The Times was sooo thrilled to find a vaguely correct use of a semicolon on a subway ad that they tracked down the copywriter (who has a degree in creative writing, natch) and wrote a whole cutesy piece about how rare it is that civilians punctuate properly. Then they asked various famous linguists and grammarians to comment:
Say what you want about New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who announced yesterday (left) the newspaper would be cutting 100 newsroom positions this year. But the guy gives a damn good bad-news speech. "We-all of us-have taken a badly wounded, publicly humiliated newsroom and restored it, largely by dint of great journalism, to a position of international esteem," Keller told his audience. "And we have done all of this while avoiding the cutting of muscle that has so badly weakened many of our competitors. Smugness, in our business, is death." Good line! "You pour your talent into this great miracle, and I am proud to be part of it." Aww. Feel inspired? Want to go change the world? Yeah! If you still have a job next month, you should totally go for it! After the jump, some key points from the in-house transcript of Keller's speech, which follows in full.
Gannett, Hearst, the New York Times Co. and Tribune, in the grand tradition of doomed online-newspaper joint ventures, is creating an ad network, QuadrantOne. The new partners said QuardrantOne will reach more than 50 million monthly visitors through more than 120 papers. But not the New York Times or USA Today, which already have national sales operations. Yahoo launched a similar newspaper consortium last year, to no visible effect. [WSJ]
For our last Gay Modern Love essay contest winner (a response to the overwhelmingly straight NYT relationship-essay column), we're going to leave you with something short and sweet, titled "Gay Boy Love Story":
"I hooked up with this guy twice over the course of a year. It was really good and over the course of the year or so we kept in touch. We got together again a couple of months ago and we are now completely and deeply in love with one another. From hook up to boyfriend in a year- that's great progress right? (p.s. knew I loved him from the moment I met him)."
Google hosted an event in Manhattan yesterday to pitch advertisers on YouTube. Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Learmonth tried to crash and got booted. The New York Times's Louise Story played nice and apparently got to stay, but later told readers the "bulk of the event" was "off the record." Apparently, neither tried Google search. Attendee Ian Schafer, CEO of a digital marketing agency, was happy to blog everything.
Modern Love, the Sunday column in the New York Times, has occasionally been enlivened by strippers, fatties and leukemia sex. But the fact remains that the weekly dissection of modern relationships is overwhelmingly conventional. As shown by our exhaustive analysis of themes since the series launched in 2004, Modern Love protagonists are preoccupied above all by their parents; and children, prospective or wailing. Same-generation passion: bleh. TABLE »
According to a New York Times staffer who spoke to Gawker, the first major newsroom layoffs at the Times didn't surprise the 200 employees who got the news this morning from executive editor Bill Keller at his annual "Throw Stuff At Bill" meeting. "In some ways it was anticlimactic," the staffer said, noting that "it's stunning" how many Timesers sit around on their hands all day. Funny, this stuns us not at all! During the meeting, Keller mentioned the crummy economy and industry as a reason for the cuts. He also spent a good deal of time discussing how the Times could beat Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, or, as Keller put it today, "The New York Times Lite." Ouch. "We would be fools to underreact or to overreact," Keller was said to pronounce. "We cannot win by being defensive, we cannot curl up and act that way." Oooh! It's a real-live newspaper war!
In response to recent allegations that Modern Love, the popular relationship essay column in the NYT, has always been a bit hetero and bland (babies and divorce, basically!), today we're publishing real-life relationship essays from the Gays. Our next Gay Modern Love essay comes from commenter BettyCrocker, in which he emerges from dating hell to fall in love - with a cop! "Late winter 2002 could pretty much count as an "Annus Horribilus" - I was laid off from my i-banking compliance job, I dumped my BF of 2 years, and my prospects for meeting someone nice seemed well-near impossible. I met an ex-Marine with an extensive doll collection, followed by an amiable bearish type who pounded 6 cocktails and jumped merrily into his car to drive home. Things were looking grim..."
By year's end, the New York Times will cut 100 newsroom positions, executive editor Bill Keller announced this morning at his regular "Throw Stuff At Bill" meeting. "At the end of the year, the newsroom will be smaller than it is now," Keller told the group, warning that staffers should prepare for layoffs. "The newsroom leadership will share in the sacrifice," he said, according to an attendee. When the Times announced the elimination of a dozen support positions last fall, Keller said the paper would cut "a few management jobs in administrative areas," a far cry from today's announcement. Despite the planned cuts, Keller said today, the Times will still have 150 more newsroom staffers than any other paper; spokeslady Catherine Mathis tells Jeff Bercovici the newsroom's staff is currently 1,332. "As you know, we have not been reducing our staff. It's been quite the opposite," she told him. "We've been increasing the number of newsroom staff. [But] right now we're in the midst of a very difficult time in the business." Well that's odd. During the December cuts, Keller said something completely different!
Our Gay Modern Love Essay Contest continues! In this essay, by Gay Matt, our hero finds, and leaves, love on a Newark-to-Los Angeles red-eye: "My twenties were about as romantic as taking steel wool and rubbing it on your balls, then soaking them in grain alcohol. Sure, I had a long-term relationship, but it ended with even more than the usual gay drama..."
It's V-Day! We prefer to think of that as Venereal Day, as well as the day we publish the winners of our very first Gay Modern Love Essay Contest! The first essay is by The Gay Recluse: "Thanks to Stephen, I came out twice. First as gay, then as a recluse..."
"It's late November 1998. I'm 30 years old and a total closet-case: it's past midnight and I'm scrolling through the men-seeking-men listings of Web Personals. During the day, I still like to tell myself that—although I'm not exactly a virgin in the same-sex department—whatever homo tendencies I have are basically a minor health problem; in short, as soon as I meet the right girl, I will be "cured" of the desire to say, head out to Prospect Park at 11:30 on a Tuesday night or—as I have been doing more and more as the days grow shorter—take a walk through the virtual hallways of the internet..."
It turns out, according to today's Times, that when you have children, you might have to slightly compromise your aesthetic design sense and maybe even tape the corners of your designer furniture. Or put it in storage! All because the little puke you finally conceived after putting it off for a decade or two spent finally snagging that prewar apartment and filling it with dead-tech post-modernistic bullshit might hurt himself on the sharp edges of your Barcelona chairs. Or smudge your glass-top Noguchi coffee table. The obvious answers to the problem—belt-delivered beatings should young Atticus get near the Ligne Roset brown microsuede one-arm sofa, locking young Libertad in your minimally appointed sleek modernist basement until he's 18, abortion—are not provided. [NYT] Photo: Evan Sung for The New York Times
Charlie LeDuff, the New York Times color writer beloved of Howell Raines, has resurfaced. LeDuff has been a stay-at-home dad in Hollywood since his patron, a fellow Southerner, was deposed. Though there are rumors of something much more scandalous, the formerly rising star gave this as the reason for quitting the Times: "I can't write the things I want to say. I want to talk about race, I want to talk about class. I want to talk about the things we should be talking about." In which case, he should be very happy in his new job at the Detroit News, hometown paper of the most racially segregated urban area in America.
Howell Raines was widely mocked in 2004 when, in a defense of his tenure at the New York Times, he said the paper of record should cover events of significance to the popular culture, such as the death of singer Aaliyah. (She'd been dismissed as a minor musician by one of the paper's stodgy critics.) When Raines was replaced as editor, it was assumed the Times would revert to its old gray ways. Except that it didn't. Online, of course, the Times has made its accomodation to popular obsessions, devoting vigorous coverage to the death of Heath Ledger, for instance. And in print, the last bastion of journalistic refinement? Here's the front of today's Arts section, devoted to an erudite analysis of that cornerstone of modern culture, the game show Deal or No Deal. (Related: Radar magazine has done a textual analysis of the Wall Street Journal since media mogul Rupert Murdoch captured the Times competitor. Conclusion: ever-so-slightly dumber.) Click for the image.
Ridiculously error-prone New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has been making reliably glaring mistakes in every single piece she has published in the newspaper of record for years now. Here's today's, in her story about how MSNBC is trying very hard not to upset the Clintons anymore: "MSNBC calls its stars 'the best political team' on television, but at the moment some players are in disgrace." A free cookie to Slate's Jack Shafer, who wrote an entire column about how annoying it is that CNN uses that "best political team" slogan incessantly. Does Ms. Stanley own a TV? Or have an editor? [NYT]
The gorgeous new New York Times building is not just a rat-infested danger to pedestrians—it's also freezing cold! Exec editor Bill Keller emailed the troops earlier on this freezing, snowy Tuesday: "We raised this with the building services people Sunday when the temperature dropped, and they are on the case. Basically, cold air is leaking into the podium side of the building through the open loading dock and elevator shafts." UPDATE: We hear... that Page Six and the New York Post library were also freezing cold yesterday, with the temperature eventually measured at 39 degrees. Which is a real problem, considering how many staffers there are cold-blooded reptiles (zing!). Please send in any and all additional tales of newsroom frostbite. [Radar]
To paint married hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias as a gay philanderer and his wife a murderer, the New York Times last month turned to a source named Billy Ash, who the paper identified as "a former assistant to Mr. Tobias." It turns out Ash was an online psychic, a convicted con man and a former pimp. In later interviews with other publications, Ash's claims would grow more outlandish: the wife put a $100,000 voodoo hex on her husband; she mailed Ash a lock of Tobias' pubic hair; she mailed a note reading "the scumbag is dead." New York magazine detailed Ash's past in a takedown this week; now the con man is trying to rehabilitate his image.
