From Sulzberger:

To the Staff:

Given the business challenges we face, we are constantly looking for
ways to reduce costs that do not affect the quality or quantity of the
journalism we provide to our readers. Next month you will see one
such way in the metropolitan edition of The Times.

Beginning Monday, Oct. 6, we will introduce a new layout of the paper
by consolidating some sections. Metro will be integrated into the
Main News section Monday through Saturday. Business
and Sports will
be combined into one section Tuesday through Friday. There will be no
loss of content for readers. In fact, there will be some advantages
— a freestanding Saturday Arts section and a return to later
deadlines for Business news on Monday — and we are working to create
later deadlines for culture coverage. The cost savings, which are
significant, will come from the production savings of having a single
run on more nights than we do today.

We are not reducing the space devoted to Metro or Sports news. This
is simply a way to produce the paper more efficiently. These changes
will affect the New York edition only, as the national edition is
already configured in a similar fashion.

That said, we don't make these changes lightly. We care deeply about
what our New York readers think about their edition. We know that
many of our readers like and are comfortable with our current
layout.
But after a good amount of reader research and exploring various
options, we feel this is an effective way to reduce expenses while
providing our readers with the breadth and depth of high-quality
coverage they expect from us and we are committed to giving them.

Arthur

From Keller:

To the Staff:
As you've learned from Arthur's message, beginning next month the
paper will be reconfigured. Metro news will appear in the A-book along with
International and National news. Sports will be combined with Bizday,
except on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, when we will offer freestanding
sports sections. I just want to elaborate a little on what this means for
the newsroom.
The aim, of course, is to save money — and, importantly, to do it
without cutting back coverage. The savings come from eliminating an early
shift in the printing plants on some days. We do not expect to cut the
space devoted to these important and popular areas of coverage, or to
reduce the staff of journalists who deliver that coverage. For readers who
like to single out the Metro or Sports sections for the train ride to work,
the new configuration will be a little less convenient. But there will be
no less of the great news reports, enterprise, features and columns they
expect from those departments.
There are even few offsetting gains for readers:
— The new configuration will allow us to give readers a
free-standing Arts section in the Saturday paper.
— We will get some later deadlines, which will help us
competitively. Monday Bizday, which is now on the early press run with
deadlines in the afternoon, will be printed on the late run, something
business editors have long craved. Thus business news that breaks on Sunday
night can hereafter be displayed in its proper place, where readers most
expect it. We are working to assure that the Arts section can also move to
later deadlines most days of the week. We still have some details to work
out about the timing and mechanics of the later close, but our ambition is
to set deadlines so that late-breaking news from Hollywood or the art
auctions or awards shows can be included in the section.
— Metro stories that begin on A-1 will jump to Metro space. This
year, to ease navigation of our news pages, we have mostly eliminated those
annoying jumps from the front page into other sections. The result is that
front-page Metro stories mostly jump into National space, where they may
feel a little orphaned. Now they will jump into the company of other Metro
stories.
We have already begun a conversation with editors in Metro about how
we assure, in practice, that we keep the light of Metro burning bright when
there is no longer a freestanding Metro section. For one thing, I think we
will want to be more willing to front urgent Metro stories in the
metropolitan editions. For another, we will be looking for new features or
improvements to our Metro coverage to reaffirm our commitment to local
readers. We've also talked to Tom Jolly about using the front page more to
billboard sports coverage.
And then there are the opportunities the Web presents us.
It's worth remembering that these cost savings serve a long-term
purpose. While we are tightening wherever we prudently can, we are
continuing to invest in our journalism, especially online, where our
audience and revenues are rapidly growing. Metro and Sports have proven
among the most innovative departments in exploiting the possibilties of the
Web. Witness the Olympics coverage; witness City Room. My belief is that
our continuing proliferation of great coverage on the Web will erase any
questions about our commitment to Metro and Sports coverage.
The top editors at Metro and Sports have been briefed on this, as
have the members of the Masthead. If you have questions or thoughts about
this development, you know where to find us.
Best,
Bill

Its out-of-touch publisher, Elisha R. Hagenbuckle, who resembles former Times publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, is "like a rhino with cage fever . . . muttering to himself . . . a parody of a man in animated concentration." He's horrified by such Web sites as Gawker and Defamer, asking, "Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about the breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities?"

To which his son, a takeoff on Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., chirps, "That's the whole point, Dad. You've got to be snarky."

The odd thing here is that Punch retired as publisher in 1992 and as chairman in 1997, half a decade before Gawker started. The exchange would make more sense between Pinch and his own twentysomething son Arthur Gregg Sulzberger. But, hey, what's the point of slapping the "fiction" veil over your former employer if you can't take some liberties?

[Post]

Oooooh, how snug indeed, that synergistic Commieloving capitalist News Corp embrace! Nah, for real though: Thomson has a right to be legitimately stoked that his newspaper is just now getting into the "read it at home and peruse it in your leisure hours" business because unlike his pals over at the Times he doesn't have to now endure the wrenching financial fallout of non fetish-inclined old people finally discovering Craigslist. But next time you give a press conference, bro, maybe remember that you're talking to the press, as in the "broke-ass former journalists who have to blog this now because yes, that is what it's come to for most of us" and that a lot of them are past the point of "schatenfraude."

*Ha ha ha, you like how we juxtaposed those two sentences? Anyway, "eschatalogical" may be a little internerdy at this point, but it's still a twelve-Euro word in my book, Bob! (Side note: love what you've done with the bloggy digressions over there, Bercovici!)

All right, he’s not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he’s retreated a bit). And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins.

Other hints that Murdoch is still an unpolished, rough-and-tumble media mogul: He is a terrible mumbler, has alienated many of his children from his business and likes to personally report dirt on his foes (Wolff observers him trying to nail down gossip about a Hillary Clinton adviser).

But is no longer the unwavering backer of Fox News that he once was. After begging an audience with Barack Obama, Wolff writes, Murdoch arranged a "truce" with the Democratic presidential candidate and Fox News. Also, he's no fan of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly:

Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

And Murdoch would "really like to own" that temple of liberal New York respectability, the Times:

Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never … And then there’s the opprobrium of public opinion.

But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.

Given his history with the Journal, it would be a mistake to write off Murdoch's ambitions for the financially-troubled Times. And given his savvy, it would also be a mistake to assume the mogul walked through his acquisition fantasy with a media reporter for any reason other than to broadcast it to the entire world, in particular the Sulzberger family, whose dividend payouts are crippling the newspaper they supposedly would never relinquish.

[Vanity Fair]

Winners:

• The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — they get 50-yard-line seats. It's noteworthy the Journal wasn't made to pay for its rabidly right-wing editorial page. Likely explanation: Murdoch is an "Obahh-mer" booster these days.
• Megan Carpentier, at the convention on behalf of Glamour and Jezebel (and formerly of Wonkette!). "One very pleased writer, Carpentier... couldn't be happier to be a few seats closer to the front of the podium than Mother Jones' David Corn and Portfolio's Matt Cooper, both writers sitting to her left... 'This is amazing! It's so completely random."
• Politico. Parity with Time and ahead of the New Yorker and New Republic is not at all bad for an 18-month-old publication.

From the press box, via Jezebel's liveblog:

9:00 ET: Michael McDonald is killing the crowd, and not in a good way. Most common journalist question: "Who the hell is that guy?" The New York Times David Carr comes in with the assist from down the row: Doobie brothers.

[Observer]

*He is also overhot, but Nick thought his photo was taking up too much space. He is right about everything about Theroux except the parts about Turkmenistan and China. And also, I probably don't need to point this out but Naipaul is a huge twat.

They will be "tracking" No Shows! So Alberto Gonzales of you, New York Times!

*July ad revenue was down 15.3% percent at the newspaper (and that is not even including the Boston Globe that has been dragging them down all these years) and far be it from me to judge a company by its stock price but this is not a pretty chart.

Related: In Tough Economic Times, Bankers Long For Intimacy With Their Happy Endings [Jezebel]

She’s voting for McCain and had nothing nice to say about the Obamas. What about the kids, I asked. “Adorable,” she agreed. Well, I said, Michelle raised them.

“I think her mother does,” Anderson shot back, adding: “I wonder if Michelle would give the Queen one of her little knuckle punches?”

Lady, America does not have a Queen. Also, what is wrong with you?

I don't know what Byron's piece is about, but: the cool thing about covering the luxury and consumer goods industry for the Journal is that the whole nature of the relationship between reporters and the companies that they cover is predicated upon the notion that said companies want to look good to their investors. Which is generally the exact opposite of trying to look good to customers!

Essentially that means that the Journal is the one venue in which you will regularly find executives being forced to roll the "curtain" and say, "Here is our ingenious strategy for scamming people this quarter!" Or: "Isn't it amazing how when you put a giant logo over everything suddenly it's like, a Veblen Good?" Etc. etc. etc.

Perhaps there could be a great glossy magazine to be compiled from the observations and interactions and amusing existential outtakes of Journal Media & Marketing section reporters that don't fit into the paper's more traditional, Street-focused vision? Of course, giving reporters an outlet to write longer, more thoughtful stories is adamantly not the point of newspaper weekend magazines.* I mean, the Times Magazine sometimes serves that purpose, but it launched in 1896. T, which launched four years ago, is the model now! And unlike the Sunday newspaper magazines that have folded in the past twenty-odd years— here's a list — T is profitable. Too bad it is so boring to read! (Although, maybe you are not supposed to read it?)

Anyway, by the T model, WSJ editor-in-chief Tina Gaudoin and co. now has to go courting the same companies that regularly line up to embarrass themselves in the name of investor relations in the regular print Journal. Luxury goods advertisements, which make up 10% of the Times' ad revenue (and that doesn't include retailers) are still a fairly rare sight in the pages of the Journal, not because Journal readers think conspicuous consumption is tacky — far from it! — but because the newspaper, despite its new Saturday edition (even though it is where you'll find Peggy Noonan's invariably awesome column), is something most advertisers still assume most readers get and read — and leave — at work.***

But here's the thing: it is a horrible, retarded — or as a Fitch analyst recently paraphrased Confucius, "interesting" — time to launch such a magazine. Because we are basically in the jaws of a terrible recession, don't you read the Wall Street Journal? Spending is down, ad pages will be worse, the Journal does not exactly have any "first mover advantage" here, and by "industry metrics" (ad pages, extravagant launch parties, "buzz" etc.) this magazine is kind of doomed to "failure."

That could make for an opportunity though! The Journal is, from a talent and institutional knowledge perspective, capable of making a good, funny, readable version of T — just by committing to the kind of magazine its reporters might actually read. Which is not to say stories about options back-dating or the exploitation of immigrant labor or executive suite power struggles; that's why they have a daily newspaper so you can read those stories in the morning and then short the stock during the day duh!

But richly-reported stories like this or even this or the collection that created this book — stories that rely not only on the Journal's matchless access to captains of industry**** but a long-waning commitment to nuance and humor and the seemingly superfluous but telling detail (and um, length) — would get better play in a lifestyle magazine format. And Gaudoin should fight for them, even (especially!) if they stand to piss off potential advertisers, because they're precisely the sort of stories a reader wants to take home. And when Dolce and Balenciaga and LVMH decide to ramp up their marketing budgets again, that is something they will care about.

*Though having been part of a chronically-disappointed Journal staff five years ago it is good to know they're still capable of disappointment!
**Incidentally, the Journal's vaunted "Weekend Journal" section helmed by Joanne Lipman — the gig that won Lipman the job launching the highly underwhelming Conde Nast business monthly Portfolio— was, while an advertiser success, an outlet for which most reporters I knew positively dreaded writing. These days they are probably a little less picky.
***Whereas a "lifestyle magazine" is something people put in the rack next to the toilet where they see the ads again and again, much like those posters in bar bathrooms from which you learned that people forget 80% of what they learn everyday.
****Aka terrible rich people.
[Image noticed by Philaelphia Will Do]

Comments, tips or clarifications, Journalists? Email me.

[MediaWeek]

1. He wants to cut taxes BUT he also wants to raise them!
Barack Obama actually wants to cut taxes by an average of $900 a year for the average household, which is wayyyy more than John McCain. BUT, for the average household in the .01% of households, he wants to raise taxes by an average of $800,000 a year! This is radical socialism yes BUT we agree with former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin who maintains that studies show it is not sufficient to "stifle innovation" especially with regards to how rich people do their taxes.

2. He thinks Ronald Reagan did some good things for the economy BUT he also thinks Bill Clinton did some good things for the economy.
Put another way, he is from Chicago BUT he is also from the Chicago School. As we all know, Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago. That job led him to think welfare reform was not a good idea, probably because he worked with people on welfare. But at the same time he also taught a constitutional law class at the very "Chicago School" that is the hotbed of all those people who think despite all evidence to the contrary that markets solve everything. By some form of "osmosis" Barack Obama is said to have absorbed the realization that markets do actually solve some things and now he wants to apply them to solving pollution or something.

3. He likes Bob Reich BUT he also likes Bob Rubin!
So did Bill Clinton, you say? True enough BUT! Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs moneylover Bob Rubin ultimately prevailed in the "Battle of the Bobs" with Labor Secretary Bob Reich over Bill Clinton's economic policy. BUT! It is not 1993 anymore! Fifteen years have passed! Bob Rubin got Bill to cut the budget deficit, which was good for interest rates, which was in turn good for rich people, and also deregulate the fuck out of everything, which was really good for rich people, but guess what he just told the Times? He said: “The distributional issues are obviously more serious now.” A few weeks ago Obama even tried to broker a little peace agreement with the Bobs over dinner!

He was sitting at a conference table, with Rubin two seats to his left and Reich across from him. “One of the points I raised,” Obama told me, “is if you just use you, Bob, and you, Bob, as caricatures, the truth is, both of you acknowledge the world is more complicated.”

4. Barack Obama's gut instincts regarding commonsense economic issues can seem bad BUT other times they seem remarkably good!
Early in the piece, Obama is described for taking his part-time professorship at the University of Chicago to "make extra money." I think we can all agree that you are not supposed to go into academia for the money! But later in the piece, Obama is described giving a speech to a bunch of economists about how laid-off factory workers should not have to all become nurses just because health care is the only sector creating new jobs in the economy because some of them probably would feel like that would be gay and what factory workers really want to do is "make stuff." Obama's suggestion was that we give factory workers jobs improving our roads and national infrastructure. Well, a few days after this speech, that huge bridge collapsed in Minnesota! You have to give the guy props for those political instincts. (And to that end: He changed his mind on welfare reform BUT he has yet to change his mind on ethanol subsidies. Sigh.)

5. Republican wonks say this fiscal policy will result in "European style social democracy" BUT the Obama campaign maintains they are simply following the model of the state where those Republican wonks live!
Yes, Virginia! (Heh.) As Chicago school resistance member Tom Frank has observed, Virginia is very very rich. (But as Tom Frank's fellow Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has observed, you would not know how rich they are by their governor's Detroit-esque haircuts.) Virginia's thriving economy is one big love note to the economic boons to be reaped from big government spending, but the state didn't get that way by broadcasting its love for big government spending. Quite the opposite: they are all Republicans who support it when the government contracts out its functions in the name of "small government" so executives and lobbyists can reap a disproportionately large percentage of the ensuing economic output. And Virginia's per capita income is now 7% higher than the national average. (Not least because they have five of the country's richest counties.) Whatever, the point is: Obama will follow the economic lead of Virginia in the rest of the country, while trying to reduce the role of lobbyists, as long as Virginia's voters don't get in his way.

Barack Obama, A Free-Market Loving, Big-Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist

KURTZ: Right.

Now, CNN, Jessica Yellin, worked this story. In fact, had a package all ready to go, a taped piece with The Enquirer reporter who broke the story, was part of that. But CNN held back and just about all national media organizations held back.

Why do you think that was?

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are two reasons. One is because of the evidence. You have to have your own solid sourcing to go with this.

And the other is that John Edwards was at no point a top contender for the presidency. I mean, before the campaign started this got a little bit of traction. As soon as it was clear that he really wasn't going to be in the running after Iowa, there's no real public interest of need to know here.

[HOWARD] KURTZ: Wait a minute. I'm not buying that. So what?

The guy ran for president two times. He was the Democrats' vice presidential nominee four years ago. And suddenly, because he didn't win the Iowa caucuses and drops out, you're saying it doesn't matter?

YELLIN: Howie, I guarantee you, if we were in hot pursuit of the story and pushing it and putting it on the airwaves at that time, we would have gotten lambasted for ignoring a war, ignoring a tanking economy, and all these issues that matters to voters. Why are we chasing some lascivious sex scandal?

[JOAN] WALSH [of Salon]: I agree.

YELLIN: The media would have gotten lambasted.

Hopefully Yellin has at least learned a key media lesson from all this: What news consumers say they want and what they actually consume are two very different things (paging Julia Allison...).

Because they've been doing this story since September 2000.

Alexis Boehmler is a junior studying English at Davidson College. At 20, she is bright and well versed, with strong views on the abortion issue and other political matters. Occasionally, friends tease her about her passion for literature; she recalls with some embarrassment speaking in class once about Don DeLillo's novel "White Noise" and being moved nearly to tears. Her opinions do not betray a hint of apathy or intellectual lethargy, and she has every intention of voting in November. And her primary news source — often, her only news source — is "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," a parody.

Just to make sure the story still holds up, we put a call into Alexis, who now works at BOMB Magazine. Turns out she still gets her news from the Daily Show. "Maybe because he covers a variety of topics and personalities, as opposed to the same thing over and over," she said.

Is Jon Stewart The Most Trusted Man In America? [NYT]
Much, much earlier: The Stiff Guy Vs. The Dumb Guy [NYT]
Related: Colbert, Stewart Viewers More Well-Informed Than Those Watching O'Reilly, Dobbs [ThinkProgress]
Which also isn't exactly news: Daily Show Viewers Smarter Than O'Reilly Viewers [BoingBoing, 2004]

Monica! Duh. Remember the Starr Report? Bet you never thought you'd look back on that era as one in which the mainstream media seemed less disingenuously pious.

In a recorded conversation later on October 6, Ms. Lewinsky said she wanted two things from the President. The first was contrition: He needed to 'acknowledge . . . that he helped fuck up my life.'

Obviously, we sympathize more with Monica than Times editors here. After all, as Washington Post editors usually point out self-mockingly in cases like these, as they did when I recently tried unsuccessfully to contrast "sweetie" with "cunt" in a reference to John McCain's alleged use of the term in a fight with his wife for a column for the Washington Post website, the Washington Post is indisputably a "family newspaper." Not so the Times, which possesses nary a comic section nor a "Mini Page" nor any of those coupons for various high fructose corn syrup treats that are actually 1000x more likely to be noticed by impressionable children than any actual text.

The Empire Goes Slack [NYT]
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity [Washington Post]
John McCain's Profane Tirade At His Wife

“They don’t have a lot of options,” said one media investment banker who followed the company in the past. “They can walk away, or they can sell assets. There will not be another big refinancing. They are pretty much at the end of the line.”

Enquirer editor David Perel rightly brags about the tabloid's old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, prompting the passive-aggressive observation from Timesman Carr that "newspapers are cutting back in big whacks and chaining the remaining reporters they employ to their screens to feed all manner of deadlines and blogs."

But if awesome stories could save old media, the large American broadsheets wouldn't be struggling either. Perhaps a makeover of NationalEnquirer.com is in order. The current advertising there is for supermarket coupons, which can't be bringing in much revenue (and which were actually mocked in the comments section here even just as a hypothetical idea.)

[Times]

[Pdf of original.]

"I have this recollection of somebody asking me for lawyers in New York, and I remember naming three or four, and he must have been one of them... It was either her who called or somebody on her behalf...

"I remember getting a call from Pam and her telling me that she was representing him... I may have sent him over there, but on the other hand I may not have. I don’t have an accurate recollection...

"I have a brief recollection of giving someone some cash. My assumption is I loaned some small amount of money to the both of them..."

Baron had previously admitted to paying for Young and Hunter's posh living arrangements but said he didn't know how they found their lawyers. So the Times here is establishing that he might be a liar and also that he may have helped orchestrate the exoneration of Edwards as father of the love child.

The newspaper is apparently quite proud of its scoop, placing it on A1. Editor Bill Keller appears to be in full retreat from his haughty statement that the Edwards scandal is "a supermarket tabloid's anonymously-sourced story" that he would never "recycle." In today's story, his own newspaper not only mentioned the Enquirer's proven reports that Edwards had an affair but also alluded, in the second paragraph, to the tabloid's stories about Edwards fathering a love child. Neither the Times nor any publication other than the Enquirer claims to have proven that allegation through its own reporting. Sounds like "recycling!"

And presumably the Times' standards editor changed his mind about the scandal being "classically not a Times-like story."

[Times]

(Photo via Wikipedia)

Two stories, a man on the street scene piece about…uh, men on the street, and one piece about foreigners who live in nice houses that resemble the old houses that average Chinese used to live in before they were all bulldozed except they are nice and that's why they get to stay.

We checked out some other people we knew in China, including our Times reporting friend Nick Confessore, who is actually in town on vacation, and reports on Facebook that he recently ripped off the idea of Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti and climbed the Great Wall, which was "more effective against the Mongols than against the Japanese." (Not to mention opiates and naval warfare! ) Our former Beijing correspondent friend professed to be "not doing much of anything," saying she'd write more when it was more timezone-appropriate. Oh yes, and Gawker legal counsel Gaby Darbyshire is in Beijing right now, "doing a deal." Sure. Finally we received this email from a friend at Paris Review who is also in Beijing:

I'm on vacation here. I've met a whole lot of people—Americans especially—who've left me asking, What exactly are they doing here? Unfortunately, almost none of them are reporters.

My guess would be that those reporters who are here are trying to see as many events and drink in as much Beijing life as possible while filing just enough copy to make their airfare seem worthwhile. Or at least that's
how I'd handle it.

So there you have it. Most journalists in Beijing right now are just adjusting to the air, seeing the major sites and enjoying the company of their loved ones while sniffing out the emerging superpower, and they've chosen the Olympics as the moment to do it because it sounds sort of "work-y" and it's the last time they'll have so many other clueless white people around to make them feel less ignorant without being forced to wear matching hats.

With Manhood Intact, Not Sauteed, I Conquer The Great Wall [Sun-Times]

How Much Does It Cost?

Travel: Expedia is offering four-night packages to Beijing right now for $1570. The Olympics are two weeks long. Throw in an extra day on either end, and we'll call basic travel and housing costs $6,000 per reporter. Total: $192,000

Food and drinks: Plenty of the food will be free. The booze will be extra. And you know traveling reporters love to splurge on the expense account. We'll give a conservative estimate of $150 per day per reporter. Total: about $67,000

Security, guides and transportation: Americans are getting stabbed! Somebody has to keep an eye on these reporters' safety. Let's say $25k for protection. The Times needs handlers to show them around Beijing: we'll call that $50k over two weeks. Add in another $100 per day per reporter for taxis and whatnot. Total: about $80,000

Freelancers: Somebody has to cover the house fires, baseball games, political rallies, and whatever else the Times full-timers would have been writing about normally. Let's say each reporter at the Olympics would have written three stories per week that the paper had to freelance out at $300 each. Total: about $57,000

Miscellaneous: Laundry bills, souvenirs, pens, computer charges, phone bills, and other things reporters sneak onto expense accounts, legitimate or not. Call it an extra $500 per reporter. Total: $16,000

Total extra cost of sending reporters to Beijing, not including salaries, insurance, or bribe money: $412,000

What's It Worth?

Let's say, for ease of calculation, that each reporter writes one story per day on average for two weeks. That's 448 stories total for the Times' fancy Olympic section. Yes, some stories will be epic features and some will be throwaway coverage of particular events, but we figure that evens out. The total extra cost per story, then, is about $920.

Those better be some awesome stories, right? But divide it by a million papers per day, and it comes out to a total of less than three cents per day for the entire Olympic Times contingent. So the real question is: Would you pay three cents a day to read what the New York Times has to say about the Olympics?

It's a philosophical question.

[Any NYT people who'd like to correct our calculations, email us]

Top Gun, the nickname for the Navy fighter pilot school made famous in the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, originally used the A-4 to simulate Russian MiGs. The key attribute for a "fighter," according to widely recognized definitions, is high speed and maneuverability and weapons designed to shoot down enemy aircraft.

The A-4 proved itself fast and maneuverable at Top Gun, as well as in the service of the Navy's Blue Angels precision-flying team, but in neither of those cases did the aircraft carry any weapons. But it was built to do so. All versions of the aircraft can carry Sidewinder air-to-air missiles for self defense, according to Bill Gunston and Mike Spick's excellent "Modern Air Combat." And they often did, for example in the service of the Israeli Air Force, where an A-4 shot down a Syrian MiG-17 during the Yom Kippur war. Boom, fighter!

The authoritative Jane's military book series calls the A-4 an "attack bomber" in its "Encyclopedia Of Aviation" while Gunston and Spick call it a "versatile little attack bomber."

But! "The World's Great Attack Aircraft," a nifty guide published by W. H. Smith's Gallery imprint, refers to the plane as a "versatile little fighter-bomber."

The Times should not be so easily cowed, particularly when 12 years worth of coverage is at stake. The newspaper no doubt did its own investigation, and "attack aircraft" is a more appropriate term for the A-4 than "fighter" — it's not the "F-4" after all — but there's no need to backtrack from using a perfectly accurate alternative name.

Oh, right, the other amazing correction. That would be one to a review of West Side Story published in 1960:

A listing of credits on April 28, 1960, with a theater review of “West Side Story” on its return to the Winter Garden theater, misstated the surname of the actor who played Action. He is George Liker, not Johnson. (Mr. Liker, who hopes to audition for a role in a Broadway revival of the show planned for February, brought the error to The Times’s attention last month. )

That one is just a bit more cut-and-dried.

[Times]

"I was hoping for a minimal crowd and a minimal disturbance to traffic," Malone said...

If he was really looking for "minimal disruption," Malone had a strange way of showing it. After hanging a banner on the building blasting Al Qaeda's "crusader baiting" of President Bush, Malone called The News looking for more exposure.

He rattled on to an editor about his theories about Al Qaeda.

The News editor eventually had to journey to The Times building to help persuade him to give himself up to cops.

See how the News kind of screws Malone in those last few sentences? That's why the climber should have leaked to the Post. How do you think that tabloid would have handled the case of an American anti-terror crusader being prosecuted more severely in a New York court than a French environmentalist? It's not even worth asking.

[Daily News]

(Pictured climber is Alain Robert, one of the first two. Getty Images.)

Deceiver, July 31:

Who is this guy?

I think we might be able to find out. If you go to the Google cache of MargaretSweet.com, which is the site for an astrologer named, aptly enough, Margaret Sweet (who’s also a friend of Hunter’s), there’s a page called “Helpful Dudes.” But despite the plural, apparently there’s only one dude who Margaret Sweet considers helpful:

Robert (Bob) McGovern - Healer

Bob McGovern is an intuitive who has worked as a healer since 1988. He works with energy in the area of the emotional fields. He uses philosophy, psychology and the intuitive to find resolutions that move people back into alignment with the universe and into a place of peace, harmony and joy.

Bob uses the intuitive to help people with a variety of life issues, including relationships, career and health. His knowledge of the past and the future helps people find balance in the present. He is able to separate out surrounding negative energy, which allows people to have a clearer perception of their own options and choices. He works to empower people so that they can respond to the challenges of daily life with greater discernment and fuller understanding.

That really does sound intuitive, doesn’t it?

The “Helpful Dudes” page also lists McGovern’s Santa Barbara phone number and mailing address, which are current as of June 12, but I don’t think it’s good netiquette to give out that sort of info in blog posts.

NYT, August 10:

But little is known about Mr. McGovern, who is 64, according to records, and lives with his wife in a modest ranch-style home a few miles from downtown Santa Barbara. The Web site Margaretsweet.com, which promotes spirituality and New Age practices, recently carried a brief biography of Mr. McGovern, describing him as “an intuitive” and “a healer since 1988” who had worked “with energy in the area of the emotional fields.” The biography is no longer on the site.

“He uses philosophy, psychology and the intuitive to find resolutions that move people back into alignment with the universe and into a place of peace, harmony and joy,” the site said. “Bob uses the intuitive to help people with a variety of life issues, including relationships, career and health.”

The description of Mr. McGovern, posted in a section called “Helpful Dudes,” also said he tried to empower people so they could deal with the challenges of everyday life with greater understanding.

“His knowledge of the past and the future helps people find balance in the present,” it said. “He is able to separate out surrounding negative energy, which allows people to have a clearer perception of their own options and choices.”

Deceiver was steadily working this story long before the Times printed one word. All it takes is a one-sentence credit to avoid these things. Play fair.

[Deceiver]

Cretella says the Times didn't give him a promotion because he was falsely charged with sexually harassing a new 33-year-old copy editor that Cretella was training. Very enthusiastically:

The two became friends, with Cretella giving him a hand-me-down jacket, letting him use his personal coffee machine and giving him some of the candy he often kept at his desk...

The Times cited allegations that Cretella offered to train the new employee at his home and had a sign on his computer that read, "Can't get enough of lil' bro."

But! Cretella says he was just being nice, and the other guy is actually the perv:

The new guy would walk close by after lunch breaks and whisper things like, "Did you miss me?" the lawsuit says...

In June 2006, the younger employee "started to act inappropriately more consistently" and once rubbed himself through his pants for 20 minutes in his cubicle, the lawsuit says.

Needless to say, both men come off looking very strange. Who's right? We want to hear from each and every New York Times employee with an opinion on this matter. Particularly the copy editors.

[NYDN]

Here's Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, whose newspaper in the recent past trashed the National Enquirer, which owned the story, and also implicitly trashed the story even assuming it was true. Via Kurt'z CNN show:

It almost became a conspiracy of silence by the media... I think at that point we should have earlier than we did told readers, told viewers what we knew and what we didn't know.

In his column Monday morning, Kurtz added that he personally "came to believe that we should publish a story" after North Carolina papers started talking about it.

One gets the sense that the Times' David Carr may have shared similar thoughts at his own newspaper, if only because the media reporter has helped pushed the Gray Lady deeper into blogging and even into slightly whimsical video reports.

On Kurtz's show, Carr called Edwards' admission "a tribute to [National Enquirer editor] David [Perel] and his reporters." He later wrote that it showed how, instead of editors, "consumers... now drive the news process."

The Journal weighed in with a straight news story, reporting that many in the news media had "ignored the story at their peril."

It doesn't take much courage to allow this sort of hand-wringing after some of the allegations against Edwards have been proven true via Edwards' limited TV confession. But most of what's being admitted — that the media should have engaged the story earlier for readers' sake, that consumers and not editors decide what's news, and that traditional media hurt themselves by ignoring the story — would have been just as true if the charges had proven false.