Intrepid Jennifer 8. Lee has defied Google's blackout on photographs of the lego sculptures at its offices in New York's Chelsea. The New York Times reporter, stymied by Google's publicists, obtained images from a brave insider-who will no doubt soon be sweeping the floors at one of the internet monolith's server farms.
In two days, the New York Times published three pieces—by Kate Zernike, Peggy Orenstein, and Jodi Kantor—on Hillary Clinton, misogyny, and the first woman president. Orenstein, writing from Berkeley, does not "consider Senator Clinton a victim." She doesn't like Hillary, in other words, but the senator is maybe a useful lesson for her daughter in how the world will shit on her if she's ambitious. There is a long way left to go! In the meantime, we shall distract our daughters with cookies. In the Week in Review, Zernike, writing more practically, asked who the first lady president will be. Answer: kinda like a male president, but more so.
Wired ran the meth tutorial above under the headline, "Give Your Intellect A Boost — Just Say Yes To Doing The Right Drugs!" That was, like, a month ago, but the Times is now wondering if the article might, you know, give people the wrong idea about drugs. In addition to some positive words about meth, the article also praised drug Aderall and said it is "often prescribed to A.D.H.D. patients (wink, wink)," implying people should lie to their doctors to get the drug and "enhanc[e] concentration, turning mundane tasks into wondrous ones." This incident bodes well for Wired in two ways:
Here's the menu for lunch at the New York Times cafeteria today. The theme? "Take Me Out To The Ball Game!" Which means hot dogs. Only hot dogs. They represent our nation. Or, as the Times puts it, "Hot Dogs As America." We don't really know what that means. Click to enlarge the menu!
An article about women in science and engineering from the New York Times, "Diversity Isn't Rocket Science, Is It?" seems like it ought to go in the news or business section. It ran in fashion and style instead. Why? Because white lab coats and Tyvek cleanroom jumpsuits are totes the hot look this summer! (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)
John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama tonight in a masterstroke of Clintonian gladhanding. The timing of the endorsement certainly shouldn't improve Edwards' reputation as a slick, ambulance-chasing lawyer. He waited until the Democratic presidential hopeful had a virtual lock on the nomination, but not so long that his endorsement would be totally useless. Thus, he preserved the chance to be a part of Hillary Clinton's cabinet for as long as that looked possible, but still managed to score some points with Obama. I'm not saying he planned it all along, because who knew Clinton would stay in the fight this long, but he certainly seized the opportunity she presented to offer a very-low-risk endorsement with significant potential personal upside. Also: Major gripe with the Edwards endorsement coverage in the Times and Washington Post:
Well. The Times sent some poor stringer to ask about salmon diseases at some port in Chile. Fun gig! One can understand why he was maybe inclined to get his interviews done and get the hell out. Fish smells gross! Still, he might've wanted to ask around a bit more after his interview with the "port director." He might've learned that that guy was, in fact, the security guard. "Had The Times been aware of his actual position at the time, it would not have cited him as an authority on the contents of the bags, which were labeled medicated food." Well heck, why didn't the Times just say "the port director might've said" and saved themselves the trouble of getting that pretend expert opinion? Text of the correction below.
The New York Times publisher and his wife Gail Gregg said their decision to divorce was "amicable"-which nobody believes. Divorces are never amicable. There's no information beyond the statement, buried on a Friday afternoon: even the Post, which would normally relish the opportunity to embarrass the liberal snobs at the Times, left the story alone. So here's some speculation from the gossip mill to fill the vacuum. 1. " I always just assumed a guy who still carried around a stuffed moose was either a plushie or a furry and therefore not interested in vaginal sex," says one gossip. 2. Given the Times' lackluster share price under Sulzberger's rule, and collapsing advertising revenues, the motives could have been financial. "She probably wants a divorce while he's still worth something." 3. Most likely: the younger girlfriend. Sulzberger and his wife, both 56, have been married for 33 years. Anyone know who the new model is?
Alyse Myers, a Times vice president, recently published a book about her cruel mother. Perhaps you heard about it last week in the Times, where it received a glowing if stilted and end-spoiling review. Or perhaps you missed that review but caught Myers' essay in this past Sunday's Times magazine, in which Myers revisits the topic of her mom, and gets another nice plug for her book. Granted, it was Mother's Day Sunday, so the book was topical. And, granted, Myers' employ at the Times was disclosed in both articles. But so much kind coverage so quickly on a Times executive lends at least the appearance of favoritism. And according to one email tipster, Times staffers are upset not only at appearances, but at Myers' behavior, as well:
"Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and his wife, Gail Gregg, have decided to separate, they said in a statement issued Friday. Mr. Sulzberger, 56, who is also publisher of The Times, and Ms. Gregg, also 56 and a painter and writer, said the decision to end their marriage was amicable."
Every exhausted old institution now has a revivifying social network, the Gray Lady included. I'm told a browser plug-in is now available in beta, allowing users to contact each other and chat about articles—or hook up, more likely. Can't wait to see who proprietor Arthur Sulzberger includes in his buddy list! This will be so much fun—or would be, if only I could get hold of the plug-in. Help!
This week Susan Edgerley, an assistant managing editor, is answering questions from the public on the New York Times' website. Her job, according to her, is "to listen to the career aspirations of the people in the newsroom and help them realize them," and to help the paper integrate its web and print operations more closely. But according to a tipster with a grudge, Edgerley's real title at the Times should be Shouter-In-Chief!:
David Carr is a charming and competent media reporter, commuting to the New York Times from bourgeois Montclair where he lives with wife Jill and three children. But once he was in his own words a fulminating crackhead. Here's a sample from his forthcoming addiction memoir, obtained by Daily Intel: "Both of us were chronically, psychotically high, and I was spending all of my time lifting the blinds and peeking out at a world that I was increasingly scared to venture into."
Steampunk! According to the NYT's Thursgay Styles, it's a "subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives." They describe steampunkers as fusspots with a taste for gaslight-era style: "he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass." But steampunk's been around for a while, of course. Despite the length of the piece, glossed over is the fact that this hot new movement started with a book called the Difference Engine—in 1990!
There are several ways for reporters to sneak opinion into the supposedly hallowed news pages of the New York Times. The opinion can be dressed up as a "point of view"-which is different, somehow, executive editor Bill Keller recently explained in an interview with the newspaper's public editor. Or, in time-honored fashion, the reporter can simply find an academic or other expert to parrot the sentiment. But there's a third way: don't bother finding a real authority, which is so tiring; just make up the source, as the newspaper's John Broder just did, in today's article on Hillary Clinton's bitter-ender campaign: "A pop psychologist might say that Mrs. Clinton was showing symptoms of denial or of being divorced from reality, but she has said for months that she will not quit as long as there remains a mathematical possibility that she could capture the nomination."
The Post's Keith Kelly has been keeping close watch on the Times' recently-completed cull of 100 editorial staffers. He puts the number pushed out involuntarily at 15. Meanwhile the Newspaper Guild has filed a grievance over the way the cuts were carried out, and offered to negotiate better severance for older laid-off newsroom employees.
When Microsoft's bid for Yahoo fell through, hotshot reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin produced a scathing analysis of the deal-making skills of the Redmond software giant's boss, Steve Ballmer. 'Microsoft has tried to spin its reversal as a show of "discipline" and "self-control." But what it really shows - painfully - is Mr. Ballmer's indecisiveness about this deal.' Ouch! And fun! But you won't find Bill Keller and his fellow editors boasting about Sorkin's punchiness: because they're still in denial about the blurring of news and opinion, and so much else.
Gawker, yesterday: "Anyway we can't wait to see what new way [Maureen Dowd] comes up with of calling Barack Obama a fag tomorrow." Maureen Dowd, today: "As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it's as though she's crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence." Guess who the "butterfly" is. [NYT]
