At last, Timesman Matt Richtel has explained why he's posing as a female hooker on his personal Twitter account: He's writing a novel, 140 characters at a time. No, no, wait for it — he's invented a new genre of fiction which he's calling the "Twiller." How were people who don't read Editor & Publisher supposed to figure that out? Richtel, belatedly, has grasped the problem: He's just broken voice on Twitter to announce the addition of a plot summary to his blog. Richtel coauthors the clever comic strip Rudy Park under the name Theron Heir, so you'd think his new project has a chance. But his online tale fails. I asked Valleywag writer Paul Boutin, who moonlights as a Wall Street Journal book reviewer, to explain why:

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

The Wall Street Journal's new glossy quarterly "Modern Wealth "-themed grab for the pocketbooks of the plutocracy-in-waiting is here!!!! And…would you believe that model's "dress" was "designed" by Roland Mouret? Huh. I can think of some Project Runway rejects who might have done it better for cheap?? But, whatever, it's a fine cover, so let's get down to "business": as we've discussed previously, this magazine is a naked appeal to modern wealthy Journal readers to finally take their ad pages home and leave them toiletside. But don't get it twisted! "The eschatological angst that characterizes much of the newspaper industry does not define Dow Jones," said new managing editor Robert Thomson at a press conference this morning.* Meanwhile, silver-dollar-shaped scones and "flights" of three different types of juice (Juice?) were served and Thomson talked lots of schat on their New York Times counterpart T.Oooooh, how snug indeed, that synergistic Commieloving capitalist News Corp embrace! Nah, for real though: Thomson has a right to be legitimately stoked that his newspaper is just now getting into the "read it at home and peruse it in your leisure hours" business because unlike his pals over at the Times he doesn't have to now endure the wrenching financial fallout of non fetish-inclined old people finally discovering Craigslist. But next time you give a press conference, bro, maybe remember that you're talking to the press, as in the "broke-ass former journalists who have to blog this now because yes, that is what it's come to for most of us" and that a lot of them are past the point of "schatenfraude."

"[Sunday business editor Timothy] O'Brien ridicules [Publisher Arthur] Sulzberger... He thinks Sulzberger is a dummy." [Post]

If mayor Michael Bloomberg buys the New York Times, this may have been the genesis: a game of Telephone started by those two inveterate gossips, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his biographer Michael Wolff.

It should really come as no surprise that News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch wants to be respected by the limo liberals who (officially) disdain his politics and tactics. That's why he paid so dearly for the Wall Street Journal, and was proud for having done so, right? But no one really thought age and young wife Wendi Deng would gentrify Murdoch's barbarian soul to such an extent that he now spins fantasies about buying the Times from one side of his mouth while betraying his conservative shock troops at Fox News Channel out of the other. Murdoch's brash past is becoming an embarrassment to him as his portfolio becomes more respectable, at least according to Michael Wolff, who excerpted his sanctioned Murdoch biography in the October Vanity Fair. And yet the Aussie can't help but revert to his old ways, like when he told Wolff that Muslims are, as a group, inbred:

Matt Richtel, the New York Times reporter and author of Hooked, has whored himself out on Twitter this week. The messages read as if they're written both by a hooker and the murderous john she meets, somewhere on the road to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. Tweeting in drag as a prostitute. Is it an old-fashioned Internet man stunt? Part of Richtel's recent day-job obsession with covering the Internet sex industry? Or is it some kind of experiment for his moonlight career as a novelist? Whatever Richtel's motive, the result is deeply creepy. His most whorish updates follow:

Not all reporters are created equal at Invesco Field, where Barack Obama is about to close out the Democratic National Convention. John Koblin at the Observer printed a seating chart (left) and gave a rundown on the winners and losers. It looks like the Obama campaign continues to snub the New Yorker for its controversial parody cover, sitting the magazine's correspondents in worse seats than Jezebel/Glamour (team Megan!), the Nation and the New Republic. More delightfully, the campaign totally dissed those conssumate insiders at Vanity Fair, "which is stuck in the back row in Section J" behind basically everyone except the Gotham tabloids. Ha ha, I guess the entire free world is not actually obsessed with getting into the Waverly or your damned Oscar party, Graydon Carter! After the jump, early chatter among reporters, plus a list of seating winners.

"Certain writers have a style that can be best likened to body odor: irresistible to some, obnoxious to many and apparently imperceptible to the writer himself." That is the overeducated overyoung* novelist Robert MacFarlane on the new book out by Paul Theroux. [Times]*He is also overhot, but Nick thought his photo was taking up too much space. He is right about everything about Theroux except the parts about Turkmenistan and China. And also, I probably don't need to point this out but Naipaul is a huge twat.

Employee benefits are perking decidedly down all over medialand, as we found out last night Conde Nast sent out that memo limiting employees to five (5!) expensed lunches a month. So we were soothed to hear that the New York Times, whose ad sales have in the words of one analyst "fallen off a cliff" this year,* remains committed to the healing power of complimentary backrubs. Massages on the house in the two days leading up to September 11! But then we got the memo announcing said benefit. And it was sort of the opposite of a "happy ending"…They will be "tracking" No Shows! So Alberto Gonzales of you, New York Times!

How many times now has the New York Times columnist come away from a post-primary Democratic event having apparently only talked to the one insane Nobama PUMA lady in attendance? First there was, of course, the ear plug lady, who managed to get the attention of every journalist at the campaign rally. But one imagines the incomparable Dowd had to search a bit to find this nut in Denver, where the attendees are a little more carefully screened:

The New York Times Company's total revenue dropped 10 percent in July, to $235.9 million. Total Internet revenue, which now makes up 12 percent of the Times's roughly billion-dollar annual business, was up 2.6 percent — which only looks good compared to the rest of the newspaper industry. [PaidContent]

• NBC is leading the ratings with its coverage of the DNC. [TVDecoder]

Advertising revenues at New York Times newspapers were 18% down in the year to July, but that wasn't the most depressing statistic. Even online advertising—which is supposed to represent the Gray Lady's salvation—fell in real terms.

The story about a Georgia school's struggle to teach evolution in Jesusland may be the most emailed story on the Times website right now, but you had to read it on paper to get the full experience. (Well, this time you can just click for our scan.)

Barack Obama's campaign has been the most successful end-run of the mainstream media machine in American politics. But the senator's plan to text-message his announcement of a running mate at 3 a.m. Saturday —- deliberately out of step with the MSM news cycle — was beaten to the punch by a collusion of two factions: Experienced reporters out to get the scoop, and people close to the politicians who didn't get the gig.

"Are you sure he's not a Rockefeller? The New York Times seemed to raise that question yesterday when it published a photo of impostor Clark Rockefeller on the front page of its Style section—and 14 pages later, a wedding announcement for actual family heir Clayton Rockefeller, who, in the accompanying photo, looks shockingly like the phony." [NYP]

There's something adorable about how the Times mangles movie titles. This year's grisly Oscar Best Picture sounded much more approachable as Old Country For Old Men. Likewise, Tropical Thunder conjures visions of an action-adventure set perhaps in Cuba, not of a send-up comedy accused of trafficking in "vulgar" Jewish stereotypes. So far, none of the Times' big movie errors have made it into print. Perhaps the sleep-deprived, round-the-clock Web crew simply hasn't time for the luxury of movie screenings. Send those media soldiers out on some shore leave!

Here's our theory: Daily deadlines did in the newspaper industry. The pressure of getting to press, the long-practiced art of doom-and-gloom headline writing, the flinchiness of easily spooked editors all made it impossible for ink-stained wretches to look farther into the future than the next edition. Speaking of doom and gloom: Online ad revenues at several major newspaper chains actually dropped last quarter. The surprise there is that they ever managed to rise. The newspaper industry has a devastating history of letting the future of media slip from its grasp. Where to start? Perhaps 1995, when several newspaper chains put $9 million into a consortium called New Century Network. "The granddaddy of fuckups," as one suitably crotchety industry veteran tells us, folded in 1998. Or you can go further back, to '80s adventures in videotext. But each tale ends the same way: A promising start, shuttered amid fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

• Barack Obama will appear on the cover of Time for the seventh time this year. [Drudge]