All The Jobs Are On The Internet

The New York Times is hiring, hiring, hiring! You can be a freelance writer even—that is, for "online content startup" LifeWire, which, when it launches, will provide "original and syndicated lifestyle content to Web publishers." You can be a "business producer," a confusing title for what actually sounds like an entertaining job—it's one of those newfangled jobs where you're a packager and a photo editor and a triage nurse and actually a journalist too. There's a travel and style editor job to oversee web producers; an open blog producer job at New York/Region; a homepage producer. That's a lot of hiring for a paper that's having its first layoffs in a while!

Passive-Aggressive Rick Stengel Announces New 'Time' Hire

Salon's Michael Scherer is leaving his position there as Washington correspondent to join Time magazine as political correspondent and teacher's pet. "Michael represents the new TIME correspondent: adept on-line, on-air and in print," said Rick Stengel, in an email to staff today. We are quite sure that none of the magazine's web-reluctant old guard will resent that thinly-veiled barb one little bit! Memo after the jump. More »

Court TV Lays Off Half Its "Online Group"

We always hear about layoffs in production departments, or foreign bureaus, or "a little bit of everywhere," in the case of MTV—but it's rare these days that you get to see an outfit chop up its web staff. But that's what Court TV is doing right this second—with fellow Time Warner company CNN.com going big on plans for CNN.com/crime, Court TV (soon to be called truTV) no longer needs 16 of the staffers at their website. 15 will remain. More »

"MySpace today announced the launch of an original scripted web series, Roommates, in collaboration with Iron Sink Media and sponsored by the 2008 Ford Focus.... Best known for the creation of the popular series 'Soup of the Day,' 'NoHoGirls,' 'WeHoGirls' and 'VanNuysGuys,' Iron Sink has a deep understanding of serial Web programming and production.... As part of the launch, the new 2008 Ford Focus will serve as a title series sponsor providing products which will be integrated into the storyline across multiple episodes....'Today's small car customer is more connected than ever, and the new Focus with SYNC allows them to seamlessly transition from their home or office into their car,' said John Zaremba Focus marketing manager. 'The My Space audience is youthful, on the go, and very social which is exactly like the customer who will be drawn to Focus and use SYNC.'" Did we just wake up in a movie about the future? (But filmed in the 90s?) [MySpace TV]

The PageSix.com Raiding Begins With Noelle Hancock

Noelle Hancock, who's been laboring at the Us Weekly website—she's a former New York Observer gal and one-time Gawker guest-editor—is the first hire that we've been able to confirm for the forthcoming blockbuster craziness that will be PageSix.com. Now it is on, TMZ! We have such great high expectations for the degrading battle of the web tabloid celebrity dirtiness that is coming so very soon—in particular, we hear PageSix.com will have a huge west coast bureau. Noelle, by the way, is the heterosexual lover of New York Times hottie Nick Confessore, who is apparently still on the Albany beat, the poor schmuck.

It looks like the New York Observer has somehow yet to find a web host who can withstand a link from Matt Drudge. They're sort of like the goth girl of newspaper websites—when they get any attention they're all, "Oh my God don't look at me I'm so ugly!" Annnd crash. So while their politics desk continues to regularly get stories on the monster uber-crazy-blogger's website (today's apparently is "NY DEMS BAFFLED BY RUDY LEAD: 'I refuse to believe this could happen to our country'... "), their back-office continues to undermine their work. I bet that is really annoying!

It was a big deal when Time magazine's Rick Stengel sent a memo to the whole staff, saying that "I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to TIME to do. But... [i]f you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine." Well, the Newspaper Guild has put a stop to that—the newest proposed agreement between the union and Time Inc. says that "there will no negative impact on any employee for not volunteering to do Web site work." While we totally get that most companies are making journalists take on more work for no more money, which blows, still; this is the first time I've ever felt a tiny bit of sympathy for Rick Stengel! [WWD]

Each Friday, deputy managing editor Jon Landman and NYT.com general manager Vivian Schiller send out an email to New York Times staffers on the subject of innovation of a digital nature. We read it to take the temperature inside the paper. Some notable moments from this week's installment: "We are way past the point of arguing (aren't we?) about whether blogs or articles make better journalism. The answer, of course, is 'Both.'" And: "Webbies like to say, 'Iterate.' It gets worse! They love to say 'Iterative.' Horrible words. Great ideas. The point is, you can start something on the web that isn't perfect. While it sits there, you make it better. (Try that in the newspaper—by the time you iterate, it's fish wrap.)"

Atoosa: "The Next Big Style Icon Is Going To Be A Drag Queen"

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Did The 'New York Times' Lose Money On TimesSelect?

Portfolio econ-blogger Zubin Jelveh makes the case that hiding some Times content behind a paywall for the last two years cost the newspaper growth, and therefore cash. (Unfortunately, and unrelentingly, traffic equals cash. Stay tuned for some naked celebrity pictures later today!) Comparing the Times' web growth to a number of sort-of competitors, Zubin calculates that the Times lost out on growth of 1.3 billion page views, and asks and answers: "So is 1.3 billion worth page views $20 million over two years? Not knowing anything about their inventory, I'd argue yes." The traffic calculations seem a bit over the top, but we'll still sign on to the conclusion. More »

The 'Times' Bets It All On Graphics

Vivian Schiller General Manager, NYTimes.com: I just want to say one word to you—just one word. More »

From the mailbag: "Could you run some kind of item (or even just this email) that could serve as a clearinghouse for all the things commenters have to say about those retarded ads that have been running in the stalker section?" Yes! Yes we could. Oops we're so fired!

Jeff Bercovici thinks TimesSelect, the extremely annoying partial pay wall of the New York Times, is ending this week. Please God please, yes. [Portfolio]

Melena Ryzik, the one-time sharp-elbowed Times Boldface Names party stringer who went on to write that paper's daily culture email Urban Eye, has gone fulltime for the Times culture desk. We hear Urban Eye is looking for a new... email-blogger? Direct-mailer? What shall we call these new modern forms of journalism? Better find out fast, because these are the jobs of our time. Update: We hear she's keeping Urban Eye as part of the new job. What can't she do???

PRNewser Shows MediaBistro Still Giving This Blog Thing A Shot

We've had this wacky theory that the new owners of Mediabistro are going to jettison their useless collection of blogs, which, save for TVNewser, are increasingly irrelevant and probably draw focus away from the company's core strength of getting guileless freelancers to shell out money that they could better use for food on "get togethers" and seminars. But maybe we're wrong! There's a brand new blog on the block, and it tries to take the TVNewser formula and apply it to the equally fascinating world of public relations! More »

Web Outfit To "Change Journalism Forever" With Pay-For-Traffic Scheme

Last night saw New York's geekiest gather at something called NYC Tech Meet-Up, an event which we will not even pretend to understand. Or care about—save for the fact that Thomas Plunkett, Gawker Media's tech master, made some sort of presentation about something or other that he and his army of supergay IT warriors do behind the scenes to make your reading experience that much more manageable. Portfolio seemed to enjoy the performance—but they didn't get the goods. Unfortunately, we did. More »

"[Jeff] Chu, who was offered and accepted his new position at Fast Company on Facebook, was most recently a senior associate editor at Portfolio where he created consumer product and travel sections." So maybe everything really is different now. [Romenesko]

Our Tennis Nightmare Obsessively Documented, Not Yet Over

We could not give less of a damn about the U.S. Open—although we are still interested in and baffled by Vogue editor Anna Wintour's extreme obsession with Roger Federer. (She hosted a dinner for him on the 23rd, he got that Men's Vogue cover, she keeps getting spotted in the stands, including on Monday, and we fully expect to see him seated alongside her at the fashion shows.) Whatever, despite the forearms, he's not that pretty. But we'd be remiss if we didn't point out the absolute insanity of the Observer's U.S. Open blog. We realized it had totally gotten out of hand last night when they posted pictures of South African doubles player Jeff Coetzee getting his hair cut. It's like U.S. Weekly but for straight men! We'll start reading when there are more pictures of ballboys.

The Hamptons Townies Speak

Around 1 a.m. today we got an email from one of the Hamptons kids that we wrote about on our last trip to the East End. (They were hanging out downtown when we met them, getting the hairy eyeball from uptight New York summer Hamptons people.) We're publishing it for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a benefit of this medium that we get to have subjects of stories respond; if Google News can do it, why not us? And also, because we pretty much agree with it! More »

News Subjects Get Place To Grind Axe

Genius? Evil? Google News is going to append comments to the stories they aggregate from "those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question." OH FUN. We actually can't quite envision the exciting ways in which this will go horribly wonderfully wrong—though we're pretty sure for-now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is going to have to get a new team up and running for this though. More »

Virginia Heffernan will pick up her blog, Screens, and move it from the New York Times to the... New York Times magazine, where she'll also do a column about "home entertainment." From the Times memo: "Virginia Heffernan plays a role at The Times not unlike that of Russell Owen, the correspondent who nearly 80 years ago traveled literally to the end of the earth to cover Richard Byrd's pioneering expedition to the South Pole. Except that Virginia does the bulk of her exploring from Brooklyn, in front of her computer...." Heh.

Lindsay Lohan's DUI Is TMZ's 9/11

By 9:43 a.m., gossip site TMZ had put up seven Lindsay Lohan DUI arrest posts—the first six were published while she was still in jail, and the seventh was her release from jail. Please note that it's 6:30 in the morning out there. We're predicting 18 TMZ Lohan posts today—definitely a minimum of 15. Our hearts go out to the gossip laborers of the west coast in this time of crisis. Oh wait! In the time it took for us to write this brief paragraph, they've published an eighth item, questioning the utility of her alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet. Next up from TMZ, we think: a post predicting how much jail time she'll be getting. OMG, no, wait! Now there's a ninth item, about how she's not going to do the "Tonight" show tonight, clearly. We raise our prediction to a full 21 posts today—one for each year that Lindsay Lohan will be alive! Oh, look, the LA Times and the NY Times finally got an AP story up!

Ask Your Own Damn Mexican

"Ask A Mexican," the great OC Weekly column, is now being syndicated in New York by our local New Times paper The Village Voice. Now, according to the City earlier this year, there are 250,000 Mexicans in New York City. (Total undercount, no doubt, but: a blip.) No matter how awesome the column, the syndication is a huge mistake. The Voice doesn't even have a media column any more—but how expensive would it be to start up Ask A Puerto Rican? Rosie Perez and John Leguizamo would totally co-write it for 50 bucks a week. I guess we'd even settle for Ask A Dominican. The smart syndication should be site-specific mutation, yo! Miami can start Ask A Cuban. Chicago can start up Ask A Greasy Pole. Hello? "Prepare to be entertained and pissed off," says Voice editor Tony Ortega in the press release. Really? You think? Border-crossing comedy is a lot less funny this far from the border. Also: L.A. sucks.

Celebrity Babies Make Money

So Nerve—which used to be a sleek sexy magazine, and then split off a company that ran personal ads, and is also a place that gets snippy every time we mention them, by the way—is now all about the fetus and the newly post-fetal. It began with their new site Babble, "the magazine and community for the new urban parent," which I'm sure would make my mom, the old urban parent, stab someone if she saw it. But now it seems there's money in them thar baby bumps! Their celebrity baby blog FameCrawler is up and live. Nerve: They are New York. They went from screwing to breeding but like totally kept that edgy 'tude. Just like Amy Sohn! Also Drool.icio.us is their blog for "the top million baby products," if you were in need of a $390 crib in environmentally-safe fabrics or whatever. Not a good site for bitter childless fags to visit, apparently. For them, I hear, it can be a real downer.