[TimesPeople]

31-year-old Sorkin, part of a new generation of Times reporters, has been permitted opinion before. "Mr. Murdoch may be the perfect publisher of The Wall Street Journal." Let's take another example: Alessandra Stanley's front page indictment of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's troublesome pastor. Stanley’s review called Wright “the compelling but slightly wacky uncle who unsettles strangers but really just craves attention... [Wright] doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice."

Sorkin's slam on Ballmer is a sign of a livelier Gray Lady. The challenge from web news sites, the threat of layoffs—and now competition from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal—have lifted the metabolism of the newspaper in a way that the exhortations of earlier executive editors never could. An intelligent or provocative slant is one way that a newspaper can differentiate its story from the thousand other rehashes of the same information. British hyper-competitive newspapers have made an art of such spin; as America's media becomes more competitive, outlets are following Fleet Street's example.

It's not only the news pages that are livelier. The Times' City Room blog led the pack in covering the sudden death of movie star Heath Ledger: they were quick with the breaking news, information from the scene and background on the Dark Knight actor's bouts of depression. During the Eliot Spitzer scandal, the paper's website broke the first pictures of the governor's call-girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupré. And the newspaper's opinion writers like Frank Rich have led a devastating intellectual charge against George Bush and the Republican administration.

So what's the problem? All this messy modernity compromises the Times' prissy self-image. The newspaper's proprietors and editors are obviously moderate liberals, and the conservative columnists are either watered-down or compromised, as token as the useless liberals allowed to whine on Fox News—but the Times can't acknowledge that it's partisan. On the web, the Times has opted for speed and sensation, passing on a false detail that Ledger's apartment was owned by Mary-Kate Olsen—but the newspaper still maintains it applies the same standards of accuracy as in print. (It's still scarred by the fabrications of Jayson Blair, five years ago.)

Most painful of all to behold is the editors' contorted defense of an outmoded notion of objectivity. Here's the summary, it's fine for opinion to be expressed on the opinion pages, and in columns on the news pages, but only so long as those columns are written by designated columnists and not by multitasking reporters, who are only allowed to express "points of view" and not opinions, as if there were any way to distinguish between the two.

The mandate of columnists in the news pages “is fundamentally analytical,” executive editor Bill Keller told the paper's public editor. “They may have a point of view on an issue, but they are not partisan or ideological. They don’t endorse candidates. They don’t prescribe outcomes. ... They are free to express opinions of a certain type that grow out of a particular expertise and a body of reporting.” His deputy, Jill Abramson, was equally opaque when defending Alessandra Stanley's put-down of the attention-craving Reverend Wright. On May 4, in another column by the public editor, Abramson was quoted saying, “She had a lot of interesting things to say that didn’t go over the news-opinion divide." (So how interesting would one have to be to go over that line?)

You know what? Screw the news-opinion divide. When the Times was still pure, reporters would simply trot out some tame expert to give the story the slant they planned; it's less convoluted—and wordy—for writers like Sorkin and Stanley simply to express their own views. Readers can get raw information from wire services and press releases; the only value the Times can add is time-saving summarization—and attitude.

The Times is the closet-case of newspapers. Everybody knows that the political bent is liberal; that the newspaper's reporters have opinions; and that they're hungry for a juicy story, even if the rush to publish can introduce mistakes. None of these are crimes; they only become embarrassments because of the paper's official position. Bill Keller needs simply to come to terms with the nature of modern newspapers. He and his colleagues will feel so much lighter if they do.

Anyone familiar with Times Kremlinology could probably have guessed at that basic narrative by reading the front-page story: respected investigative journo Jim Rutenberg got the tip, four star reporters followed it, and they never quite ended up with solid documentation to satisfy Keller, who was under pressure from the McCain camp and their new (criminal!) lawyer Bob Bennett. Then it hit Drudge and suddenly they had to do something with it, 'cause if they didn't, someone else would.

Also it was a major battle between the Washington bureau (who wanted to run it!) and the New York bureau (stodgy and old and wanted to kill it!), with Keller, in New York, eventually making them reshape the piece into a history of vague ethical malfeasance and not OMG INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP. This hedging led to the story being even fuzzier and more open to the criticism it's received than it would've been if they'd stuck to the "anonymous former aides insinuate this" angle, probably.

But, after continuing to pretend they didn't know anything about the story or when it would run up until the night the final draft arrived on Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson's desks, they had to do something with it, before everyone else did their pieces on how they didn't do anything with it. And there you have it. The New York Times is just a fancy blog.

We also extend our congrats to TNR for being, as far as we know, the first major publican to headline their story on this scandal with a Top Gun joke.

The Long Run-Up [TNR]

"We knew this was coming," the insider told us. Maybe it was the way publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. stood with his "hands locked together in this pensive way," that clued staffers streaming into the shiny new red-seated TimesCenter auditiorium about what Keller might tell them. Or maybe it was just common sense—after all, the Times has held out longer than most when it comes to layoffs.

"But as many of you know, we put into place a hiring freeze several weeks ago, and except for those jobs that are critically important to our future ambitions, we intend to enforce it." So which is it going to be, kids? Were things bad then? How about now? Things are just pretty poor all around, huh. Know more? Let us know.

—-—-—-- Forwarded message —-—-—--
From: Ellen Kavier
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:26:14 -0500
Subject: [NYT Newsroom] Message from Bill Keller
To: newsroom@ahot.nytimes.com

To the staff:

Despite growing pressure on the newsroom budget, The Times has continued to
turn out great journalism, whether it's covering Iraq, New York City or the
most crowded Presidential campaign in memory. We've been able to do this,
in part, because each of you has helped us save money by finding new and
more efficient ways to do what we need to do. That has enabled us to avoid
the kind of drastic staff cutbacks other news organizations have endured.
Jill, John and I greatly appreciate everything you have done.

As we approach 2008, it is clear that the newsroom is going to have to do
even more to tighten spending, and to help the publisher and the Times
Company meet the difficult financial challenges facing our industry. While
we are committed to retaining our competitive muscle, we will be facing
some tough choices about where to save. That is why I must tell you that
there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent
memory. The people who are affected are not journalists, but that does not
make this news any easier to share.

Today we notified the Newspaper Guild that about a dozen support positions
within the newspaper are being eliminated. We will, for example, be
closing the Recording Room as well as trimming a number of clerical and
secretarial jobs. The people in those jobs will receive the severance they
are entitled under the Guild contract.

During 2008, we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in
administrative areas.

This staff reduction does not include any journalists, nor any widespread
buyouts, as has happened in the past. But as many of you know, we put into
place a hiring freeze several weeks ago, and except for those jobs that are
critically important to our future ambitions, we intend to enforce it. As
journalists resign or retire from the Company next year, we will be trying to fill their
positions internally.

As we move into 2008, we will be rethinking coverage priorities and how we
use our space and our people, but always in ways that preserve what The
Times does best. In the future, as in the past few months while these
matters were under review, we have worked closely with our partners on the
business side, with a single shared ambition: to seek cutbacks and
reductions that are as strategically focused as possible, and do nothing to
damage our core journalism.

Bill

Ad revenue for the New York Times Media Group decreased 2.9 percent from July 2006—which is actually not bad. Take the New England Media Group, where apparently the Nordstrom and Neiman-Marcus in the Natick Mall have yet to open and save the world: Ad revenues are down 4.9 percent compared to last July. The bad news came from the Regional Media Group, whose ad revenues are down a cringe-worthy 10.9 percent, "mainly because of softness in home furnishing, home improvement and department store advertising. Classified advertising revenues decreased due to weakness in real estate, help-wanted and automotive advertising." Hi, Craigslist!

All of those numbers are marginally better than the June results, when the Times was down 3 percent, the New England Media Group was down 11.8 percent, and the Regional Media Group was down 12.2 percent.

The bright spot, as always, is Internet revenue, which grew 19.3 percent over last July. But while impressive, the rate of Internet growth is also slowing. In the second quarter, Internet revenue grew 23.4 percent; in June, Internet revenues were up 22 percent over last year.

We assume that a lot of that growth came from the About Group, whose ad revenues rose 34.7 percent in July (About's ad revenues are bundled into the calculations for the Internet group, but also broken out separately, presumably because they're a spot of good news). It seems that as the months go by, the company is looking for other, mostly online-based, ways to make money to support its sinking newspaper business. Bill Keller doesn't work for free, ya know! But now his salary is being paid by stuff like "What Not to Play At Your Wedding."

New York Times Company: Press Releases [NYT Co.]

Well! Probably not Larry Ingrassia and his Business staff—like David Carr, Joe "Near-Death Experience" Sharkey, and soon, ex-TV Newser Brian Stelter—who are stuck way down on 2 (maybe they sold it to them as "bad views, but a short way down in case of emergency"?). Sharing that floor are various research/administrative-y departments like contracts and news surveys and database reporting, but also fun desks like Escapes/Travel; Investigative, which is run by former "Our Towns" Metro columnist Matthew Purdy; the Science desk (presumably where counterintuitivist John Tierney hangs his hat); and the wacky dudes of Sports. Oh, and Week in Review also gets its own corner on 2.

On 3, we've got a real newsy smorgasboard: City Weekly (hey, Jake Mooney! What's up, Jennifer Bleyer!), the clerical staff, the Continuous News Desk (they still have those?), Alison Mitchell's Education desk (where we presume ethics-loving and Jew-struggling Sam Freedman probably has a cubicle), the Foreign desk (the editors, we assume? If everyone else is, you know, in a foreign country?), and hip-hop and memo loving Joe Sexton's Metro staff—like Clyde Haberman, overwriter Michael Brick, weather poet Robert D. McFadden, and Peter Braunstein-chronicler Anemona Hartocollis. We're not done, though—also crowded into the third floor are the National desk, led by Times lifer Suzanne Daley (though, like the Foreign desk, most of her reporters are scattered in various places); the News Administration, News Design, and the simply named "News Desk" desks; Obituaries, where advance writer Marilyn Berger toils away, presumably maintaining the office celebrity death pool; the limping Regional Edition; and WQXR, the Times-owned classical music station.

Most important, though, is that the "Masthead" also lives on 3. Who, or what, is the "Masthead" desk? Why, simply the Most Important Editors of Our Time, such as executive editor Bill Keller, managing editors Jill Abramson and John Geddes, and deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, who've clustered in a corner of the floor to protect themselves from the unwashed masses.

Up on 4, we've got Sam Sifton and his Culture clique—Alessandra Stanley, Bill Carter, Virginia Heffernan, Jon Pareles, Kelefa "K" Sanneh, etc.—who share space with a bunch of other features-y departments. We've got Trish Hall's Home section, which, of course, is not just for rich people! This floor is also where Pete Wells holds court over the Dining section, which is home to sometime bartender Frank Bruni, cheapskate Peter Meehan, and food-world gossipper Florence Fabricant; the Real Estate section, which hopefully will never again publish a front-page story printed at an angle like they did the other week; "Special Sections"; the TV Studio; and (drumroll!) WASPy Jew Trip Gabriel and his Styles minions. This, we imagine, is where the real decisions at the Times get made. It's where Stephanie Rosenbloom sits at her cubicle, calling her mom. Where Guy Trebay and Eric Wilson get into catfights over who's wearing the skinniest pants. Where Cathy Horyn swans into the office in a conceptual muumuu. Where "society editor" Bob Woletz has the power to decide which couples shall receive an announcement the paper's Weddings section, and which shall die a certain social death.

Moving on! On 5, ensconced with, undoubtedly, many bookshelves, we've got New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus and his staff, including Paper Cuts blogger and "Inside the List" columnist Dwight Garner, deputy editor Bob Harris, and assorted other book review staff.

On 6 and 7 is Gerald Mazorati and Alex Star's New York Times Magazine—plus the various incarnations of T, Play, Key, and whatever other one-word glossies they're incubating over there. The Art department also has space on 7. And most of the Editorial staff of NYTimes.com, including Digital News Editor Jim Roberts, lives on 9.

Our friends on the editorial page—editor Andrew Rosenthal, deputy editors Carla Robbins and David Shipley, and Letters editor Thomas Feyer—have taken up residence on 13, which they share with some ad operations people from NYTimes.com.

The Morgue has, sadly, been sent off-site, to the Times offices at 230 W. 41st St.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis and her corporate communications cronies are on 17, which they share with the controller's office and part of the executive committee (scary!), part of which is also on 16. Now we're getting to some potentially good views. On 18, we've got the corporate secretary, the "forest products group" (uh, paper?), legal, blah blah. The 19th and 20th floors are home to Ad Sales (and a herd of mice). Then, on 22, which is the very top Times floor (the rest of the building has been leased to fancy law firm Goodwin Procter) are what, clearly, are the most important departments in the place: Circulation and Finance. Just remember that.

"It was like Dorkfest 2007. The newsroom, filled with empty desks which were lousy with dustballs, contained about a hundred pizzas, 500 bottles of beer, and hundreds of journalists, editors and photogs sweating it out to the sounds of the 70s spun by an in-house DJ. The greatest talents in the newspaper world were cutting loose in the only way smart people can: very earnestly. As the news clerks played a drinking game in the back—special guest appearance by a serene-looking Bill Keller—dancing bodies stole the attention away from the photo slideshow of the newsroom in its heyday playing on the wall.

"Keller's memo called for no speeches, no toasts, and, mercifully, there weren't any. Sewell Chan was there, happy and relaxed for a change, as was the always-adorable Pat Healy, who should be a star in Washington as the campaign heats up. Everyone was there, except it was so crowded that it was nearly impossible to make the rounds, so some hopped up on desks and filing cabinets and shimmied to the beat.

"But the best was Joe Sexton, Metro Editor, who is always a relaxed, jovial presence in the newsroom, always encouraging social outings, and he's a huge hip-hop fan, so nobody could hold a candle to his moves. He was on that dance floor for at least a couple hours, drenched in sweat. Nobody made a fool of themselves, and nobody was too drunk, I don't think. Some took the rare opportunity to travel to the 14th floor and see Sulzberger's private quarters, replete with his bedroom and shower, now empty."

Last July, Times executive editor Bill Keller sent around a memo detailing the changes that would be occurring. He started by saying that the NYT's printing plant in College Point, Queens would be adding another high-speed press, and the Edison, N.J. plant would be "subleased"—i.e., closed. He also said that "when this consolidation is complete—in April 2008—The Times will adopt the narrower format that is now becoming the industry norm."

Of course, the move to narrower pages is happening in August 2007, not April 2008. And yesterday's memo also said: "a large number of press mechanics will changeover prepared presses at College Point, Edison and national plants on Sunday to be able to print at the new size." Curious! Why would the Times go to the (expensive!) trouble of getting a new press for a plant they're about to close? Why not wait until the original appointed date, next April, to make the change, when they're going to be closing the plant and putting all those people out of work anyway?

It also seems as though either the size changes have turned out to be more significant than Keller originally thought, or else he has deliberately downplayed their significance to his staff. In last year's memo, he wrote:

The smaller format will affect the newsroom in big ways, but not in dire ways... The narrower format will mean some reduction in our news hole, and it will require an extensive redesign. Since this will not happen for nearly two years, we'll have plenty of time to adapt.

If we just cut the page size and did nothing else, we would lose 11 percent of the news hole. That would be a serious loss. But the plan is to add more pages to the paper so that the net loss of news space is approximately 5 percent, which I believe we can absorb without significant damage to the report. We will look for ways to report incremental news developments in digests or other abbreviated forms, and to police flabby or redundant prose in longer pieces. I'm convinced that, with good editors and a little time, I could take 5 percent out of any day's paper and actually make it better.

A dress page column now with headline and blurb might be 720 words; without a jump, the equivalent column will be about 50-60 words shorter. While Bill Keller has been asking overall for shorter stories, the start of the narrow-measure paper will reduce specific news holes. Page designers are working out samples to share with individual sections. Merrill Perlman is working with News Technology on a guidance sheet for copy editors. With the start of this project looming, it seems a good time to ask all to think anew about how the measures may alter story lengths or layouts.

Not that we're saying that the Times couldn't tighten up. May we suggest that it begin with Thursday Styles?

Coming This August: The New York Times Narrows! [NYO]
New York Times Shrinks Paper, Closes Plant [Romenesko]

The bulk of Keller's presentation (which was followed by a Q&A) had to do with the Times' transition to "journalism on the web" and the evolving "web-print relationship." Newsroom editors, he said, "need to be better informed about features that appear in their sections. They don't necessarily have to know how to put up a slide show or put up a graphic, but they need to know who does what." Excellent plan!

He also spoke about the "gradual reallocation of resources from print towards digital" and copy editors being moved to the day side, so that there could be a "greater flow of fresh quality edit material." We imagine a chill swept quickly over the room! Then he brought up two of the Times' stars: Sewell Chan, who has become a "full-time, online Metro journalist"; and the comely Ariel Kaminer, who—assuming we heard this correctly—is becoming a "cultural impresario." Snarf.

"We can't let our reverence for quality become a straitjacket in new media," he warned. "The web environment is different... We can offer guidance but we cannot insist on the same control we exercise over print."

That, it would seem, might be a difficult lesson to absorb. But Keller hurried to make his charges feel better! "Online and in print, we are the New York Times," he intoned, not entirely convincingly.

He spoke of the new building: "Pioneers have already settled in our gleaming frontier." He brought up some of the complaints that the "pioneers" have had, including fire alarms having a mind of their own and motion-sensor lights not working. "There have also been reports of a rat sighting," he said, though he hurried to say that it was unsubstantiated. "The mice aren't scheduled to move in until June 15." Laughter! Relief!

"I implore you to be versatile," he implored. "It's an immense improvement over our venerable, but cramped and deteriorating, building on 43rd Street. The company is heading for a long future."

Part of the future includes a reduction in the size of the paper at the end of the summer. "Folks, it ain't that different," he said. There's that warm Bill Keller we all know! "It's an inch and a half narrower. There's no dramatic makeover of our design." In contrast to the Wall Street Journal's redesign, he said that the Times would "absorb the change without a great deal of fanfare." He said the changes include a display page for the foreign desk, and limiting the jumping of A1 stories to other sections.

While the paper will be adding pages, the "actual reduction of the newshole is about 5 percent," he said, which will give editors "some incentive about being a little more ruthless about throwing stories back for cuts. Our stories are too often too long... The 1200 word stories could be 800 or 900. There are editors at a Page 1 meeting boasting that a story is only 1400 words." (Good thing Sewell is only writing for the web, then.)

Then it was time for questions. Someone asked how the Times plans to make money off the web. "I heartily believe we will," Keller said. "How, is a lot more complicated." He talked about Wall Street, and doing PowerPoint presentations. "There's a phrase they use in drug and alcohol rehab—'fake it til you make it.' That's basically what we're doing."

Another person asked about Rupert Murdoch's bid for the Wall Street Journal and how that might affect the Times. Keller seems to think that if Murdoch wins the bid for Dow Jones, he will invest in Bloomberg-type news. "I don't think we want to go into the newswire and business newswire service," he said. "It's not our strength. We can respond in a smart way by providing more of what we provide now, which is stuff that if you're interested in business, you have to read. Smart analysis, columns, news of that kind." He speculated that Murdoch might be interested in starting a magazine to go with the Journal. "He doesn't seem to like the Saturday Journal," Keller remarked. "We're pretty good at magazines. I'm quite confident that if he comes up with something we will be able to respond. There are a lot of people at the Wall Street Journal wondering if we're the last lifeboat in the ocean."

Someone asked whether the hiring of online staff would affect hiring or staffing the paper. "Mostly, no," Keller said. "The web creates openings for very specialized jobs. Sometimes you have to go out and hire them from other places. But in the reallocation of resources from print to digital, we're not talking about closing down print slots and opening up web slots."

And then someone asked about City Room, which is Sewell Chan's new project, and is basically a mini-New York Times, but online and only about New York. "The idea is that the New York Times is not giving up New York City... We're taking one of our most inventive and productive journalists and setting him loose. He will do all different kinds of news without any narrow portfolio." God help us.

About once a year, on this day, I find myself wondering why we treat this particular prize with champagne and speeches, while other accolades are celebrated with beer and e-mails. Shouldn't the Polk Award Lydia Polgreen accepted last week for her courageous and incisive coverage of Darfur fill us with the same pride as the honors handed out today? How is it that Tyler Hicks was voted Newspaper Photographer of the Year by a jury of leading American picture editors, but neither Tyler nor any of our amazing photo staff is a finalist for today's prizes?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm just saying prizes, like newspapers, are put out by human beings.

Bill Keller's Speech:

This is the last time we'll be having the annual Pulitzer gathering in this place. By next April we will be settled into a new home, and, presumably, whining and kvetching about the facilities. We will have a new Pulitzer wall — in the corridor outside the 15th-conference rooms. The move comes just in the nick of time, since we had pretty much filled up the hallway up on the 11th floor.

Before we get to the good news, I'd like to say what I say every year, come rain or come shine. Prizes are not the reason we do what we do, and they are not the most important measure of what we do. They are nice to get and very nice to get, but there is a long honor roll of world-class journalists — some of them standing in this room right now — who have not been singled out for a Pulitzer — at least, not yet.

This year the resourcefulness, intelligence and artistry of our journalists has been acknowledged with a cascade of prizes — the Polk, the Overseas Press Club, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, professional associations of business editors and sportswriters, photographers and graphic artists, and so on.

About once a year, on this day, I find myself wondering why we treat this particular prize with champagne and speeches, while other accolades are celebrated with beer and e-mails. Shouldn't the Polk Award Lydia Polgreen accepted last week for her courageous and incisive coverage of Darfur fill us with the same pride as the honors handed out today? How is it that Tyler Hicks was voted Newspaper Photographer of the Year by a jury of leading American picture editors, but neither Tyler nor any of our amazing photo staff is a finalist for today's prizes?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm just saying prizes, like newspapers, are put out by human beings.

Okay, that's enough cloud. On to the silver lining.

This year we had three Pulitzer finalists — two of them emanating from that engine of excellence known as the Metro Desk.

In the explanatory category, The NYT Staff was a finalist for our national wake-up call on the epidemic of diabetes. Sonny Kleinfield, Richard Perez-Pena, Marc Santora and Ian Urbina kicked off the year with an eye-opening series, and throughout the year we had contributions from other departments, accompanied by great video narratives and slide shows that brought the problem vividly to life.

In the commentary category, Joe Nocera was a finalist in his first full year as a Times business columnist. Joe's tough-minded and richly reported columns have made him a destination for those in business, those interested in business, and anyone who just love a good, thoughtful story, beautifully told.

Our Pulitzer winner this year, in the feature-writing category, is Andrea Elliott. Andrea won for taking us into a Brooklyn mosque and illuminating the life of an imam in America. Her series was a thrilling piece of journalism — an intimate tour of a world we ought to know better. Her writing was clean and clear without glossing over the complexities. It was humanizing without being romantic. And I doubt that many people who started it put it down without reading every last word.

Last Saturday one of the guest columnists on our Op-Ed page, Robert Wright wrote that the most treacherous fault line in America is the one between Muslims and non-Muslims. "Americans," he wrote, "have already done things abroad that are helping to make the 'clash of civilizations' thesis a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's not make that kind of mistake at home."

We won't, if more journalists follow Andrea's example.

Joe Sexton would like to pile on, and I don't blame him. Before he does, two more notes of pride within our extended family. Our friends and colleagues up in Boston won the national reporting Pulitzer for exposing those presidential signing statements, in which President Bush apparently set out to reinterpret legislation sent to him by Congress. And Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff won one of the literary Pulitzers for their fine book on reporting of the civil rights era in the South. Congratulations to them — and to all the other winners today.

Joe Sexton's Speech:

Arthur, Bill, Jill, John, thanks for the freedom and confidence and encouragement, and for creating and protecting, even in some awfully challenging times, an atmosphere in this newsroom of great ambition and appropriate modesty, of perspective and adventure and humor.

For the last couple of years, Metro has had a half dozen or more reporters engaged in long-term project work. There ain't many papers left that are able or willing to make those kinds of investments.

It's sad and scary to say that; but it is also a blessing to say that this paper is still one of them.

I'd like to thank Glenn Kramon, who has been an inspired consultant and co-architect of much of Metro's most ambitious work. He opened his heart to Andrea's series, and championed and bettered it every step of the way. And he is a prince of a person.

I'd like to thank Susan Edgerley. None of Metro's enterprise realized this past year would have got done had she not said, over and over again, that simple but daring word, "Yes."

Andrea — I know — will have lots to say about the irrepressible and irreplaceable Jim Estrin.

But I wanted to say a special thanks to Michele McNally and Meaghan Looram. They gave Jim unbelievable latitude to work his magic, and then layered on their own genius. And all that was enhanced yet further by a team at the Web, including Lisa Iaboni, Samantha Storey, Grant Burningham and Juliet Gorman.

It would be a crime if I got to stand here in celebration and did not salute the work of others.

So, I'd like to give some serious props to Tim Golden and Michael Moss and Debbie Sontag and Lydia Polgreen and Sabrina Tavernise and Michael (Wines) and Sharon (LaFraniere) in Africa and the amazing Mr. Chivers and the indestructible Mr. (Ed) Wong and Mr. (Jim) Glanz, and the extraordinary foreign picture editor who has directed her brave photographers in one war zone after another, keeping them alive and loved.

A shoutout, too, to the national desk and its defiantly stubborn commitment to covering Katrina's legacy, to Laura Chang's clear-eyed and tender look at challenging children, to Mr. Sifton's ever more entertaining and gutsy section, to Pete Thamel's exclusives, and to Larry Ingrassia's experiment with the future that is now.

Okay, just one more bit of business before Andrea. I know her parents are wondering, hey, what gives with this guy?

But the work on diabetes by Sonny and Ian and Marc and Richard, and spearheaded masterfully by the unrivaled Kevin Flynn, was some kind of model for powerful and professional partnership across the paper. And Bill Glaberson's serious beat down of New York State's system of small town justice — done in expert collaboration with Patrick Farrell — made for one of the more jaw dropping exposes of what are known as outrages hiding in plain sight.

You know, the Pulitzer people make you write up the impact achieved by any submitted body of work. It's a fun and validating experience. But often only the judges get to fully appreciate that scope of impact.

Here's a flavor then for the record books:
one reader of the diabetes series donated $6 million to reopen a clinic;
The NYS Health Foundation dedicated tens of millions to diabetes work.
Mr. Spitzer has promised to overhaul he way the state handles chronic diseases.
The National Conference of State Legislatures said the series inspired it to begin monitoring diabetes in all 50 states.
And the U.N. passed a resolution recognizing diabetes as a global threat, the first time a non-infectious disease has triggered such an action.

As for Bill, well his work only managed to produce more reform than had occurred over the last century, and, since there are no secrets anymore to the Pulitzer process, it's worth saying his work was among the final bunch in two separate categories. The state's top officials are now spending several more months studying the possibility of some more radical changes — like, oh, well, requiring that judges actually be lawyers. It will be interesting to see if the governor has half the political and personal courage he says he does.

Ah, now Andrea. You know, at the heart of her series on Sheik Reda Shata was this idea that, as he made his way in the west, the sheik had to make certain adjustments and accommodations. Well, he'll likely have to make another one when he tries to get his head around the fact that the idea for the series on the life of an American imam began in a dive bar off Times Square.

But it was there that Andrea decided the paper had neglected long enough the notion of covering Muslims in America after 9/11. She already had a head of intellectual steam and a list of story ideas, and, after several Bud Lights over which I pretended to add my own incredibly astute thoughts, I just got out of her way.

And it's a good thing to get out of her way. I have rarely been in the presence of a reporter who quite so literally vibrates with intensity — an intensity of interest, an intensity of purpose, an intensity not just to know things but to really actually understand them.

She would ultimately produce a series that, for me and others, was from start to finish built one utterly novel sentence after another.

But it was others who had the most eloquent responses. One board member of the sheik's mosque, a man who had said all he ever wanted was a fair picture for once, said: "The series marked a new era for Muslims in the country. It's like 9/11. There was before and there was after."

And so it is. You know, the sheik, in Day 2 of the series, talked about what had accounted for the often ignorant and hostile relationship that existed between Muslims and the wider world of America. "I once read a Spanish proverb," he said. "The wall of hatred was asked, "'How were you built?'" And the reply was, 'From the stones of insult.'"

Well, if today that wall of hatred has some number of fewer bricks, it is in no small part because of Andrea's series.

So, at long last, here she is.

Andrea Elliott's Speech:

I came to The Times at a tough moment for the paper. It was May of 2003. In all the tumult, I didn't expect much of an orientation. But I was hardly prepared for my second day of work, when my new boss Jon Landman said, "Oh. You should come to this Town Hall meeting we're having."

It certainly didn't feel like the most promising start. But from the beginning, my path here has been filled with the kind of great luck that anyone has to have to win one of these things. And I'm really honored and humbled to be standing here today.

My first stroke of luck came in the form of Joe Sexton. I must admit, after the Town Hall meeting, it took me about a month to work up the courage to walk over to his desk and pitch a story. I was so relieved when he didn't cuss me out.

We all know that Joe has a big personality. But what fewer people know is what a remarkable listener he is. He searches out the deepest parts of a story. And as masterful an editor as he is, he clearly hasn't tamed his inner reporter. He thought nothing of trekking out to Bensonhurst, midway through my reporting on the imam series, to meet the Sheik. For all of his boisterous passion, he can also be calm and steady and even quiet in his devotion to a project. His wisdom and patience on this one were priceless. Joe, thanks so much. It's been a huge privilege.

I had been working the Sunday shift in Metro for two years when I pitched the idea of this series to Joe. And the thing I feel most at this moment is enormous gratitude, to both him and this newspaper, for just letting me run with it. I was like so many reporters out there who have stumbled on a great story, and wanted to do right by it. And the thing about The Times is it doesn't matter if you've been here for twenty years or two. This is a place where your ideas can take flight.

I really believe that almost no other newspaper would have made this story possible. We spent thousands of dollars on Arabic translators. I worked on this series for months, disappearing from the paper. I remember at one point getting a letter from my dad that read, "Andrea, I am puzzled as to what you've been up to."

But as we finally started to get there, Joe was not alone in embracing this. Glenn Kramon was an incredible champion of the series, and all of our work on Islam, as were Bill and Jill. And I'll never forget walking up to my desk after the imam series ran and seeing this handwritten note of congratulations on my keyboard. It was signed Arthur. That just blew me away.

Another incredibly lucky break for me was to work with Jim Estrin. Long before we set out to cover Islam in America, we wound up together on the Sunday shift, cruising around looking for stories. It tells you something about our synergy that one story to which we both gravitated immediately involved a financial analyst who was giving out free hugs in Washington Square Park.

I have never met anyone with such relentless curiosity as Jim. It was Jim who learned that immigrant imams were being trained in pastoral counseling, which was one of the first tips I had that there was something great here. His imprint is felt throughout the stories we did, far beyond those spellbinding photographs. We really stopped working as writer and photographer, and became two journalists who were telling the same story in different mediums. Which is how it should be. Thank you, Jim.

And then I had the great fortune of finding Sheik Reda Shata. It's hard to fathom the courage it took for him to let us inside his mosque and home and life. As remarkable a person as he is, Sheik Reda is really unremarkable in terms of the experience he represents. He's like so many other Muslims in this country who have endured a tough journey in the years since Sept. 11, who feel they are living in a hostile land, and who have closed their doors to journalists out of fear. And yes, a lot of people wouldn't talk to me, but the only reason that some of them did was because they craved understanding, and wanted so much to be rendered with fairness and depth. And so I hope that, if a story like this has helped open their doors, we keep them open.

I want to thank Jon Landman for plucking me out of Miami and bringing me to The Times, and Susan Edgerly for embracing this beat when she was metro editor. I also want to thank the brilliant Christine Kay for working with me on the series about Muslims in the military. And I need to thank "the imam team," as we came to call it: Meaghan Looram, Michael Kolomatsky, Samantha Storey, Jeff Rubin and my translators, Awali Samara and Sadek Ahmed.

I also want to salute my dear friends, Lydia Polgreen and Sabrina Tavernise, both of whom risked their lives for this paper in the last year.

And to my husband, Tim, who is standing here today with my parents. He, like other people in this room, did extraordinary work last year. And at the same time, he was my greatest support.

I'll never forget watching Tim, when we heard the news, hop out of the car and start jumping up and down with me in rush hour traffic.

Paper Chase [WWD]

Balenciaga Backstage/Front Row [Style.com]

Orange Crates, and Vanishing Change By KATHLEEN McELROY

The crates, which are stackable, are 16 by 25 inches at the top, and taper to 15 by 23.5 at the bottom. They will be used for files, books, staplers and darn near everything else except computers and the like. But remember you can't be reimbursed if truly personal items like stuffed animals are lost or damaged in the move. The lids are connected and interlock when closed.

Those who sit at a workstation get six crates, those in offices get 16. Work directly with your move co-ordinator for exceptions, pleas, bribes and other considerations. Co-ordinators will be receiving information soon about the crates, and will be ensuring that each crate is properly labeled and delivered.

In other news, no change will be a big change at the cafeteria in the new building.

It will be "cashless." Everyone pays with something like the laundry cards many apartment buildings use, or perhaps credit cards. Those still laundering in the 20th century will have to get their quarters elsewhere.

The cafeteria will have 250 seats, about the same number as 43rd Street, but it looks more spacious because of its dining balcony (and one corner of the downstairs seating has a slither view of the Empire State Building). Restaurant Associates plans to open the cafeteria when the first staffers relocate in April, with limited service at the espresso cafe. It also supports WiFi.

Incidentally, the cafeteria is for Times employees and the tenants of the few floors The Times is leasing; other workers in the tower will not have access.

After guiding The Times through toxic storms and rebuilding our bureau into a dominant force in Washington coverage, Phil Taubman is returning to his first love, the correspondent's life. Phil has chosen a new mission that capitalizes on his deep experience as a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter, military historian and editor.He will be taking on a special reporting assi