I'm no cheerleader for this here website—after all, I quit! Monday is my last day! Even so, I can't help but be irritated when Real Media Outlets write total lies about Gawker—because it's just bad journalism. Why, they're worse than bloggers!
Each Friday, 'New York Times' deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman and NYT.com General Manager Vivian Schiller write an in-house email on the subject of The Future and The Internet and The Newsroom. This week: Why is everyone ragging on 'T' magazine? A rebuttal!
Blogger Rogers Cadenhead doesn't get to declare the official winner of the bet between the Dave Winer and the New York Times. Google — the company, not the search engine — will call a winner, and the Long Now Foundation, which holds the cash in the pot, will decide the issue. I know because I set this all up in 2001, by talking to Google PR chief David Krane before approaching Winer and the Times to arrange a wager on whether blogs or the paper of record would cover the big stories of this year better. The bet ran in Wired's Long Bets issue.
I don't really like to stoop to making fun of stories. You know why? Because I've written so many bad ones myself! Hi-o! Hell, everyone does! And also, who cares? That aside, it's safe to say I may never get over this opening paragraph in the Times metro section: "Across the city, delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread." INDEED. Whatever, the story is somewhat redeemed because it is about deli cats, which are the most awesome cats in the world and anyone who is against them is EVIL. What would you rather have, the occasional scratch and cat hair on your bagel or RAT-NIBBLED TRISCUITS?
Five years ago, blogger Rogers Cadenhead recalls, blogging sorta-evangelist and RSS king Dave Winer made a long bet with Martin Nisenholtz, the senior VP for digital operations at the New York Times. The proposition was this: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site." The best part is, their arguments at the time both pro and con are pretty hilarious—because they've been rendered obsolete. Though technically one of them won, there was another real winner, Cadenhead points out.
We're hearing that the New York Times has changed its mind about giving buyout packages to six of the employees eliminated in newsroom layoffs announced last month. Instead of a package that would have included benefits for a time, they'll walk away with severance packages, which don't include benefits. A source tells us that the severance packages are worth about a third less than the buyouts originally promised. In November, the Times announced it would cut a dozen newsroom positions and "a number" of clerical administrative jobs.
The SEC's website is the new location of the New York Times' corrections page. NetSuite stock is up 12 percent today after its $26-a-share IPO debut, a long-awaited victory for the Larry Ellison-backed software company, as the Times noted earlier this week. But it appears that the paper got several things wrong.
John McCain is getting pushy with the New York Times over a Jim Rutenberg story he wants killed, according to Drudge. The planned piece, six weeks in the making, alleges that McCain gave special treatment to a lady lobbyist over pending telecom legislation. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday, sources reveal, but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about jounalism [sic] ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election," Drudge says. Drama! Also—convenient! Makes us totally forget about yesterday's news that the Times had acceded to a White House request to change the subhed on their CIA story.
The blogfest that is T magazine's website has taken a turn for the greedy, as the staff has begun posting "holiday wish lists" that might as well be coded solicitations for publicists! "Fashion magazine editors may have it worse than the general population. Every day we find ourselves surrounded by beautiful objects," say the supposedly tongue-in-cheek bloggers, before going on to solicit Brunello Cucinelli wool flannel travel jackets and the harlequin dress from Miu Miu's Spring/Summer collection. ATTENTION PUBLICISTS: I WOULD LIKE A NEW PAIR OF SHOES, BECAUSE THESE HAVE HOLES, FOR SERIOUS. SEND THEM TO 76 CROSBY STREET, NY NY 10012 BEFORE MY LAST DAY, 12/31. KTHXBAI!
A photo editor of the New York Post wrote a desperate plea last night: "I am on URGENT hunt for images of the (now dead) NY times Bureau dog Hentish and two other dogs that are also in the NY times Bureau, Itchy and Scratchy. (See Reuters story below) I need something today- Dec 18th. Might any of you have any images of them from years past or... know any freelancers shooting in Iraq right now that you can recommend me to email right now. Perhaps one of them might have some images." WHO WILL KEEP NEW YORK TIMES DOGS ITCHY AND SCRATCHY SAFE FROM MURDEROUS BLACKWATER NOW? By the way, we want puppy pics too—and we don't pay that standard photo rate! We pay nothing!
Now that New York Times staffers are all settled in their fancy new building with the indoor arboretum and the finicky windowpanes, we wondered what the company might be doing to impress upon employees that their comforts and convenience remain priorities. As it turns out, the Times HR department wants everyone to know they're still listening. "We recently implemented some changes to better suit the needs of our employees," reads today's in-houseTimes newsletter [PDF link]. For instance! Bike racks are promised! Name plate holders for the copy desk too! Also, in the interest of convenience, staircases are now numbered "on the inside railing on each staircase—now when walking between floors you can easily know your location." Pardon us for saying so, but aren't well-marked means of egress, you know, prerequisites to passing city building and fire codes? We decided to poke around in the code to find out, and hey, how about that! They totally are.
It's amazing how "He never acted like he was from The New York Times" seems to be a high sort of compliment you can pay a fella! That comes from today's obit of Douglas Kneeland in the Chicago Tribune; he was an editor at the Trib from '81 to '93, after spending 22 years at the NY Times. So reading this has a sense of: Oh, someone finally said it! This thing happens to some people—not all! Not at all all!—where their life's ambition is to work at the Times because it is The Top Of The Heap, and why not, people are ambitious, and obviously these people are often very smart and extremely skilled, and then they get there and they find out that in many ways it is just a job and has workplace issues just like any other workplace and then this slightly warped thing happens over some time as they think "Okay, so what now?" and "Is that all there is?" and they become a little hostile/defensive/wary/bossy?
New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue has signed a new contract with CNBC and is very proud of this. Here's our 100-word version of his video introduction:
Each Friday, 'New York Times' deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman and NYT.com General Manager Vivian Schiller write an in-house email on the subject of The Future and The Internet and The Newsroom. This week: "The number of people coming to our website has really popped. The TechCrunch blog, a respected source, attributes this to the dismantling of our Times Select pay wall. It's reasonable as a hypothesis but premature as a conclusion. Lots of things affect Web traffic so it's hard to isolate individual factors. One thing that obviously has a big impact is news. Here's another, maybe not so obvious: Page weight.... In June, the home page took an average of 1.52 seconds to load. Heavy. For September, the first month our new page-lightening technology was fully installed, the load time dropped to 1.18 seconds, roughly a 22% improvement even though our page views grew by 19% over the same period (574 million in June to 683 million in September). Our performance has continued to improve since then: October: 1.15 seconds, November: 1.14, and so far in December: 0.96, while traffic continues to grow."
Finally, an entire website devoted to our favorite cheap "this thing looks like that thing" posts! "The Times they aren't a changing" seems to have been at it for a month now, but it wasn't until today that its enterprising (Post-employed) proprietor brought it to our attention. The lesson, learned time and time again, is that things were so much awesomer back in the day. 2007's Putting on Weight for Football Glory vs 1910's A game for fat boys? We know which one would make it to the top of our most emailed list. In the interests of fairness, though, we should note that no one is immune to this curse of repetition. Much like n+1, we've dug through the lengthy archives and found a number of ancient Gawker blabberings that read suspiciously familiar.
