The New York Times-reeling with the rest of the newspaper industry as advertising dollars and readers shift to the web-has completed its first ever newsroom layoffs. Editor Bill Keller told staff this morning that the newspaper had completed the cull of about 100 reporters and editors it began earlier this year.
Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd sat down with the kids at the Harvard Political Review and discussed the important issue of "real news" verus "fake news." The debate has raged for years now, and it pits the network evening news against Comedy Central, basically. The New York Times counts as "real news," even though they publish Dowd's column. Dowd, obv, is unworried about this pretend news crisis. Because, she would like to remind you, she invented it! Sort of.
Campbell Robertson used to have what seemed to be the most fun job at the New York Times: writing Boldface Names with crazy Joyce Wadler. Then the Times killed that bizarre little corner of the Metro section and Campbell was sent to the Broadway beat. Recently, though, he's ended up on the campaign trail, where he apparently been drawing funny pictures. In the last week, the Times has brought us three installments of Robertson's funny pictures from his trip to North Carolina, where he's been talking to voters and attending campaign events and, uh, cartooning. Doesn't the Times already have professional cartoonists on staff? Is Robertson auditioning to illustrate an issue of American Splendor? We love him, but surely there are plenty of other "occasional cartoonists" on staff they could send to upcoming primary states. Adam Nagourney's might be pretty funny. He probably draws everyone with really big heads and tiny mopeds!
We're all for telling it like it is in book reviews, but this Sunday's review of Harry, Revised by Troy Patterson in the New York Times, seems extraordinarily mean-spirited, even unusually so. Among many things, Patterson mentions that the book "does not seem to have been reread, never mind revised," that its author Mark Sarvas writes "about 'old money' in a fashion indicating that he's never met anyone in possession of it," that it contains "a kind of coarse banality that may have found a new exemplar," and (drumroll, please) "that you are reading a review of this novel in these pages is a testament to the author's success as a blogger." A backhanded compliment, that last one! We had to ask author Sarvas: did he, like, do something to piss off Troy Patterson, who is a TV critic for Slate and a film critic for Spin?
Clearly inspired by the much-vaunted free Madonna show at an "intimate" 2,000-capacity theater last night, the New York Times review got a little wild, describing her fans as "screamy" and quoting a 28-year-old about her look for the evening: "stewardess-Madonna-tricky-tranny." The show was only thirty minutes long; one Madonnagay told the Times that "Gays don't camp out [for tickets], but we'll camp out for this." (Only Madonna can overturn the gays' longtime anti-camping law.) When the aging pop star took the stage,"the room roared with 'Omigods.'" [NYT]
Sometimes a brief, seemingly casual line in a news story can set it head and shoulders above the competition. That was the case with the Times' coverage of movie star Uma Thurman's testimony against her alleged stalker yesterday in New York State Supreme Court. A trembling Thurman told a jury about a disturbing card that included "a picture of a headless bride" and the inscription "My hand should be on your body." The defense tried to paint the alleged stalker, Jack Jordan, as crazy "in love" but benign and compliant. Jordan carefully avoided looking at Thurman during her testimony — important when you're accused of being her stalker, presumably. But one detail, which eluded the Post, Daily News and People, among others, indicated Jordan was still more than a little obsessed with Thurman:
The Pulitzer-winning book critic for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, has been in the news this week: she was called "the stupidest person in New York City," by author Jonathan Franzen, presumably because of her negative review of his memoir. (Norman Mailer called her a "one-woman kamikaze" who "disdains white male authors," but he was afraid of intimacy.) The Guardian's book blog offers a field guide to this "reclusive," mysterious critic:
The New York Times ran a "correction" of their Business section front page story yesterday on how young Miley "Hannah Montana" Cyrus was totally topless on the cover of Vanity Fair, due to her recent run-in with a Jewish lesbian mystic, who hypnotized her. Now, the Times claims Cyrus was topped. The correction:
NBC nightly news anchor Brian Williams blogged yesterday about how he's totally unsurprised that the Sunday New York Times is suffering rapidly dwindling circulation. 'Cause BriWi picked up one of these Sunday papers the other day and was totally unimpressed. "I must admit that on Sundays it becomes a tough paper to figure out. While this week's paper featured an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Edwards bemoaning the lack of serious, in-depth coverage of the political race, it's tough to figure out exactly what readers the paper is speaking to, or seeking." Then he sorta writes a Gawker post about it!
"Top American newspapers posted further declines in weekday circulation in the six-month period ended in March, with the exception of USA Today and The Wall Street Journal... The New York Times was No. 3 at 1,077,256, but that was down 3.9 percent from the period a year earlier... Newspaper circulation has been on a declining trend since the 1980s, but the pace of decline has picked up in recent years as more people go to the Internet for news, information and entertainment." [Times]
The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner was held in Washington this past weekend. The dinner awards some prizes and serves as an excuse for the corporations that own media companies to reward rich friends and B-list celebrities with seats at tables that are often within 100 feet of the President himself. Then a comedian does a little routine. This year's comedian was late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson. He was ok.
Today, the New York Times profiles Gary Stern, the owner of the last pinball-machine manufacturing company in the world. "To most," Times profiler Monica Davey says, "the story seems familiar." Well, it seemed familiar to us! Because in March of 2005, BusinessWeek profiled Gary Stern, the owner of the last pinball-machine manufacturing company in the world. Let's see what else these stories have in common!
The Times is short of its goal of 100 staff buyouts, so 30 newsroom staff will likely be laid off in the next month. This would be "the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history," according to Keith Kelly at the Post. But there's a chance that number could be reduced, since the Newspaper Guild has yet to obtain an official count - Kelly's number is based on his own inside sources. In any case, it looks like the cuts may very well fall on the feisty Metro desk, which has turbocharged the paper's internet presence and is probably the last place the paper should be cutting:
A student from Brown University wrote in to "Mr. Gawker," hoping we could convey an apology on his behalf to a Mr. Thomas Friedman, the author and Times columnist whose mustache narrowly escaped sullying in a campus pie-throwing ambush earlier this week. While the student in question did not participate in the pie-flinging or distribution of related leaflets, he is embarrassed, and notes that "actions like these make us seem just plain stupid." Seriously: If you're going to pull a stunt like that, at least practice, so your pie doesn't miss its target. But why couldn't the student just send an email to Thomas Friedman? In a flat world Changed Forever By The Internet, shouldn't a college kid be able to transmit a letter to a newspaper columnist? Apparently not, so we've honored his request and printed his email after the jump.
Any Brown students catch Friedman on camera after a green pie was thrown at the New York Times columnist at a lecture, yesterday? Email us. The pie was thrown by an environmentalist protesting the globalization enthusiast's "sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism's conquest of the planet."
Editorial: "By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don't like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama." [Times]
It was self-righteous and catered to the rich. But was the New York Times Magazine "Green Issue" green enough? Not according to anyone who actually cares about the future of this precious island we call Planet Earth. The magazine was printed on non-recycled paper. Egad! That means all those eco-friendly car ads were actually leaving a gigantic carbon footprint. Vanity Fair's annual green issues are also printed on non-recylced paper. It's like these magazines really just care about the advertising market for environmentalism instead of the actual environment. Let the Times Magazine Green Issue be a lesson: Never care about anything unless you're prepared to be called out as total a hypocrite. [Folio]
Oh no, now you've gone and encouraged Michael Bloomberg again: Newsweek reports that "the mayor's confidants and closest associates are, in fact, encouraging him to explore the idea" of buying the Times. And to bolster their case they've no doubt assembled clips of others saying the same thing in the press over the past few months, including Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, shouting head Jim Cramer and former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger. Despite frightful working conditions at Bloomberg's financial information company, his buddies imagine him shielding the Times newsroom from intense financial pressures:
"PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing." Oh, really, Marc Lacey? Really, New York Times? Hunger did this? The inanimate sensation created when one's liver requires more glucose "bashed in" a gate and burned tires? Oh, sorry, are you trying to be poetic? A little fancy with the language? Great work! Your stupid lede made us too annoyed to read what is probably a very important and serious story about poverty. Your stupid lede and our hangover. Is it... the stupidest lede? Probably not! SO: find us even more egregiously 'poetic' Times ledes. Maybe we'll poll! After the jump, Denton's nomination for dumbest fancy intro to serious news.
