A week after launching, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal remain the bestsellers for Amazon.com's e-reader, Kindle, but Time magazine has dramatically fallen to 12th place and continues to fall. Why? The display technology, eInk, is better than traditional displays at approximating the experience of text on a page, but the high-contrast, monochromatic screen is lousy at displaying images. The Kindle version of Time omits the images because of this, and Time magazine's appeal is as much in pictures as in words.

About an hour ago, New York Times staffers received a holiday gift from executive editor Bill Keller—an announcement of layoffs! The cuts will come from the newsroom "for the first time in recent memory," according to the memo. A dozen "support positions" will be eliminated from the newsroom, along with "a number" of clerical administrative jobs; next year, several admin management positions will be cut. The Times apparently put a hiring freeze into place several weeks ago, and "except for those jobs that are critically important to our future ambitions, we intend to enforce it," Keller writes. Full memo after the jump.

New York Times media beat wunderkind Brian Stelter ever so gingerly puffs out 700 words today on how Nikki Finke owns the writers strike story and everyone knows it. Of course, when your subject's this good at tooting her own horn, you might start to wonder why you're bothering to toot it for her: "Since the strike began, Ms. Finke has published 142 posts about it. She said she had worked almost around the clock for three weeks, and had fallen asleep at the computer four times. She estimated she had received 2,000 e-mail messages a day." Quantity is the new quality!

"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.
This week, a homeowner is so far up in his neighbor's business he should be paying rent, and some bro in Texas has this bro who cleans pools but things are totally not chill what with that pool-related committee appointment, y'know?

As we mentioned earlier, Fox News anchor Shephard Smith is raking it in, to the tune of $7 million per year in a recently-inked deal with his network. According to today's story from New York Times media reporter Bill Carter, "Mr. Smith would be making more than anyone at CNN—if reports of $5 million for Anderson Cooper and $6 million for Lou Dobbs are accurate." Did Carter forget that in 2002, the Timesran a piece in 2002 about CNN talkshow host Larry King's potential $14 million salary? Perhaps. Harder to believe is that he forgot the piece the Times did way back in 1998 about King's earnings, which the paper reported at $7 million. He wrote it himself!

"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.

Beatblogging.org is a new site about hybrid forms of collaborative information gathering backed by thirteen credible news publications including Wired.com and the San Jose Mercury News. The premise:

The New York Times will celebrate its new headquarters twice—first this Thursday for employees, with "complimentary coffee and tea all day," and then, you know, a party for the actual fancy people next Monday. That's the party during which the building will "limit access" to staffers, it sounds like, which should make that whole "coming to work to get your job done" thing mildly irritating. Or fun! For reporters, sorta like wending your way out of the Green Zone, except with cocktails and Gail Collins and Gay Talese instead of IEDs and "insurgents."

A silver lining in the disappearance six months ago of 3-year-old Madeline McCann while on vacation with her family in Portugal? Sales for tabloids covering the case are up, says the New York Times! The struggling public relations industry has gotten a boost! Well it's about time someone came up with a viable solution for saving the communications industry. You can bet the U.S. tabloid editors are reading this and wondering which toddler to nab first.

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the 'New York Times.' Each week, Gabriel Delahaye's "The Unethicist" will respond to the same questions as "The Ethicist." But you see: His answers, they may be different!

Another great moment in newspaper subject anonymity descriptors: "'It's very clear that people are taking nicer vacations,' said one Google engineer, who asked not to be identified because it is also not Googley to talk about personal fortunes made at the company." Heh. (Also! The Google massage gal retired a multimillionaire! Go on: Slap yourself. [NYT]

Each Friday, NYT.com General Manager Vivian Schiller and 'Times' deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman write an in-house email on the subject of The Future and The Internet and The Newsroom.As of 4 a.m. today, when this week's email was sent, more than 1000 folks had declared themselves "Fans" of the New York Times on the paper's new Facebook page. Here are some of the Facebook comments:"'NYTimes ... Freakonomics, Ethicist, Chess, Pogue, and all the news. Best!'
'Hi NYT. I try to never miss your daily e-output. ...'
'NYT, the nation's newspaper.'
'NYT rules!'
'Oh NYT how I love you. ...'
'Yes! The NYT is my religion.'
And this, from one Max Schindler of Mountain Lakes High School (Ah, the
elusive young reader): 'I love the nyt, more than anything else.'"

Hillary Clinton still totally hates New York Times reporter Patrick Healy; he wrote a piece about her relationship that she's never gotten over. (2008 is gonna be a long year for him!) Incidentally, according to Pat's recent bio, he is "single." Race ya! [NYO]

How does it feel for former Timesman Charlie LeDuff to be unemployed and raising his kid—does he miss the "late-night cocktails, accepting prizes, speaking at prestigious universities"? Well!

The Q&A session at the Computer History Museum last night was billed as a talk between former Apple evangelist turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and former anonymous blogger turned book shill Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs. But it quickly turned into a sordid three-way. Brad Stone, the New York Times scribe who outed Lyons as Fake Steve joined the two on stage, and what was billed as the "Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs" turned into a celebration of Apple, blogging, and Dan Lyons's massive mancrush on the real Steve Jobs.

Digg is close to announcing its sale to a major media player for $300 million to $400 million, according to sources close to the company, I hear. When I floated this Digg rumor past some knowledgeable friends, several scoffed: "When isn't Digg up for sale?" It's true: The news-discussion site is perpetually in talks — but we hear the price tag always sinks potential deals before they're consummated. CBS, for example, backed off, with effervescent dealmaker Quincy Smith citing the media company's bubbly $280 million purchase of Last.fm as the reason it couldn't bid a high price for Digg. Things are different now, though.

New York Times restaurant critic (and totally self-appointed head language bitch on campus of us all!) Frank Bruni so rightly rails against the "semantic pox" of restaurantspeak today. Examples: The use of the first person singular ("How are we enjoying the quail?"); the overusage of "enjoy" ("How are we enjoying the quail?"); and pleonastic phrases such as "Pardon my reach." [NYT]

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller finished War & Peace yesterday! Which means he read he the whole thing in a week, while gallivanting around Iowa following Presidential campaigns and comparing all the candidates to doomed Tolstoy figures and imaging old Leo "tut-tutting from the press section" at all the idiot Iowans foolish enough to believe that the suit they nominate will have any power to affect the inexorable march of history. ['War and Peace' on the Campaign Trail [NYT]

Odd! The New York Times article on the heinous horrible awful-sounding new Facebook Ads: "Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. So each user's news feed will contain items like 'Bobby Smith is now a fan of Toyota Prius' or whatever." Or whatever! Ha! (Wow, Facebook is so over now!) Also: Did they not want to mention that NYTCo is paying big bucks to be (along with CondeNet and Crest Whitestrips) one of the "brands and companies launching with Facebook Ads"? [NYT]

There seems to be a sudden rush of New York Times employees onto Facebook—including Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher. He has 61 friends! But Times spokesbot Catherine Mathis is not among them. What up? And: Send us screenshots please! We are loving his business casual picture! Update: Ah ha! The Times is a "partner" in "Facebook Ads", which is going live tonight. It makes more sense now!