The most "polite" thing about Rob Thomas' snub of the president was probably the way he tweeted it years later for maximum humiliation.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Dorsey hearts Twitter. Whoever invented that thing deserves mad props.

Jennifer 8. Lee may work for the New York Times, but her sometime Googler-boyfriend Craig Silverstein actually prefers the bagels in Montreal. A lot. Fact checking is called for, clearly.

Judging from this posting at Overheard Newsroom, there's at least one reporter out there whose pitches are WAY more engrossing than yours. Or whose blowjobs are WAY worse. Either way.

Sarah Silverman might be depressed, but at least she started a cool Twitter-tag meme.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Daily Show producer Miles Kahn frantically tweeted to hide from his shame.

Io9's Annalee Newitz found something that could bring together mind control fantasists and anime fetishists. Finally! It's the chocolate+peanut butter of nerd porn.

Food blogger Kathrina Manalac called bullshit on McSweeney's twee literary "newspaper."

The New York Times' Jennifer 8. Lee continued to fearlessly cozy up to the sort of software that runs the internet.

Ashton Kutcher has something for your mother.

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LeVar Burton actually had to explain to people that he did not write "My Living Nightmare Of Encouraging Kids To Read Is Over" for The Onion. The actor did not seem entirely pleased to still be teaching reading comprehension, three years after Reading Rainbow was cancelled.

Ellen DeGeners bragged of her ability to get college co-eds to strip for her cameras. It would seem the intentionally-awkward TV host can get away with anything. Can you imagine Anderson Cooper pulling this off?

Sarah Gilbert: Weepy dancer.

The New York Times Jennifer 8. Lee has discovered a new lifestyle trend: Starbucks can't make coffee for Jennifer 8. Lee.

Now that Fast Company's Noah Robischon thinks about it, a tazer isn't a bad idea in the absence of an actual physical advertising-editorial wall. Like at his last job.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

We downloaded the app after it was flagged on the personal blog of Jennifer 8. Lee, the Chinese American New York Times reporter who wrote a book on the evolution of the fortune cookie. In a post titled "Now You Can Get Fortune Cookies on Your iPhone with a Ching Chong voice," Lee writes that the voice in the app "definitely doesn't sound like a native Chinese speaker, just what someone who thinks a native Chinese speaker would sound like in English... Yikes."

Yikes indeed. In addition to the ridiculous voice (see our brief video above), there's also the sound of a gong, and a brief string refrain that's become the calling card of all-too-many caricatured "Chinese" moments in film and television. We've emailed app author Charles Hill to get his thoughts, and will update this post if we do. For now this app looks pretty unredeemable. Of course judging by the popularity of stupid "ching-chong" poses among Olympic athletes and teen celebrities, the app should still enjoy some decent sales until Apple yanks it.

Elliot Holt of One Story Magazine brought squirrel porn into the microblogging era. Small animals, small medium. Appropriate!

Marissa Mayer quoted Tom Clancy. We'd never have pegged the Google bigwig as a fan of techno-thrillers, but her and Clancy both strive to make them.

Jennifer 8. Lee's source wish list read eerily like Julia Allison's blogger wish list. We tried not to think about it.

Silicon Valley PR maven Brooke Hammerling might have grown up in New York, but she'll always be a California girl at heart. Judging from her taste in music, at least.

Former Googler Kevin Marks, a social networking guy, took a dig at the type of software that actually makes people more productive.

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The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins reflected on what Robert Novak's death meant to him.

Reuters' Felix Salmon reveled in his immunity from the AP and Bloomberg social media policies.

Gothamist's Jake Dobkin decided he'd investigate this second amendment he's heard so much about lately.

Lindsay Robertson lamented the tyranny of the news cycle.

The New York Times instructed Jennifer 8. Lee to take "the dog days of summer" literally.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic: Bruni already got the chance to talk up his own kiddie bulimia in the NYT mag. Just the beginning! He'll be talking about it on Nightline on August 19. Sample transcript quote:

[Nightline]: You were 8 years old on the Atkins Diet?

Bruni: Yeah… the Atkins Diet came out in hardcover when I was 8, if I have my arithmetic correct. ‘Cause I remember mom bought it in hardcover so this was serious stuff and I remember leafing through it and learning about ketones and ketosis and you know, having no idea what that meant, I was 8 years old, but I thought, ooo that's profound stuff. If I can get into this ketosis thing I'll be home free. I'll be skinny.

Bruni is now the Food Critic With Food Issues.

Jill Abramson, managing editor: Not just managing editor for news; managing editor for puppies, too! She is the Serious News Lady With a Smooshy Marshmallow Puppy Center.

Alex Kuczynski, former shopping columnist: Rich Botox Lady Who Will Talk About Same, Endlessly.

David Carr, media critic: The Marlboro Man of Media. With a heart of gold!

Jennifer 8 Lee, metro reporter: Hard-Working Internet Addict Who Loves Chinese Food.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Dealbook columnist: Wunderkind Who Could Totally Be a Rich I-Banker But Isn't Yet. The next Steven Rattner?

All The Opinion Columnists: Suave Expert on [Made Up Topic] But a Snazzier Writer Than Usual! Also, too rich!

And of course, the one future Self-Brand we'd like to see speaks for itself:

AG Sulzberger: Baller.

Dropping off their Twittering this summer are such familiar Twitterti as music writer Touré; Air America snarker Ana Marie Cox; New York Times Oscar obsessive David Carr; Times "conceptual scoop" artist Jennifer 8. Lee; celebrity journalism diva Bonnie Fuller; Yahoo vlogger Sarah Lacy and Digg perpetrator Kevin Rose. See the chart above, assembled with help from tweetstats.com (until we melted their servers by asking for numbers on Times Twitterer-in-Chief Brian Stelter).

Summer vacations could well be playing a role; Carr went on a bike trip to Colombia this month, Rose was inspecting tea in remote parts of China. But that would seem the ideal time to use Twitter, which lets you talk to all your friends back home at once, without much time commitment, and even to share pictures and videos with services like TwitPic. Maybe media and tech types have Twitter firmly slotted into the "work" category and don't want to touch it much on break.

There are some outliers: Salon's Joan Walsh, whose been on a cable-news punditry tear, has spiked her Twittering; the New Yorker's Susan Orlean has been manically chronicling her animal obsession in recent weeks; and Kurt Andersen got a burst of posts out of his trip to the White House. Everyone else should hop to and follow their examples; what else can America export to save its useless circle-jerk of an economy, if not narcissistic navel-gazing media?

The lesbians just love Kurt Andersen, according to Kurt Andersen.

The Associated Press is still mad as hell at the internet, and isn't going to take it any more, but in the meantime Lauren McCullough would like the internet to please send free content kthxbai.

Joining the day's crowdsourcing trend, the New York Times' Brian Stelter asked for fact-checking help.

Ryan Block of gdgt found some slipping standards at a Steve Jobs-less Apple.

The Times' Jennifer 8. Lee found an ethical issue with her coworker's choice of Twitter application.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

The Nieman Journalism Lab obtained an internal memo on the topic. It warns that some "computer performance problems that have been traced to TweetDeck," an application for accessing Twitter but not actually made by the startup itself. (At last, a microblogging tech problem Twitter can't be blamed for!)

It... takes a serious bite out of the performance of many computers, particularly older PCs.

We recommend against installing it or using it on Times computers.

Of course, Times writer Jennifer 8. Lee, known for her "conceptual scoops," was once again ahead of the pack on this one:

Always on top of the fascinatingly frivolous habits of the young, she is.

Full memo:

After reclaiming her Twitter name from a fakester, Tina Fey apparently had stage fright.

The Times' Jennifer 8. Lee was awesomely geeky, although she could have worked some kind of "SIGHUP" joke into this one.

British freelancer Louise Bolotin denied a friend request with extreme prejudice.

Wired's Chris Anderson not only gives away his content online, he throws in sassy rejoinders as a bonus.

Blogger Chris O'Leary had a few too many.

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Key warnings from the the guidelines, from standards editor Craig Whitney:

Be careful not to write anything on a blog or a personal Web page that you could not write in The Times —­ don't editorialize, for instance, if you work for the News Department. Anything you post online can and might be publicly disseminated, and can be twisted to be used against you by those who wish you or The Times ill — whether it's text, photographs, or video. That includes things you recommend on TimesPeople or articles you post to Facebook and Digg, content you share with friends on MySpace, and articles you recommend through TimesPeople. It can also include things posted by outside parties to your Facebook page, so keep an eye on what appears there. Just remember that we are always under scrutiny by magnifying glass and that the possibilities of digital distortion are virtually unlimited, so always ask yourself, could this be deliberately misconstrued or misunderstood by somebody who wants to make me look bad?

He's talking about us! Although we wish everyone well. We hear that the paper may be cracking down on Twitter use by staffers soon. So now's the time to look at some the NYT's most prolific Tweeters! Not surprisingly, most of them are prolific reporters, as well, and just can't stop writing things, every minute of every day. It's truly amazing.

Superhuman metro reporter Sewell Chan's Twitter page is uniformly innocuous.


Dealbook wonder boy Andrew Ross Sorkin's is livelier, but still disappointingly uncontroversial. Lots of live-tweeting and extra Dealbook-like commentary.


Young media obsessive Brian Stelter is an outrageous link-Tweeting machine. Truly incredible. Not too controversial, though. You work too much, Brian!


Magical trend specialist/ metro lord Jennifer 8. Lee hears the WSJ may be clamping down on Twitter! She also reveals that the NYT newsroom is patrolled by drunken thieves!



Finally, King of All Media David Carr is wild with the Twitter! He Twitters whatever he wants! Maybe enough to give Craig Whitney palpitations? It's all so charming, though! He has a big personality! Fight the power!


So overall there's not much that we would find scandalous there (more drunk Twittering from the whorehouse, people, thx), but probably enough to make Craig Whitney want to tell people to be quiet. Keep an eye out for a sudden NYT clampdown on newsroom Twittering. Then everything can get back to boring again.
[Disclosure: I'm Facebook friends with Carr and Stelter, hopelessly compromising my objectivity.]

Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney experienced retrotech.

Lazy gadfly Guardian columnist Paul Carr continued to dine his way through the ladybloggers of San Francisco, following Kara Swisher up with Sarah Lacy.

Alt-weekly veteran Mark Athitakis saw the future of journalism.

Blogger-entrepreneur-venture capitalist Om Malik felt the recession funk.

New York Times eclecticist Jennifer 8. Lee crowdsourced penury.

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Yoga instructor/reporter Liz Glover prepped for some interviews.

Tech author Sarah Lacy pursued a fad detox regimen.

North Carolina journalist Beth Brooke suffered through the afternoon.

New York Times eccentric Jenny 8. Lee had a manicure disaster.

Facebook spokessister Randi Zuckerberg experienced a fit of Jewishness.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones economized.

Children's Hospital star Rob Corddry stabbed, then rinsed.

New York Times writer Jenny 8. Lee planned a party with, no surprise, fortune cookies. (Yes, but is she bringing her millionaire Googler boyfriend?)

Former AOL CEO Steve Case tried to feel relevant.

Author and sometimes entrepreneur Steven Berlin Johnson dined alone with his Kindle.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

And not just any Googler. Her beau is Craig Nevill-Manning Silverstein, Google's director of technology. The pair showed up as a couple at this year's TED conference, a swanky affair frequented by Hollywood and Silicon Valley types, according to an attendee.

(Note: In an earlier version of this post, we had confused Craig Silverstein with Craig Nevill-Manning, a slightly less fabulously wealthy Googler. Our apologies!)

Silverstein, as Google's first employee, is fabulously wealthy. The relationship seems to have synergy: Lee quoted him in a 2002 article about Google, and she put him to work as her photographer in Beijing last August. Nice catch, Jenny!

(Photo of Lee by Nina Subin; photo of Silverstein via University of North Carolina Gazette)

New York Times Snapple researcher Jennifer 8. Lee caught up with a high school friend.

Today news anchor Ann Curry thought up quippy lines in Chad.

Seattle journalist Glenn Fleishman remembered who paid the bills.

Fast Company writer Ellen McGirt got an eyeful of beige.

Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal spilled the beans.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times was starstruck at TED.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha had a weird dream.

Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Daniel Victor felt too popular for his own good.

Slate political correspondent John Dickerson prepared his daughter for a lifetime of oversharing.

Ashton Kutcher pretended to take a meeting but was really thinking about Demi Moore the whole time.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Oooo, a new reason to look out for racism! Are political cartoonists too obsessed with making Obama's lips big, hearkening back to the bad old days of caricature? Michael Cavna at the Washington Post makes a persuasive case that the lip-drawing has gone too far. Or, is this just all liberal hand-wringing, which will perpetuate our national Crisis of Comedy? Consult Pareene's opus for guidance.

There's a rumor going around that trade magazine publisher Incisive Media is laying off 40 people in New York today. Email us if you have details. [UPDATE: Several sources have confirmed that there were 42 layoffs at Incisive/ ALM today, including, we hear, two New York Law Journal reporters and one editor, and a few people at American Lawyer.]

Over on his personal blog, Slate writer John Dickerson is running, in serial form, a novel that he wrote about a loosely fictionalized version of himself as a brash young write at Time magazine. I read five chapters and so far the kid in the book is still working on his first story. It's stressful!

Quinn heaped meaning into every little back-stage artifact he saw, knowing the chaos that had blown through that end of the building four days earlier. The whole mess looked so impressive, like the speckled pots and hasty garlic skins left on the stove after a great meal. The appealing disarray was all ordered by some important purpose that someone talented had orchestrated.

A mad genius, that's what he wanted to be, Quinn thought. He lifted his arms as if to control all before him. It was 4:30 in the morning. It could be that he was just mad.

Will Quinn ever finish that Wall Street story? Does more stuff happen after that? We can't wait to find out in the remaining 217 chapters!

The House has defeated the bill delaying the switch to digital TV. So the date is still Feb. 17. All the technologically inept old people reading this internet blog, make a note.

NYT trend and Chinese food (and Chinese food trend) specialist Jenny 8 Lee's travel quirks revealed! She collects toothpaste! She can sleep on planes! She really, really likes Brazil! Read all that and more, right here!


Oh no: blog chatter about this year's upcoming crop of Super Bowl ads is down 20% from last year. What's wrong with you people? Coca-Cola is involved in this!

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times had her importance recognized on arrival.

Slate's John Dickerson watched an elderly woman triumph over adversity.

Thomas Burr of the Associated Press saw a famous black person who was not Oprah.

Times TV blogger Brian Stelter witnessed a collective cliché.

Ex-Googler Chris Sacca, a lefty blogger, overshared his bowel movements.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us their username.