Oh, New York Times "T" fashion magazine: we will never understand you. We know the glossy mag brings in a ton of advertising dollars for the paper. But beyond that, its editorial mission is too rarefied for us to grasp. There's the odd indie rock fashion spread or child porn dustup, but what for? Today we were informed by a marketing person that the magazine has launched a series of celebrity "screen test" videos on its website. As far as we can tell, they're the first people to succeed in editing a five-minute long Will Ferrell interview in such a way that it is not funny at all. Beyond that, we're not sure what they were trying to accomplish. Watch the clip below, and take your own guess:

Look, we have another entrant to the oversharers hall of fame! This guy doesn't post pictures of cum on his face, or go on and on about his four-year-old's cheese preferences. But considering that this man is a reporter for the New York Times, we're going to hold him to a slightly higher standard. Anyhow, is everyone in for the barbecue excursion next week with Allen Salkin?

Let's begin with some truisms: a newspaper is not a blog-not even its online version. Conversely, a blog is not a newspaper. However, newspapers have been in the toilet lately, partly due to the proliferation of blogs. One easy pseudo-solution some newspapers have settled on is to act more and more like blogs. After all, this 2.0 world is all about "You," the user, which in practice means it's all about a false sense of democracy through publication of comments and user-generated content-just like a common blog. After the jump: why newspapers should stop slumming as blogs and disallow comments.

A tipster tells us that Mark Bulliet, an editor at NYC's throwaway free morning paper Metro, has been fired. The reason: Bulliet was the editor who oversaw Metro's embarrassing front-page story last Thursday about a girl who was supposedly attacked by four black girls because she was wearing a t-shirt reading "OBAMA IS MY SLAVE." As we told you last week, that story's only source was the crappy designer who had sold the t-shirt, and it's likely the whole thing was a tasteless, racist publicity stunt that Metro fell for. A source tells us that Bulliet had an intern do the story despite its incredibly poor sourcing. We've emailed Metro for a response. If you know more about the fallout, email us. [Previously]

Gnomish, Harley-riding media Methuselah and Tribune Co. boss Sam Zell inspires a bit of resentment amongst his minions, mainly for doing things like laying them all off while cussing them out. But his ex-Tribune employees are now striking back-on a blog! Prepare to be hoisted on the new media petard of broke, grizzled newsmen, Mr. Zell the multimillionaire!

Metro, the free paper best known for causing track fires on the NYC subways, ran a cover story yesterday that is totally indefensible, even by the lowly journalism standards of free morning papers. Radar spotted it: a front page splash about an innocent grad student girl who was supposedly attacked by four wild young black females because she was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan, "OBAMA IS MY SLAVE." The paper's one and only source? The untalented media whore designer who sold the mystery girl the shirt. (We would feel dirty giving him more PR than necessary, but it was this prick). But guess what, Metro: we got that press release too. And if this whole story isn't a hoax, I will personally buy one of those shitty shirts.

Chuck Philips, the LA Times reporter who wrote a huge front page story in March tying Puff Daddy to the shooting of Tupac Shakur-only to find out that this main source was a serial con man and the story was wrong-has been laid off from the paper, along with 150 colleagues. On one hand, Philips once won a Pulitzer; on the other hand, he tended to write things that turned out not to be true. Perhaps journalism's just not his field. Pinkberry franchisee maybe? He'll find something. [MTV News]

We got tipped on this an hour ago and happily it still hasn't been corrected. The New York Post's review of Mamma Mia comes with bracketed editor's notes asking the reviewer to clarify vague passages! At no extra charge! Anyone want to check the print version for us? In case they fix it, click to see the screengrabs. [NYP]

Keith Olbermann and Rupert Murdoch's media empire keep adding to their illustrious history of mutual hatred. Last month, the Murdoch-owned Post's Page Six accused the broadcaster of valuing ketchup more than the memory of the newly dead Tim Russert. Earlier this week, Page Six ran a particularly provocative item accusing Olbermann of being, uh, too nice to the departed Tony Snow. And last night, Olbermann had his revenge for that; he was forced to call Page Six "sick, sick people" and big liars for all their lying lies. Click to watch his righteous thunder. We report and you decide, ha ha!

The economy these days is terrible and scary! Uh, notwithstanding yesterday's biggest gain in financial stocks in two decades. The important thing is, business figures must look terrified for the future of us all. So the WSJ had to redo some of its overly happy portraits (like Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit's, pictured). Below, a larger version of Pandit, and before and after shots of Hank Paulson, courtesy of CJR. Their furrowed brows will solve the credit crisis:

Earlier today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that it's cutting almost 200 jobs-8% of its total workforce-due to "tough economic times." This afternoon, the Wall Street Journal sent out a staff memo saying that the paper is eliminating 50 editing jobs for "strategic" reasons. Less than an hour later, word came that Greg Osberg, president and publisher of Newsweek, is stepping down with no clear successor. (Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's crusade to appeal to the youth apparently hasn't taken effect quickly enough for Osberg, a digital advocate). This has been an extraordinarily bad day for print media by any standards. But take a look at the chart above-an illustration of newspaper industry stock prices over the past five years. There will be many more bad days to come.

Quelle horror! NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni has a friend with an iPhone 3G—with its Urbanspoon application—and he's all ready to eat! Problem is, the restaurant-recommending app is proving to be spotty at best—like a bored, difficult concierge. What did it advise for our office's block—Elizabeth Street below Houston?

June ad sales at USA Today were 27% lower than a year earlier. That's a decline even steeper than reported by the Tribune Company papers and the New York Times.

Manhattan residents often find themselves dreaming of the paradise that is Houston, Texas. The cars; the affordable barbecue; the murders. It's a working man's promised land. But why must some people have the bad fortune to get stuck in NYC, while others live the dream by breaking free and making their way to the sweltering heart of Texas? Luckily there's a Harvard economist to explain exactly how Houston came to be so much better than New York!

The Wall Street Journal's new managing editor Robert Thomson took another step toward remaking the paper in the image of his former employer the Financial Times, hiking the cover price 50 cents to match the FT at $2 per copy. But another directive, reported by Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio, seems to have been borrowed from the Journal's News Corp. sister, the Post:

After bitter tabloid rivals the Post and Daily News both lost their bidding war for Newsday to bumbling Long Island cable concern Cablevision, discussion centered on which tab would be first to strike some kind of cost-cutting partnership with Cablevision. As it turns out, the Post and Daily News may just cut Cablevision out of the loop entirely — the Times tonight substantiates prior rumors the two papers will partner. The tabloids are in preliminary but "committed" discussions to share printing, distribution, sales and other functions, stopping short of a full Joint Operating Agreement. If only it were all so easy as simply signing off on such a deal.

Everyone at the Washington Post loves the Grahams, the wealthy family who've owned the paper since the Depression. Specifically, they loved feisty Katharine Graham, who published the Post during the years when it was good and successful. But she died. Now she's been replaced by her granddaughter Katharine Weymouth (who is related to Tina Weymouth!), who recently replaced editor Len Downie with former Wall Street Journal editor Marcus Brauchli. Former WaPo gossip Lloyd Grove profiled Weymouth as she attempted to rescue the newspaper industry.

Nonpartisan journalist Bill O'Reilly is a man who calls em how he sees em, and that means that he's not afraid to give credit to the liberal lie-mongering site HuffPo when credit is due. When former Bush flack Tony Snow died last weekend, the AP ran an obit that was not 100% positive. Even worse, "The LA Times website allowed loons to post vile things about Tony Snow." O'Reilly condemns these examples of factual reporting and free speech, respectively; but he actually praises foreign-born socialist Arianna Huffington for scrubbing her site of all Snow smears. Truly a bipartisan lovefest! Watch the clip of what happens when you look up "Fairness" in the dictionary, below:

Ann Marie Lipinski, who went from summer intern to editor of the Chicago Tribune, is stepping down. Why? She won't really say! Except that "this position is not the fit it once was." Which is to say, not the position it was from 2001 until crazy billionaire Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company in 2007? Maybe? "Her resignation comes two months after George De Lama, the paper's managing editor for news, announced he was leaving the Tribune after 30 years." And little more than a month after Zell announced he was trimming 500 pages of news a week from his many flailing newspapers. Meanwhile-is publisher and David Hiller out at the L.A. Times? Basically every decision he's made since arriving at the paper from Chicago has enraged the already miserable LAT staff, so we figured he'd stick around for a while longer.

Could this be the end of the anonymous life of Banksy-British street artist -to-the-stars, darling of the underground and Angelina Jolie, and the most famous unidentified figure since Batman? We took a shot at solving the mystery ourselves a couple of months ago; but now the Daily Mail has done their own investigation, and we must say: it looks like they have him nailed. All the evidence is below-decide for yourself: