Stanley Fish, guest op-ed columnist for the Times, delivers some scandalous news about the book industry and its nefarious machinations:

Here they are, direct from the Times' internal facebook, your Styles combatants: At left, style editor Anita "Bonecrusher" LeClerc. At right, her boss, Mary Ann "Candybowl" Giordano. This doesn't look anything near a fair fight. And how mugshotty is LeClerc's photo? It's almost like they knew something like this was gonna happen. Sadly, this has drained the sexual component out of the story for us. Now we're just stuck thinking about that poor old lady in Queens who was assaulted and robbed. What kind of sick person attacks someone who looks like our aunt?

What is going on over at the Times? Rush & Molloy bring word of a recent gir-scuffle on the Styles desk between fashion gal Anita LeClerc and her boss, deputy editor Mary Ann Giordano. The altercation was apparently about turf issues—vague! We'd like to know more, please—and was initially restricted to harsh words. However, when Giordano attempted to defuse the situation,

• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

• NYT managing editor Jill Abramson gets into it with playwright David Hare, tells him that the Times is "the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York." We'd argue with that—but if it isn't, well, what is? Right. Also: theater people are never fucking happy with anything. [NYP]
  

"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.

The phenomenon of the wingman—you know, the buddy who will distract the fat friend of the girl into whose pants you are attempting to effect entry—made its appearance in the local papers this weekend, with a piece about Art Malov, a 28-year-old dating coach who teaches sad, lonely men the secrets of conning women into your bed. There's a lot of poignance in the article; you will not be surprised to learn that one of Malov's advisees is a computer technician who is reduced to bragging about how many phone numbers he now gets. The deepest moment of pathos comes when the aforementioned computer guy points out a fellow who seems to embody the apex of skirt-chasing.

Big trouble at the New York Times Magazine this morning, as an editors' note reveals that one of the women who appeared in last week's cover story on female Iraq veterans never served in Iraq and might have made up much of what she told reporter Sara Corbett in her interview.

Have you noticed how things are small now? The journalists over at T, the New York Times' glossy style magazine, definitely have, and when they did, they wanted to know why. Really: everything is so small! Even houses are small — have you noticed how every house these days is a pod house? It is. Same with hotel rooms and MP3 players: all pods. The T people were stumped, so in preparation for today's special travel issue, they cracked the book of history and came up with some sentences. Their findings are presented in a slideshow. As they put it in the intro text, "A new wave of budget accommodations are landing everywhere. How did it happen? Here, one plausible story."

Every weekend around this time, we ask ourselves, "why are we here?" Then we crack open the Times and learn about places that remind us "at least you aren't there." Take Los Angeles, featured in tomorrow's Arts section. Not only does the town seem to lack necessities like zoning laws and a newspaper, the ocean's garbled vomit by the shore also leaves rather anemic the lifeblood of any respectable post-industrial metropolis: i.e., art-school grads! Yet, reports Edward Wyatt:

Since 2000, according to census figures released last year, the number of children under age 5 living in Manhattan mushroomed by more than 32 percent. And though their ranks have been growing for several years, a new analysis for The New York Times makes clear for the first time who has been driving that growth: wealthy white families.

• Times Co. to increase dividend by 31%. (But whose idea was it?) So enjoy that extra third of no profits, stockholders! [NYT]
  

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about Morgan Stanley portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry showed just how persistent a thorn he's been in the New York Times' side for the past couple of years. Since June 2005, Elmasry—whose fund owns a chunk of NYT stock—has been sending letters to NYT Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., outlining his stern disapproval of how the Times is conducting its business (a lot of it relating to the Sulzberger family's control over the company) and requesting to meet with Pinch. It took ages of lobbying before Sulzberger agreed to let Elmasry come and lay it all out, which he finally did before the board last month. And it was a shit-show.

Meet Colin Breavan, 43; Michelle Conlin, 39; and Isabella Beavan, 2, your cast in the hurlyburly tragicomedy that is today's Times' House and Home section. (And is also another exhibit in how House & Home is killing Thursday Styles.) Colin Breavan, a writer of historical nonfiction, had been cast adrift by the vagaries of publishing and was looking for a new book deal. His Faustian agent thought a book about living a year without wiping might sell well. FSG thought so too.

For some reason, there wasn't a single picture of 15-year Times vet and newly-minted BizDay media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña that we could find on the internets. So we had to go in and get the one off the Times' in-house version of Facebook. Slighty doofy, yet surprisingly hot! Sure he's no purty youngster like Campbell Robertson or Nick Confessore—but with more gravitas, he'll definitely pretty up nerdy media parties. Distinguishedly graying temples! Good peek-a-boo chest hair! Hey, he's already bringing what Kit Seelye couldn't.

Our (stolen) video tour of the new Times headquarters building concludes with a look at employee workstations. Good-at-pretending-to-be-friendly NYT CIO David Thurm guides us around a sample cube. No space is wasted in these state-of-the-art reporter cages; there are plenty of nooks and crannies in which to hide your coke, and a shiny roll-out surface on which to snort it! Architect Renzo Piano has thought of everything.

TimesSelect isn't just about the witty observations of Maureen Dowd or the elaborate "I told you so"s from Paul Krugman. No, it's so much more! Including this video of human rights advocate Nick Kristof getting a haircut in Kabul!

Let's take another stroll through the new New York Times headquarters! In this installment, the always affable Times CIO David Thurm introduces us to the stunning new (non-high school style!) cafeteria. It sounds like the food is going to be so good that Alex Kuczynski will need to get lipo again.

• Read all about Hassan Elmasry, the Morgan Stanley portfolio manager who's trying to take the Times out of Sulzberger family hands, and the man responsible for tearing Pinch Sulzberger a new one at the late February board meeting. (In PowerPoint, no less!) [WSJ]
  

The New York Times is pimping to its staff a video tour of their new trophy headquarters, knowing that some of the old folks are cranky about the upcoming move. It stars Times CIO David Thurm at by far his most charming. Here's a little excerpt—let's take a quick look inside!