The New York Times

Is Wired better than The New York Times? According to this year's Webby Awards, when it comes to Best Copy/Writing, it sure is.  read more »

Edwards spokesman Matthew Nelson just sent over this response to a question I asked about the assertion in today's Times story suggesting that Elizabeth Edwards was pressuring John Edwards to endorse Hillary Clinton:

"Unless you're hearing from John or Elizabeth themselves, and not unnamed sources, I wouldn't put much stock in it. Information is currency in politics, and there is a lot of fake currency floating around out there.  read more »

Sometimes statistics can give rise to a piece of journalism. New York Times magazine contributing writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a resident of Boston, found that 700 gay men age 29 or younger were wed in the state of Massachusetts between May 2004 and June 2007.

What resulted is a 7000-word New York Times magazine cover story, published this weekend.

This number sounds like a statistical anomaly! It certainly is.  read more »

The wingnut parade at the 112th annual New York Times stockholder's meeting, held late this morning at the Times' conference room on the other side of a birch-and-moss filled atrium from the Times' newsroom tower, was out of control. And when chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was not being harassed by pesky shareholders, he was being attacked by bugs. (He spent about a minute flailing at an insect that seemed to have emerged from his hair.) Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media was there.  read more »

At a press conference in Lower Manhattan about expanding 311, Michael Bloomberg gently tamped down the speculation that he might purchase the New York Times, saying, "I am not a newspaper person."

Bloomberg said he was "flattered" that anyone would think of him as a possible buyer.

Which is how he responded to, but didn't discourage, more than a year's worth of rumors that he would run for president.  read more »

Newsweek gives big play this week to Rupert Murdoch's early maneuvers at The Wall Street Journal. Point: He's the general who has declared war on The New York Times.

This is something we've been talking about around here for a while now, and rumors of war aside, we haven't quite heard the first shot around here.

That doesn't change much with this week's story, but there's still lots of juice here.

Here are the highlights:  read more »

When The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on April 9 that “barring a change” Katie Couric and CBS News were “likely” to part ways and that it “could” happen after the election (those are just the qualifiers from its headline and subhead), Matthew Drudge picked it up quick as lightning on the Drudge Report.

After a few hours, the story, sourced to “people close to Couric” and executives, was taken out from behind a paid firewall, and WSJ.com watched the traffic—“definitely” one of its biggest hits of the month—roll in.  read more »

Filling out the rumors floated in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, today the New York Times reports that a “wide-ranging discussion” about Katie Couric’s future took place among CBS executives back in February:

 read more »

At a little after 3 p.m. on Monday, April 7, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller grabbed a microphone and took to a landing on one of the floating red-walled staircases that climb up into his brand-new newsroom’s skylit clerestory. It was Pulitzer day, and the first time this kind of stand-up-in-the-newsroom ceremony was being observed in the new Renzo Piano-designed tower the newspaper moved into last May.  read more »

The Washington Post picked up six Pulitzer Prizes today, a record for the paper and one shy of the New York Times' record of seven back in 2002. Dana Priest of the Post nabbed her second Pulitzer in three years, winning the Public Service award along with Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille for exposing mistreatment of veterans at Walter Reed Hospital (She also won in 2006 for Beat Reporting on counterterrorism prisons).  read more »

The New York Times' Barry Bearak, who was detained yesterday in Zimbabwe, is still in jail. Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for the paper, said that he has been "falsely" charged. She writes: "He has not been released. He's being charged, and falsely so, with passing himself off as an accredited journalist."

This was a statement sent out yesterday by the paper's editor, Bill Keller:  read more »

Ever since Obama declared his candidacy for president in early 2007, news organizations have been busy trying to piece together the significant moments in his life, especially those left unaddressed in Obama's surprisingly candid autobiography, Dreams of My Father.

And so, the young Barack Obama has become a character in the campaign. And Roger Boesche, a professor of political philosophy at Occidental College who taught two classes to the young Barry Obama almost 30 years ago, is mystified at the sudden interest of political reporters in what he has to say.  read more »

Ante up!

Now suddenly everyone is interested in Newsday. The New York Times is reporting that a Manhattan media blockbuster trio is "in discussions" to buy the Melville-based newspaper: Rupert Murdoch, James Dolan and Mort Zuckerman. Sam Zell decides who's the winner.

It sets up a satisfying auction between Mr. Murdoch (Post-owner) and Mr. Zuckerman (Daily News-owner) and Mr. Dolan, who owns MSG, the Knicks, Rangers and Cablevision.  read more »

“Being pop critic at The Times is a dream job—certainly it was mine,” the former occupant of that position, Kelefa Sanneh, wrote in an e-mail to Off the Record this week.

But a little more than two weeks ago, Mr. Sanneh left his dream job for the other dream job: a reporting gig at The New Yorker. Since March 3, when a Times memo went out announcing Mr.  read more »

Howell Raines is back.

The former executive editor of the New York Times has written his first media column for Portfolio, and it's about—surprise!—the New York Times. It will appear in the April issue that hits newstands later this week. (Online this morning.)

The article, titled "Murdoch v. the Times," examines the paper's vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal.

"There is no more important question in American journalism than the future of the Times, and I don't think the newspaper or the journalistic profession is taking Murdoch in particular or the takeover issue in general seriously enough," he writes.  read more »

Who would have thought that all you had to do to launch a singing career these days was hook up with the governor of New York? I mean, Tila Tequila had to steadily rack up more page views than any other artist on MySpace and host a trashy MTV dating show before people started to take her musical talents "seriously." Not so for "Kristen," a.k.a. Ashley Alexandra Dupré (birth name: Ashley Youmans), the former Jersey shore resident and aspiring songstress who recently made "The Luv Gov," well ... sing!

After the identity of the 22-year-old (or 32-year-old, by some reports) upscale call girl involved in the prostitution scandal that brought down Eliot Spitzer was revealed on Wednesday night, millions of viewers flocked to her MySpace page, on which she offered a sampling of what The New York Times described as "an amateurish, hip-hop inflected rhythm and blues tune that asks, 'Can you handle me, boy?'" (Her profile is now defunct.) The Times also reported, on its DealBook blog, that thousands of listeners have flooded the startup music site AmieStreet.com, where two of Ms. Dupre's tracks are available for purchase.

So is there a burgeoning star in our midst? Billboard asked some top A&R execs to weigh in on Ms. Dupre's prospects, and here's what they had to say:  read more »

Even the gossipy bit—Who's That Girl?!?—that all of the tabs were after all day yesterday (us too, in fact) is broken first by The Times: Spitzer's prostitute "Kristen" is in fact known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, though she was born 22 years ago as Ashley Youmans, in New Jersey. [The New York Times]  read more »

Paterson will be a strong governor from an environmental standpoint, but he's no Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to an analysis of his record by Jerome Woody. [grist.org]

Last night, the E.P.A. announced "a modest tightening" of its smog standard, despite the unanimous call of the agency's scientists to adopt a more protective standard. [The New York Times]  read more »

Michael Powell and Nicholas Confessore have the exegesis in the Times today that explains a bit of the reporting behind the paper's major break on the Eliot Spitzer story on Monday, along with a behind-the-scenes look at his life for the last six days.  read more »

The New York Times breaks the news first: "Kristen," the prostitute that Eliot Spitzer has been associated with in a federal affidavit, is a 22-year-old named Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

Serge Kovaleski and Ian Urbina got it first. The story was time-stamped at 5:49 p.m. She was interviewed last night, and the paper confirmed with an independent source that Ms. Dupre is indeed "Kristen."  read more »

At 2 p.m. on March 10, The New York Times published a story on its Web site reporting that Governor Eliot Spitzer had been named in connection with a federal investigation into a prostitution ring.

And the story belonged, unequivocally, to the Cinderella section of the Times newsroom, the Metro desk. Joe Sexton, editor of the section since 2006, was finally getting to try on the glass slipper: The Spitzer story was arguably the biggest scoop in a year at The Times, and was certainly the biggest story of Joe Sexton’s reign at Metro.  read more »

A team of New York Times metro and investigation reporters and editors have been working since yesterday afternoon to break the story of Eliot Spitzer's alleged involvement with a prostitution ring, according to a newsroom source.

The group of editors were led by metro editor Joe Sexton, politics editor Mary Ann Giordano (former Observer managing editor!), metro political editor Carolyn Ryan and investigation editors Matthew Purdy, Kevin Flynn and Ian Urbina.  read more »

New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh is leaving the newspaper to become a staff writer at The New Yorker, according to an internal memo distributed yesterday. (Radar had reported a rumor to this effect.)

Also heading over to 4 Times Square is New York Magazine contributing editor and writer Ariel Levy, who has already posted the news to her personal web site.

David Remnick wrote in an email to Media Mob that they are both expected to "write reported pieces."  read more »

Michael Bloomberg just ended his first press conference since announcing in the Times that he will not be a candidate for president.

In response to a question about how he plans to "engage" the current candidates, as he said he aims to do, Bloomberg said he saw no need to form a 527 group to advance his agenda.

"If I want to get a message out, I think it is relatively easy to do," Bloomberg said.

When asked whether he would accept a vice-presidential nomination from Barack Obama, Bloomberg did not say no, but rather said that he didn't think the offer would be made.

Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer-winning diviner of the inner workings of the Supreme Court and one of the great New York Times institutions, has asked to leave the paper under a voluntary buyout program.

"For 30 years, my internal clock has been set to the Supreme Court's calendar, but the buyout got my attention and it's a really good deal," she said in an interview with Media Mob last night.

The Times announced on Valentine's Day that 100 newsroom staffers would lose their job, and they'd begin the painful process by offering
buyouts. The first deadline to volunteer for a buyout is on March 5 and Ms. Greenhouse has applied.  read more »

The New York Times front-of-the-book is about to get a makeover.

Starting in a month, when you open up the front section of the Times, you’ll find an expanded table-of-contents section spilled across two pages, a section box detailing features at nytimes.com, a relocated corrections section and a new banner heading dubbed “International Report” for foreign stories.

In essence, there will be lots of easily digestible summaries, which will require an extra page flip or two (or three!) before you hit your first news story.  read more »

Jim Impoco, the former deputy editor of Portfolio, is heading back to his old home at The Times, where he’ll be a consulting editor at The New York Times Magazine.

Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati told Off the Record Mr.  read more »

It took Bill Keller about five minutes at his "Throw Stuff at Bill" meeting at the Times Center to announce the bad news. He told the group gathered that there would be about 100 newsroom cuts through a combination of attrition and buyouts; he also cautioned there was a "real clear" possibility of layoffs, according to two people present.  read more »

Jeff Bercovici is reporting that Bill Keller told staff today that the paper is cutting 100 newsroom positions. Bercovici writes:  read more »

The teeth-chattering classes over at the new Times building are packing extra sweaters this morning after getting an email from executive editor Bill Keller about how cold the newsroom (or parts of it!) are during the present cold snap.

It seems that the elevator shafts and loading docks in the state-of-the-art Renzo-Piano designed building are funnelling cold air into the offices; and a long-term fix doesn't look too near.

Click "read more" to see the memo.  read more »

According to internal traffic measures, the Web site of the New York Times broke single-day traffic records this week—then broke them again the very next day.  read more »

First-time authors looking for a book deal could do worse than to have a piece published in Modern Love, the New York Times Sunday Styles column that tends to provoke eye-rolling among the chattering classes—if they admit to reading the thing at all.  read more »

New York Times reporter James Risen has been issued a subpoena and will be asked to reveal a source from his book, "State of War," before a federal grand jury on Feb. 7, Mr. Risen's lawyer told the Times this morning.

His lawyer said that Mr. Risen will be asked to reveal a source from a chapter in his book that dealt with the C.I.A.'s failed efforts to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program.  read more »

Neal Ungerleider of FishBowlNY is reporting that the New York Times "has made an offer to buy" the New York and Boston editions of the free daily Metro. Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for the Times, said she couldn't comment to Mr. Ungerleider because of company policy.  read more »

Observer alumnus Gabe Sherman has a piece in The New Republic today that pins Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to Bill Kristol's hiring and how lots of current and former Times staffers aren't happy about it.  read more »

You may have noticed there have been a lot of stories about rats in the Times Metro report recently.  read more »

At Talking Points Memo today, Greg Sargent concedes that the whole Dowd-dateline dust-up "isn't the hugest deal in the world" and doesn't suggest any rules were broken, but asks, "If datelines are an 'anachronism' and an 'affectation,' why bother having them at all?"

He continues:  read more »

Some media observers are in a tizzy over a recent Maureen Dowd column published with a “Derry, N.H.” dateline even though she filed it from Jerusalem. Also that some of the quotes used in the column were collected by her assistant, without a reporting credit.

Greg Sargent originally called attention to it; the Columbia Journalism Review described it as "easy manipulation,” and Spencer Ackerman said that using the Derry dateline was a lie.

“It’s driving me out of my fucking mind,” Times editorial-page editor Andy Rosenthal told Media Mob this afternoon.  read more »

City Room, the local news blog launched last June by The New York Times as part of a paper-wide effort to offer readers more exclusive content online, will soon get some space in the print edition of the Metro section, according to the blog’s editor, Patrick LaForge.

While items from City Room are regularly repackaged as Metro stories and published in the paper—three short dispatches from Albany might be synthesized into one article for the next day’s paper, for instance—Mr.  read more »

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Reporters were mostly only half-listening moments before Hillary Clinton's eyes welled up with tears in a coffee shop here early this afternoon.

It was another of the increasing number of hour-plus gatherings put on by her campaign, and the majority of the reporters were scrolling around on Blackberrys or reading the newspaper or whispering to one another about the ubiquitous but somehow unmentionable Chelsea Clinton.  read more »

After last night's debate, New York Times columnist David Brooks was chatting with a group of people. One of them said: "I hear you hired that conservative Bill Kristol." David Brooks responded: "More like a pseudoconservative."

More reporters than you could possibly believe are stacked into an auditorium at Saint Anselm college, safely far from tonight's debate.

At the front of the room is a row reserved for photographers. In the second row, news agencies AFP and AP and Reuters share space with USA Today, as well as local heroes from the Keene Sentinel, the Concord Monitor, and the Eagle Tribune.  read more »

John Koblin meets twins who blog, discovers that a Ron Paul party distracted Times reporters on deadline, and witnesses an interesting moment involving Hillary Clinton, Bill O’Reilly and a girl with red hair.

Yesterday's Times report from Iowa was produced to an Allman Brothers soundtrack.  read more »

On the back of the Hillary press bus, the word spread quickly that she might be able to do an "avail," meaning she might speak to the press during an unscheduled stop at Gala, a downtown Manchester coffee shop.

It's been a rare thing for her to do a presser, but as one reporter put it: "She has no other choice." It's time to start talking!  read more »

BEIJING—“I think it’s actually surprisingly easy for Americans to come here and feel like they can fit in,” Joseph Kahn said, sitting in a coffee shop called Sequoia, a block north of the gate of the Jian Guo Men Diplomatic Compound. It was late December, and Mr. Kahn was nearing the end of his Pulitzer-winning tour of duty as The New York Times’ Beijing bureau chief. On Dec. 31, The Times named him deputy foreign editor, a job that will require him to relocate to New York.

The first time Mr. Kahn was sent home from Beijing as a reporter was in 1989. When the Tiananmen Square protests began, he was in Hong Kong, doing graduate work in East Asian studies. Mr. Kahn entered the mainland on a tourist visa and began working as a stringer for The Dallas Morning News. After the crackdown, the authorities revoked his visa and ordered him out of the country within 72 hours.  read more »

The Times today published a correction to yesterday's disputed sub-hed:

The subheading with a front-page headline on Wednesday for an article about discussions between four top White House lawyers and the Central Intelligence Agency over whether to destroy videotapes showing secret interrogations of members of Al Qaeda referred imprecisely to the White House’s position thus far on the matter. While Bush administration officials have acknowledged some discussions leading up to the destruction of the tapes in November 2005, as the article noted, the White House itself has not officially said anything on the subject, so its role was not "wider than it said."  read more »

It's been a while since we've had a good Bush-administration-vs.-New-York-Times flare-up. But today the White House took the unusual step of issuing a public statement demanding that The Times retract the subhed to a front-page story in today's paper.

The Times reported today that four White House lawyers were more involved than had previously been acknowledged in the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes. The story's subhed read: "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said."  read more »

Radar.com has already noted the news that Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the Times Book Review, will take over editing duties for the Week in Review section, according to an internal memo. He'll stay on his job at the Book Review too. The outgoing editor, Katy Roberts, will join Jonathan Landman at nytimes.com.

Bill Keller's memo after the jump...  read more »

When New York Times executive editor Bill Keller sent out a Nov. 28 memo announcing the layoffs of a dozen Times employees, one detail attracted little attention outside the newsroom: The paper would be eliminating a legendary Times institution, the Recording Room.

Years ago, the Recording Room was, as Gay Talese put it to Off the Record, the “way station, the midwife” for foreign, national and even New York-based reporters who needed to phone in copy in a pinch.  read more »