New York Times city reporter and author of new book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles Jennifer 8. Lee is sad. As she notes in her blog, "Someone added my Chinese name to my Wikipedia entry in simplified :( form." Oh, the perils of fame! "I have never in my life used the simplified character," Lee adds, "even when I was in Mainland China, I always wrote my name out with the traditional character... In case you are wonderig, my Chinese name means competitive. It's an unusual name for girls, and very striking. In traditional character it looks like two men running side by side (competition, get it?). You lose that in the simplified, sadly." Sad! (Click for offending entry.)

Forget ESPN, Sports Illustrated, or your office pools. Why not spend March Madness this year with the New York Times [click to enlarge]? There's a possibility of a fancy top prize for you: an iPod. A shiny new iPod, to one lucky fan. Millions will clamor for this bauble! Second prize: a shiny nickel.

Sedate national readers are so curious about Eliot Spitzer's sexy sex affair of illegal sex that the Times had to post a whole list of FAQ's about the story. Complete with answers! One of the most asinine questions is, "Why did The Times track down and identify 'Kristen,' the prostitute in the case?" Our answer would be, "Seriously?" But the Times, being a respectable news outlet, tells its curious old readers that the real answer is: because she's in the news. Well, why did they have to print a picture of her sexy sexiness, then?

Stanley Fish, the author, law professor, columnist, and one of the Times' innumerable bloggers, thinks it would be helpful if readers know exactly what his motivation is with all this highbrow writing he does. "Given a choice between being trivial and being ethical in any direction whatsoever, I'll take trivial (although I might want to debate the judgment), because ethics is not something I'm doing in these columns," he explains in his latest entry. How about superfluous, then? Would you consider being pompous and superfluous, Mr. Fish? Sure you would!

Sheriff Santiago Barrera Jr. of Duval County, Texas would like you reporters to shut the fuck up, or else he will throw you in jail. It's really just that simple. After the Alice Echo-News Journal ("A Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper serving Jim Wells County and the area for over 100 years") wrote a front page story about the sheriff's son getting arrested for public intoxication, Barrera told a reporter, "If you guys keep interfering with my business, I'm going to have you arrested." Old school! Unfortunately, what with all the electronic communications and so forth these days, word spread quickly around the nation, and now the sheriff just looks like a crooked old bastard, which he surely is. But it does make you pine for the days when the lawmen were dirty, the reporters were in cahoots, and small towns were dusty fiefdoms ruled by power-mad, ignorant scumbags. Not really. [AP]

The newest entrant in the New York Times' strangely pedestrian fitness beat is today's piece asking, "To Stretch or Not to Stretch?" Short answer: If you're a gymnast or swimmer, yes; if you're a distance runner, no; for other activities, it's still an open question. So if you eliminate backflips and butterfly strokes from your workout routine, you can probably get away with no stretching at all, until a scientist tells you better. We just saved you so much time. How about the Times doing us all a favor by dispensing with this nonsense and replacing its entire Fitness & Nutrition section with nothing but empty white space and one single Amazon link to THIS:

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth across the state of New York today as the citizenry tries to come to terms with the scandal that has ripped our illusions away: the Yankees signing comedian Billy Crystal to a one-game contract. He'll appear in a spring training game, as a publicity stunt. This sudden disgrace of our heroes is shaking us to the very core! The New York Post splashed the outrage on their (back) cover, and fired off a defense of our collective moral standards:

So a middle-aged couple that lives in Las Vegas decided to splurge and take their daughter and her friends out to a hot nightclub (owned by the same people whose bouncers make half a million a year) for the daughter's 21st birthday [LV Sun]. Dad lines up reservations, and is led to believe he'll spend $1,000 for the night. Instead, he gets run through the wringer and extorted for tips by every bum employee in the place, until he's spent twice as much—including $120 for bathroom tips, and $100 to a security goon to "ensure their safety." Now he's pissed! It's easy to make fun of the old-people-at-a-club meme, but these were parents trying to do something nice for their daughter, and getting hustled by shady club people who saw them as easy marks. We must support them! It's like somebody taking advantage of your mom and dad.

Did you know that NYT executive editor Bill Keller has a new book out? That's OK, neither did anyone else! It's called Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela, and it's sold 926 copies, according to BookScan. It's a biography for children from ages 9 to 12. As Portfolio points out, it didn't really get any press. Except, of course, for two mentions in the Times. [Portfolio Mixed Media]

Richard Martin, the crazy old super in Bay Ridge who enjoys posting abusive signs about his tenants and filling his lobby with garbage to teach them all a lesson, is now aiming his strongly worded sign-based commentary at the free press. The newly minted media critic has taken aim at Daily News reporter Matthew Hysiak, whom Martin accuses of being "shit" for misquoting him in an article. Already, Martin has achieved a more insightful level of press criticism than Howard Kurtz. In further news, somebody has stolen Martin's umbrella! Did he post a sign about it? You bet! Photos of his news critique and his arch rejoinder to the umbrella thief [via BeehiveHairdresser], after the jump.

Dallas Mavericks owner and well-known billionaire blogger Mark Cuban has banned bloggers from the team's locker room. Hypocritical? Cuban says there is simply not enough room, explaining "I am of the opinion that a blogger for one of the local newspapers is no better or worse than the blogger from the local high school, from the local huge Mavs fan, from an out of town blogger." Right-o! For a rich, supposedly savvy blogger guy, Cuban obviously doesn't know what the fuck is going on in the media these days. One newspaper editor challenged him by saying that blogging is part of newspaper beat reporter's job now, and Cuban responded like so:

The ongoing quest to make personal finance interesting to average schlubs is not just confined to the internet or television; the Daily News gets into the act today with its own celebrity-infused financial advisory articles that may or may not contain sound advice [NYDN]. First, the paper lets us know what to do with our upcoming national tax refunds: Splurge! They come to this conclusion by asking the most obvious personal finance experts: Rich people!

The tabloid frenzy over Richard Martin, the crazy old Bay Ridge super who enjoys posting crazy signs insulting his tenants, continues to escalate. The Daily News gains the edge today by breaking the story that the cranky old man is letting his building's lobby fill up with garbage. To teach those dirty tenants! The city's other media outlets are surely deploying crack investigative teams to Bay Ridge at this very moment, intent on uncovering all the serpentine twists and turns of this developing, inconsequential matter. After the jump, an actual photo of the abrasive sign that the coot posted warning his tenants of his rotten scheme.

Now that lying author Margaret Seltzer has made the New York Times look like useful idiots for printing a fawning profile of her in which she spouted her stock lies about her ties to the hood, the paper is pushing for some changes. Standards Editor Craig Whitney emails the newsroom today that they shouldn't run any more single-source profiles of people who aren't well known, because they could turn out to be lying schmucks like Margaret Seltzer and make the paper look stupid all over again. Makes sense. Points to the Times for doing some kinda thing, at least! The full internal email, reprinted below.

The LA Times is trying to slow its inevitable decline with a bunch of futuristic digital billboard ads across Los Angeles, which will show a series of news, sports, and entertainment stories, along with promos for local events, on an eight-second rotation. When drivers rubberneck at the new billboards and crash their cars, the paper will cover that, as well. [Ad Age]

As this screengrab from the Times' feed this afternoon shows, anecdotal evidence indicates that three out of every four news stories in the US are now just useless tripe. Click to enlarge.

PageSix.com: a name that carries weight not only in the corridors of gossipdom, but in the virtual corridors of the internet blog-o-world. The Post's gossip site knows that it needs to spread its influence throughout the online realm in order to remain competitive. But they're not so clear on what a blog is. The following email from Page Six was sent to a MAGAZINE—NOT A BLOG—which really undermines its call for solidarity amongst gossip bloggers:

The New York Sun editorializes today that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. is a hypocrite, because he recently sold his apartment to his wife for "estate planning purposes" even though the Times has editorialized in favor of "higher taxes." Sulzberger has not formally replied to the Sun, but one possible response: "Your paper sucks." [NY Sun]

A breakthrough study from the Society of Medical Researchers Who Didn't Think Up a Study Topic Until the Very Last Minute has found that limiting the amount of time your fattie kids sit on their ass watching TV or playing on the internet could help them lose weight! Kids tended to eat less junk food when they were forced to get off their ass and do something else, the study determined [WSJ]. One doctor is recommending parents get some kind of electronic device that limits brain-numbing time per week for children. We wholeheartedly support this effort to whip these no-account kids today into shape. Junk food and TV are not the way to go. There is only one safe and effective way to gain weight:

It's not unheard of for questionnaires to be accompanied by a dollar bill, to encourage recipients at least to open the envelope, and guilt some of them into replying. But the New York Observer is more desperate than that: the weekly newspaper, supposedly for Manhattan's elite, encloses a $5 note in its latest reader survey. (Thanks, Matt, for the pic.) The generous interpretation: the Observer's ad rates depend on proving to advertisers that the curiously pink newspaper's readers are indeed worth $1.7m apiece; and such wealthy readers need commensurately rich inducement to open an envelope. Alternatively, boy-publisher Jared Kushner, who is trying to sustain the Observer's paltry paid circulation of some 50,000, is simply applying the family's experience with bribery. Hey, it works. Kushner won his place at Harvard University after his father pledged $2.5m to the school. ENLARGE»