"He chronicles the foils of Hollywood's bad girls ..." Were we the only ones who read this typo in our print edition of yesterday's Times Styles section article about P*r*z H*lt*n and thought, "Well, true enough. Highlights, you know"? [NYT]

"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.

We hear that Rebecca Dana, who left the TV beat at the New York Observer to go to the New York Times but was shanked on her way in the door, has taken Brooks Barnes's old job—or an iteration of it—covering TV for the Wall Street Journal.

This week, New York Times Dining section editor Pete Wells is being forced to answer the questions of Times readers in Talk of the Newsroom. Wells—a relative newbie to the paper, as he arrived from Details in October, 2006—apparently hasn't learned about the Times' code of omerta. In response to a reader's inquiry as to how large the Dining section staff is, Pete does the unthinkable. He answers.

New New York Times ombudsman won't say "Mr." or "Dr." and there's no one who can make him. [NYT]

Theater critic Ben Brantley is unwell: "I came down with food poisoning yesterday afternoon. I'll spare you the cause and consequences." All we need now is for Dwight Garner to run a photo of himself in a Speedo and we're declaring victory on behalf of blogland. [NYT]

Hot on the heels of this morning's second quarter earnings report was the Times Co.'s conference call, intended to explain said report. CEO Janet Robinson once again proved that she is a master of the Boston-area retail market. She just loves to bring up the opening of the new Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus in the Natick Mall! And that the Bloomingdales in Chestnut Hill moved to fancy new quarters! And like, that means more ads for the Boston Globe, ya know. But. The Bloomingdales move was completed months ago (as was the turnover of the old store to an "upscale" Macy's, if you can imagine such a thing), and we're just wondering how long she's going to beat this Nordstrom and Neiman's drum. Can those two stores alone save the Boston Globe? And then she made a fatal error. She stumbled onto our turf—thanks to our discount-loving (Jewish!) heritage.

The New York Times—both in this article and as like, individual people, at least in a few recent interactions we've had with staffers there—thinks that use of the strike tag (you know, this one) is "an ironic function... a witty way of simultaneously commenting on your prose as you create it." What total horsepucky! Sure there's a time and place for dumb strike-through jokes, or not—but really those who use it, as we do, do so to leave a record of an original inaccurate statement while adding something accurate. To regard the actual best possible system of making corrections, to cast transparency and responsibility as silliness or bitchiness, completely misses the opportunities of the internet. [NYT]

The second-quarter results from the New York Times Company just came out, and they're kind of grim. Operating profit decreased to $43.3 million—last year, same quarter, it was $86.2 million. Earnings per share decreased to $.15 per share; same period last year, it was $.37. But why? Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson said that the results "reflected the weakness in the print advertising market stemming from both secular and cyclical forces in our businesses." Ooo, good, cyclical! That means there'll be an upturn—or at least less stress?—next quarter? Uh, right?

Sometime in the year 2050, you'll be able to explain to your gay husband's adopted children's adopted children that there once was a newspaper called the New York Times and also show them the documents that explain exactly how it went down the tubes. [NYT]

"Because of an editing error, a report in the 'Arts, Briefly' column yesterday, about an Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest in Key West, Fla., misstated the title of a novel that Hemingway wrote when he lived there. It is 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' not 'From Whom the Bell Tolls.'" [NYT]

The new Times ombudsman won't take any guff from anyone, especially lefty media watchdog groups. Hoyt, who knows a thing or two about Iraq coverage, drops a chemical agent on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: "In the case of Iraq, the anti-war movement has plenty of factual material to work with. I'm astonished that FAIR would feel the need to play so fast and loose with the facts about Fallujah." [NYT]

A salvage crew picks through what remains at the old New York Times building. [NYer]

New NYT ombudsman Clark Hoyt suggests that the paper might try covering the Ochs-Sulzberger family in the same way they cover other stories. He didn't get very far with Pinch, though: "Sulzberger wouldn't talk about his family's trust in any detail, like how the family divides the income." Mmhmm. [NYT]

This weekend the Times took a look at former mayor Rudy Giuliani's tenure at the helm of the city through the prism of race. While candidate Giuliani reached out to the African American community in 1989, he lost that race (the mayoral race!) to David Dinkins. By 1993, things were different—Giuliani was almost a different person. The paper relates this telling anecdote:

Today Page Six picks up on the Times gay slur incident that we've been talking about lately—today, they name the person who supposedly called a coworker a "faggot" as assistant managing editor Michelle McNally, who's the director of photography. The person on the receiving end of her insult was a photo editor. The item also names two of McNally's deputies, who "both vehemently denied" that the insult (which was allegedly lobbed at the Times farewell party) had taken place. But there's more to the story.

In another publicity stunt designed to remind us that not all of YouTube's content is pirated from big media companies, the Google-owned online-video site has been asking its users to post videos posing the questions they'd like to ask at tonight's Democratic presidential-candidate debates. The New York Times' Kit Seeley has deigned to take notice. But in doing so, she made a major gaffe that has one of the people she wrote about accusing her of racism. Here are the details.

"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.

We're still stumped as to the identity of the Times masthead editor with the gay problem, but a Times source tells us that the paper's anti-harassment policy (which, our tipster notes, is seven years old) was reprinted in yesterday's edition of in-house newsletter Ahead of the Times, with the following introduction: "From time to time, the company likes to remind employees of its
various policies. In that spirit, we've now posted on the news administration policy Web page the company's anti-harassment policy. We encourage you to read it, which features guidelines on what to do if you have a complaint, or receive one." Curiouser and curiouser!

The New York Times joins the crowd of those breaking Scholastic's embargo on revealing anything about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In a review in today's paper, book critic Michiko Kakutani limns the final volume of the Potter series, and, presumably inadvertently, reveals a major plot point. It's kind of amazing.