New York Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal is stepping down. He’ll be replaced by James Bennett, former editor of The Atlantic. This change in Establishment Opinionmongers will be so drastic that readers won’t notice a thing.

The New York Times jealously guards its status as America’s paper of record through an obsessive focus on decorum and propriety. So it’s interesting to see in two leaked photos that the paper’s brass has a sense of humor behind its respectable front—even if that humor veers into “making light of mass killings” territory.

Hey, here's a surprisingly bold and fresh move, in opposite-world: the New York Times—a serious newspaper—is planing to give regular space on its editorial page to Bono—an edgy rock star! Will this odd couple possibly be able to get along? Will Bono stumble into the office at 7 a.m. after a night of wild coked-up groupie sex and start trashing the place, disturbing the morning meditation of Times editorial page chief Andy Rosenthal? Are Times readers ready for some motherfuckin rock-n-roll? Ha, of course what you really have to look forward to is six to ten editorials from another wealthy cosmopolitan liberal. Rosenthal and Bono have more in common than two ring-tail lemurs from separate sides of Madagascar. Wake us up when you hire Young Jeezy. [Radar]

Andrew Rosenthal

New Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt passes along a reader query about columnists' outside income to editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal. Rosenthal patiently explains that columnists cannot take money for anything except books they publish, academic work, and the occasional "reasonable" speaking fee. Oh, also:

Guess what? The New York Times is super proud of TimesSelect, that whopping success for which 218,000 (hey, that's .0007% of the U.S. population! Uh, if our math is good!) have signed up. We know this because they're trotting out Editorial Page Editor Andy Rosenthal to do a dog and pony show in today's Observer. Andy is beaming about the assload of contributors he's signed up to offer web-only content (Stanley Fish, Will Leitch, the dude who played guitar for former Bad Company lead singer Paul Rodgers during the recent Queen reunion tour). And blogs? They've got TONS of blogs! They've got blogs about blogs!

From the inbox:

So Gail Collins, the first double-x chromosomed human to head up the NYTs editorial page, will be stepping down at the end of the year. She's gonna do the typical "book leave" thing and then return to the "nice lady" column slot previously inhabited by Anna Quindlen. (We're all for the idea of having two female op-ed columnists in the Times, if only to reduce the general feeling of dickishness induced by John Tierney.) Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., described her tenure thusly: