In your friendly Friday media column: the NYT's standards editor retires, a Russian journokabob scandal, Time Warner really loves this "magazine" business, and the magazine industry has big plans, sure.
Among the names floated by Radar yesterday as possibly taking a Times buyout was Craig Whitney, the assistant managing editor overseeing journalistic standards. Whitney sided with public editor Clark Hoyt in a recent internal Times feud over semi-nude photos in T Magazine of a 17-year-old girl (pictured) whose blurred breast was exposed. Hoyt and Whitney argued the photo did not belong in the paper, T and the main Times Magazine basically called Hoyt and Whitney Philistines. The folks at T would be happy to see "prudish" Whitney go, claims one observer, if only because they see his very job as unnecessary. Of course, it was barely a month ago that Whitney was reminding everyone to attempt to interview multiple people when writing profiles. Sometimes a prude is just what you need.
Times cologne critic Chandler Burr got accused of an ethical blunder. Last week a correspondent going by the name of Ellsworth Toohey sent around the following complaint, asking: "Is it ethical for New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr to charge all comers a fee of $200 a head to have dinner with him — and for Mr. Burr to hand out a "goody bag" of perfumes to each guest — at the end of the evening? That is what Mr. Burr is now doing with a series of "scent dinners" he is holding at various luxurious Rosewood Hotels around the U.S., including recently at the Carlyle Hotel in New York and coming up at properties including the Mansion at Turtle Creek in Dallas."
Once a week, Ahead of the Times, everyone's favorite in-house New York Times newsletter, runs a regular column called After Deadline, in which errors are kindly mocked, word usage is criticized, display copy praised and the like. This week's is the choicest ever, most notably because Standards Editor Craig Whitney felt compelled to pitch in to decry repeated uses of "snarky"—six in the last month! Yuck. And the offending sections are exactly the ones you'd suspect.
