Traditional media acted with predictable arrogance for ten months in ignoring tabloid and blog stories about John Edwards' philandering. Also utterly predictable: The self-flagellation now occurring on how the story was missed and what it means for the future of newspapers. Yes, if there's one story the public eats up more than a sex scandal complete with love child, it's yet another navel-gaze at media ethics and economics! Reporters for the Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal all shared their thoughts on the matter. But the fact that they waited, or had to wait, so long to do so hints that their bosses are missing the point.

Orthodox Jews-previously thought unknown above 42nd Street in Manhattan-are massing on the Upper West Side, reports The New York Times. And they've come to breed! But despite their somber suits, long skirts and aversion to motor-power on the Sabbath, these young singles are as a hip and unbearable as any Yuppie on that overpriced island. "Although dating is a major preoccupation of the vast number of single twenty- and thirtysomethings, it's hard to think of a group that so completely chooses to live in a neighborhood based on dating opportunities as the city's young Orthodox Jews. And the Upper West Side, an increasingly Orthodox enclave, has over the past four decades emerged as courting central for modern Orthodox singles from across the country and around the world."

If you see the Times' Jennifer 8. Lee today, ask her for a special blessing, or just to touch you, because this is probably her luckiest day since, like, August 8, 1988. But get in line, because everyone wants a piece of her! "Supposedly, I will be part of a segment that will air on 08/08/08 @ 8:08 a.m. as part of the Today show. (Guess why)." Also, Lee has three radio segments. Don't be L8! [Jennifer 8. Lee] (Photo by Jennifer 8. Lee via New York)

Times are tough for our friends in the print media — especially for the staff of the Hollywood Reporter, which has weathered shakeups and a redesign in the shadow of trade titan Variety. Now, from Sharon Waxman, comes word that the Reporter is going on the block (along with other Nielsen publications like Billboard and Adweek) and that one of the higher-ups has been pitching the paper to the New York Times:

In perfect sync with some apparently genuine positive news out of Iraq, Judith Miller is yet again delivering spoonfed reports on America's glorious strategy there, just as she did before she was disgraced at the Times. It seems we are finally being greeted as liberators — within the massive prison camps we have constructed. Miller, now employed by the neocons at the Manhattan Institute, reports in Reader's Digest that Iraq's "Camp Bucca" has been transformed from a riot zone into a super-empowering bakery, gym and mini-University, except for the 20 percent of prisoners sent to some sort of inner prison too terrifying to detail:

Speaking of the constantly, publicly self-flagellating New York Times, now they're just co-opting our ragging on them. "After Deadline," a column on one of their 600 blogs, has an item today on phrases the Times overuses and grammatical mistakes they make far too often. It's like four nice little Gawker posts, but they're running them for some reason. What are the Times' various crimes against language? Misusing "Like." It's not a conjunction, people! Well, it is in casual English, but not according to the stylebook. Please use "as" or "the way." "Best" is the superlative form of "well." In other words, there is not really such a thing as "most well-known." They make this mistake all the time. "Meltdown" Meltdown! The easiest way for the Times to reference the current fiscal crisis is to call it a "meltdown," as they have 400 times this year. Finally, most egregiously, Tale of Two Cities references must be stopped. The Grey Lady published eight headlines involving the "Tale of Two..." construction last year, and one this year. This does not even take into account the many "Best of __, worst of ___" references. Editors, there are far, far better Dickens works to constantly allude to. Isn't Hard Times more appropriate these days? Still, we're pissed that someone in-house picked this up before we could. Stop taking the fun out of mocking you, New York Times!

The penchant of America's greatest newspaper for self-flaggelation is no longer a harmless peccadillo; it's positively self-destructive. Vanity Fair's Bruce Feirstein accidentally stumbled upon a New York Times reader response survey they've been asking web users to take. Usually these things are done for advertisers, to gauge demographics in order to target readers more effectively. This one, though, is a bizarre paranoid list of every scandal, minor and major, the Times has been involved in over the last decade, followed by worried queries as to how much each one upset you, the reader. The questions are embarrassing—"What is the main reason your opinion of the New York Times has gotten worse?"—and specific—"The New York Times' Judith Miller reported about the probable existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Those stories turned out to be wrong. Has this made you feel better about The Times, has it not affected your opinion of The Times, or haven't you heard enough about these stories to say?" That's the most direct admission of error the Times has yet made on the subject, right? More of these terrible survey questions below.

Wisconsin newspaper distributor Martin Holtet had a little trouble convincing people in the small town of La Crosse to subscribe to the New York Times. So he took matters into his own hands and created a big bunch of fake subscribers. Too many, in fact. Perhaps not surprisingly, Times executives back in New York were a little surprised to see that the number of Times subscribers in La Crosse jumped from 65 in 2006 to 2,718 in 2008. (That's, like, the whole town, isn't it?) Now Holtet is in trouble for the $227,096 he collected in distribution fees and the $100,000 in unnecessary printing costs. He's since been arrested and charged with fraud. You can review the criminal complaint yourself after the jump.

The website of the New York Times is unresponsive beyond an archaic "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" error. We didn't even have to check the site — we could have gathered as much from the frantic IMs being sent by the same Internet poseurs who like to blog about how the mainstream media is irrelevant to their lives.

Ooh, symbolic. The New York Times website has been down for several minutes. And tonight's New York technology meetup has been cancelled because of power problems at the Gehry-designed headquarters of troubled internet conglomerate IAC.

If you've visited sites like those run by New York magazine and the Observer over the past couple of months, you may have noticed, in the comments section, repeated instances of a message that begins, "Steve Ratner [sic]... has paid my wife $500,000.00 to leave me." If you saw these comments, you probably wondered what the hell was going on. Well, the Times this morning sheds precious little light on the situation because, get this, there is a Steven Rattner, he did sleep with that guy's wife and now, as a result of the angry ex-husband's smear campaign, he has vacated his job atop the private equity division of Credit Suisse. The lesson, as relayed by the Times' hotshot finance writer Andrew Ross Sorkin, is that the internet renders "helpless" ordinary plutocrats who just want to hush up stories about how they allegedly taunted and harassed the husbands of the high-class escorts they procured on trips abroad. Wait, what?

John McCain's feud with the New York Times is sometimes blamed on the newspaper's humiliating demand for a rewrite of an op-ed piece he had written or the February scoop on the Republican nominee's relationship with a female lobbyist. One could attribute the campaign's petty digs at the newspaper's business woes to the candidate's Scots-Irish irascibility or to the cannier calculation by McCain's new aides that an attack on the liberal media is a reliable way to stimulate an otherwise lethargic base. But there's one point the pundits have missed: McCain's grumbling morning reading of the Times reveals more about his age than any other characteristic.

Jennifer Senior's affectionate profile of former coworker David Carr examines what the Times media reporter left out of his tell-all memoir of crack addiction, drug dealing and physical abuse: Being a big jerk to many of the women he drew into his orbit. Carr's many female friends, Senior said, were shocked to read about him choking his girlfriend, and probably also would have had trouble imagining with some of what got cut:

So you spend a good decade or so of your life contributing to the Times, making a name for yourself in the Styles section before leaving for greener pastures in 2000. Then you die, tragically young, of breast cancer. Will you get a Times obit? No. Will you even be mentioned in the paper? Nope! In fact, poor Monique Yazigi, who died last week at 45, got only a posthumous rejection letter. Which is about the most depressing thing we can think of. Sigh. That letter, from obituaries editor Bill McDonald, below.

The smart way to read the New York Times report on the latest Domain Name System vulnerability — "A rush to patch the Web" — is to start from the end and read backwards. That way, Bruce Schneier opens with the statement that there's no reason to worry. In layman's math, the odds that you'll be redirected to another site by a hacker are extremely low, and the worst that can happen to you is you'll fall for a fake site that prompts for your credit card number. You'll next notice the Times couldn't find anyone who'd been bitten by the bug. But keep reading, because the rest of the article is a huge media opportunity for security famewhore Dan Kaminsky. Actual quote: “I play this game to protect people."

Good news! You don't even have to read the Times today. Because you already have! The cauliflower ear story (there's an Action Sports section now??) was in the Washington Post in March and the fucking shorts piece in Styles has already been spotted in Styles at least five previous times.

When the Times got a call from Steve Jobs, the hands-on CEO of personal computer maker Apple, it had already been investigating the former pancreatic cancer victim's health for several days. Following a Monday report in the Post that some Jobs associates were "troubled by his thin appearance," the Times on Wednesday revealed Jobs underwent some sort of surgical procedure earlier this year. By Thursday afternoon, Times columnist Joe Nocera was preparing to report that Jobs was losing weight due to "ongoing digestive difficulty" and, possibly, due to a recent infection. That's when Jobs phoned to give a peace of his mind. But with a liberal interpretation of the term "off the record," Nocera would go on to finagle a scoop out of the confrontational call:

Error-prone Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley made a mistake everyone!

"Analysts say that 2008 is shaping up as the worst year for the newspaper business since the Depression, and the second quarter is clearly worse than the first." [Times]

House Republicans "fired off" a strongly-worded letter to the editor of the New York Times today, because that mean and biased newspaper asked John McCain to write a second draft of his stupid editorial. It's hilarious for like ten reasons. Look, regardless of the quality of the work the Times op-ed page prints, you do, as a political candidate, have to aspire to a certain level of pretend-seriousness before you can be printed there. Having a junior staffer throw together old talking points and attack-ad rhetoric is just not acceptable. And so now we have House Republicans crowing about a mythical right of "equal access" to the op-ed page of a privately owned newspaper. Ha ha do they want to bring back the fairness doctrine? Anyway let's all climb the New York Times building and burn it to the ground. Or let's make like the GOP wants to do and buy a full-page ad in the revenue-starved paper. That'll teach 'em! [Politico]