By Mediaite's tally, 32% of the more than 500 commenters on the story said they'd pay to read the NYT online. Let's call that one-third!

Now let's make some generous assumptions. Quantcast estimates that NYtimes.com gets about 15 million monthly US readers. (We asked the company how many comments they get; they haven't gotten back to us yet). Their weekday circulation is around 650k. So the question becomes: How many of those online users who currently pay nothing would pay, say, $5 per month (a number the NYT was floating in a survey earlier this year) to read the website?

Since one-third of the commenters on a story about the paper's staffing issues said they would, does that mean one-third of the total would? We are currently laughing derisively at that assertion! These commenters are people who not only are interested enough in the inner workings of the paper to read a story about its staffing issues—already a small minority—but also interested enough to comment on the story, which takes a certain level of commitment at the NYT's website. So we have a small subset of a small subset of the paper's online readers; namely, those readers most interested in the financial fate of the NYT. Of those, one-third say they're willing to pay.

Let's very generously say a quarter of online readers fall into the first subset, and a quarter of those fall into the second subset. Therefore, the number of online readers willing to pay would be 1/4 times 1/4 times 1/3 times 15 million, or 312,500 readers. If they all paid $5 per month, the NYT would make an extra $18.75 million per year. Which is nice and all, but would not even cover the interest payments on their subprime Mexican loan.

The NYT may in fact get more online readers worldwide, but then again, our assumptions here were already overly generous. In other words, the company's salvation will not be found in the comments section.

It sure was an awesome story (written up last week by the NY Daily News, but it had been floating around long before that—Roxanne tells it herself on the Beef video series, for example): Warner Music put a throwaway clause in her record contract when she was still a teenager saying they'd pay for her education for life; she took advantage of it to go all the way through grad school on their dime.

But! Slate says the story has the following problems: Roxanne doesn't actually have a Ph.D. from Cornell; she didn't even graduate from Marymount Manhattan as an undergrad; she's not licensed to practice psychology; and all her record labels deny ever paying for her education. Caveat:

In a subsequent e-mail, Shanté wrote, "I also attended College under an alias, because of a Domestic Violence situation" and speculated that she "made a mistake on an application and put my old name so maybe that's the reason for the computer error?" But she was unable to substantiate such claims.

God damn it Slate. We are going to ignore these enormous red flags and cling to our hopes of some bit of good in the world. Everything was fine until you journalists started poking around.
[Pic via]

An attention seeker at an attention-seeking company said something outrageous about the iPhone, and of course the news is now everywhere. Here is the specific outrageous thing, spoken by the CEO of GetJar (you don't care what that is, trust us) to the BBC:

"Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet... They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development. "

Every bubble needs nonsense on which to feed. Ten years ago, during the dot-com bubble, we learned the following:

• The Dow would hit 50,000 (it's now just below 9,000).
  
• Amazon stock would hit 400 (it peaked around 115 and peaked above 300 but quickly fell back to Earth and now trades for about 80)
  
• The online ad business would be worth $28 billion by 2005 (try less than half that)

Since iPhone apps are internet apps, sold via the internet, for use on the internet, the idea they will be "bigger than the internet" somehow — in related software revenue? lines of code? time spent by users? — is nonsensical. And thus perfect for parting fools with their money! We can't wait for the first iPhone app investment fund. (Oh, nevermind, too late.)

(Pic: Steve Jobs with Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile executives for the unveiling of the iPhone in Germany, September 2007.)

The NYDN's own story says:

Fawcett - who waged a three-year battle against anal cancer - died shortly before 9:30 a.m. in a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.

That would be about 12:30, NYC time. So when did the Daily News break the story?

First they said they broke it at noon!


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Then they updated it to 12:13, still before she died.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Finally they updated it to 12:39, about the earliest it could have possibly been up.

You have to be quick, on the internet. Too quick.

Because how can the Zodiac Killer be her dad if JFK was also her dad?!?

I checked her out as much as I could and she seemed to have a good standing. Then she called one day and told me she was JFK's illegitimate child and was with Robert and Rose Kennedy the day before Robert was murdered. And that's when I stopped talking to her. I felt duped at that point. The chances of her being the Zodiac's daughter are a million to one—the chances of her being both JFK's daughter and the Zodiac's daughter are a gazillion to none. I feel sorry for Debbie. I really do.

Zodiac Killer: still enough of a mystery to make movies about. And the nation breathed a sigh of relief.
[Read the whole wacko file at True Crime Report]

In his most recent interview today, with Vulture, PB says (via email):

Henry Matyjewicz was arrested Friday night at 7:30pm. Sent to central booking. Then sent to Rikers. He was bailed on Sunday night and was released Monday 2am. The police showed up to the "Friends We Love" event in Soho and arrested Henry for partaking in a Poster Boy installation. From the beginning it was stated that Poster Boy is not about one person. What the NYPD did do is arrest an individual who volunteered to legally collage some prints at the show...Arresting Henry for being Poster Boy is like plucking a strand of Medusa's hair.

Okay, sure, maybe it is a movement by now, but Poster Boy is one guy, as far as we can tell. He sent us this photo(shop) of himself in October:

Same guy photographed for the NY Mag story that month:

Same guy as in the video last month? Maybe. Looks similar:

But if being a movement rather than one guy will get him out of his charges, then we'll go with that.

Here's a roundup of the Great Pretenders (with one reality check thrown in at the end):

“The best thing is that it was my best friend from New York who called and told me. She was so happy, she was crying and I’m like, ‘What has happened?”
— Marisa Tomei, supporting actress, The Wrestler

“It’s delightfully surprising. I had no expectations. A very close friend called me, as I had no idea it was televised."
— Melissa Leo, actress, Frozen River

“It’s weird, a big surprise. You learn not to have expectations. My son-in-law called and then the phone started ringing."
— Richard Jenkins, actor, The Visitor

“I was at a midnight screening last night here at Sundance and was up until 3 a.m. I was sound asleep and then a little shell-shocked when the calls started coming in."
— Michael Shannon, supporting actor, Revolutionary Road

“I was sleeping, because that’s my technique, and I just got it on my phone when I turned it on.”
— Gus Van Sant, director, Milk

“I was awoken by the news. I’m in New York, but a late riser.”
— Martin McDonagh, original screenplay, In Bruges

"I'm a nocturnal worker so because of that I go to sleep with all my phones turned off. I saw a text message saying `congratulations' and I wrote back asking `for what?' True to form for me, I thought the Oscar nominations were tomorrow.''
— Danny Elfman, original score, Milk

"Why wouldn't I be good? Anybody who tells you they were sleeping is a liar."
— Eric Roth, adapted screenplay, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

• Reactions from the Oscar nominees [THR]

• Reactions to the Oscar nominations [Variety]

Nonsociety VP of fameballism Rambin told us, of her penchant for videoblogging her own colonics: " The procedure is certainly not 'unnecessary'... Our bodies store so many toxins from food (pesticides, chemicals, preservatives) and our bodies were not made to process and flush them out. We need help."

Yes, you need help.(She's actually shilling Blueprint Cleanse still, today). In a flabbergasting development, the Times Style section has actually published a useful article today, gently debunking this entire fraudulent industry:

“It is the opinion of mainstream and state-of-the-art medicine and physiology that these claims are not only ludicrous but tantamount to fraud,” said Dr. Peter Pressman, an internist with the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., and a critic of detoxification. “The contents of what ends up being consumed during a ‘detox’ are essentially stimulants, laxatives and diuretics.”

Would you like another quote from this highly qualified physician, who may, in contrast to purveyors of 'Cleanses,' know about science and stuff?

“There is absolutely no scientific basis for the assertion that the regimens popularly defined as ‘detox’ will augment the body’s own capacity for identifying and eliminating your own metabolic wastes or doing the same for environmental toxins,” Dr. Pressman said. “I advise patients that these detox programs amount to a large quantity of excrement, both literally and figuratively.”

But hey, what about your cousin who lost 15 pounds doing the Master Cleanse and drinking nothing but lemonade and cayenne pepper for ten days?!?!?! Well, if you go on a diet consisting solely of a few glasses of juice per day—any juice—you too will lose weight. Magic. [NYT]

Not only are these things utter ripoffs, they're wearying to hear about. It's all either yapping about juice, which makes the yapper sound like a credulous new age fool, or yapping about intestines, which is just disgusting. Our fameballs would entertain us much more effectively with a six week program of THIS:

UPDATE: Mary Rambin writes us, in response:

Detox can be different than cleansing. The NYT article is right about Health Food Stores selling nonsense in a bottle with diuretics. That is what the experts are talking about. You won’t find a single doctor who will say it’s harmful to your health to blend up lettuce. With these organic cleanses, companies like BluePrint and Organic Avenue are extracting the vitamins and minerals of produce to make juices and smoothies. Furthermore, instead of causing more movement, sometimes they can stop you up. Hence the colonic that also helps flush out the toxins and crap that adheres to the walls of your colon on a daily basis.

Furthermore, I lost maybe a pound on my most recent cleanse. Someone with a little more to lose might see weight loss as a benefit, but for me, it’s all about getting my healthy diet back on track.

And finally, at least link to the video and TMIweekly so people can hear our side of the story, not just the shit you’re spouting. You do trust them to make a decision for themselves, right?

Our first instinct was to disbelieve the story; after all, virtually every profile we've ever read of Hathaway mentions how carefully and professionally she answers questions, concerned that her quotes will be taken out of context. Had Hathaway been emboldened after her split with boyfriend Raffaello Follieri, or was someone putting naughty words in her mouth?

Turns out, it's the latter. We contacted Esquire for comment, and spokesperson Rhett Usry was shocked by the rumor. "Absolutely not true," he told us. "There is no interview with Anne Hathaway at all in the upcoming issue of Esquire."

So where did the story originate? All signs point to this September 12 posting on Celeb.Dump, a photo-laden blog promising "Sexy Celebrity Pictures With Little To No Bullshit" (and headlines like "Stacy Keibler is so very hot" and "Jessica Simpson touching herself"). "Thanks to Miss M. from Esquire for letting me know" about the rumor, said the poster (who declined our repeated requests to comment on his tip).

As for how this obscure bit of gossip hit the big time, we're betting it's due to a potent mix of wishful thinking, Hathaway's Rachel Getting Married press tour, and lingering conflation of the actress with Brokeback Mountain. Either that, or Follieri's got an axe to grind. Memo to Celeb.Dump: if your "source" claims to be Esquire's liaison to the Vatican, it may be time to place some calls.

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Anne Hathaway Loves Anal Sex [Celeb.Dump]

Ive been holed up in Boston all summer. On vacation
Would never dare do standup

Which raises the question:

Could there be a Fake Dan Lyons out there? Meanwhile, the real Lyons is back blogging, and today he's heckling Microsoft for hiring standup comedian Jerry Seinfeld as a new pitchman. The mind reels.

The general reaction to the boxer's initial denials were roughly the same as the reaction to R. Kelly's legal team's theory that it wasn't really him in the sex video: quiet scoffing. In reality, experts concluded after much examination that they were faked by a stripper trying to blackmail him. So, on behalf of the media, we (as ridiculous as that sounds) have to apologize to him. Sorry!

And while many people have laughed off the incident as free publicity for Oscar, the truth is that things like this never really go away. Many more people will have heard about the initial photo scandal than will hear about its debunking. It will now make its way to Snopes.com, along with all the other persistent urban legends that get passed down despite the fact that they're false. Never forget:

"According to researchers in Palo Alto," Wilson says, "1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits." Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales believes the same; he told the Times, "the vast majority of work is done by this small core community." So Slate buys the party line. But these are fake statistics: The Palo Alto study counted the number of edits. If I add five hundred words to an article about fortune cookies, that counts the same as if I rename a category. All this proves is that a small set of wonks are organizing Wikipedia.

The masses are still writing it. Aaron Swartz compared the number of letters added to several articles and found that most articles are written by people with little other Wikipedia experience. That is, most of Wikipedia comes from people who dropped in and added a chunk of text. All the edits? Those are just Wikipedia diehards rearranging the other users' contributions. (A more thorough study confirms Swartz's conclusion.)

It's obvious, really. Why does Jimmy Wales believe that only 500 people wrote everything of import on Wikipedia? With 2 million articles on the site's English version, that would mean each core user wrote nearly 20,000 articles in the seven years since the site launched. That's eight articles a day per user, and clearly physically impossible. Is Wales unaware of this math, or is he so bent on maintaining Wikipedia's respectability that he can't admit how innovative it is?

So much for Wikipedia being in the hands of the few. But Wilson also aims at Digg, saying the site "is largely run by 100 people." The top hundred Digg users submitted almost half of the stories that went to the front page, he points out. Of course, Digg recently adjusted its algorithm to lower the influence of those Diggers.

Wilson tries to spin this: "The super Diggers published an open letter of grievances and threatened to boycott the site," he says, implying that the hundred top users were in united revolt. But the actual threat only came from four users. That's hardly enough to threaten the site.

As Wilson notes, founder Kevin Rose talked to these four Digg users and reached what Wilson calls a "shaky truce." What exactly is shaky? Rose and CEO Jay Adelson merely explained what they had just done and how it would encourage new users to contribute. They didn't actually concede anything to the four users.

Isn't Slate supposed to be the reasoned, second-guessing news source? Then why does Wilson assume Rose has any fear of his top users? Talking to these users wasn't Rose's way of saving his site. It was a cunning move to make these users feel important, and get his message out to the entire Digg community. Rose came away doing just what he wanted and making everyone thank him for it.

Wilson even reaches for unsubstantiated arguments against Digg; he points to rumors that the site hires secret moderators to delete stories. Rose has denied this publicly several times; it's hard to believe he'd lie about this one aspect of the site when he's been so open about all others.

It'd be easy to blame this story on Slate's need to be contrarian, but the message here was so conservative and mainstream, it seems it's just a plain old bad story, bad enough to be retracted. If only we could vote on that.

Item one: Let's take a look at the empirical evidence. Brady (Gisele) lost the Super Bowl. Romo (Jessica Simpson) lost in the playoffs. Tony Parker (Eva Longoria) is injured. Matt Leinart (Paris Hilton) also got hurt. Further back, Mike Tyson (Robin Givens) went crazy, David Justice (Halle Berry) got accused of steroid use, and Andre Rison (Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes) got his house burned down.

Or, put another way: Brady had one of the best seasons in history. Romo had a career year. Parker has won three championships. Leinart was a top draft pic, Tyson was a champ, Justice won some rings, and Andre Rison is a five time Pro Bowler. In other words, all these guys did great things, even as they were boning some famous girls.

Item two: This supposed curse really needs to be clarified. Plain old beautiful women are not dangerous to performance, apparently, because damn near every married professional athlete has a beautiful wife. Tiger Woods, the most successful athlete working today, has a famously smoking wife:

So do scrub baseball players like Kris Benson:


Item three, in which we explain the fundamental roots of the error: This "Curse" bullshit is based in three things. One, the old crusty coach's idea that sex before sports can make an athlete worse; that one is a myth. Actually sex raises testosterone levels in men, making them more manly, aggressive, and powerful. Second, there is a simple feedback mechanism most men have that allows us to keep our self esteem high. When we see another man with a beautiful woman, we must assume he is a bitch (David Beckham), or a pretty boy (Don't make me kick your ass, Oscar de la Hoya), or— best of all— cursed! This helps us believe we're still at the front of the line, baby.

Finally, there is a female-driven paradigm of hate that is the psychological flip side of the male desire to undermine our competitors. Females, faced with the prospect of a simplistic boyfriend being bombarded with images of successful athletes (his heroes) being rewarded with famous celebrity women (his poster-bound fantasies), must act to incite a negative response in the man's mind, lest he lose all grip of reality. Knowing that he values his sports even more highly than his sexual desires, the idea of a curse is implanted into the public dialogue, instigating a reaction of fear, rather than lust, towards famous female sexual objects. No single Jessica Simpson blow job is worth a playoff loss to a real Cowboys fan.

The media simply feeds on this triumvirate of underlying influences to perpetuate the myth of a curse, because it's a pretty good story. But really, athletes should feel free to go ahead and scoop all the actresses and super models they want. New England didn't lose to New York because of Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen. They lost because Boston sucks.

Thanks to Chris Hansen and his team of pedophile hunters at Dateline, everyone has learned two things: First, that you should only approach underage girls you've met in person, and second, that the Internet is full of dirty men who want to rape your daughter.

Well, engage in consensual sex with your daughter. "To Catch a Predator" involves voluntary meetings, not secret stalkers. Fear of unintended contact with predators is far more often based on urban legend and a few highly publicized stories. In fact, during the growth of the Internet from 1990 to 2000, estimated sexual abuse cases fell 40%. As of 2004, 85% of child abuse and sexual abuse was committed by the victims' family, with only 9% of abuse cases coming from outside a child's immediate circle of normally trusted adults. A kid is statistically ten times as likely to get jumped by Mom, Dad, or Grandpa as by an Internet stranger.

So much for the Internet as a hive of predators. But it could still be a place for bullying. Oh yes! So could school. Over 1 in 10 kids grades 6-10 surveyed in an academic study said they've been bullied (another 13% said they've bullied others, and 6% swung both ways). The nice thing (in this case) about the Internet is you can't punch someone through it. The other nice thing is that you can document everything over it. There will be the occasional high-profile "MySpace suicide" like Megan Meier's (in which the fake profile that allegedly drove Meier to suicide was a hoax by the neighbors), and everyone will focus on the one part of the story that depended on the Internet, but the truth is that online bullying is a lot more detectable and preventable than real-world abuse.

Frontline also points out that, surprise, kids can get loads of porn online. Not going to argue this. But why is it a bad thing? Thanks to the abstinence-only sex education promoted by the Clinton and Bush administrations (and largely uncriticized by presidential hopefuls), parents and peers still bear the full burden of teaching sexuality to youth. But kids, or at least boys, can find porn faster than their parents can figure out how to give "the talk," so they end up seeing quite a lot that they don't understand, but feels really right. As comedian Ze Frank said, learning how to have sex from watching porn is like learning how to drive from watching monster truck rallies, but it at least gets some of the basics down.

And teens are reaching past porn to find real information about sex. Nikol Hasler of the Midwest Teen Sex Show, told me she gets hundreds of e-mails a day about her show, and many are from teens asking sex-ed questions. (Male teens mostly ask if their dicks are normal.) She wants to create a forum to accompany her weekly web show, somewhere between the unmoderated forums where teens already work out sex through awkward flirtation, and the hypermoderated forums that can squelch "stupid questions" as much as a real-world classroom.

Frontline also addresses a particularly tricky area: pro-anorexia web sites. I can't deny that anorexics might find the same Internet benefit as Rubik's Cube solvers: Whereas before, there might be only one anorexic girl in a classroom (or so she thinks), finding thousands of sympathetic anorexics can normalize and encourage her anorexia, creating a "safe haven" that further drives her away from confronting her problem. The only hope here may be to catch the problem in real life. Again, this is only a reflection of a large offline problem and a long-term rise in eating disorders since as early as the 1930s.

So in the real world, kids are being preyed upon by their parents, beaten up at school, and shamed by teachers for wanting to have sex. On the Internet, they're talking more freely with their peers, keeping tabs on each other, and busting a nut without getting each other pregnant. It's not a sanitized world, but neither is the real one. The biggest problem is the lack of understanding that drives parents to shame and control their kids until they break all trust and know nothing about their children's online activity. Thanks, Frontline.

UPDATE: A publicist from Frontline noted that I apparently hadn't watched the documentary and said it's available online. Frontline's segment on predators does focus on the fears of parents and other media coverage, but the show gives generous time to danah boyd and other commentators that support a more balanced view of kids on the Internet. The fearmongering came mostly from the Times' poor representation of the show. My fault for not finding the original footage.

UPDATE: Oh yes, maybe it was the NFL playoffs! There's always a more obvious answer, especially for those of us who only hear about spectator sports when our pilot announces a game score as we touch down in SFO.

Statistics 101: You can't judge current growth without comparing it to earlier periods.

Alexa

Note that this is YouTube's traffic as a percentage of the whole Internet. The January dropoff? Maybe people are working online again, or maybe there's no easily packageable explanation.

Compete

Maybe a tiny bump — one that affects YouTube much less than its natural massive growth. Which is possibly an even more damning indictment of TV vs. the web.

The Beeb cites growth at Crackle.com, not exactly an industry leader. The Post says Revver has gone from 800 thousand views a day to 1.2 million (under three times the daily traffic of Gawker). Assuming this is because of the strike, these sites are still just a tiny corner of the Internet. The growth is unimportant in the long run, when the strike inevitably ends.

Dear media-beat journalists: Maybe the Internet isn't a direct replacement for TV! Maybe you shouldn't so readily take pitches from struggling video sites! Maybe you could find a better narrative! Maybe your insistence on this narrative is also a sad indictment of traditional media, but there's probably a chart to prove that wrong.

Rumors have been swirling this morning that rapresario Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter) was in a plane crash this morning. TMZ has confirmed that a small plane registered to a citizen of Dublin, GA crashed near Asheville, NC in the Smoky Mountains. The FAA tells TMZ that the four-seat propeller plane did go down this morning, but could not provide any additional details.

But just minutes later, that rumor was promptly unswirled:

UPDATE: TMZ has confirmed that Jay-Z WAS NOT aboard the plane. The three aboard the plane were white men.

We apologize if this brief moment of panic curtailed your Feel-Good Friday, and now return you to basking in the warm glow of Mandy Moore's new-found self-confidence.

• Jay-Z in a Plane Crash— NOT TRUE [TMZ.com]

Of course, Slashdot is not known for its fairness to Microsoft, and even the smallest slight will not go unpunished on a powerful forum filled with Linux and Unix fans. But this sad little story earned extra sympathy points by suggesting that the Evil Corporation was violating the sanctity of the Holy Book of Wikipedia. This is the geek equivalent of accusing Stalin of defacing a church: Who cares if the story's true? It sounds so true!