Did you see the New York Times' positive coverage about web viewership of the Olympics "soaring"? Well, we beg to differ.

NBC was going for the gold (forgive us) with all their online coverage of the Olympics. They launched a brand new cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in website to cover the Olympics and unleashed more than 2,000 hours of online video. But they didn't even qualify to compete, according to recent numbers. Techcrunch tells us that Yahoo Sports beat NBCOlympics.com with an average of 4.7 million visitors a day versus 4.3 million, according to Nieisen Online. Yahoo didn’t even have video. Worse, NBC’s Olympics video ad revenues came to only $5.  read more »

Is Nicholas Kristof the new Michael Moore? This week, The New York Times columnist wrote about his attempt to obtain a permit to protest at the Olympics in Beijing and, at times, his stunt feels like a remake of Roger & Me, minus Mr. Moore's trucker hat and blue collar crusading.

Here's how Mr. Kristoff sets the scene:

Following government instructions, I showed up at an office of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, found Window 12 and declared to the officer, 'I’m here to apply to hold a protest.'

What I didn’t realize is that Public Security has arrested at least a half-dozen people who have shown up to apply for protest permits.  read more »

At brunch time on Aug. 9, less than a day into the Olympics, China was off to a bad start. This was before the murder, even. Outside the 24-hour dim sum restaurant, the air was filthy, as it had been, more often than not, for two weeks. The roadway in front—south of Ditan Park, the ancient Altar of Earth—was being cordoned off for a road-cycling race, in the glare of sunlight through dirty white haze.

The authorities had been blowing smog of their own; local environmental officials and the International Olympic Committee declared that the measured air quality was acceptable and that the press was mistaking normal humid mist for pollution—an old lie, publicly retired by the Chinese government in 2006 and now pressed back into emergency service.  read more »

Olympic gold medal-winner Michael Phelps has a few thoughts on Facebook, the social networking site beloved by teenagers and marketers everywhere. In an article by Karen Crouse from this weekend's New York Times (in the new "platform agnostic" era, it ran on August 9th on the Web and August 10th in the paper), Ms. Crouse writes:

As Phelps’s legend grows, so does his popularity. The last time he checked his Facebook page, he had more than 4,300 friends. And then there is President Bush. All of which does not impress Phelps much. All the hotheads and cold shoulders he endured as a child have inured him to celebrity’s charms.  read more »

With the Olympic Games about to begin in China, Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Tom Scocca look at the press descending on Beijing and note, "When President Hu Jintao held a press conference with selected foreign journalists on Aug. 1, it was not clear whether getting an invitation to attend had been a mark of honor or disrepute."

"Henry Holt’s flagship imprint has a new editor in chief," writes Pub Crawler Leon Neyfakh. "Who it is we don’t know yet, nor will we for two or three more weeks unless the wrong person hears about it and sings." Plus: McNally Robinson becomes McNally Jackson.

Plus: Penny Crone, Broker?... Subway summer reading... Tanks.

BEIJING—The last night of the old, normal life, July 19, was mild and beautiful. The air was clear, even though the Olympic rules would not take effect till the next day: the driving ban on half the city’s three million private cars, alternating daily between odd- and even-numbered license plates; the halt to construction digging and cement pouring. Tomorrow, by plan, the Olympic city would be in place.

I had spent the morning and early afternoon 80-some miles away in Tianjin—the Newark to Beijing’s New York. I had in mind that I would return on the brand-new bullet train, but the bullet train isn’t open to customers yet.  read more »

Covering the rush to prepare for the Olympics in Beijing, this reporter inadvertently became a mascot for China's new spirit of cooperation with journalists.  read more »