When the owner of a Beverly Hills eatery spotted the L.A. Times restaurant critic in his lobby, he refused her service and took her picture, making her identity publicly available for the first time. Kiss anonymity goodbye, S. Irene Virbila.

Albany bar owner Timothy Rankin has been acquitted of ordering two men to attack the local paper's restaurant critic, Steve Barnes, who'd written some negative things about Rankin's bar. Every single person involved in the attack got off easy.

Curious how much KFC-gobbling New York Times food critic Sam Sifton eats in a week? Well, he's written it all down for us, and 24,560 calories later I feel kinda sick. Or hungry. I feel sick for feeling hungry.

In your recovering Thursday media column: layoffs at the AP, a truly awesome correction, another restaurant critic gets canned, the SPJ conference is good for alkies, and Incisive Media has contest that is fun and tasty!

Despite a careful scrubbing of the New York Times' website, photos of the paper's new restaurant critic, Sam Sifton, are all over the Internet. The man needs a way to visit restaurants undetected, stat.

The New York Times has picked Frank Bruni's successor as holder of the NYT's Sweetest Job: Sam Sifton, currently the paper's culture editor. No successor's been picked for Sifton yet. The full staff memo is below.