pictures of Bill Cosby playing with the Harlem Globetrotters in 1973. Mr. Cosby’s good friend, George Kalinsky, official Madison Square Garden photographer for the past 40 years, took them. Mr. Kalinsky suggested to the Hall of Fame that they honor Mr. Cosby, and it recently did.