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Citing Concerns About Backpage.com, Film Forum Pulls Advertising from Village Voice

The independent Manhattan movie house Film Forum has decided to pull its advertising from the Village Voice, citing concerns about Backpage.com, the classifieds site owned by Voice parent company Village Voice Media.

Longtime Film Forum director Karen Cooper told Off the Record that Nicholas Kristof’s Friday op-ed in The New York Times prompted her decision. Read More

Letterman Booker Eddie Brill Fired After ‘Women In Comedy’ Flame War

Eddie Brill, the longtime comedy booker of The Late Show With David Letterman, was fired after a controversial profile ran in The New York Times last week, Mirth Magazine reports.

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David Letterman’s Booker In Hot Water After New York Times Controversy

It's 2012, and the specter of Christopher Hitchens' Vanity Fair essay about women in comedy is still haunting the Internet. Its latest incarnation is in the form of The New York Times' comedy critic Jason Zinoman's profile of Eddie Brill, the longtime comedy booker for The Late Show with David Letterman.

In the article, Mr. Zinoman touched on several unsavory facts of the late night industry and of Mr. Brill himself, including a quote from the booker that's been highly circulated as further proof that men in comedy are misogynistic. "There are a lot less female comics who are authentic," said Mr. Brill. "I see a lot of female comics who to please an audience will act like men.”

Cue the the three-ring circus.

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New York, LA Times Now Decides What Documentaries Nominated For Academy Awards

Adding to the already long list of confusing and nonsensical plans for handing out the little statues from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it was announced today that documentaries would be considered for Oscar nomination only if they had been reviewed in The New York Times or The LA Times beforehand.

This may not be as terribly insane as it seems. (Though it does seem pretty random, not to mention biased: giving an outside organization the power to wield a nomination verdict conclusively is actually unheard of.) Despite the rise of DIY film making and festival showcases, it's true that both Times do an admirable job reviewing most documentaries of note--one could make an argument that The New York Times actually skews towards the more esoteric form of film-making because traditionally documentaries have been considered "high-brow" films.

So this shouldn't be a problem, right?
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Facing Times Lawsuit, Huffington Post Relinquishes ‘Parentlode’

The Huffington Post has given up the name of its parenting blog, "Parentlode," columnist Lisa Belkin announced yesterday. The New York Times thought the name was too similar to that of its own parenting blog, "Motherlode," which was written by Ms. Belkin until she moved to The Huffington Post two months ago. When she Read More

Harassed New York Times Journalist Robert Stolarik Speaks On NYPD’s Continued Barring of Credentialed Press

On Monday, a video emerged from the protests over the World Financial Center Plaza, where Occupy Wall Street protesters had yet another clash-in with the police. But perhaps the most interesting thing in the video wasn't the police, or the protesters: it was New York Times' credentialed freelance journalist Robert Stolarik, being pushed down some stairs by an officer, moved back with a baton by another, and barred from taking pictures by a third, who kept jumping to get in his way. And this was after The New York Times, along with several other high-name publications, had sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg and Ray Kelly regarding their treatment of the press when it came to OWS events.

We spoke to Mr. Stolarik--one of the few reporters who was actually allowed in Zuccotti Park on November 14th, go figure--about how The New York Times reacted to this latest slight on their First Amendment rights, and NYPD's response.
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‘New York Times’ Readers? Huge Dothraki Nerds

Yesterday, The New York Times' put out it's best multimedia essay yet titled, 'Athhilezar? Watch Your Fantasy World Language.' The whole article was about Dothraki, the fictional language in the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones, and the linguist David J. Peterson, who helped create it. There is even a section where you can learn how to say hipster phrases in Dothraki, like "Is this locally grown?" ('Hash jini nem avvitisher qisi?') and "Can you take me to Brooklyn?" ('Hash yer laz addothrae anna Vroklinoon?')

The article briefly touched on other made-up languages in pop culture, like Na'vi (from Avatar) and Klingon. And then boy, did the nerds come out of the woodwork to run the gauntlet in the comment section!
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New York Times Expands Theater Coverage

The New York Times Company has begun shopping around for tech acquisitions for the first time since 2008, CEO Janet Robinson told Bloomberg News last week. But that doesn’t mean the paper is neglecting the mother ship.

The New York Times is in the midst of adding a slew of interactive bells and whistles, including e-commerce, to its online Theater section. Read More

Jonathan Lethem Wants You to Know How Much Smarter Unemployed Literature Students Are Than You

"They’re the precursor of this kind of synthesis of extrainstitutional intellectualism, native to the Internet, native to the city dweller,” said the author of Chronic City, referring to a group of hyper-literate N+1 types running The New Inquiry in an article for The New York Times. Oy.

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A Black Friday Sale at The New York Times

Just in time for the biggest retail weekend of the year, The New York Times has announced a special deal on digital subscriptions. They call it "Cyber Monday." "From 12 a.m. on Monday, November 28, until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, November 29, all new subscribers will save 50% on 26 weeks of any of The Read More

Mainstream News Organizations Aren’t Very Good At Using Twitter, Study Finds

The journalism community prides itself on its social media use, but a study released yesterday reveals that mainstream news organizations are using Twitter wrong, i.e. to advance their own material as opposed to engaging with readers and followers. Researchers from The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University's School Read More

Occupy Wall Street Moves Indoors With Spokes Council

While we've noticed that many of Occupy Wall Street's General Assembly meetings have been moved off-site and indoors (due to a literal lack of space now that the tents have gone up), it wasn't till last night's OWS first conference of a new council did we realize this was actually part of the plan to keep the movement alive once it gets cold. The Spokes Council--which was passed by the General Assembly committee but is not one of their working groups--had its first meeting in Murray Bergtraum High School cafeteria, to mixed results.

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New York Times Digital Executive Martin Nisenholtz to Retire

The New York Times senior vice president and chief of digital operations Martin A. Nisenholtz is retiring at the end of the year, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Janet Robinson announced today. The company will restructure in the upcoming weeks. Internal memo below: Read More

Liu, With No Choice, Makes a Good One

City Comptroller John Liu really had no choice. Faced with serious questions about his campaign fund-raising, Mr. Liu backtracked from his position that an inquiry could be handled in-house. Instead, under mounting public criticism, Mr. Liu asked former State Attorney General Robert Abrams to conduct an independent audit of his campaign’s books.

Good move. And good choice. Mr. Abrams, who served as A.G. from 1979 to 1993, has an impeccable reputation and would seem to have no ax to grind.

What remains uncertain, however, is whether Mr. Abrams will have the resources—in terms of a budget and personnel—to conduct a thorough investigation of Mr. Liu’s tangled campaign finances. Read More

The New York Times Paywall Yielded 1,981 New Sunday Home Delivery Subscribers

For the first time in five years, The New York Times saw an increase in home delivery subscribers, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) data released today. For the 6 month period ending in September, Sunday home delivery circulation averaged 992,383, an increase of .2 percent over last year. Read More