Trump Tower Soho isn't the only major new building in New York to fall into perilous disrepair of late. Last month, a couple of pedestrians walking by the New York Times' fancy-pantsy 8th Avenue building caught the wrong end of falling window glass from the skyscraper, broken by high winds. Two weeks later, sidewalks were shut down by falling ice that had formed around the building's ceramic rods. Then last Wednesday, seven windows on the 22nd, 10th and sixth floors were shattered by strong winds, prompting a Friday visit by the Department of Buildings.

Howell Raines, the editor who tried to shake up the New York Times, and failed, has returned to regular journalism. Radar's Fresh Intelligence reports he'll be writing a media column for Portfolio. Conde Nast's business magazine, which sells poorly on the newsstand, could use a bit of a kick to the editorial metabolism. But Howell Raines, having retired to a life of fishing in the Poconos, is no longer in that line of work.

Anyone have a review manuscript of Jennifer 8 Lee's book on Chinese food? Apparently, the self-promoting New York Times writer has included no fewer than four pages of name-dropping acknowledgments. They deserve to disseminated more widely.

The Associated Press says Britney Spears is now "a big deal", writes Brian Stelter, the New York Times' wunderkind media reporter. An interesting story, but strangely familiar. Because it was reported on "various media blogs" a full six days ago. 22-year-old Stelter came to the notice of the Times because of his obsessive and to-the-minute reporting on the one-man blog he started as a hobby, the excellent TV Newser. Shame to see his journalistic metabolism slow so quickly.

This morning's New York Times begs your pardon for an error in yesterday's editorial that said no winner of a contested caucus had ever gone on to win the White House. Turns out Dubya did, in 2000. We know the Times is rabidly anticipating the end of the Bush administration, but how hard is it to look up what happened the election before last? Admittedly, this whole "caucus" concept is a toughie. Yesterday, two of the most popular searches on Google, according to Room 8 founder Gur Tsabar, were "Iowa caucasus" and "caucasus," neither of which look quite right. A Caucasus isn't so much an agonizing exercise in televised self-government as a Russian mountain range. God Bless America.

Is prolific New York Times golden boy Sewell Chan hiding something in his trash? Like maybe comments critical to his CityRoom blog posts? According to one of his readers, who blogs over at Young Manhattanite, Chan "pretty much cribbed entirely" his post today about MetroCard makeovers from design blog A Brief Message. The blog just happens to be run by Times' design director Khoi Vihn, not that you'd know from reading his post, since Chan credited the site's operation to someone else. Whoops! When his reader aimed to correct Chan in an online comment, the Times superstar allegedly hastily updated the post and squelched the critical comment without publishing it. Maybe he thought no one would notice he'd ever been wrong in the first place?

Happy Bill Kristol's First OpEd in the Times day! He got off to a great start, babbling about Huckabee and quoting Michelle Malkin as saying something Michael Medved said. Alert Barney Calame! [E&P]

CNBC and the New York Times have decided to share material on their respective websites in a move to try to stave off competition from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and recently-launched massively-failing Fox Business News. Basically, CNBC (a General Electric company) gets Times articles that will show up on CNBC.com while the Times gets CNBC videos. We're not so sure if having Jim Cramer screaming at you from the bottom of NYtimes.com is going to boost anything other than annoyance. They should take a page from Murdoch's own playbook and only have hot staffers in front of the camera. . That means a lot more Melena "Urban Eye" Ryzik and David "Dork Hot" Pogue and much much less of David "Scary" Carr and A.O. "Suburban Dad" Scott.

A weekday lunchtime, when cubicle slaves wind down with some web entertainment before lunch, is the busiest time for most web sites. The New York Times, making a belated discovery of the new primetime, posts up the news early on a Saturday morning.

Getting out of Iowa today was a complete bitch, thanks to the throngs of reporters fleeing frozen Iowa for frozen New Hampshire. The airport is supposedly 50% busier than usual and nearly 2,000 rental cars were returned. Luckyduck New York Times reporters on the other hand, had no reason to fret. They got a ride home in Daddy Sulzberger's corporate jet! A Times rep told Politico that "for The Times Company, it was 'most cost-effective.'" Anyone know how much jet fuel for several round-trip cross-country treks will set you back? Finding out involves math and you know, work, so we have no idea, but we suspect the answer is: a hell of a lot more than coach fares on JetBlue.

What a difference ten minutes makes, and the thundering authority of the New York Times. The Caucus, the self-important newspaper's politics blog, scorned other, lesser media outlets when they dared call Barack Obama the winner of the Iowa caucuses. "Madness," said Chris Hull. But, one post later? Click to find out.

Buried in his column in New York Magazine (see item #9), Jim Cramer passes on some gossip that's been going round town: that Michael Bloomberg's financial information company, which rents out terminals to Wall Street traders, is the logical acquirer of the Sulzberger family's vulnerable newspaper. The name of the TV pundit's show, Mad Money, doesn't exactly inspire confidence; nor do the bizarre money manager's notoriously erratic stock picks. But he is well-connected. And it's not the craziest notion: New York's mayor says he's not running for president; ownership of the Times would preserve his influence once his term is up.

Punk houses have finally been classed up and commodified! Not only in a book of fancy photos by a SELL-OUT 29-year-old artist who documented life in 42 punk houses for purchase and prominent display on your fancy mahogany coffee table in your comfortable, single-family home or apartment full of professionals found on Craigslist, but also in a lengthy Times "Home & Garden" section plug of said book, which will help explain the entire concept to your grandmother. We were going to follow that with a representative, forehead-slapping line, but an entire paragraph jumped out at us as too hilarious to break up, so we'll just stick the whole thing after the jump (Ron Paul).

Click to viewAll those people—such as myself!—who complain about what New York City is like today? Too much anecdote, not enough fact. What really happened to New York City? I thought of one way to find out. Over the last month, I have read the Metro section from each issue of the New York Times—starting in mid-2000 and ending with today's paper. Here's what I learned.

You know what? Appointing Bill Kristol as a New York Times op-ed columnist is pretty much the worst idea ever. Guess what? We all already know what the one-time chief of staff for Dan Quayle thinks. We've heard it all. Are we expecting great original thoughts from someone who really thought the Iraq war was a totally super idea? "His work will undoubtedly be provocative in this election year," said editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal in the press release. No, actually, we can doubt that, as it'll be exactly what we expect it to be. There have gotta be younger, more interesting, better-thinking conservatives than this. (And it's not a fear of "opposing viewpoints," for Chrissakes. He's just a ninny.) [NYT]

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Gabriel Delahaye's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.

Purdue Pharma had a bit of a problem. They spent millions marketing their awesome new painkiller OxyContin as totally non-addictive, despite the fact that they knew it was very addictive. Then a bunch of poor Appalachian people started dying! And the DEA was beginning an investigation! As was a federal prosecutor! And also their own factory workers were stealing batches of the drug to sell on the black market! So, naturally, Purdue called Rudy Giuliani.

Why all the lists heading into 2008? Well, laziness. That, and the urge to reflect on the year gone by. No, mostly laziness. And in that spirit, we present you Valleywag's top 10 list of top 10 lists. Oh yeah — our lazy, it's meta.

New York Times tech writers are confused, or at least a little bit lazy. Over Christmas Eve they posted to the Bits blog a post titled, "Questions We Thought, But Didn't Ask, in 2007." Then, "A Few More Questions" And then, "More Questions." Reading them, it's clear that coming up with questions required no reporting, little research and maybe five minutes. Why didn't we think of that? One very special correspondent could have actually seen his wife over Christmas. Here are their top three questions — and our helpfully provided answers.

American Apparel placed an ad in the New York Times on Friday, getting all political on us: "At American Apparel, we agreed with the President's call for immigration reform, so why has nothing been done for the last three years? ....It's time to give a voice to the voiceless. Businesses are afraid to speak to the media about immigration, frightened of reprisals by government agencies.... At what point are we going to recognize that the status quo amounts to an apartheid system? At what point will America stop living in a state of denial?" Wild! At what point will your billboards show some equal opportunity and start featuring fully-splayed half-naked men as well as women?