A Wisconsin newspaper delivery guy defrauded the New York Times out of $325,000 over six years with a fake subscription scam. Hey, who says there's no money in the newspaper business any more! Better jokes go in the comments. [E&P]

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.

Last week, the LA Daily News announced that its staffers could no longer wear jeans, thereby destroying the last remaining perk of a journalism career. Now, the paper has rescinded its rash decision. Break out the Cross Colours, copy editors! [LA Observed]

How is the Wall Street Journal's new glossy magazine, WSJ.—helmed by yoga mogul Tina Gaudoin—bridging the gap between the paper's dreary workaday reporters and the unbridled glamor that is a glossy magazine? By having some Journal reporters and editors pose as extras in a photo shoot for the mag, "clutching cameras and clamoring around glamorous figures." Living the dream! [WWD]

One positive thing to come out of the widespread layoffs that have resulted from decimation of the newspaper industry is the fact that laid off reporters feel free to speak up publicly, sharing ideas about the industry that could actually do some good in the long run. That's cold comfort to unemployed journalists, of course, but it's pretty fascinating to read what these people have to say when they're unencumbered of their corporate shackles. William Lobdell, a longtime LA Times journalist who's now quit and "gone digital," has come forth with a damning list of dozens of things wrong with his old paper. And he's as clear as you could possibly ask:

Sometimes we come across a PR item so ignorant, misguided, and inexplicable that we just have to shake our heads back and forth and sigh in a dramatic manner. We have one such item right here. If you ran a newspaper that had been terribly embarrassed for treating a racist publicity stunt as front page news just weeks ago-so embarrassed, in fact, that the editor responsible was quietly fired-would you not, in the future, do everything possible to distance yourself from the bad designer who fooled you with with the stunt? Metro NY decided: instead of that, why don't we just sponsor this guy's next fashion show? The press release for the upcoming L.E.S. Fashion Flipside show is below. As you can see, Metro is listed as one of only two sponsors for the show. And [bad designer], last seen trying to sell a copy of his poetry book "America, My Whore" to a reporter from Jewish Week, is listed as the first name under "boutiques." Urgh:

The Mainstream Media is really hoping that the presidential election will be the ticket to higher TV ratings and more newspaper sales because, man, they could really use the help. But the results so far aren't too encouraging. Instead of an explosion of people rushing home after work to catch Brian Williams' reasoned analysis of election strategy, it turns out that those people are rushing to upstart internet sites, argumentative cable news programs, and trashy magazines for their campaign coverage. Which just goes to show that-barring a nip slip-not even Barack Obama's hallowed visage can save media platforms that are on their way down. Ratings for cable shows like Hardball and Countdown have "risen sharply" during the campaign. The Politico's website is blowing up, with more readers than "more than all but 13 American newspapers." Political ads are more popular on YouTube than political news broadcasts. Us Weekly saw a bigger bump with its Obama cover than actual political magazines did. And the nightly news broadcasts just keep sadly puttering along:

The Olympic Games in Beijing start on 8/8/08. That's no coincidence—8 is a lucky number to the Chinese. Numbers-obsessed NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee must be so excited! She wrote yesterday's Times article about Chinese couples getting married on dates and times that include the number 8. And she adjusted the number of chapters in her book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, to have 18 chapters instead of 19. (But that was to appeal to the Jews, who love Chinese food.)

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.

Hawk-faced elderly man James Brady, the name-dropping veteran of 600 media outlets who has now eased into his retirement job as Forbes' "media columnist" (ha), is primarily skilled at being befuddled about the point of things (though he hasn't lost his name-dropping talent). So faced with an early copy of former crackhead-turned Times columnist David Carr's (well-reviewed) new book-which is not, as Brady hoped, a volume of media name-dropping-Brady panics in print like the senile Uncle Junior in The Sopranos: shoot the bad man and run hide in the closet! See, Brady really wanted this book to be a recitation by Carr of media inside-baseball stuff. "What a glorious read that would be, and what a column or two I could get out of it," he writes. But no-it's full of drug shit!

"A year ago, the conventional wisdom was, 'Yep, there are problems out there, but there’s still significant value.' Now, it’s 'Run away.'" [Times]

One of the few good things left about working in journalism is the right to dress casually in the office. If a reporter knows they're going to be sitting behind a desk all day, making phone calls and typing stories, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to wear some god damn jeans. It's not like journalists—especially at newspapers—are getting paid a lot, or have job security or good remaining pension plans or a business in which layoffs are not forever imminent. Dressing down is really the only thing they can cling to when they ask themselves why they didn't go to law school. But not at the LA Daily News! After the jump, read the paper's new dress code that is a stake in the heart of every reporter who rationalized that, hey, at least my job is a good place to show off these designer jeans:

A 1904 New York Times headline. [Radosh]

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.

Summer is not just an excruciatingly slow time of year for actual news; it's also an excruciatingly slow time for manufactured news. It's not like ad agencies can just riff off all the interesting scandals in the news, when there are no scandals in the news. What does that mean for you, the consumer? A shitload of publicity stunts, in which advertisers try to create some interest out of nothing. What does that mean for advertising reporters? Stories about these very stunts-sometimes even a trend story, to give the appearance of being something more than just a roundup of items from Adrants. See, the system works! Although that doesn't mean any of these stunts are necessarily good:

"New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, who had been among the potential buyers for Newsday, might be interested in buying the Star-Ledger if it were for sale, according to a person familiar with Mr. Kushner's thinking." [WSJ, Previously]

After wisely deciding that the massive John Edwards love child scandal is, in fact, a news story deserving of coverage, the Democratic politician's home-state newspaper the Raleigh News & Observer used basic journalism to uncover some interesting new information. Although Edwards' apparent mistress Rielle Hunter has claimed since even before her child was born that it was fathered by married Edwards aide Andrew Young, and even though Young issued a statement confirming this, the name of the father has been omitted from the child's birth certificate. Any other newspaper like the Times or Washington Post could have obtained this information, since informational copies of birth certificates are public documents in California. But those newspapers are too busy arrogantly destroying their businesses by ignoring the story to bother asking for a simple piece of paper. So they don't have either the birth certificate (PDF) or these fun non-denials:

The Newark Star-Ledger, the biggest daily newspaper in all of New Jersey, is NEAR DEATH. If 225 workers don't accept buyouts like now, the Newhouses (specifically Si's brother Donald) will sell the paper along with the Trenton Times. The Star-Ledger will lose $30 million to $40 million this year, so it's a great buy! Soon Jersey residents will have to go back to getting all their news from Springsteen lyrics and Kevin Smith movies. This just in! They closed down the amusement park and also marijuana is quite popular. [NYP]

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.

Celebrity publicists are definitely busy. They're often liars. Sometimes they try to control media coverage. But are they really a "dark breed of fixers, stuntsters and arch media manipulators"? Do Hollywood flacks count as "an invisible army of Machiavellian schemers"? No, they're more like a very visible army of bumbling media whores and hustlers. But the Times UK has several even more exaggerated descriptions of the prowess of idiot flacks. This story's hyperbole makes it the stupidest article ever written about PR, which threatens to destroy the media forever: