So here’s a question for the Paper of Record: Can a reporter ethically accept a gift from a company he covers if the reporter gives it to a family member, or a friend? We ask because superstar tech reporter Nick Bilton admitted to doing so—or at least attempting to—on last week’s episode of Leo Laporte’s "This Week in Tech" podcast. Here’s what Bilton said:

Uber nerd website ArsTechnica has one. Amazon is guiding web savvy writers toward them. And now even the electronic newspaper of the future, the Huffington Post, has one. Meet the so-called "book," heir apparent to the future of media.

Gay magazine The Advocate used its own formula to assemble a list of the most homotastic cities in America and published the results today. You may be shocked by which city is the gayest, and which ones don't even rank.

Every drag queen, club kid, and homosexual in New York (and in the media) came out to celebrate the silver anniversary of the downtown chronicler extraordinaire. It was like Area all over again!

The New York Times has travel writing issues; specifically, the accepting of junkets by their writers, and then having to fire them to the public in Clark Hoyt's ombudsman column. It's come to a peak. Special appearance by Mike Albo!

Remember Mike Albo? He's the freelancer who broke The New York Times' convoluted travel writer rules and had his column axed. Now, Mary Tripsas, who pens the Times' "Prototype" column, has made a similar misstep. Will she be fired, too?

Ombudsmen, the Internal Affairs officers of journalism, should be feared and respected—but mostly: feared—by their respective publications. It's their job. The New York Times' Clark Hoyt? Quickly going soft. The Washington Post's Andrew Alexander? Pussywhipped. What's happening here?

The New York Times fired Critical Shopper columnist Mike Albo for taking a free junket to Jamaica, in violation of ethics policies. Which might make sense, if the Times itself hadn't specifically cleared him of violating ethics policies.

Mike Albo's free trip to Jamaica violated the newspaper's freelancer guidelines, or at least the ones we've seen. And now the Times has reversed its defense of the trip, saying it has "concerns."

The denizens of cheesy Thrillist junkets were once only shameless bloggers, but now it looks like grandiose outlets are getting on the free-trip teat, too.

Remember our much-loved columnist the Underminer, the friend who casually destroys your life? Underminer author Mike Albo plays one version of him—a little too convincingly—in a video. After the jump: the Underminer goes to Total Foods.

Professional underminer Mike Albo mourns the halcyon early 90s in today's Critical Shopper column. Also, the Times still hasn't caught on to the fact that he only ever makes fun of the impulse to buy or own fancy clothes: "I know it's not 1993 anymore, but some of these prices still gave me pause. Fourteen years ago these clothes would have been incomprehensible to me. If I had walked in, listening to Letters to Cleo on my portable CD player, I would have reacted like a cave man who, hurtled through time, had come across a microwave and was dumbfounded, 'Wha? $135 for T-shirt? Me no understand.'" Also: "[1993] was a carefree, de-gorgeous era, when I often wore girl's-size thermals printed with snowflakes or flowers and $3 thrift store bell-bottoms. I even knotted my hair in Bjork buns." HOT.

This is an occasional column by one of the authors of The Underminer, or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life. In this installment, the Underminer has taken up graphic design!

In this occasional column, one of the authors of The Underminer or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life refracts the news of the day through a bile-green lens. This week: the New Yorker Festival and also Internet pervs!

This is an occasional column from one of the writers of The Underminer, or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life. His byline is everywhere these days! But, I mean, who really wants to write for those crass mainstream publications that still pay their writers well, anyway?

Mike Albo, our Gawker Underminer columnist, writes the Times' Critical Shopper column today: "I guess I was enchanted by A.P.C. But at some point, I began to feel a little imprisoned, too. Not necessarily by the lovely clothes, but by our entire era of perfect fits and meticulous hipness. Part of me wanted to just get naked and wrap myself up in the burlap curtain and scream." Mike. Honey. Is everything okay? Oh, no reason. You just seem kind of... not-okay. You know? No, I mean of course you look fine! Better than fine! Decent, even! It's just that it kind of seems like writing the Critical Shopper column is making you sort of... how do I put this. Crazy! Ha, you are so crazy! Seriously, though, you're crazy. Maybe seek help.

This is a column by one of the authors of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, who is at Yaddo right now by the way. Are you?

Live from the pages of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, we invited everyone's favorite frenemy to chime in from time to time on various hot topics. That's right, The Underminer has a Gawker column now. But keep trying! You'll get one someday! You trouper!

Here's one of the ironies at the heart of the Mike Albo thing: His success makes other writer-types feel sorta... undermined! Reassuringly, though, the "Underminer" writer is still broke. But wait, is that actually reassuring? It might actually be incredibly depressing! After all, if Mike Albo can't get paid, what hope is there for everyone else? And it's completely true that Mike Albo can't get paid; he recently told genius blog Bazima that the hardest thing about being a writer is "getting fucking paid from magazines that owe me money like Blackbook (1400 dollars) and Mens Vogue (1715 dollars)." So what's Mike's plan? "[One of my current obsessions is] whether I should move to LA because I don't have any money and even though I have finally, after 15 years, made it to the point where I am writing for the Times and NY Mag and whatever. I can't live off writing for magazines. So I would rather write crap for TV and get fucked over for 30,000 dollars than 2,000." Gah. Are those really the choices an adult should have to make? —Emily