A tipster tells us that three assistant managing editors have been laid off at Fortune magazine, presumably as part of the ongoing companywide Time Inc. layoffs. Mediaite confirms that the company did do a round of layoffs today. If you have more details, email us.
UPDATE: We hear five staffers were laid off at SI.com: Two associate producers, a copy editor, a producer, and a production editor, according to our tipster.


Gary Weiss got a peek at a BusinessWeek corporate post-layoff memo, in which the people not fired are referred to as "Individuals ineligible or not selected for inclusion in the restructuring program." Well. How Bloombergian.


Dave Eggers continues to save print! This time by producing a $16, 300-page "newspaper" with content "ranging from Stephen King's reporting on the World Series to explanatory graphics on subjects as diverse as the conflict in eastern Congo and how to make the perfect bowl of ramen." The whole thing sounds great. Except, of course, this six-month long niche literary project has absolutely nothing to do with newspapers or with the continued viability of print, which is dying as a mass medium, naturally, due to its obvious limitations.


From Roy Greenslade: "Twelve journalists were among 46 people murdered yesterday in the Philippines in what is thought to be the greatest loss of life by news media in a single day. Several of the victims were beheaded or mutilated in the massacre carried out by a huge force of gunmen."

For example, the charmers at my hometown paper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, saw an increase in circulation this year by 6.6%. Which is awesome! Except: strange. Because Vegas' economy is in the toilet, having been crippled by foreclosures and joblessness. Why wouldn't these people just go online and get that shit for free? Funny you'd ask, because weekday sales dropped by 12,000 copies.

So. About that increase in circulation. Is the mob fixing numbers in Vegas again, or what? So old-school. Here's how this works: back in April, the Audit Bureau of Circulations changed their rules to let numbers look better to people who look at circulation rates, like ad buyers (and media reporters). The standard-change was bad. Like, disingenuous. Which is how the Review-Journal went up in circulation this year.

The change happened because the price the newspaper was charging for the online replica — it costs print customers an extra 50 cents per week — hadn't been high enough to qualify as paid circulation until the ABC's April change. That let newspapers define their paying readers as anyone who spends at least a penny for a copy. Previously, a newspaper copy had to sell for at least 25 percent of the basic price to qualify as paid circulation.

Right, so, by that logic, $1 could potentially equal 100 copies, and $100 equals 10,000 copies. Here's where I'd write that that's five times the amount of copies of the LVRJ distributed in Vegas, but I can't, because we have no idea how many copies are actually distributed! Fun. How do advertisers feel about this runaround? Raging mad, right? Um, kind of. One advertiser thinks the numbers are "less credible."

You really have to do your homework now and ask newspapers about how much double counting is going on,'' said Allison Howald, U.S. director of print investment at PHD Media.

The rage doesn't come across quite like I was expecting it to.

Hopefully, "less credible" is a kind euphemism for "complete bullshit," or some advertisers are going to wake up one day and start asking questions about why the 200,000 eyes they were promised on their quarter-page actually only amounts to a third-grade arts class making paper machete hats. You'd think these sketchy practices are limited to sleazy gambling towns like Vegas, though, right? WRONG again. Wall Street Journal, you guys will be transparent, right?

Nope. WSJ spokesman Robert Christie wouldn't respond to the AP's questions for quote on the new rules, including whether or not their numbers included digital subscriptions.

Including the print side, the Journal's total circulation edged up by just 0.6 percent to 2.02 million. ''We followed the ABC's rules and methodology,'' Christie said

Right, so, newspapers: more fucked than previously statistically "proven."

I'm forgetting where I read about the guy who used to steal ATM receipts of trashcans to impress dates with his huge bank account. This reminds me of that.

The lofty rhetoric surrounding the launch of outfits like the CNC, a MacArthur Foundation-funded news organization run by former Chicago Tribune staffers, is based on the notion that genuine public-service journalism—the expensive boring stuff that results in legislation—is at risk as for-profit newspapers crater. In the words of CNC founder and former Trib editor Jim O'Shea:

At a time of declining resources in newsrooms across the nation, journalists must adapt to new technologies and devise some creative, innovative ways to fulfill our obligations so we can hold our government accountable to citizens and restore to our journalism the standards desperately needed in these troubled times.

Newspapers can't afford to live up to those obligations anymore, so nonprofit-funded outlets like the CNC need to step into the gap. So what sort of hard-hitting "accountability journalism" can we expect from these new creatures? The CNC has contracted with the New York Times to produce an insert for the paper's Chicago editions purporting to bring Chicago readers the sort of shoe-leather that the bankrupt Chicago Tribune can't afford to produce anymore. It debuted today, so lets have a look.

• The lead story, by former Trib reporter Dan Mihalopoulos, is precisely in line with what news alarmists say will be missing if and when we lose newspapers: Internal documents from the company that the city of Chicago sold its parking meter business to last year show that it is making boatloads of money, and that the city would have done better just to keep the meters for itself. Bravo!

Now for the rest:

• A trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, where we learn that "young people (under 30) tend to enjoy modern art."
• A 195-word story about a stay-at-home dad who tried to join a play-group for his infant son, but couldn't because it was for moms only.
• A 156-word story about the Chicago Bulls' "circus trip," an annual tour that the item doesn't really explain but has something to do with Ringling Bros. and the Bulls losing. Here's a Sun-Times blog entry on the matter, published two days ago.
• A column from Jim Warren wherein he visits a food pantry.

Some of this is perfectly useful, but is it going to save journalism? Does a recitation of the Bulls' woes count as holding "our government accountable to citizens"? Is the MacArthur Foundation fulfilling its mission of creating a "more just, verdant, and peaceful world" by subsidizing stories about dads getting barred from mommies' groups? Is this what all the fuss is about?

The problem is that yes, newspapers underwrite important, expensive journalism that in many cases falls through the cracks in the pageview-obsessed, run-and-gun environment of online publishing. But that's perhaps five percent of what the average paper does. Maybe ten or fifteen. But it's a fraction. The rest of it is rewriting press releases, spouting opinions, reviewing things, and telling people what's on television and when—things the internet is exceptionally good at. CNC has loudly proclaimed that it is going to take up the slack and "restore" journalism's "true values," but, to judge by its first outing, all it's doing is creating a mini-newspaper—one solid story surrounded by a bunch of fluff that you could get anywhere. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with fluff, it's just that no one is raising alarms about the lack of quality writing about art museums and sports and opinions about poor people as newspapers decline.

If the idea of nonprofit journalism and innovative ways of paying for and distributing important reporting is going to succeed, it's going to have to actually produce important reporting. And if former newspapermen are going to lay claim to journalism's future by launching projects aimed at restoring its values, they ought to come up with something better than one good muni story.

UPDATE: Jim Schachter, editor of digital initiatives for the Times, writes in to make a good point that we hadn't considered—the Times asked CNC to provide a mix of serious and fluffy stories. So it was the Times, and not CNC, that wanted the mini-newspaper. We still don't understand why the MacArthur Foundation has to step in to help pay for the fluff the Times is asking for, or where that fluff fits into the CNC's journalism-saving rhetoric. But good point nonetheless:

Perhaps your dart is a bit misaimed. We asked the Chicago News Cooperative to give us a mix of content, because we're trying to come up with a formula for adding local news to The Times that prompts people to keep their subscriptions or start one if they're not buying our paper now. The tough story at the center of today's report, about the parking meter deal, is representative of what CNC means to be about. And, to be fair, so is Jim Warren's humane and pointed column.

I'm expecting to see a lot more afflicting of the comfortable and comforting of the afflicted from Jim O'Shea and his crew over the coming months.

That's what this recent Financial Times profile of the Vice empire tries to grasp. It starts by looking at Vice's lavish, quarter-million dollar Halloween party and asking the very good questions: "$250,000!? Wha—-huh!? Where did they get all this money?" Here's where: Vice increased its revenue from $45-64 million in 2008 alone. Turns out it's all about what you DO AND DON'T, and we had a foul-mouthed former Vice intern annotate the various tips and tricks contained in the FT piece that you, too, can use to build a successful alternative magazine/media empire.

DO: Become an Ad Agency

With Virtue, [Vice's in-house ad agency] the business has become a one-stop shop for youth branding. At the same time as charging premiums for advertising in its own pages, the company produces video content, photoshoots and other work for less than more established advertising agencies thanks to its network of 4,000 freelance creatives from around the world.

4,000 freelance creatives! In addition to the magazine, website, Viacom-backed online video channel, record label, book publishing house, film studio and London pub (!), Vice should think about opening a chain of over-priced coffeshops to give those freelancers somewhere to park their Macbooks.

DON'T: Be Corporate

The company has always been marked by an anti-establishment approach that has infused its editorial and business approach. Only now, for example, is the company starting to create hierarchies and line managers.

Fuck hierarchies. The only thing a hierarchy is good for is to give you something to fuck your way to the top of. Line managers, though, I can deal with; just depends on what kinds of "lines" they're managing, if you catch my drift...

DO: Have an "incredibly sophisticated" audience that gets why you work "with brands and for brands"

"Since day one, we have worked with brands and for brands," explains an unapologetic Mr Simon. "We are completely transparent in what we do. Never in any of our communications will we find a cheeky way to get one over on our audience. The audience is incredibly sophisticated."

Here's how sophisticated Vice's audience is: One time, I met this girl at the Charleston and I told her I was interning for Vice. And she's like "Cool, let's go back to my place fuck." So, we go back to her place, she puts on some Finnish electronica, then calls up her ex-boyfriend and asks him if he wants to come over and have a three-way with a dude who works at Vice. He said no fucking way. But still, she was totally into it!

DON'T: Let Sketchers Advertise in Your Magazine

But while Vice's reach is global, it remains targeted at a large niche and advertisers are required to fit with this brand image. For example, it has rejected advertisers, such as footwear giant Sketchers, when they have not fit with its image.

I believe it was the great philosopher Plato who once said: "There's just something about Sketchers that screams, 'I am poor.'" Seriously, Sketchers put the "S" in "Trailer TraSh".

DO: Think Big

"We can produce better content than is on TV for pennies in the dollar and put it on phones and TV," says Mr Smith. "Eventually when we get to 25m unique [users] and have all the biggest brands in the world underwriting it, we go to Google and say, ‘If you turn on the jets we'll be the biggest network in the world and overtake MTV'."

Imagine that: It'll be like a hipster Tower of Babel, bringing together all the slightly-differing types of hipsters from all over the world and uniting them in a glorious three-day outdoor indie music festival. We'll call it: The Dell Celebration of Universal Brotherhood.

The Apple Tablet has been something of a holy grail for gadget fiends. Now print publishers are enlisting in the cause with just as much fervor. Condé Nast's plan, as described by company execs to Peter Kafka of All Things D: Port Wired to Apple's tablet by mid-2010, followed later by all 17 other titles. By using a special digital format now under development by Adobe — which makes the publishing software that Condé and most other magazine publishers use — Condé also hopes to gain compatibility with tablet and other touch-screen devices made by Hewlett Packard and others.

Jobs should be flattered that such a high-profile publisher is chomping at the bit to get onto his new gizmo. Condé joins New York Times editor Bill Keller in talking up Apple's device; News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch is another recent print-media convert to the tablet religion.

Condé, clearly eager, should keep its enthusiasm in check. The company has closed six magazines and slashed budgets 25 percent at its remaining titles this year, setting off a wave of layoffs. It's doubtful that even Steve Jobs can come up with a silver bullet to rescue businesses that have spent many years squandering past digital opportunities. Especially if the company rushes too quickly and turns out a slapdash tablet product that burns its readers on the format forever.

(Photo illustration by Photo Giddy on Flickr)

Way to win reader trust, Post-Dispatch!



The employee's comment was just one word: "Pussy." It was a stupid response to a stupid blog post, entitled "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" The joke was a groaner, to be sure. And one that was annoyingly re-posted once after administrators deleted it. But the comment posed no threat to anyone or anything other than perhaps good taste. So it's bizarre how far the author of the post to which it was attached went next: The author, , Kurt Greenbaum,looked at the IP address on the comment, associated it with a local school, called the school and forwarded them all data on the commenter.

Then, Greenbaum later wrote, the guy got busted:

The school's IT director took a shine to the challenge... he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

Score one for Greenbaum! Now St. Louis-ians won't dumbly assume they can speak anonymously to the local paper, or that newspaper staffers, of all people, might have some sympathy for the soon-to-be unemployed. And we can't imagine anyone else hurling the word "Pussy" at Kurt Greenbaum again. Because this is clealry a guy with a thick skin.

(Pic from Greenbaum's Flickr)

[via Read-Write Web]

That's bad news not only for News Corp. chairman Murdoch but also for all the other old media barons hoping online paywalls will save their bacon. Even those who will pay can't decide if they want to buy individual articles via micropayments, subscribe to print-online bundles or subscribe to just the website:

Then there's the anecdotal evidence collected by Ad Age's Simon Dumenco, who surfed the comments section of Murdoch's websites and found that most of his own readers thought his paywall would fail. Some were downright mean, like Times of London reader Robin Stack: "It will reduce your wealth and influence; please do it."

So, in order to have any hope of weaning consumers off free content, the likes of Murdoch will have to offer a diverse array of payment plans and work like hell to change the thinking of the vast majority of his existing audience. For moguls used to exploiting their readers' and viewers' basest instincts, that sounds like an awful lot of persuading.

Richard Miniter, the editorial page editor of the Moonie Washington Times, is suing the paper for "being forced to attend a Unification Church mass wedding," and also because he says they made him work while he was sick, even though, according to TPM, "During a health scare earlier this year, Miniter was brought out of the newsroom on a stretcher." Who would have expected this at the Moonie Washington Times, of all places?


The (unprofitable) New York Daily News is investing $150 million in a new printing press . Buyers of print ads in the Daily News love it; everyone else thinks it is stupid.


Hey, Lou Dobbs is very interested in Bill O'Reilly's offer of a "semi-regular contributor" position on O'Reilly's show. Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs, together, on the same show. That would be something. Something evil.


Ah, here's a fourth item on this day of layoffs and only layoffs, as far as media "news" is concerned: Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni has named Hearst's Food Network Magazines as the Most Notable Launch of 2009. Americans can no longer tolerate any aspect of their daily reality that is unconnected to television. What an apocalyptic future we all face. Thanks, "Mr. Magazine."

Murdoch was on a panel with Indian mogul Ratan Tata and Mexican billionaire and future New York Times owner Carlos Slim. The question that elicited Murdoch's bizarre reference to New York Gov. David Paterson was clearly directed at Fox News: "How do we bring more civil discourse to the discussion, and stop appealing to the populists on the right and the left?"

One way would be to not pay people millions of dollars to pursue bizarre conspiracy theories and call the first black president a racist—but that's not the Murdoch way! No, Murdoch's slurred, barely coherent answer blamed politicians, including Paterson, who, it's important to note, is "blind, and can't read braille, and doesn't know what's going on." And therefore is responsible for the lack of civil discourse in our political conversation. Class act. Good thing Murdoch has leftie liaison Gary Ginsberg at hand to smooth this over for him.

We're just going to throw this out there: Rupert Murdoch is not well. This senseless gaffe, on top of his strange and uncomprehending assertion last week that Barack Obama is indeed a racist just like Glenn Beck said and that no one at Fox News has ever compared Obama to Stalin when they obviously do on a nearly nightly basis, make him seem strange and muddled. He's getting old, and it's showing.

The conference had another highlight—Slim's defensive and belittling discussion of his minority stake in the New York Times. Asked why he loaned a quarter of a billion dollars to the struggling paper, Slim responded with a casual, "Why not?" before nearly interrupting the panel's moderator to point out that on top of a 14% interest rate, he'd received warrants in the deal. Asked to elaborate on the value of media investments, Slim started with, "I think the New York Times will pay. It was credit, with a high yield, and warrants." How reassuring. Slim did offer a perfunctory defense of the Times as a business, calling it one of the best newspapers in the world. Then he offered to lend money to the Wall Street Journal at 12%, two points better than he gave to the Times.

Window Media owns the Southern Voice and David in Atlanta, the South Florida Blade and 411 Magazine in the Fort Lauderdale area, the Houston Voice, and the Washington Blade, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in October (and where I worked for a number of years). This morning Atlanta gay blogProject Q Atlanta reported that a sign had been placed on the office of the Southern Voice and David, stating, "It is with GREAT regret that we must inform you that effective immediately, the operations of Window Media, LLC and Unite Media, LLC have closed down." In a sad indignity, employees are told to return to the office on Wednesday with boxes to pick up their belongings. We hear that employees are currently huddled in the parking lot in Atlanta, not sure what to do with themselves and dealing with the local media that has come to report on the closure.

Though the Washington Blade is still online visiting the websites for any of the company's titles lead to an error message, and no one is answering the phones at the Washington Blade. Several gay websites are reporting the Blade is also closed. The Blade's website posted a notice on Friday looking for an editorial intern, so this must have been quite a surprise to all employees. A call to the Blade's editor, Kevin Naff, was not returned. Update: The Blade staff just confirmed the closure on the newspaper's Twitter.

Window has been in financial trouble for some time, and was placed in receivership by the Small Business Association in February because it violated it's contract with the SBA and didn't have capital from individual investors equaling half of the $38 million it had borrowed from SBA. It's not a shock that this happened and, without niche newspapers in major markets, the gay media will continue to move online, just like everyone else. It's sad to see a big gay landmark close—especially one with the reputation for excellence that the Blade had—but isn't that the greatest form of equality?

• The new medium could rot people's brains and erode cultural standards: "What you'll be seeing: [Ventriloquist dummy] Charlie McCarthy or the [intellectual radio broadcast] Chicago Roundtable?"
  
• The government is making huge new media decisions with far-reaching implications for the future: "Battle in the spectrum... Uncle Sam Looks at Television."
  
• The new medium will impact this old medium: Title: "Movies and Television" Article: "Film companies are watching television development with a careful eye."
  
• The elite first adopters will be overrun by the masses: Title: "Is Television Ready for the Public?" Article "Before the war about 7,000 television sets had been sold... the purcahses were all in or near a handful of cities. among them New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Schenectady, and Los Angeles" Those big-city bastards of Schenectady were liberal elitists even back in the day!
  
• The new medium will usher in a new crop of media lords: "Who Are the Leaders in the Fight?"
  
• The new medium means fun new gadgets (which could get us loads of advertising): Title: "What Kind of Television? War improvements cut costs / Look before you buy / Network possibilities / Buy wisely / Color television"
  
  
  
  Article (emphasis added): "Before you start looking for a receiver, check up on the television station in your area and find out whether its programs interest you...Don't let the salesman double talk you into buying one before it is demonstrated in your home. Who knows, you may be living in a "dead spot" where it is not possible to pick up television pictures. [AT&T has apparently been in the wireless business a long time.]

Somehow we still have movie theaters, radio, books and newspapers decades later. And every one of those sectors is still fabulously profitable and growing. (*Cough*)

[via Brendan Koerner]

News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller (pictured) said at a Monaco media event that his conglomerate plans to block Google (at least partially) within "months and quarters — not weeks... The traffic which comes in from Google... is the least valuable of traffic to us." That's according to the Telegraph, and followed similar comments from Miller's boss Rupert Murdoch just days before.

So why all the noise? Blocking Google is a straightforward process involving simple text files, not a big act of war that requires lengthy preparation.

Maybe Microsoft has offered News Corp. a middle ground between charging for content and leaving search engines entirely. Bing might offer a cut of ad revenue to News Corp. and other content providers in return for exclusively appearing in the Microsoft search engine, former weblog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis recently suggested.

And that idea isn't far fetched. The Associated Press's CEO recently said Microsoft was offering AP many more favors than Google:

Curley said he was negotiating a new partnership with Microsoft under conditions more favorable to the AP and its members...



Someone asked Curley if Microsoft was willing to accept the AP's demands. "They have said very strongly that they would," Curley responded... "They know how to have a conversation." And what about Google? "I'm not talking about Google," he said. "We haven't talked."

So maybe in the end Rupert Murdoch, the doddering newspaper fetishist, will have the last laugh over Google, reclaiming "his" content revenue... and delivering it straight to Bill Gates and Microsoft. Oh, Rupert.

(Pic by Dave McClure)

UPDATE: This new TechCrunch story about Microsoft's meeting with European publishers confirms that Microsoft's strategy is to ally with the likes of News Corp. against Google: "Microsoft plans to launch an assault on Google's flank, by cosying up to major content providers, especially newspapers, that feel hard done by Google News."

Meacham sent this memo to his staff around 6 p.m. on Wednesday announcing the elimination of "about a dozen" positions at the magazine due to "market conditions." Meacham admirably admits that he has "no spin to offer" about the magazine's dire condition, but then goes ahead and offers some spin anyhow: "The different direction we undertook earlier this year continues to appear promising in terms of building and retaining an engaged audience." Can't blame him, really. Tough times.

To the Staff
From Jon Meacham

This has been a tough day for the magazine. Because the economic climate in publishing has become ever more difficult, we have been compelled by business considerations to eliminate about a dozen positions. We are parting company with colleagues who have done much to serve the magazine and its readers. As much as we would like it to be otherwise, market conditions mean that we are going to have to do our work with fewer people.

I have no spin to offer. I will say this, though: our new magazine and website have been well received by readers. The different direction we undertook earlier this year continues to appear promising in terms of building and retaining an engaged audience that we hope will be attractive to advertisers while we, like so many other organizations, seek new sources of revenue in order to fulfill our mission. Our situation is not unique. But we will keep working as hard as we can to find solutions that are.

In the meantime, thanks to you all for the work you have done and will do. To those who are leaving, we will miss you, and we wish you the very best.

In a profile of the 32-year-old Too Big to Fail author, New York's Gabriel Sherman reports that, in order to fend off repeated poaching attempts from competitors (Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter says Sorkin has a "standing offer"), the Times has bumped Sorkin up to management to circumvent union pay rules and entered into an extraordinary deal in which Sorkin gets "a bonus that is based, in part, on the financial performance of the various DealBook properties." It makes him, Sherman says, one of the highest-paid staffers at the Times.

So the newspaper that told its staff to take a 5% paycut in order to avoid layoffs, and then announced that it plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs anyway, is paying out a quarter of a million dollars and performance bonuses to one of its youngest stars. Sherman doesn't have details of the arrangement—we e-mailed Sorkin last week about it after Sherman previewed that news in a blog post on Friday, and haven't heard back—but it sounds an awful lot like a pageview bonus to us. Which is an ugly practice that distorts news judgment and induces reporters to chase down attention-grabbing and salacious gossip rather than substantive information and is the province of unscrupulous blogs that are killing journalism. And also the New York Times, apparently.

Sorkin's privileged place at the struggling paper enrages his detractors, who call him a callow deal junkie and shill for his Wall Street sources. The publication of Too Big to Fail rustled some of those leaves in the newsroom, but until now, it's consisted exclusively of anonymous sniping. But Sherman got Tim O'Brien, the editor of the Times' Sunday business section—who oversaw Sorkin's column before it was moved to Tuesdays—to grouse on the record about what he regards as Sorkin's sloppy reporting:

"When Andrew had a Sunday business column and he'd drop a thinly reported or loosely written piece on the desk at the last minute on Friday night," O'Brien explained, "it made us concerned about our production schedule and, occasionally, about the credibility of our page. So, yeah, there were frequent tugs-of-war with him."

It's one thing for Times staffers to bitch about one another on background. But to have a senior editor openly questioning the credibility of one of the paper's biggest names is about as close to open rebellion as it gets. We've got to wonder if O'Brien has already decided to take a buyout, because it's clear where the Times' leadership stands: Executive editor Bill Keller told Sherman that Sorkin is a "classic beat reporter" who "develops real inside sources" and has become "essential reading."

A point of personal privilege: Sorkin told New York that Gawker "misquoted" him in an earlier item on claims from some at the Times that he ripped off the reporting of his colleagues Don Van Natta Jr. and Gretchen Morgenson for his book. Van Natta and Morgenson had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's call logs, as well as an ethics waiver Paulson received from the White House allowing him to work directly with his former employer Goldman Sachs. Both documents figure prominently in Sorkin's promotional push for Too Big to Fail, and some at the Times claimed that Sorkin had learned of their existence from the Times and piggybacked on the paper's reporting. Sorkin told Sherman that we misquoted him when we reported that he'd told us that he first FOIA'd the logs and the waiver in June; in fact, Sorkin says, he'd only FOIA'd the logs at that time. Here's what happened: Sorkin told us he'd FOIA'd the logs and—according to our notes of the conversation—"all the ethics documents" in June. We took that to mean the ethics waiver. Sorkin has since explained to us that it did not—he used FOIA in June to try to obtain the logs and the original ethics letter that Paulson wrote when he joined Treasury pledging not to work on Goldman Sachs issues, but not the waiver that later relieved Paulson of that obligation.

Sherman also used FOIA to verify Sorkin's claims, and found that he did indeed file a request in June for the logs. It's unclear whether he also requested the ethics letter, as he has claimed to us. We've requested the same documents, but haven't received them from the Treasury Department yet.

UPDATE: A Times source called to point out that Sorkin isn't alone. Several Times reporters and columnists are treated as management, the source says, and are therefore eligible for performance bonuses—although it's unclear how their performance is assessed or whether anyone other than Sorkin earns bonuses tied to the financial performance of their editorial product. Astonishingly, the source says that the Times paid out bonuses last year, despite the fact that its performance has been dismal.

Media junkies everywhere, young and old, this is crack-like goodness. Kaplan's supposed to be on the show to talk about a new compilation book from the New York Observer, but that's passed over pretty quickly for the good stuff. There's even a clip spliced in of former New York editor Clay Felker, who died last year, discussing what makes a great editor. Some of the more compelling lines:

• Sadly, his only swipe at the New York Observer's (Michael Corleone-esque) owner Jared Kushner was a passive-aggressive pawing: "(Jared's positioning it) a little bit different than where I live." Classy, but like Jared, I wanted more blood.
  
  
• On his departure: "I thought I had driven the car as far as it could go."
  
  
• "I have an evangelical mission to save the part of the print media that I love. Which is, to me, sophisticated, arcane, a little bit of a throwback to the 20s, but also a 21st century medium that the internet was a direct assault on."
  
  
• "All my mean friends on the internet say you can't put the genie back in the bottle..."
  
  
• "Tina (Brown) is a lot stronger than I am."
  
  
• "(The best New York editors) come from outside and bang on the door to try to understand it. The really great ones are desperate to understand New York City and are desperate to say what they don't know."
  
  
• On how long it takes him to spot a great reporter: "About a day."
  
  
• "I don't know what's going to happen. I have close friends who work in various (what I like to think of) as information supermarkets. Aggregation has undermined the American news process...It separates the news item from the news story. It's (by definition) a shallow landscape."

Interestingly enough, Kaplan at one point talks about the future of journalism returning to a pay model with a new medium—like, say, an Apple Tablet—that could shut out the broad sheet altogether and create a narrow outlet through which people would have to pay for something like, say, the New York Times (who are more or less cozying up with Apple in anticipation of the Tablet's 'impending' release).

I'd rather leave the futurism to someone else, but this kind of thinking seems a little reckless. Sure, the New York Times is pretty, and has great content, but isn't the information at the heart of every New York Times article—gathering it, compiling it, fact-checking and editing it—where a lot of the money is? And you can't charge people for information. A New York Times exclusive is only an exclusive for the minute or two before someone else has posted their Google-landgrab headline reporting on the New York Times' reporting.

Nevertheless! Kaplan's maybe-changing old-school methodology and the quality he put into his work is going to be interesting to watch as he tries to move whatever products he continues to move forward with as time goes on, which is to say nothing of whatever direction the New York Observer's going to take as well.

Via Torontoist, the story goes like this: the Toronto Star—Canada's largest daily circulation newspaper—is, like every other newspaper, starting to come to terms with how completely doomed it is. So they're going through the company's biggest restructuring in its history, offering buyouts to everyone in the company, and outsourcing both copy editing and pagination work. First of all, is pagination work really that hard? There are people at the New York Observer who write Very Short List, half of Transom, and do Kushner's taxes. Pussy Canadians. Learn from us.

But apparently, it is, or it's hard enough to require outsourcing. Also, they vaguely alluded to this nice gem:

The plans could expand to include editorial content and other production, he added.

So, you know when you call American Airlines and they pick up and they're like AMEERICKAN URLUNES CHALO DEES IZ, URR, BOB, OW CAN YOU BE HALPED PLEEZE? And you're like, Bob, I know you're name isn't Bob, and you're not picking up this call in Austin either, are you? Well, imagine what happens when they start outsourcing your editorial content to the same people who pick up American Airlines' numbers?

Or so was the thought process of a certain Toronto Star editor, who took a memo written by the Star's publisher, John Cruickshank, to the editorial staff, and showed Cruickshank just how much they need their in-house copy-editors by leaking it to Torontoist. Observe:

LEDE!! indeed. If anything, this only serves to remind me how patently annoying copy editors are. Besides, isn't that what #commenters are for? Punctuation Nazis, all of them, imposing their draconian rules on the beautiful words of beautiful writers with flowing hair and long, circumspect...typing fingers. But from a publisher's standpoint, they might, you know, come in handy every once in a while. Like when you're writing a doomsday memo to your staff.