Now that every department at the New York Times has moved into the new building, you're probably wondering where everyone has gone! So let's go floor-by-floor, shall we? And as we work our way up, we'll see who really matters in the Times organization.
Say you want to have one of those low-stress, non-Bridezilla weddings. You know: Your high school pal serves as the rabbi, your fave gay whips up a nice chuppah, and everybody just shows up and has a ball. If you're Times deputy editor for online journalism Ariel Kaminer, you even hire a pal to do the catering—his very first wedding job! Except your caterer, one Montgomery Knott, the hipster-genius behind MonkeyTown in Williamsburg and member of Stars Like Fleas, went and got arrested on Friday, the day before the wedding. It was for a "bench warrant that shouldn't have been a bench warrant" said Mr. Knott this afternoon by phone, somewhat cryptically. "Apparently Brooklyn arrests more people than any other bureau." (Um, GOOD.) So he did his 20 hours—which plunged the wedding into the sort of chaos that forced Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni to bartend, with Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman as his bar back. Still the "candied bacon balls" were sorta tasty, guests said. They were like gobstoppers... made of bacon?
There's an email circulating today among the ad sales people on the 19th floor of the new Times building—let's just say that it's a good thing it's summer and people aren't eating lunch at their desks as much! Or, you know... eek! Mice! The email follows.
Joe "Private Dancer" Sexton sent out a memo to his Metro staff this morning about City Room, the new blog headed up by Times favorite son Sewell Chan. Things are going swimmingly! Except it seems that some reporters need more than a gentle nudge to start contributing: "Expect that Sewell and Patrick and Jim and Lexi and I will be reaching out to you. We need breaking news updates; supplemental material that didn't make its way into the paper; off-the-beat observations and anecdotes; links to primary sources like Web pages and PDF's that can help the reader who wants more context; and more. Sometimes it's as simple as a phone call or email to us." (Wonder how the union feels about all that?) But Sexton, unlike Rick Stengel over at Time, hasn't resorted to threatening his reporters if they don't contribute to the website. Yet. The full memo follows.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by a 24-year-old Brooklyn lad named Ben Dolnick, about his summer working at the Central Park Zoo. Dolnick's first novel, Zoology, was published last month, and it's about an 18-year-old boy from Chevy Chase, Md. (where Dolnick is from, too!) who goes to work at the Central Park Zoo. In a wee review, the New Yorker wrote that "Dolnick seems to share some of his protagonist's immaturity, but he demonstrates an engaging lightness of touch." The book seems to be—we haven't read it—a pretty slight coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist barely comes of age. (It's blurbed by Jonathan Safran Foer, but still! UPDATE: We have learned that they went to the same D.C. private school.) Dolnick's doing pretty well for himself! It probably helps that Dolnick's mom, Lynn Dolnick, is Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr.'s cousin. Also, she sits on the board of the New York Times Company. Not that the Times, which seems to get its panties in a bunch about conflicts of interest and disclosures and the like, mentioned that. But there's more of this web to untangle.
New Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt passes along a reader query about columnists' outside income to editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal. Rosenthal patiently explains that columnists cannot take money for anything except books they publish, academic work, and the occasional "reasonable" speaking fee. Oh, also:
Jack Shafer on Times Digest: "The shorter New York Times, set in the same fonts as the newspaper, is the perfect brief news read, provided you're 1) not near a computer and can't download the Times Reader; 2) unable to get the regular Times; 3) extraordinarily pressed for time; or 4) in a mood to make only one hand available for reading (such as when you're in the whirlpool)." [Slate]
After yesterday's slapdash jam-job, the Times redeems itself this morning with a lengthy piece on Rupert Murdoch's ties to China. There's not a lot that comes as news to those who (for, say, work reasons) obsessively read every news story about the News Corp. mogul, but for the casual observer it's a fairly good summary. Let us break it down for you.
Both today's New York Times and New Yorker offer lengthy pieces about Rupert Murdoch. And when we say lengthy, we're not exaggerating: The New Yorker piece clocks in at 7409 words, while the Times offers a more sprightly 3868-word story. If you're interested in the Murdoch story but don't have the eight hours it would take to get through 11,000+ nouns and verbs, what's the better choice?
Last evening, the staff of the New York Times bid their old building at 229 West 43rd St. one final farewell. Staffers were allowed to bring one guest and were asked to bring their own food and wine (beer and soft drinks were readily available), though it turned out that Pinch had sprung for a whole bunch of pizza. Whew. Our correspondent reports that Metro editor Joe Sexton has some sweet hip-hop moves. Get your head around that one. The full report follows!
The other day, Radar reported on the new Times building, saying that "one section of the fourth floor, housing the education reporters, among others, lies so far removed from the rest of the building that its occupants have put up a sign reading "Welcome to Outer Mongolia." Ha! It's actually the third floor, though, and the sign reads "You Have Reached Outer Mongolia. Welcome!" And there are also a few Metro reporters scattered in there as well. One Times employee describes the education reporters as "out of the loop and humorously disgruntled about it." Thank goodness the critics aren't out there; they'd just be weepy.
Last Thursday, the Times' Styles section told us that fashion was taking its cues from the eighties. It also told us that fashion was taking its cues from the sixties. Which is it? As of today, it's apparently the sixties. Fine with us, so long as it never ever ever goes to the seventies. Because that decade was a fashion partial-birth abortion.
