Last week, Keith Kelly claimed that the New York Times will finally end the long national joke that is TimesSelect—you just know Maureen Dowd is cursing those Freakonomics guys right now for being able to refuse to have their blog behind the TimesSelect pay wall!—and a quick look at the just-out July numbers confirms that the core group of 225,000 or so people who signed up to pay for the service in the first place are pretty much the same people who still subscribe. (Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.) Whenever it does get shut down, it'll be a speck of egg on the faces of Times CEO Janet Robinson and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. But the failure of TimesSelect is probably the least of their worries right now: Their ad revenue, especially in the Regional Media Group (all those little papers they own in places like Lakeland, Florida) and classifieds across the board, is having a bit of a summer slump.

The spin-doctoring of Wikipedia, the user-written online encyclopedia, continues apace. Wired is keeping track of the mostscandalous edits, including some lengthy insight into George W. Bush. This nuanced assessment of the president, "Jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk," originated from within the corporate network of The New York Times. [Wired]

We hear that New York Times Business honcho Larry Ingrassia is trying to lure fired Portfolio deputy editor Jim Impoco (whose bio is still on Portfolio's website) back to his old Times home in Biz. That would be an interesting, if not entirely unpredictable, turn of events. (Where is there to work, anyway?) And they have something in common. When Ingrassia left the Wall Street Journal for the Times, one of the great benefits for him was getting away from Lipman.

Did you read that article in the Times magazine about couples therapy? Poignant, right? I cried at the end. And I had to wonder: is the dream of finding lasting love hopeless? [NYT]

There are some mornings when you open the paper and see a story that fills you with dread, because you know that, no matter how repellent—or, because it is just so repellent—everyone will be talking about it. And so we had a flash of such anguish on Saturday, when we caught the piece about Billy and Debbie Bancroft, a family who summer in the Hamptons and rest-of-the-year on the Upper East Side. The article caught the Bancrofts in a moment of party crisis.

On the left, Craig Newmark, the filthy-rich founder of Craigslist, the site that has, some say, decimated the newspaper business by making classifieds ads irrelevant. On the right, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, who, rumor has it, has decided to drop its subscription-only TimesSelect service. No word on if this was taken mere moments before Sulzberger decided to throttle Newmark, on behalf of wealthy newspaper families everywhere. Given Newmark's tendency to bloviate endlessly, baselessly, and tediously, in a monotone drone, on what he sees as biased reporting, we'd hardly blame Sulzberger for anything he did. (Photo by Esther Dyson)

Times TV-watcher Virginia Heffernan reviews VH1's new reality series 'Douche School': "[I]t's no wonder that Mystery has a reputation for getting results, turning schlubs into ladies' men. (Neil Strauss, a former reporter and critic for The New York Times, chronicled Mystery's methods and adventures in his best seller "The Game." He was also won over to the technique, and used it to seduce women himself.)" [NYT]

Now that he owns the Wall Street Journal, will Rupert Murdoch go after the Times? Former Post publisher Ken Chandler says yes. "I would expect that he would be very aggressive on ad rates, and I would also predict that he would be very aggressive on cover price, whether it's home delivery or newsstand." It'll be neato to see who goes free first, the online Journal or TimesSelect. [LAT]

"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.

New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse is afraid that if she appears on C-Span she might reveal the paper's secret agenda to force abortions on everyone. [NYP]

Fake Brad Stone is doing a passable job of celebrating the career of the ruggedly handsome New York Times reporter who outed Fake Steve Jobs. Passable. I mean, I like the idea of supplanting the Pulitzer Prize with a new "Stoney" award. But Fake Brad could do so much more. He could, for example, burst into song. With apologies to George Thorogood — and, while I'm at it, to Brad Stone, Fake Brad Stone, and my readers — Valleywag presents a rock-and-roll celebration of our favorite Timesman. Here are the lyrics to "Brad to the Stone":

"New Yorkers think the format of the New York Times is sacred. I've never understood this. When read on the subway, the inky and oversized Times formerly required either the expert paper-folding skills of an origami champion or a ruthless willingness to elbow fellow passengers in the eye. So what would be so wrong with making the paper a little more compact, kind of like a magazine?" [LAT]

New York Times Critical Shopper stand-in Cintra Wilson takes a look at Phi, the Soho clothier that "showcases the artistry of the meticulously trained Norwegian designer Andreas Melbostad." Then it gets less penetrable: A reader dared us to translate the piece's most harrowing paragraph.

"The Wall Street Journal is the greatest newspaper in America and one of the greatest in the world," said Rupert Murdoch in a conference call concerning News Corp's 22% rise in annual profits yesterday. "That's why we put such a premium on it and why I spent the better part of the last three months enduring criticism normally levelled at a genocidal tyrant." Poor thing! We're sure he only expected the kind of soft-pedalled criticism his papers generally direct at the tyrants in China. Anyway, what's gonna happen to Dow Jones once they hand Rupe the keys?

Brad Stone, the ruggedly handsome Timesman who outed Fake Steve Jobs, explains how Apple drove Forbes editor Dan Lyons to starting the faux-Apple CEO blog. [New York Times Bits Blog]

What sort of person reads the New York Times? The comments section from a post about this morning's commuting issues on the paper's City Room blog might provide a clue. Since the Times doesn't seem to do it, we've gone ahead and picked out Gold Star recipients from the wealth of worthy insights the paper's readership provides. Enjoy!

The Times' new Freakonomics blog just launched today, and boy did it come in with a bang! Steven D. Levitt wants to know what you would do to maximize terror if you were a terrorist with limited resources. Don't worry, though: "Consider that posting them could be a form of public service: I presume that a lot more folks who oppose and fight terror read this blog than actual terrorists. So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur." Okay, Steve! Hmm... we would start by making Maureen Dowd's content completely free to everyone on the Internet. That or just wait for a short yet intense rainstorm.

First Fake Steve Jobs went to Forbes.com; now Freakonomics, the economics blog, has relocated to the New York Times website. The assimilation of blogs into mainstream media continues apace. [Freakonomics]

Rod Townsend records the gays in and around their natural environment of Fire Island and reports back. This is the time, and this is the record of the time. Put your hands over your eyes.

Sources at the Times tell the Post that the paper is ready to shut down TimesSelect and return Maureen Dowd et al to their free, unfirewalled glory. [NYP]