If you can find a bunch of loosely-connected references to a certain subject floating around the zeitgeist, you can write a trend piece! Today's "Move Over, My Pretty, Ugly Is Here" in the NYT's Styles is the pitch-perfect example. A truly bad, meaning typical, trend piece can be broken down into pure science. The first thing you need? A contrarian question or statement! ("Is ugly the new pretty?") Got that? Here's a step-by-step checklist to writing the rest:Now that you've got your contrarian question or statement, the Times editors are going to be on your ass about getting facts and "proof" of this trend existing. Not as highly anecdotal as the Observer, though—you'll have to call in all sorts of experts. Ask yourself:

Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, it's true. But it is surely unexpected that a Supreme Court justice, of all people, would have to wait so long for deliverance from reckless cruelty. Over and over and over again, year after year since 1980, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had to endure the sight of her name carelessly rendered "Ginsberg" or some similarly awful facsimile in the pages of the Times. Would the paper deign, even once, to run a correction? No, it would not. Any formal objections were presumably, well, overruled. Until now.

Despite the avalanche of media layoffs, (Gannett, Time Inc., and Business Week publisher McGraw-Hill have all announced major job cuts this week) New York Times executive editor Bill Keller bucked the trend by doing his best to pour cold water on our earlier tip about 20% layoffs coming to its 1,200-strong newsroom. Per the Observer, he told his staff, "I do not see another round of newsroom reductions on the horizon," and that he had access to some sort of special "investment fund" for new hires on the business desk. He even gave a non-denial denial of our original item: "Consider the source." Okay then! But what we're still hearing is that Keller's editorial side of the paper is in the midst of a big fight with the business side over the timing and size of staff cuts. So, while layoffs may not be on his horizon, they are for the people looking at the numbers.The scenario sounds reminiscent of the three-year, knock-down, drag-out battle at the L.A. Times that led to three different top editors stepping down rather than implement the job cuts demanded by Tribune Co. executives staring at dwindling circulation and advertising trends. Eventually, management won (who'd a guessed it?) and the LAT has been shedding jobs ever since. And in another parallel to the ongoing Tribune saga, we also hear that some in the NYT executive suite have broached the topic of putting prize New York Times Co. assets (such as its office building, its stake in the Boston Red Sox, About.com, regional papers) on the block to raise enough cash to take the company private, which, considering the five-year, 80% swoon of its stock price to a $1.4 billion market cap, is becoming an ever cheaper proposition.

Patrick Swayze, like other media and entertainment personalities, opted to work through his treatment for pancreatic cancer. The Times got the first interview with Swayze since his diagnosis, and reported he's working 12-hour days on his TV show, has restored some healthy bulk to his physique and missed less than two days work. But it also indicates Swayze's doctors are still battling his disease, which kills 95 percent of patients within five years. The actor couldn't help but sound a contradictory note amid the Times' reverentially upbeat story:

God bless John Markoff's ethics-addled heart. The veteran New York Times reporter sucks up industry-spin bullshit, fake quotes and all, then repackages it as truth I can cut and paste. Why is Windows 7 suddenly in the news? Same reason Microsoft's cloud-based Office knockoff, whatever it's called, was also demoed to developers in Los Angeles this morning:

♦ The battle over Project Runway rages on: Harvey Weinstein is now claiming that Bravo intentionally undermined the success of Season 5 by changing the show's airtime, running "mundane and unappealing" ads, and "revealing spoilers about future episodes." [THR]
♦ Barack Obama will appear on The Daily Show tomorrow night. [AP]
♦ The New York Times is not running out of money, say execs at the paper. [NYO]
♦ MSNBC moved into second place in the primetime cable news race, beating CNN for the month of October. [THR]

Despite the economic meltdown, and despite having its debt downgraded to junk status, the New York Times Company does not plan any more layoffs, Times editor Bill Keller told staff. There had been rumors of a 20 percent headcount reduction, but according to Keller's prepared remarks, as presented by the Observer, the paper thinks it can get by with some extreme belt-tightening. "There will be no luxuries and little comfort," Keller said rather darkly in the midst of a sugary pep-talk. That still doesn't explain how the Times Company will pay the half-a-billion dollars it has coming due over the next couple of years.

I've been amused by the vast number of people who have uncovered Paul Boutin's dirty secret: The guy who just told Wired's 700,000 readers to kill their blog writes for a blog. Actually, a gossip rag, but come on. The real reason Paul wrote "Kill Your Blog"? So he would never, ever, ever have to write another servicey how-to-write-blogs article for the New York Times's Circuits section.

"At Seesmic, a video blogging service, the day of reckoning — when it runs out of the $6 million it raised in May — will come in three years. To make the money last, Loïc Le Meur, the chief executive, recently laid off seven employees, or one-third of his staff, and cut all projects not directly related to the video service." Great messaging, Loic. Now for the bad news: No video blogging service will get its picture in the NYT until Web 3.0.

♦ The New York Times has endorsed Barack Obama, not surprisingly. [NYT]
♦ If Bravo loses Project Runway, there's always the copycat show Fashion House to fill the void. [NYP]
♦ Maer Roshan's Radar magazine has folded. [Gawker]
♦ OK! has a brand new editor, publisher and executive creative director. [NYP]

After Moody's threatened to downgrade the New York Times Company's debt to junk status Thursday, Standard & Poors went ahead and actually made such a move, bringing to reality a development foretold fully two months ago by Bloomberg. The Times Company is only now considering reducing its outsized dividend to shareholders, including most prominently to the Sulzberger family that controls the company. Having failed one test, involving credit, the Sulzbergers now face another, involving their hold on arguably the most important journalism franchise in the country.

Oh, this is really not what you want to hear if you are a fan of the newspapers, or journalism as a whole, or especially if you're an investor in the NYT Co.: In the wake of shitty third-quarter earnings, the ratings service Moody's is warning that it may downgrade the company's debt to junk status. It's currently at Baa3, the lowest rating before junk. A downgrade would make it even harder for the company to borrow money, which—without going into a lot of financial mumbo-jumbo—is not what they need right now (Pictured: their year-to-date stock price). Financial mumbo-jumbo quote from Moody's analysts below:

Yesterday the New York Times had an anthrax scare at its headquarters. White powder in an envelope! The lobby was closed. People were barred from the main elevators. Who knows how many grammatical errors were made by scared and distracted reporters? Turned out the white powder was "some kind of pebbles." You know what? All this irrational anthrax fear is going to have to stop. Think about it: A lone nut was able to effectively seal off the entire New York Times building—and get an entire floor evacuated—by filling up an envelope with some fish tank pebbles or something. The same thing happened to the Times a month after 9/11, and they evacuated the entire newsroom. Also, "since then, there have been several other cases of suspicious materials being sent to The Times. None turned out to be harmful." It doesn't take much extrapolation to figure out that you could cost the NYT millions of dollars over the course of a year with just a box of safety envelopes and two scoops of baking soda. (And the Times can't afford it!) And really, is anthrax still a thing? It takes an incredibly sophisticated scientist to produce weapons-grade anthrax, and we haven't had any real anthrax attacks since that one rash we had several years back. It's basically the skyscraper equivalent of being made to remove your shoes when you go on planes. One single dude ruined it for everyone. So our suggestion: If you receive some powder in the mail, calmly call the cops. Don't shut down the building. Don't evacuate everyone. A decent actuary will tell you that, hey, in the long run your odds are extremely good. And that's what the New York Times stands for: facts, statistics, and a life chained to a desk. Back to work! [We reserve the right to change our minds when we receive anthrax here.]

♦ Cuts have arrived at Hearst: Cathie Black (left) is "going floor by floor at the Hearst Tower to trim costs and staff positions." [WWD]
♦ Lloyd Grove talks to Tina Brown about her new site and the economic climate: "It's pretty scary. It's scary, scary, scary." [Portfolio]
♦ The New York Times Co. reported profits fell 51 percent for the quarter amid the drop in advertising sales. Traffic to the Times website, however, is up. [Bloomberg, AP, NYO]

How do you boost interest in your struggling newspaper during these challenging economic times? You get a rock star to write an Op-Ed column! The man who oversees the New York Times' editorial pages, Andrew Rosenthal, says that Bono will write a regular Op-Ed column beginning in 2009. [Radar]

This is fun. Whenever the crazy culture wars heat up, someone starts mailing dangerous white powder to senators, newspapers, and banks. A New York Times human resources exec just sent an email around to the office staff warning of a suspicious white power found in an envelope addressed to the newspapers. The cops are there and the lobby is closed. Click through for the email. From: NYTIMES MAIL Date: Oct 22, 2008 12:24 PM Subject: Note from Dennis Stern re the Building To: NY TIMES NOTES Folks, At about 11:30 a.m. today an employee on the 13th floor of our headquarters building in New York opened an envelope addressed to The New York Times. A white granular substance was in the envelope. The New York City police were called and are now on site investigating. The 41st Street side of the lobby is closed but people are able to get in and out of the building. We will keep you updated on any developments. Dennis

♦ Bill O'Reilly has signed a new four-year contract with Fox News worth $10-12 million a year. There is good news, though: His radio show may be coming to an end. [NYDN]
♦ More bad news for Harvey Weinstein: A handful of senior execs at The Weinstein Co. have announced their departures. [THR]
♦ How are monthly business magazines keeping up with the financial crisis? They're not, really. [NYO]
♦ The offices of the New York Times received an envelope this morning containing a "white granular substance." [Radar]

It's a predictable routine: Write about Glam Media, Samir Arora's dangerously bubbly online-advertising startup, and get bombarded by comments from website operators for whom Glam sells ads. The latest victim: Saul Hansell of the New York Times, who dared to point out that most of Glam's traffic comes not from the kind of high-quality, editorially driven websites his salespeople promise to advertisers, but from horoscopes, social networks, and gaming sites. Two Glam publishers promptly weighed in. It almost makes one wonder if, like a political campaign, Arora gins up faux grassroots complaints. (Valleywag has attracted its own reliable Glam commenter, AretinaAegeus.) Like a well-done Astroturfing, as the process is known in politics, the comments seem genuine enough — original wording, no cutting-and-pasting of talking points. But the process may backfire on Arora. Goaded by the commenters, Hansell updated his piece with a more concise — and damning — explanation of why Glam may be scamming its advertisers:

♦ The Rachel Maddow publicity machine rolls on (not that we mind, of course): According to today's Times, she's a "fresh face," MSNBC execs adore her, and her show's ratings have defied all expectations. [NYT]
♦ For reasons we will never understand, Fox & Friends is now more popular than CNN's American Morning and MSNBC's Morning Joe combined. [LAT]
♦ Sarah Palin will sit down with Brian Williams tomorrow. [TVNewser]

The Times ran a special editors' note this morning accusing one of its freelancers of twisting the truth "to fit his theme, contrary to the Times' standards of integrity." The writer, Paul Burnham Finney, apparently distorted an American Psychological Association survey to reflect his article's thesis that business travel and the Wall Street meltdown are stressing people out more than anything else. In fact, the survey showed the economy generally is stressing people out. Also, he rewrote a therapist's quote to also be more specific in the same way, the paper said. Having developed something of a history running false stories, the Times seems to have been eager to get out in front of this one, running its correction barely one week after the original article came out — quite a speedy timeframe for deciding one of your contributors is a liar. The full editor's note is after the jump.