In Styles this week, the New York Times profiles Jared Kushner, the young owner of the New York Observer. In Styles! Why? Did Mr. Kushner start a trend? Or did he make a fashion? We may have to revisit this piece a few times! But for now: So, Kushner and the paper's editor, Peter Kaplan, recount a bonding trip to a Yankees playoff game back in the summer. Kushner reveals that two weeks earlier, he'd gone to a game and sat next to "the owner of another New York news media property," and was "astounded at his disdain for his staff." So hard to believe! People, tell us who disdains you. (P.S. Disclosures abound; for one, Weekend Gawker has interned at the Observer. Also, do enjoy the research credit at the end of the story: Happy Blitt strikes again!)

Sure, you know that Nick Kristof is a Pulitzer-winning Times Op-Ed columnist. You probably also know that he used to be associate managing editor of that newspaper. And maybe you were even dimly aware that he has a TimesSelect blog, 'On The Ground,' where he posts dispatches from his exotic visits to various underprivileged peoples. And you might recall that he picks a lucky gal (or guy! maybe) to accompany him to Africa each summer. But did you know that he is all up on The MySpace?

Let me be clear: The show is a thrill, rich and sustained. Just by existing, it makes history. But like any history, once written, it is also an artifact, a frozen and partial monument to an art movement that was never a movement, or rather was many movements, or impulses, vibrant and vexingly contradictory.

So it doesn't look like Kurt Eichenwald's check-giving ways are going to disappear from the news anytime soon. [Portions of this post referring to reporting by Debbie Nathan have been redacted for our convenience, as Kurt Eichenwald states that she'll be the subject of a defamation suit.] In response to our initial post about the affair, commenter "stephenmaturin" left a timeline of events that transpired during the reporting of the story; it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. You'll find it after the jump. [Fact-checking in caps!]

"No, no, no. You are looking WAY too straight. Gay it up for me a bit, will you, love? Like, really stereotype the hell out of it. We want to say, 'Look at me, I am the biggest ass-drinking 'mo in all of creation.' I want you to pretend there are cocks to left of you, ballsacks to the right. It's a room full of rimjobs and you're the guest of honor. Perfect! [Click.] Alright, people, we've earned our pay today."

The marketing geniuses at Calvin Klein think they can replicate the success of "generation-defining" CKOne by marketing their new smell, CKIn2U, to today's hip young "technosexuals," with lines like "She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It's intense. For right now." But are the technosexuals buying it? Huh! No! "What's most interesting about our generation is that it is very obvious when brands are attempting to market down to us when they use our own vernacular or types of personal technology," ex-College Humor rich dude Zach Klein (pictured) opined, adding "abbreviating in2u like that is lame." His friend Youngna "Gothamist food lady" Park (snapped by the Times at her laptop!) agreed: "I just imagine kids putting on cologne to sit behind their computers. That's really weird." We're withholding judgment until our Balthazar-going chief Lockhart Steele weighs in. He would totally know.

You know what's handy when going to work as an editor on the media beat at the New York Times? Having been pals in college with "future media stars" like Jeff Zucker! Oh, also, that college would be called "Harvard," a place that goes unnamed in today's in-house announcement of Jennifer Kingson's appointment as deputy media editor in the Biz section. Lil' Jeffy Zucker, now Prez and CEO of NBC, was back then the editor of the school paper, the Crimson, natch. Speaking of! We hear today's Harvard kids up at the Crimson just hired themselves an ombudsman! Hope they enjoy that.

Bad news for the boys and girls of summer at The Paper of Record:

• Real estate magnate Sam Zell will probably buy Tribune, which would be nice because it'll finally put an end to this fucking story. [LAT]
  

We knew this day had to come, but that doesn't make it any less painful to take: David Carr has hung up his Oscars-season Carpetbagger costume for another year. Now when you see David wandering around Times Square (or Soho House!) with a videocamera and acting crazy, it will be in a purely private capacity. We'll miss ya, buddy! See ya next fall.

Kit Seelye, a Times media reporter in the business section, is off the media beat after two years. She'll cover politics now—but exclusively reporting for the web. (Soon enough, won't the whole paper be? Anyone seeing a trend?) We will miss her unusually firm hairstyle.

Tough morning for former New York Times, current Portfolio, reporter Kurt Eichenwald. This morning brings an extraordinary yet difficult-to-parse Times editors' note about his famous kiddie cam-whore story from December, 2005. We already knew that Eichenwald took a while to identify himself as a reporter, so as not to spook the wee one. But now the Times says that after the reporter finally met tiny-hustler Justin Berry in person, he cut him a check for $2000. (That's like, 20 times the rate Justin charged to pose for pictures in his underwear!) What's odd is that it's never made clear why Eichenwald sent the cash, which was later repaid by a family member. For starters, wasn't the whole point of the story that the kid was raking it in?

• Wal-Mart is really, really sorry that they taped a Times reporter's calls. They don't want you to think they're Hewlett-Packard or anything. [NYT]
  

At the Times, a bit of the editorial judgment is rendered in advance of a book review based on which critic does the actual reviewing. If Michiko Kakutani takes on your novel, it's a clear signal that it's an Important Literary Effort, worthy of deep analysis and significant enough to merit a serious limning. And sometimes reviews are assigned to Janet Maslin. This was the case for Spy founder and New York mag columnist Kurt Andersen for Heyday, his new historical romp (Stevedores! Daguerreotypists! Fishmongers!). On the plus side, she grades on a much looser curve than Kakutani. So, how'd it do?

"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 New York Times mag fills a front-of-book page with a grab bag of the week's correspondence. Some of the people they print are mad, some are sad, and some are impressed. Who are these people? Why did they decide to write in? Did they read whatever they're writing about during brunch? Or, was it on a porch! Gawker Weekend will provide you with that back story.

So Laura Sessions Stepp's book Unhooked—the one that made Meghan O'Rourke fondly recall her promiscuous college daze, remember?—is getting critically date-raped. But today, the Times' Stephanie Rosenbloom sprang to her defense, giving Stepp the opportunity to respond to her critics with passive aggressive lines like "This is what I love about the bloggers. They haven't been out there interviewing young people for 10 years." Of course, Rosebloom and Stepp are natural allies: while Rosenbloom was busy letting us know there's a thing called an Evite, Stepp was introducing the world to the concept of the "wingman." We're sure that when the interview was over, there was a cathartic crying and ice cream sesh.

See that bedroom that's bigger than your studio, peon? It's never been used by its inhabitant, 5-year-old Harrison Costello. He prefers to cuddle up to his parents at night. Creepy? Well, not as creepy as the fact that a consultancy called Soho Parenting exists to address this very issue. Creepier still: Harrison's mom, Domino style director Susie Sara Costello, says that "her family's bed-hopping is 'tough on relations—I'm not going to lie.'" We'll leave the quasi-incest aside here, because we want to kiss up to Susie Sara: So, if Harrison's not using it, can we move in?

Okay, so Times executive editor Bill Keller doesn't really fetishize Nicolas Ghesqui re's inventive prints. "I'm a fan of blue jeans and T-shirts," he told WWD yesterday. So what was he doing in the front row at Balenciaga? Something to do with "a new level of editorial marketing amid stiff competition for readers and ad dollars," WWD surmises. Keller addressed Times critic Cathy Horyn's recent banning from Dolce & Gabbana (and her rumored pending ban from Vera Wang): "I always think that's self-defeating when they shut out the journalists." Well put, sir! He'll be wearing a deconstructed feathered corset by the end of the week, we just know it. This is just like his Baghdad tour, only less dangerous!

Best Times correction ever?