Oooh, this looks like a new column tagline (a search reveals none previous, at least) at the Times in the Escapes section: "Your Second Home." Really? Mine? Are you totally sure? [NYT]

You can teach old media new tricks. The New York Times posted its first video to the editor sent in by film maker Charles Ferguson as a rebuttal to an Op-Ed on the disbandment of the Iraq army. [Editor & Publisher]

Times deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, in one of his weekly memos to the staff about "Innovation," lays this deepness on you (emphasis ours): "Times have changed. Our online storytelling skills have evolved to the point where you really can get the whole story without reading a newspaper article. It's a remarkably rich experience that goes well beyond using video or maps or pictures to tell a story—something we (and others) have done well many times. The innovation lies in putting them together in a way that tells the story with all the nuance, comprehensiveness, authority and depth that define The New York Times. (It's hard to imagine online storytelling at this level coming from a non-integrated newsroom. Neither 'newspaper people' nor 'web people' could have done it alone.)"

Is the rate that the New York Times gave MoveOn for their full-page ad—$65,000, when the open rate is listed at $181,692—really going to turn into a scandal? Maybe, because wife-hungry proponent of fetus-killing Rudy Giuliani wants in now! Well, really, he just wants the same good rate they got. (Cheapskate.) Oddly enough, Rudy Giuliani is not either a registered 501(c)(4) nonprofit—like MoveOn, and the NRA!—or going through firms that buy ad space in bulk, so he probably won't get it! Oh also he's super-rich!

The Internet, despite its vast repositories of knowledge, has made us stupid. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans know less about current events now than they did in 1989. Too many distractions? Well The New York Times is looking to inform all the Web's denizens, or at least guilt them into scanning RSS headlines. It's launched a Facebook App dubbed The New York Times News Quiz. After a answering five questions based on the day's headlines, takers are awarded a "Times IQ" and ranked against their friends and collective Facebook users. Brilliant move. Even cheaters will end up learning something. No one wants to look like an idiot in front of friends.

This photograph by Beatrice De Gea that ran with Cathy Horyn's review of the Oscar de la Renta show did not show up online for some reason, so we wanted to keep you informed. Hot for fall: Strapless silk crepe gowns with a drape back. On a skeleton.

The New York Times Company announced its August revenues today, and each of their divisions is trending pretty much as expected—though ad revenues for The New York Times Media Group were up very slightly over August last year, on the back of fashion, hotel and tech ads, as opposed to July, which was down nearly 3% over last year. But more of the same in general: internet ads up! New England ads down. About.com ads still up. Sort of related: stock in the toilet. Most interesting to us: In July, TimesSelect had 225,100 paying customers. As of August, it had 226,800. That is exciting growth of 1700 paying customers! That is somewhere between $7,076.25 and $13,515 dollars, depending on whether folks bought by the month or by the year, which is like half of Maureen Dowd's expense account this month.

Note to set-crashers: "Gossip Girl," according to no parking signs, is shooting off Madison Square Park tomorrow, circa E. 25th Street or so, so you can go see the shallow for yourself. The T.V. show, which debuts next week and is about private school hissy fits between power-hungry bitches and date rapists and Upper East Side youngster alcohol consumption and a tawdry New York semi-blog, is getting a ton of advance, including in today's Times, even though it's on CW, one of those channels we don't really associate with a number. I've seen the pilot. It gives me that terrible trashy super-eww end times feeling. This means that it will be an incredible success.

You won't find it on the Wayback Machine's copy of the New York Times' September 11, 2001 front page, or on the Times' own September 11th "Times Topics" page. You won't even find it on Nexis, and you can barely find it on Google. But here is what we believe to be the first full story on the World Trade Center attacks by the New York Times. It's rough and unusual—a fascinating document. [NYT]

Capitalization-averse Times Metro head Joe Sexton has shared the happy news: Times reporter Jodi Rudoren and her comedian husband Gary are the proud new parents of twins! Sexton notes in the office memo that he doesn't think "they have settled on names. but i believe jodi has backed off her naked effort at career advancement and decided not to go with bill and jill." (That's Times boss-folk Bill Keller and Jill Abramson. Funny, creepy, or funny-creepy? Hard to tell!) Anyway, while we know that the Rudorens have plenty of expertise when it comes to choosing names, we thought we'd all pitch in and put together a list of suggestions? We'll go with Dillinger and Gingerly. Your thoughts? Full memo follows.

Yikes! Joyce Wadler unloads on the Times blogs about 9/11 stories: "The thing about these 9/11 stories, they seem to me to have become war stories, entertainments, the thing you trot out at a dinner party. What will it be, the time Mel Gibson told me to buzz off in New Zealand, or the one about standing there with the guy whose girlfriend was trapped watching the towers collapse? Not that I can bear talking about the towers. Too painful. O.K., twist my arm. I'll whip right along as fast as I can to the bodies, because that's what everybody wants, in the movies or in life, the bodies."

Melena Ryzik, the one-time sharp-elbowed Times Boldface Names party stringer who went on to write that paper's daily culture email Urban Eye, has gone fulltime for the Times culture desk. We hear Urban Eye is looking for a new... email-blogger? Direct-mailer? What shall we call these new modern forms of journalism? Better find out fast, because these are the jobs of our time. Update: We hear she's keeping Urban Eye as part of the new job. What can't she do???

Unless Apple and Treo get their respective acts together, David Carr and Joe Nocera are going to go elsewhere for their MP3 player/smartphone needs. And then write about it. [NYT]

Are you on pretty and somewhat plastically-reconstructed Times reporter Alex Kuczynski's email list? If you are, you'd better get cracking, because she has some columns coming up over there and she's got absolutely nothing. Her plea includes this priceless bit: "Next subject: Art! Any thoughts on art would be greatly appreciated." P.S. Later today we are writing some posts about things! Any of your thoughts on "things" would be totally appreciated!

"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.

So you saw that big spread about the new breed of socialites—you know, the ones who have "jobs" and even babies sometimes!—in the Times magazine, right? Did you notice anything... missing?

"A report on Oct. 24, 1988, about the marriage of Amy Levine and David Abrams, misstated where the bride received her undergraduate degree. She graduated from Brown University, not Boston University. Amy Abrams only recently called attention to the error." [NYT]

Important people who have visited the Times, in photos in the executive conference room.

The table in the New York Times executive conference room. It's covered in leather.

A Times plate, and plants, at the entrance to their executive floor. Very Columbus, Ohio, somehow.