The Wall Street Journal's Christina Binkley asked yesterday: Is Bling Over? Are the super rich—the ones who own yachts, and lots and lots of houses—about to start scaling back?

Maybe! Some are actually losing a ton of money, so it makes sense to do something like, shudder, sell the yacht. And the ones who aren't affected by the crash don't want to embarrass their friends and start buying a lot more stuff. "It's not necessarily a good thing to show up at the tennis club with a new $30,000 crocodile handbag when your friends' net worth has been halved and the Federal Reserve is spending billions to keep the banking system afloat," Ms.  read more »

At the World Business Forum on Tuesday, Robert Thomson said that since Wall Street is collapsing maybe it would be better for his newspaper if they changed the name. Reports RTT News:

Thomson also joked about the current financial crisis. He said that with, what he called, the "demise of Wall Street model," prehaps they should change the name of his paper to "just the Journal."

That's funny. Though it's not the first time that's come up.

So Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man in Mexico and one of the richest in the world, has purchased a 6.4 percent stake in Times Company. Richard Pérez-Peña reports: "[Times Company] stock closed on Wednesday at $13.96 a share, down 4 cents, giving the Slim family’s 9.1 million shares, a value of $127 million."

David Luhnow wrote a wonderfully detailed portrait of Slim Helú in August 2007 for The Wall Street Journal, and we learned a lot about him, his fortune, the monopoly he controls in Mexico and his personality. Here's a sampling:  read more »

• He's an insomniac who stays up late reading about Ghengis Khan.

"I think that's the point at which you're all meant to clap."

Tina Gaudoin, editor in chief of WSJ., stood on stage at the Morgan Library on East 36th this morning. She had just presented the first issue of The Wall Street Journal's luxury insert, which debuts in this Saturday's edition of the paper.

The assembled crowd of journalists could be forgiven for not applauding as the cover and several pages of the magazine were revealed from beneath an awkwardly-draped scrim. They were too busy enjoying breakfast, which consisted parfait, cantaloupe with a sprig of mint, salmon filet, and a filo-crusted omelet topped with caviar.  read more »

With help from Romenesko, we now know that Gary Schwitzer at the University of Minnesota health news blog is shocked—shocked!—that NBC gave up so much time to the mouse-pill story. (A recap: A lazy mouse took two pills and showed increased endurance and fitness without doing any exercise.)

"It devoted more than 2 minutes out of its total of 22 minutes or so of news time to this story. We are at war. The economy is in the tank. No one can afford gas in the tank. But 2 minutes was given to this mouse research...With limited airtime, why was that an important nugget? Unless one's goal is to make drug company sponsors happy.  read more »

In the memo in which Dow Jones editor in chief Robert Thomson announced there would be job cuts at The Journal, he also said: "Our new budget includes an ambitious expansion of our web and international operations, both for the Journal and for Newswires, where we are adding 95 journalists over coming months."

So where exactly are those 95 people going? Not to The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for The Journal, Bob Christie, told Media Mob that those new hires will all be assigned to Dow Jones news wires, not at The Journal. Mr. Christie reminds us, however, that wire copy can be used, of course, inside the pages of The Journal.

And what's the time frame for these hires? He said they'll start now, and there's no end date in mind. So, conceivably, Mr. Thomson can take as long as he wants to hire.

A story in the North Brunswick Sentinel has some valuable updates on the job cuts that are going down at The Wall Street Journal.

Bob Christie, spokesman for The Journal, tells the Sentinel that The Journal will cut 39 jobs from its South Brunswick office, and relocate 11 people to the paper's office in Manhattan (so the '50' number we were all using is a bit off). The 39 who are getting the ax will have a chance to "apply" for positions in New York. The majority of those people were from "the pagination desk and the copyediting desk," he said.

Mr. Christie also concretely lays out the new philosophy of The Journal that we've all been interpreting for a few months: Who needs editors?

"The goal is fewer editors, more reporters," Christie said.  read more »

What will become of 37-year-old NBC News correspondent David Gregory, wonders Felix Gillette, since "lame-duck presidents create lame-duck White House correspondents."

John Koblin looks at the new advertiser-friendly glossies on the horizon—WSJ from The Wall Street Journal, FW from The Washington Post, Manhattan and others—and notes, "the traditional, cozily amorphous job of the editor—rumpled visionary, bold procurer, acid social critic, lover of words!—is starting to look very different. Sort of...crisper... As envisioned by businesspeople, the New Editor seems a kind of bland, affable and well-connected creature … much like, well, a businessperson."

Is The New Yorker's James Wood becoming a guru for writers? Leon Neyfakh checks out the tips offered in Mr. Wood's new book, How Fiction Works, and asks, "Who will heed them? And will the fact that Mr. Wood has laid them out so plainly in this succinct volume—something few literary critics, to say nothing of book reviewers, have the heart to do these days—increase the likelihood that aspiring writers will eventually absorb and adhere to his standards?" Plus: David Carr.

Plus: Madonna's brother... Issac Mizrahi... The New Old Gays.

It's a late, sleepy summer Friday, but New York Times online editor Jon Landman has some choice words for Rupert Murdoch, Robert Thomson and The Wall Street Journal's online editor, Alan Murray, this afternoon.

Well, technically speaking, he doesn't name any of those people in his weekly memo, or the paper itself, but in his weekly briefing designed to discuss accomplishments for nytimes.com, he comes out swinging! Namely, he says wsj.com has accomplished nothing!

As Mr.Landman writes:

There's some financial newspaper out there, on Wall Street or maybe in midtown, we aren't sure. There's new ownership, it seems, some rich guy who says he wants his paper to be more like ours.  read more »

]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/media/times-and-journal-digital-battle-royale-landman-says-journal-has-done-nothing-its-web-sit#comments Media Jon Landman Robert Thomson Rupert Murdoch The New York Times The Wall Street Journal Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:43:43 -0400 John Koblin 72090 at http://www.observer.com