Newspapers sales have fallen 3 percent year-over-year. With the exception of USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, the vast majority of major papers lost subscribers. This year the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry organization that reports subscriber information, included online readership in the report. In the last two years, half of 88 papers examined showed no change or an increase in combined print and online readings. That's good news for the news industry — online readers tend to be younger and more attractive to advertisers. That's fine. Maybe more papers should follow the New York Times' example — they may be just a fancy blog, but that's what the kids are reading these days. (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

Well lookee here! Turns out we weren't too far off with our predictions that the recent price increase at the New York Times might have kicked off a circulation drop. According to the Audit Board of Circulation's six-month report for the period ending in September, daily circ at the Times fell 4.51% to 1,037,828—with Sunday circulation nosediving by 7.59% to 1,500,394, "at least partly due to a price increase," according to Editor & Publisher. Not that we're saying we told you so.

In the yet-to-be written history of women and lesbians who've done important things during what they used to call the AIDS crisis—Rebecca Brown, who wrote the best book to date about AIDS, Terry McGovern, who founded the HIV Law Project, basically the whole staff of the staff of the Center for HIV Law and Policy—has there been any greater hero than this week's Modern Love columnist, Virginia A. Smith?

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the 'New York Times.' "The Unethicist" is Gabriel Delahaye answering the same questions. See how that works?

You'll learn many things from the New York Times profile of Andy Rubin, the Google employee in charge of its secretive wireless project. That he has a retinal scanner on his front door, for example. Or that he almost struck a deal with telecom pioneer Craig McCaw before Google bought his latest startup, Android. What you won't learn? That Rubin actually has a Googlephone coming to the market. That, of course, is because there is no Googlephone

Times deputy editor and stylebook guru Philip B. Corbett is the very special host of this week's Talk to the Newsroom feature, and the Q&A has been pretty entertaining if you're a total nerd for grammar and usage. (The Life in Hell-ish "banned" phrase list is pretty great.) It's also been full of questions that the Times has answered before—in one case, quite literally! Also? Now that everyone can read nearly everything the Times has ever printed for free, there's really no reason for people to keep asking the exact same "Mr. Loaf" question.

What excitement! Next week's Jeopardy—which has some cockamamie relationship with the New York Times—will feature a category on the newspaper each day for its Tournament of Champions! Get your questions—oops, your answers—ready!
Monday, Nov. 5 - The New York Times Op-Ed
Tuesday, Nov. 6 - The New York Times Columnists
Wednesday, Nov. 7 - Blogs of The New York Times
Thursday, Nov. 8 - The New York Times Travel section
Friday, Nov. 9 - The New York Times Business section

The New York Times is now carefully allowing comments on some articles, not just blog posts. According to an in-house email from NYT.com general manager Vivian Schiller and deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, "This week we rolled out some new technology for commentary on articles. It's more discriminating than the blog-comment platform and it gives readers more control. For instance, readers can recommend comments and view them in rank order starting with the ones with the most recommendations. Editors can choose an interesting selection for readers with time to read just a few.... You'll notice that we're only putting comments on a handful of articles at first. That's because we're still building our moderation force and the tools for automated moderation. There are some important features built into the system that you can't see and that we're not using yet. For example, producers and editors will be able to designate certain users as 'trusted,' potentially allowing some comments to bypass moderation. We're excited about the chance to experiment."

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li now claims that she was the source of the New York Times scoop about Google's OpenSocial program, something we alluded to in a post yesterday about a quote from Li being scrubbed from the Times story. So, why did she say she spilled the beans? Turns out that Li got the embargo dates wrong, thinking that the information could be distributed as of last Friday, instead of this one. As for why the quote was pulled? The Times doesn't comment on its reporting or sources, but it was more likely cut for space in an edit than for any nefarious reason. If you've read one analyst quote, you've read 'em all. And given the number of other sources the Times plausibly could have had on this story, one wonders if Li isn't giving herself entirely too much credit.

Happy All Saints Day everyone! You're probably psyched to hit up some bitchin' All Saints parties tonight, right? Thankfully, the New York Times' "Urban Eye" newsletter has a hot lineup of tonight's events for all your Hollowmas revelry needs. Here's the final item in today's mailing, sent out today, Thursday, November 1, at 7:45 a.m.

Last night, when Brad Stone and Miguel Helft got the scoop about Google's OpenSocial program, they included a quote from Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. You can still find the quote using Google's search engine, but it's gone from the text of the story, and we can't find any cached version. Why? Perhaps it was cut for space in the final print version. That strikes me as curious, since space considerations don't apply to the Web, where the full version could have easily remained. More intriguing is the whispers that an unduly loquacious Li might have played a role in the New York Times getting the scoop. We're stumped. Anyone have an answer?

Some second-rate Jewish theatre troupe called the Jewish Theatre is calling the New York Times anti-semitic for refusing to review their latest, "Last Jew in Europe." Times culture macher Sam Sifton, who was delightfully blunt in his Talk to the Newsroom back in July, responds, "The Times is not reviewing... because the Jewish Theater of New York has been putting on substandard work for more than a decade and was showing no sign of improvement.... Mr. Tenenbom can cry censorship all he likes. He might be better served by writing better plays." Take that, Jews! [NYP]

Yesterday's New York Times opinion piece "Honey, I Shrunk Congress" marked the fifteenth thing shrunk in a Times headline since the release of the classic film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in 1989. To celebrate, we're taking a look back at all the other things shrunk, meeting some regular shrinkers, and crunching some numbers. Join us, won't you?

Guess what professional interrogator Deborah Solomon happened to mention when she stopped by a Columbia j-school class last week! Her New York Times mag Q&As, which caught the eye—and the cover—of the New York Press earlier this month for her standards and practices. Well, turns out the column is going to have a itty-bitty disclaimer printed before it each and every time it runs.

Delivered this weekend: Seven 50-foot birch trees to the New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue.
Lost in transit: Fog machine and wood sprites.

Do you believe in love? Perhaps you do! But you totally definitely believe in money. Because it's very hard to love when you have no money and you're hungry! The Weddings and Celebrations section of the 'New York Times' is where money and love meet, and where our Intern Alexis finds that in the mix, someone always comes out the winner.

"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.

In the just-ended third quarter, the New York Times Company claimed a 22% decrease in newsprint costs. At the same time, they claimed that operating costs are down only 1.5%. We think that's fishy! Here's why. Newsprint and payroll are typically two of the biggest expenditures at a newspaper. The company is claiming an 8% savings based on "reduction in consumption." Cutting its page size might play a part in that, but isn't entirely responsible. We suspect circulation took a hit somewhere.

Hooray, it's the open-air birch and moss garden planting weekend at the New York Times! But this just in from the Times: "Breaking News - Schedule Change for This Weekend's Tree Planting [!] For all who are interested in the tree planting this weekend, our schedule has changed due to our permits from the city. The trees will now be hoisted several hours earlier—beginning at 3 a.m.—so for all you night owls, this is your chance to shine! Weather and other factors could affect this timing slightly. We expect the activities will certainly be done by 8 a.m. at the latest."

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. Today: "[T]hink about the compulsive clickster. She returns three times in an hour, finds a new headline, clicks, thinks, 'Wait, didn't I read that before? The red thing says, "10:12 AM." But I already read some of this at 7:43 AM. Where's the new stuff?' Kind of confusing. Not so satisfying. Think of what a blog can do for her. It clearly demarcates the new stuff. It links to things we don't have, exposing layers of perspective in real time. It is fast, rich and deep. For the person in search of one-stop comprehensiveness, it might be an unpleasant adventure in ADD. [...] We actually maintain about 100 blogs now, about half of them active. Classy new ones roll out of the factory like Mercedes SUV's in Tuscaloosa."