When the NYT Company slashed its dividend and announced ominous October revenues yesterday, we asked you, our kindly readers: Might this company go into bankruptcy? If so, when? And if not, what should they do? Many of you answered! And virtually every viable option for the company was suggested at least once. The Sulzberger family should just read the following list of your responses and pick one, depending on how optimistic they're feeling today:
The optimist:

High profile press fight! People magazine editor Larry Hackett just sent out an internal memo blasting the page one New York Times story today about People's alleged shady dealings with Angelina Jolie. Specifically, the Times cited two anonymous sources "with knowledge of the bidding" for the photos of Jolie and Brad Pitt's most recent newborns—which cost People $14 million—who said that there was an formal agreement that "obliged" the magazine to offer only positive coverage. Of course, as Hackett acknowledges, their coverage was positive; but he strongly asserts that the magazine would never "purposely slant coverage as condition for acquiring pictures." And indeed, the Times may have oversold that angle in their story. There's certainly a difference between what Jolie asks for, and what a magazine would explicitly "promise" to do. Read his full memo below:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a five-year low today, closing down nearly 450 points. And the New York Times Co. had an even worse day. The company's stock dove almost 10%, lower than it's been in decades. And just after the close of the markets came the payoff: the company is cutting its dividend to six cents per share, down from 23 cents last quarter. How bad is it? Very bad. How long can the company last before calling bankruptcy if things keep going like this? We're putting the question to you. In one sense, it's wise for the company to cut the dividend, because it needs to conserve all the cash it can get. But it's pretty apocalyptic for its stock, because it just makes it that much more unattractive to investors. The company also released its October revenues just minutes ago. How are those? Horrible! Total revenues are down 9.4% from last year, and ad revenues are down more than 16%.

♦ Roger Ailes (left) has renewed his contract with News Corp., which will keep him by Rupert Murdoch's side for at least five more years (and keep him running the show at Fox News for at least one more presidential election). [NYT]
♦ New York has fired longtime restaurant critic Gael Greene. [Feedbag]
♦ The Runway battle continues: Lifetime has sued NBC over claims it is blocking the cable channel from airing future episodes of the reality TV show. [NYP]

Cold-hearted bastards. The New York Times sent out a memo to employees this morning telling them that the 14th, 15th, and 16th floors are going to be closed over Thanksgiving weekend so that workers can finally put finishing on the wood floors—a vital job for which the paper has plenty of money. Do you know what this means? The cafeteria will be closed on Thanksgiving. Take your snack from the coffee cart and be happy, peons! Wait, that's closed too:

After two years as a reporter at the Portland Oregonian, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III will return to New York to work at his family's Times, Portland alternative paper Williamette Week is reporting. Sulzberger wouldn't comment for the paper, but his return to New York appears at first glance unrelated to staff cuts at the Oregonian. So what's the 28-year-old son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (pictured) up to? In all likelihood, trying to help to stabilize not only a faltering newspaper company but a ruptured family.

Times columnist Bill Kristol went on Fox back in June and told the world that this governor from Alaska named Sarah Palin would be the best Vice President ever! He loved her, very much, because she was a maverick. Five months later, she is a national joke, and he is a sad, sad man, trying desperately to salvage his credibility. "I met her for the second time in my life. I know we're supposed to be such great friends, but the truth is I've met her twice... I've spoken to her on the phone once. For all our great closeness," he tells The Observer, "I barely know her." Too late, Bill. You're all washed up! Since time immemorial the New York Times has kept its rich old conservative readers slightly satisfied with some token conservative voices in the Op-Ed section. For many, many years there was reliable old Bill Safire, the Nixon speechwriter, a member of the smart old educated class of Republicans who were able to write up support for disastrous policy implemented by the corrupt and incompetent with smart, almost plausible-sounding arguments. He left, replaced with John Tierney, a libertarian-leaning sort who didn't last long on the op-ed beat and now writes "researchers say a counterintutive thing" features instead. And there is David Brooks, a quietly doctrinaire Republican who fancies up his usual party line with armchair sociology. But Brooks broke with the party this year, calling Sarah Palin a cancer, leaving only poor, dumb, Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol, who tried to sell America on Sarah Palin, and ended up repeatedly embarrassing himself, over and over again, and losing John McCain his election. Now he just mumbles about hating the mainstream media, to all his mainstream media friends, in the pages of the New York Times. Already the vultures are wondering who'll replace him—you can be terribly wrong and stupid and remain a Times columnist indefinitely, but you must be terribly wrong and stupid in the service of the conventional wisdom. So Tom Friedman's Iraq columns get a pass, as does Maureen Dowd's constant stream of nonsense. But Kristol is no longer merely just a hack, he's a failed hack. No one bought his line this year. So maybe someone nutty and anti-Palin like, say, David Frum is next for the Affirmative Action Conservative Slot?

We're back from vacation and need to learn to hate again, so let's check in with famous New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks, shall we? Today, the last conservative intellectual in America is writing about this new recession we're in, and how it will make so many people sad, and mad. There is no money! Where is the money? This thing called "the market" was supposed to make the money get bigger and bigger every year forever until Jesus came back, but instead it just ate all the money, but David Brooks doesn't really want to talk about that. He wants to talk about The Middle Class! There isn't one, anymore.

The New York Times folded Play magazine yesterday, which actually had good editorial content but bad business prospects, because many of its advertisers were auto companies, and they are all crumbling and taking the media along with them. On the plus side, the NYT business section actually hired somebody yesterday! (David Segal, from the Washington Post). The paper's special magic investment fund dedicated to Biz section hiring is obviously paying off. At least the good editorial=weak advertising equation has a flipside: the vapid T fashion mag lives!:

The New York Times is folding Play, its quarterly sports-focused magazine. FishbowlNY spoke to Play editor Mark Bryant, who said that although the mag broke even last year, "The company needs to make some pretty considerable cuts going forward," and his magazine was one of them. This is a bad sign. T, the Times' fashion magazine, turns enough of a profit to prop up a lot of money-sucking newsgathering operations; the NYT doubtless hoped that Play could do the same. Not in this ad market, apparently. Scratch that off the dwindling list of lifelines for the Times. [FBNY; anybody with more info can email us.]

♦ Barack Obama's first post-election interview with 60 Minutes (an excerpt is on your left) earned the show its biggest audience in nine years. [THR]
♦ Dan Rather has spent $2 million battling CBS thus far, but it looks like his time and money may finally be paying off. [NYT]
♦ MTV's TRL came to an end yesterday, in case you haven't heard the terribly tragic news. [NYT]
♦ Rupert Murdoch's New York Post appears to have warmed to Barack Obama. "So has Mr. Murdoch gone soft on liberals—or perhaps just reacted pragmatically to Mr. Obama's sizable victory?" [NYT]
♦ The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. The flick generated $70.4 in its first three days. [Reuters]

Hysteria over protecting children from the internet swept the Times' public editor column Sunday, when reporter Jodi Kantor was criticized by no fewer than three editors for sending Facebook messages to 16- and 17-year olds, trying to find parents to interview about Cindy McCain, wife of the former Republican presidential nominee. The political editor was scared for his own kids! The standards editor made a special new rule! The public editor said she should have run smarter Facebook searches and found the kids' parents! And yet none of them seemed particularly upset at the Times reporter who interviewed a 12-year-old, at home, without adult supervision.

With the full onset of consistently declining revenues and mass layoffs, newspapers have now finally accepted the depth of their plight. Now the war wages on as to how — and whether — print can become more commercially viable through innovation. In an article discussing how industries rework themselves to stay relevant, the NYT blissfully throws doubt on her ability to survive in this economic climate. Is there at least some solution that could save the local paper?The bitter feud between Slate's Ron Rosenbaum and new media simpleton Jeff Jarvis aside, both do agree that newspapers are in deep shit. The Times' Catherine Rampell dismisses the clamor over copies of the NYT's election issue, and doesn't see the newspaper becoming "a luxury product." Newspapers are just another industry, and as currently constituted, papers are way behind the curve in ensuring their survival:

Is Martin Eisenstadt, the neo-conservative think-tanker who claimed to have spread a rumor that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent, real? Perhaps not, but then again, how do we know if the New York Times, the august journal which exposed him, is real, either? Eisenstadt, a Times article reports, is actually Eitan Gorlin, an actor playing the part of a neoconservative think-tanker. Gorlin's response on the Eisenstadt Group website he created as part of the hoax: How do we know this is the real New York Times? Times writer Richard Perez-Peña pokes at the incident's surrealism, quizzing his sources on how they, too, can prove they're not part of the hoax. But our tenuous grasp of reality is far worse than his gibes suggest.In an age of Photoshop, Iran can have as many missiles as it wants; headlines can be faked; and bodies altered beyond any relationship to the real human form. But the problem of identity goes far deeper. Stephen Glass, as a writer for The New Republic, created a website for a fake company, Jukt Micronics, for a story; Forbes exposed this lie, and countless others. But today, Glass might well have gotten away with it. Convincingly complete websites are easy to assemble. They don't even require human hands: Automated software cobbles together topical websites from republished copy scoured from the Web to trick Google into giving them free advertising revenue. And someone looking to hide their identity can now use proxy services to register domain names anonymously. For that matter, the Internet's domain-name system — the root of all online identity — is dangerously vulnerable. Earlier this year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky found a nearly fatal flaw that would allow hackers to hijacks visits to website and redirect viewers to alternate ones. That flaw has mostly been fixed, but who knows what other ones await discovery? By tricking the systems which route a request for a domain name — nytimes.com, for example — to the right server, a troublemaker might not just fake up a headline, but an entire alternate version of the Times online. Trust for media, old and new, continues to decline. Readers demand speed, punishing sluggish outlets by withholding their attention. Celerity replaces seriousness as a measure of authority. Who said what? Can you believe it? And does it matter, as long as you were the first to know?

♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]

Send Alex Kuczynski some sympathy plastic surgery gift certificates. Because the très public, cosmetic surgery-loving former New York Times high-priced-shopping beat reporter (and now sometimes Times freelancer) may be getting a divorce from her older, bazillionaire husband. Or at least Cityfile is hearing things to that effect! Kuczynski and money man Charles Stevenson have been married for six years, and had a baby by surrogate last April. But, I guess now it could be over. Cityfile's main evidence, I suppose, is the fact that Kuczynski has been laying low of late. She backed out of fashion designer Dian von Furstenberg's recent charity spelling bee (that this exists at all brings immeasurable joy/worry to my heart) and her usual consumerism-crazy Times articles have been in short supply these past few months. In fact, her most recent article was a review of actor Alec Baldwin's new book, I Never Promised You a Rainbow A Promise to Ourselves. And what is that book about? D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Sad if it's true. Though on the bright side, maybe it would leave her more time for fabulous shopping trips and, erm, Idaho orgies.

The commie pinkos behind today's liberal fantasy spoof of the New York Times have released a video communiqué! It's basically a rundown of the printing and distribution and fabulous wonderment of the stunned populace as they considered a world free of bloodshed. The best part comes half way through: Actual NYT employee: "I don't understand what statement they're trying to make. We've been all over the Bush administration since day one. We set the standard for coverage of the Iraq war!" The faceless response: "Like Judith Miller?" NYT Guy: (turns around and leaves). Ha, they're both right! The video is below:

The actual stories in The Yes Men's fake issue of the New York Times today are a little too earnestly liberal to be funny, though they're still... nifty? (And look, we know earnest liberals are the easiest group to make fun of, even easier than religious psychos, but let's give them some props for pulling the whole thing off okay? Hope, etc.) But the fake ads they put throughout the issue are a little sharper. Dr. Z makes a cameo! After the jump, five of the best ad spoofs, that have corporate America tumbling down as we speak:

♦ NBC chief Jeff Zucker is tightening making another round of cuts. This time it's CNBC, which will see its budget slashed by 10 percent. [NYO]
♦ A group of liberal activists printed up fake copies of the New York Times today to hand out to passerby in Midtown. [NYT]
♦ Gerard Baker has been named deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. [Romenesko]
♦ Katie Couric's advice for Sarah Palin: "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing." [Page Six]
♦ John McCain's first TV appearance since he lost the election translated into big ratings for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. [THR]
♦ Monday's interview with Sarah Palin was also a winner with Greta Van Susteren's On The Record earning its best ratings of the year. [B&C]

The Iraq War is over, according to the fake New York Times! This morning a cadre of volunteers has fanned out across New York City to pass out a remarkably good, faux-copy of the Times dated July 4, 2009. They've even set up an entire website with all of the liberal fantasy headlines. Universities to be free! Bike paths to be expanded! Thomas Friedman to resign, praise the Unitarian Jesus! It's not funny like The Onion, but obviously a lot of work went into this. Now we play "Who did it?" We already know!: We have done some sleuthing based on intelligence received yesterday. First of all, this stunt needed a lot of volunteers to distribute the papers. They were rallied online, via BecauseWeWantit.org. This email went out to the collaborators last night: