Its out-of-touch publisher, Elisha R. Hagenbuckle, who resembles former Times publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, is "like a rhino with cage fever . . . muttering to himself . . . a parody of a man in animated concentration." He's horrified by such Web sites as Gawker and Defamer, asking, "Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about the breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities?"

To which his son, a takeoff on Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., chirps, "That's the whole point, Dad. You've got to be snarky."

The odd thing here is that Punch retired as publisher in 1992 and as chairman in 1997, half a decade before Gawker started. The exchange would make more sense between Pinch and his own twentysomething son Arthur Gregg Sulzberger. But, hey, what's the point of slapping the "fiction" veil over your former employer if you can't take some liberties?

[Post]

How the Internet is re-describing how we understand privacy, intimacy and personal history is, I think... a [lifestyle] issue, and the fact that the story — an 8,000-word story — has already, in 6 ours or so, attracted more than 600 comments (most of them having nothing to do with why we published the piece as a cover story) leads me to believe a lot of folks agree.

In other words, generating a lot of noise is a journalistic end unto itself. Or at least proof of merit. That's such a forward-thinking, blog-ish way to think. Gawker-esque, some might say. But now, barring some kind of technical concern, the paper seems to be having second thoughts, because the internet can be cruel. Given the subject of Gould's piece, that's very meta.

Of course, as Gould is surely aware, shutting down comments isn't going to stop the invective; it's just going to push it onto email, personal blogs, Twitters and even instant messaging status updates:

"This demonstrates how even the top editors have truly embraced blogging! Or maybe it just shows how bad the budget cuts have become."

Oh, snap! Jill, you should totally smack back on one of your blogs. Another pro tip: It juices traffic if you mention how the mainstream media totally screwed up their coverage of whatever topic you are posting on.

Also, blog posts generally don't have datelines.

Here are some of the snarkier moments in Abramson's post (which, as you might expect, isn't very snarky):

HAVERFORD, Penn.— Michelle Obama, appearing at Haverford College, gave a strong response to criticism that her husband’s remarks at a San Francisco fund-raising event were elitist

...referring to her husband’s student loans, she added sarcastically: “Now when is the last time you’ve seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt? But, again, maybe I’m out of touch.”

...At a performance at a union hall in Coatesville earlier on Tuesday, Bill Clinton said that he and his wife were now in the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers. So as not to appear out of touch, Mr. Clinton quickly added that when he and Hillary Clinton entered the White House, they were the poorest first family in 100 years.

Don't worry, Jill, the blogging thing will get easier in time. Just ask Bill Keller!

[Times]

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]

These Naughty Gifts Don't Clutter a Closet [NYT]

That's the thing about "personal branding": it might just be a new version of what used to be called "having a distinct voice." The problem comes when people (not Doree, by the way) who don't yet have distinct voices, or maybe never will have them, are forced or force themselves to develop some kind of bloggy webby "platform."

"On Oct. 13, Columbia Journalism School held a day-long workshop called 'Building A Personal Website and Your Online Brand'; the attendees were all 'working journalists.'" Doree wrote. Also, "Today, even Times reporters who are hardly household names are encouraged to set up pages on nytimes.com with a list of their Web site 'picks,' so we can get to know them better."

And per Doree, the epitome of this trend is the woman Vanessa Grigoriadis described as "the most famous young journalist in New York" in New York magazine last week. That would be Julia Allison. Julia is quoted as saying, "I looked around, and I saw that the people who were getting assignments and getting paid really nicely for it were names. They were brands ...Ultimately, you're replaceable if you're not a brand."

So it's not just that "voice" is branding. Some folks really are incredibly brand-conscious.

But while the old conventional wisdom was that this kind of behavior was "blatantly ambitious" and therefore distasteful, "Today, being 'blatantly ambitious' has different overtones; we live in an era in which we've convinced ourselves that nearly any behavior is okay, as long as we're up front about it."

Maybe we're not just talking about the rules of journalism here, but the new rules of being any kind of public person with any kind of internet presence. Where's that line between person and persona, between honesty and intentional self-branding?

Nearly all newspaper websites mistakenly segregate their blogs off with the other blogs. They're organizing by form, not by content. (The Times does a better job, both promoting blog posts on the front page and integrating each blog's content into existing sections.)

Readers just don't come to a newspaper's website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what "form" it's in. Old newspaper editors may think blogs are some crazy different variety of publication; readers don't.

The result of this bias at newspapers is the unbelievably horrible web organization of their websites. (Or! It may be a result of their already horrible web organization. They've shoehorned a place for blogs into their existing designs, doing themselves no favors.) This means that most of the blog writers end up screaming into the void. Take internet critic Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune; how will his long piece on internet gossip trash ever get seen? It's total traffic-bait—and it has nary a comment. No entity on the internet has even linked to it, as of 4 p.m. EST today.

The haphazard and anti-blog organization of newspaper websites gives us things like the Washington Post's weird pop-up listing of blogs and columns:
And the LA Times' list of recent blog posts:Mini-Britneys! Schools! John Edwards! Soy Sauce! Ack! Would any section of any publication be organized like this?

The good news about newspaper blogs is that this is all apparently so crazy and new that they'll basically try anything. And you totally get a sense that the top editors at most places aren't paying attention. The Daily News goes super-ultra local: there's the Bath Beach blog, concerning a neighborhood in Brooklyn that no one is quite sure where it stops or starts. Anyway there we learn that Brooklyn is getting a new IHOP but not in Bath Beach!

The Chicago Tribune's animal blog, mostly pictures of dogs up for adoption, has a hard time getting updated, to the frustration of its reader. But it is about animals which is cute! Living green in London? Have a blog! There's one for anyone. Overly hip Bay Area parents? Exercise and fitness in South Florida? Most of these seem to have astoundingly small readerships—because the paper won't support them or treat them as part of the paper. What nearly always does well is sports blogs—their readership is there for the taking, and they're also usually more urgent in tone and more consistent, like Dan Steinberg's awesome D.C. sports blog.

But pity all the arts critics who get forced out of the paper to run their own blogs. Don't give a rave to a singer-songwriter? The super-fan commenters will suggest that "I suppose you were being subjective." Ya think? So maybe there is something to be said for keeping an old-fashioned newspaper column with no intrusion from the dirty sort of folks who think they own the internet.

Your husband Curtis Pesman has been spending a lot of time with one of his ex-girlfriends. After a bunch of flirtatious emails, he went out to Philly, and had dinner in her bedroom. We hear they had "a reconnection, a spark." Paula, we don't know if you remember his advice book "Your First Year Of Marriage," from way back in 1995, but we're pretty sure, just judging from its index, that this was stuff he would tell a bride to be worried about. Don't ask us how we found out this inside information! Oh, okay: It came from a very private journal he was keeping in the New York Times.

As Survivors, We Were Closer Than Lovers [NYT]

Its a good thing we've spent all that money after 9/11 to fix up the communication system on the subways.Nobody at Atlantic Ave. knew what was being said.Were they speaking Chinese,its a joke !

Everyone is screwed. What I really hate is that they were not talking about subway service on any of this morning's news programs. It was all about how LIRR and Metro North was severely backed up or canceled. Nothing was mentioned that nearly half the subway lines in the city were shut down! I walked to the 1 train to find the station was closed. Of course the MTA woman there was completely useless. Me: "Excuse me, what's going on? Are the trains running?" Her: *rolls her eyes, with attitude* "I don't know. I guess the trains are messed up. I can't help you." *rolls eyes again* I walked to the 23rd Street ACE and the uptown tracks were open (downtown side was completely closed). An F train rolled into the station so I hopped on and it hit to local stops on 8th Avenue. It stopped at 59th/Columbus Circle and I walked crosstown from there. So glad I don't live in Brooklyn, like all my friends from college. As much as they rave on and on about how Brooklyn is so much better than the city, they always bitch about the TERRIBLE train service. Suckers.

I am stunned how unreliable the New York Transit system is. For the price it must be the most poorly run system in the world; For half the system to be knocked out by a night of heavy rain is embarrassing. Even worse is the announcements/notifications that they give their PAYING customers. I entered the subway today, and there was no announcement, sign, employee, or anything else that would warn me that something was wrong, or which track to use. Once on the track, there was also no announcements or warnings. Even on the train all you hears is "This train is wah wah wah waaaah wah waah weh wah." Let me know the system is not working BEFORE I pay to use it. I could have walked to work faster, hailed a cab, used my bike, anything except the train. If the MTA was an airline it would be bankrupt in a year. I won't even mention how dirty and broken the stations are.

Who needs the Taliban? We've got Con Ed and the MTA!

Has it occurred to anyone that if this keeps happening and tons of people are stuck in subways, like at Port Authority and Times Square, that it would be a perfect opportunity for some mean people to do a lot of damage? Come on MTA, I don't think the rain should be the cause of all these problems. Doesn't it rain a lot of the year in London? You don't hear about these problems there.

Al-Qaeda may have figured out that all they need to do is go to work for ConEd if they feel like blowing up the city or the MTA if they feel like crippling it .... just think about it: regular hours, nice benefits, you can be as destructive as you like and everyone just thinks you're doing your job. Because how could we tell you're not?

I don't know about all of you, but I enjoyed walking to work for once and checking out all the Wall St. business women on the way....

@!#$% The MTA... They are such losers... scum of the Hudson.

— Posted by Michael Bloomberg

Flooding Cripples Subway System [NYT]

If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack? [NYT]

...I am still amazed that just a few people are able to do all this work. We have two critics, Frank Bruni on restaurants and Eric Asimov on wine. And we have three staff reporters, Marian Burros, Kim Severson and Julia Moskin, who's on leave at the moment. Then there are three freelancers who write virtually every week, Florence Fabricant, Mark Bittman and Peter Meehan.

My two-doors-down office neighbor, David Brooks... had the misfortune to stop in the hallway right before school pickup time and ask how I was doing. 'I wake in the morning and go to bed at night stalked by a feeling of incipient failure!' I stopped hyperventilating long enough to almost scream. He blinked for a moment, impassively.

'Some people thrive on that,' he said. Yes, I thought, I've built an entire career in just that way.

End of (School) Year Frenzy [NYT]

Visits To Doctors Who Are Not In, Ever [NYT]

My son Elijah's teacher recently announced that his preschool class would be having a competition to see whose dad is the coolest. I immediately knew that I would win. After all, I am very hip owing to the fact that I know a lot about music, but I'm also very self-deprecating so I didn't want to make a big deal of the fact that I knew I would win. Two other dads were in the running: Dan Zanes and David Byrne, somehow. I was still going to win, but I needed to come up with a campaign strategy. I asked my wife for her thoughts.

"Baby, help me figure out how to assert my still with it-ness to a bunch of small children?" I said.

"I can't believe I married you. What the hell was I thinking?" my wife, Regina, joked. She's a kidder. Did I mention that I have a wife? My wife my wife my wife. We have a child, Elijah! Anyway.

"Maybe you could do something besides just sit around the house playing computer baseball," she mentioned.

By gum, she was right.

So I spent the next few hours procrastinating while I hatched my plan. I was going to show Elijah and his classmates that I was the coolest, yet most real and modest, dad they could ever imagine.

By the time I got home, I had an hour and 25 minutes to prepare for the Coolness Competition. I stumbled through a CD collection that has become more and more fossilized and scattered every week since the advent of the iPod era. I have an iPod, like the kids do! But among the broken jewel cases and the burned collections of Beck B-sides, I didn't find hard evidence of my coolness that I could be totally certain would make me seem awesome and rockin'. I mean, besides the burned collections of Beck B-sides. It's pretty hip that I have those, right? Hip and edgy. I barely had time to shower, shave, check my e-mail and play two games of computer baseball before I was almost running out of time. (See how I subverted my wife's authority? Wife wife wife.)

Anyway I decided at the last minute to make a collage about me. Kids are visual learners, and I figured I could find plenty of stuff just lying around that would make statements about my identity. I glanced down at my faded Sonic Youth t-shirt stretched tight over my not-quite-noticeable gut. Experimentally, I lifted its hem, so that the lower part of my stomach became visible. I noted that it was pretty hairy! Undeterred, I continued to look for material for my collage. Tentatively at first, and then with increasing firmness, I plunged my right index finger into my belly button and made a scraping motion.

My first try was fruitful: some grayish lint and what seemed like a possible cat hair. How'd that get in there? The cat hair, I mean. The grayish lint was probably from the faded Beavis and Butthead tee I was wearing yesterday. I took some scotch tape and attached both items to the posterboard. I was on my way.

My next scrape proved less worthwhile. I didn't even know what I was digging for at this point, to be honest. My finger emerged with just a fleck of dead skin and another little piece of lint, blueish this time. Still, it would have to be enough. What am I talking about? It would be awesome. After all, everything that comes out of me is worth noting. And everything that comes out of my kid? Well, doubly so. Duh.

"So," I asked Elijah. "What do you think of my collage?"

"I like to play the game with trucks," he replied.

"What's your favorite thing about it?" I asked, encouraged.

"What collage?" said my son. It was the most profound thing either of us had said since the last time we'd spoken aloud. —Emily

Dance Fever [NYT]

Rock On, Mr. Director [NYT]

The most basic threshold is that it has to be something people are consuming (in the most flexible sense of the word).

For example, in tomorrow's "Consumed" column on toasters, Rob Walker talks (or writes!) about toasters in a way that, when I was reading it over breakfast (which—factoid!—is called that, because as the first meal of the day, it "breaks" your "fast"), made me want to eat toast in a way that even most conventional toaster advertisements cannot do. This seems to me a trend, because I've seen people start eating more toast and less matzo just recently:

The Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster seems to offer pretty good evidence in [business writer Michael Schrage's] favor. With a retail price of around $40 (double the price of a plain old toaster), it was a top-selling toaster in 2006, and that seems to be largely because of what makes it distinct in the [toaster] category. As the name implies, it's a toaster with a built-in egg poacher.

"Nevertheless, sales figures offer some evidence in [Columbia University professor Bruce] Greenwald's favor: of the 12.3 million toasters bought in 2006, half were in the $20-or-less range, according to NPD Group, a collector of retail data...And yet, the most robust growth in toaster sales in 2006 was among products at the higher end of the price spectrum, according to Peter Goldman, president of the NPD Group's home business unit....The Egg & Muffin Toaster speaks equally to the march of toaster innovation and the difficulty of it."

Not Necessarily Toast [NYT Mag Not Online]

Chumley's is a relic of the Roaring Twenties, but the memories are being shared the 21st-century way, over the Internet. Yesterday, after reports of the wall collapse, more than 30 people posted anecdotes about Chumley's on nytimes.com, some wondering about its future.

James Barron of The Times is researching Chumley's and would love to hear readers' reminiscences — if you have them, please enter them in the comment box.

Personally I don't like bars and/or dives. The whole thing is so pointless. Now the NYC public library, there's a place.

— Posted by John Brady