Gawker
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nouriel roubini
Dr. Doom Can't Escape His Party-Boy Rep
Nouriel Roubini has made it clear he'd rather be known for his prescient economic predictions than his playboy lifestyle. But his parties are catnip for the media who inflated his reputation. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by StabbyRipStabStab: [www.encyclopediadramatica.com] 2 Responses | Other threads
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grey lady reads to you
Times Critics' Five Worst Lines About Children's Books
Tomorrow you can sit down and read the New York Times Book Review childrens' literature special insert. The annual feature is one way to find a choice picture book to give to a young person, and it also gives us the gift of the insane seriousness with which the Times reviewers treat the subject. The task of making these kinds of books relevant to the adult reader is admittedly a difficult one, and yet the best of the overwrought sentences that follow truly make us feel like children again. Unbelievably stupid children. More »
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Comment by SkittlesMcGee: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! is incredibly relevant to my adult life. 4 Responses | Other threads
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great moments in journalism
Google silencing Obama critics? Memo to New York Times bloggers: ur doing it rong
"Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama?" asks New York Times reporter Miguel Helft today, in what reads like the Gray Lady's attempt to do Valleywag-style gossipmongering. There's something very wrong with the post: Read it and see if you think Helft believed for a minute that any Google employees deliberately and maliciously turned off a few Google-hosted blogs supporting Hillary Clinton and John McCain. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by MikeTy: The internet has created new tools for politicians (and, frankly to anyone) to express their ideas in a whole new... more » | Other threads
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pest control
'NYT' Rabbit Kill Story Enrages Bunny-Huggers
This photo—along with the headline "Peter Rabbit Must Die"—opens today's "Home and Garden" section of The New York Times. It's a piece on killing backyard pests such as adorable woodchucks and icky snakes, but the illustration has NYC's bunny-owning community screaming bloody murder. A tipster writes, "On Yahoo’s nycbuns group, which is dedicated to the well-being of bunnies as well as the emotional disorders of their owners, the New York Times photo has provoked a wave of infuriated posts." One enraged bunner pleads, "everyone please inform the NYT that it is totally inappropriate to use a picture of a lop eared house rabbit for a story about killing garden pests. one would think these journalists making $200k a year would know better - yeah damn mad at them and sent a very nasty email." More bunny rage after the jump. More »
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Comment by e.varden: @CaptainHangNail: Boring rabbit pet: I had one as a kid. Lived in a parrot-cage. Daily I let it romp in... more » | Other threads
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gallery
"Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840 - 1940"
“'Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, manages to operate in the gap between both kinds of miracles, innovative and talismanic. It presents the history of a medium as well as history itself. This exhibition appropriates a model usually reserved for painters, old or modern masters. Organized by Malcolm Daniels, the curator in charge of the Met’s photography department, “Framing a Century” recounts the medium’s 100 years with a succinct cavalcade of big names, substantial bodies of work and significant historical impact." More »
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Comment by Zorica: I'm so glad I clicked on this. It's going to be hard not to skip class and spend a... more » | Other threads
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print is dead
'NYT' Leaving the Suburbs
In yet another move that will likely piss-off Old Tyme-y newspaper types, The New York Times is shutting down a whole batch of its suburban outposts. One staffer writes in, "Big stuff. They are closing all of their suburban bureaus, packing up, giving up, going home to protect what is left of their base—seven 84 year-olds on the upper west side. White Plains, New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island—shuttered, reporters brought into Manhattan and reassigned, pretty much except for one dude in New Jersey, kept there so that tri-state doesn't have less correspondents than, say, Montana. If that's not a metaphor for their dire economic circumstances, I'm not sure what is—but it's a curious decision too. Their shrinking readership base in the city is smaller than the ring outside it. Maybe they want it to be bigger again…by shrinking what's outside of it. Ah, now I get it." But another source inside the Gray Lady has a less dire take. More »
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Comment by lightloafers: not dismal when you compare their earnings to other newspapers? have you seen those losses and declining revenues? ... more » | Other threads
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Adorbs!
Awww 'NYT' Headline Writers Think They Work Here
What does it say about a story when an editor at The New York Times resorts to snark? Is this part of that whole Times loosening up thing? Is it a way to soften the blow of a really wordy article on a topic that no one seems to know anything about? Take this, for instance. More » -
Adventures in Journalism
Times Journo's Prison Weekend
The New York Times' Barry Bearak reports on his four-day stint in a Zimbabwe prison on charges of "committing journalism." It began when 21 policemen and detectives raided the lodge where he'd been staying. "The crowded room was hot. Already, I felt jailed. I needed a breath of air, but when I moved toward the door, Detective Jasper Musademba, a well-built man in a jacket and tie, stopped me. He had been the most threatening of the police. 'If you try to go outside...' he said sternly, stopping in midsentence. He made his hand into a gun and pulled the trigger. 'You’ll kill me?' I asked. 'Good,' he remarked wryly. 'Then you’ve seen that movie.'” More »
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Comment by fileunder: I'll get to this as soon as I'm done absorbing today's "Dude"/"Wassup!" advertising article. Gripping stuff. more » | Other threads
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junior high
'NYT' Bullied Boy Bullied a Boy
Turns out the subject of that New York Times article about the Arkansas kid who gets beat up all the time, Billy Wolfe, is himself a bit of bad news. And that Pulitzer-winning reporter Dan Barry either missed or ignored that complicating little twist. A story in the Northwest Arkansas Times details a police report on young Wolfe: "[T]he police report contains allegations that Billy harassed a student confined to a wheelchair with muscular dystrophy by sneaking up behind him and screaming to aggravate the disabled boy’s sensitivity to noise, by bouncing a rubber ball against the disabled boy’s head, and by calling him 'stupid' and a 'retard.' The police report provides further context on the assaults described in the NYT." More »
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Comment by tempest: What is it you call a [person who's being picked on by a bully] anyway? A "bullee"? I'm so confused. more » | Other threads
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Trends of Doom
Blogging Will Make You Fat, Or Skinny, And KILL YOU!
In the last few months, two bloggers—ages 50 and 60—dropped dead of heart attacks. Times for a trend piece! "Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet." Whoa, sucks to be them. But who are the evil bastards that drive this infernal machine? "Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more." D'Oh!
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Comment by Clare: My uncle is an air traffic controller at a county airport. He judges the quality of his shift on... more » | Other threads
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and now he's dead
Charlton Heston, Actor
Well, you can have his gun now. Oscar winning actor, NRA president, and all around iconic conservative slab of beefcake, Charlton Heston, died last night at his Beverly Hills home. He was 84. "His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the family, Bill Powers, who declined to discuss the cause. In August 2002, Mr. Heston announced that he had been diagnosed with neurological symptoms 'consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.'" [NYT] Olds, and The New York Times, will remember him as the star of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, but for the rest of us, he will always be the man who launched a thousand spoofs. Update: "Heston was born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Illinois, on Oct. 4, 1923, though the year of his birth has been in dispute for years, with some sources saying he was born in 1924." [Bloomberg]
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Comment by Cptn.ImportantPants: Finally saw the feel-good flick of the year, I Am Legend, last night and thus found my way here today.... more » | Other threads
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the riches
Moneyed Wusses Prepare for Doomsday
“'I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,' said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas. Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — 'the Greater Depression,' as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert." Yes, Mr. Marcom, when the apocalypse hits, Lord Humongous will gladly accept your old sliver coins as "currency." More »
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Comment by cassandra: @LoveHandles: I find certain aspects of your comment scary and disturbing in a kind of reckless neo-con way, but you... more » | Other threads
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op-ed
Dowd Screams Her Point, Backtracks
Times columnist and walking self-parody Maureen Dowd insists today that "Democrats are trying to sneak up on Hillary, throw a burlap sack over her head, carry her off the field and stick her in a Saddam spider hole until after the Denver convention." Yep, the party is through with Senator Hillary Clinton. "Democrats are coming around to the point Jay Rockefeller made 10 days ago after introducing Obama in West Virginia: 'Democrats always make a mistake by nominating people who know everything on earth there is to know about public policy. I introduced both Al Gore and John Kerry at their rallies. They knew all the policies, but people didn’t connect with them. You don’t get elected president if people don’t like you.'" Plus, the ladies of The View find Barack Obama "sexy," so surely the race is over. More »
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Comment by Fishman: Two Democrats with nearly identical political views are fighting to the death. Hillary pretty much has no chance to win,... more » | Other threads
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corrections
This is Not a Crack House
Last week, annoyingly one-named reporter for The New York Times, Toure, wrote about his middle class guilt and snitching to the cops about a crack house on his block. The article was illustrated with this photo of some handsome residences in Toure's neighborhood. But, oops! More »
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Comment by famousauthor: @Seeräuber Jenny: And Pamela, who aspired, as a child, to be a horse (unlike a couple of others, who managed... more » | Other threads
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media
Eliot Spitzer: Media Critic
Before The New York Times utterly destroyed former Governor Eliot Spitzer by breaking the news of his whoring ways, Spitzer didn't have much respect for the paper. New York State District Attorney David Soares' report on Troopergate includes an email exchange between Spitzer and aid Rich Baum in which they discuss Times reporter Nick Confessore. "In a separate set of e-mails early in the morning on that date, Spitzer asked Rich Baum: 'So how do u think confessore came out?'" More »
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Comment by MoeGolden: this has led me to a confessore kick, in which I found myself looking at pictures of him wearing sneakers... more » | Other threads
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issues
Our Nation Is Gripped By A Turkey Carving Crisis!
The hard part about writing News You Can Use isn't finding the solution; it's proving there's a problem to be solved. Consider today's Times, wherein dining reporter Julia Moskin has a nice Thanksgiving Eve article (accompanied online by a thrilling instructional video) about a new low-stress, expert-approved way to carve up your turkey. But is the old hack-and-slice regime really so problematic? Yes. "Before breakfast on Thanksgiving," begins Moskin's tale, "as the first Americans rise to preheat the oven, the question of who is going to carve the bird starts to ripple anxiously across the land." This being journalism (of sorts), the burden of proof requires at least some civilian testimony, which is where things take a decided turn toward the gothic. More »
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By JonLiuComment by DorothyMantooth: @concerned citizen: Powder Fresh! more » | Other threads
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bozos in paradise
David Brooks Discovers "Dozens Of Niche Musical Genres Where There Used To Be This Thing Called Rock"
Friedman's oblivious egomania, Dowd's insouciance to basic norms of logical argument, Kristof's admirable ambulance chasing: all such other Times op-ed superpowers pale in comparison to David Brooks's truly awe-inspiring, magisterial laziness. Like a frat boy funneling a brew, he sits waiting for ideas to trickle down and, when he's had his fill, spits out a rank, frothy mess whose resemblance to last week's rank, frothy mess he takes as affirmative proof of his unfalsifiable claims about life and stuff. Today, he pretends to write about music. Why? More »
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By JonLiuComment by CleophusWayne: Brooks has a real handle on Joy Division. You can tell by the way he mentions Ed Sullivan in the... more » | Other threads
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yesterday's news
Yesterday Radar seized on a memo circulating at the Times which would abolish the use of story datelines indicating when a reporter actually wrote a story, as opposed to when the story was printed. "The "significant advantages" include doing "away with datelines that are several days old, which can make a story seem stale rather than immediate," Radar reports. Ah yes, much better to seem immediate than to actually be immediate.[Radar]
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By MaggieComment by MisterHippity: @atipofthehat: Fie! I bite my tongue at thee. more » | Other threads
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structures
'Times' Review Deems New Times Building 'Kind of Okay!'
Step aside, public editor Clark Hoyt! The Times's impulse for self-assessment takes a more material(ist) turn today with architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff's review of the new Renzo Piano-designed Times HQ on Eighth Ave. and 41st Street. Ouroussoff—as far as architecture critics go, really an unimpeachable guy who continues to fight the good fight against the Cialis-crude phallus going up as the so-called Freedom Tower—doesn't dodge the conflict of interest issues. Much. More » -
books
Good news for books! John Grisham's "Playing For Pizza"—the story of a washed-up American quarterback whose trip to Italy to play for the Parma Panthers leads to hijinx—is no longer #1 on the Times hardcover bestseller list. Bad news for books: "Playing for Pizza" is now at #3, bumped by a new Patricia Cornwell novel with "dead" in the title and a "paranormal romance" called "A Lick [hmm!] Of Frost." More distressingly, "The Orc King"—the story of a dark elf named Drizzt Do'Urden—is all the way down to #17. Of course, the list "is not a completely accurate barometer of what the reading public is buying," so phew.
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By Emily GouldComment by Wrath of Farrakhan: I can't wait until I run into my very first Drizzt Do'Urden Lebovitz-Golden in Park Slope. more » | Other threads
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books
Inside The 'Times' Hardcover Bestseller List
What's this? The New York Times bestseller list "is not a completely accurate barometer of what the reading public is buying," public editor Clark Hoyt informed us last week. This, even in spite of recent adjustments to the top-secret formula, devised in order to prevent publishers from "gaming the system" that determines the list's rankings: Appalling! Well, not really. As people who work in publishing like to tell their disappointed authors, the mysteriously-weighted list has always been essentially meaningless. Unless those authors have bestseller bonuses in their contracts, in which case: The list is extremely meaningful! And so while the list does not mean everything, it must mean something. For example, the #1 spot on this week's Hardcover Fiction list is occupied by a John Grisham book called "Playing For Pizza." What's that about?
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By Emily GouldComment by MistyVixx: Are there any thrillers that aren't semi-shlocky? I want to know because that's my genre ( I wrote TSAR) and... more » | Other threads
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texts
Found Poetry In The 'Times' Readers' Comments
"Where Are You Right Now?" is the oblique, multivalent title of a new chapbook from Semiotext(e). Psych, it is the name of today's Times Readers' Comments forum, which is about whether GPS technology in cellphones is a good idea. But really, how are you supposed to be able to tell the difference based on comments like this one, from Carlos Andrade: More »
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By Emily GouldComment by TheHonJudgeSmails: @fakefakejazz: Like a postmodern Tennyson. more » | Other threads
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towering infernos
The 'Times' In Flames!
How smart are reporters at the New York Times? Well, at least some of them don't know you can't put metal in the microwaves. Seriously. What follows is a memo of shame that went around the office this morning, after a little fire on the second floor of their nice new building. More »
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By abalkComment by PhillyLass: Shouldn't memos out of the offices of the NYT be better written than this? more » | Other threads
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bad moms
Michelle Slatalla's Daughter Hates Her So Much Right Now
The Times' "families use computers now" beat reporter, Facebook-loving helicopter mom Michelle Slatalla, is having another rough week. One of her little ones is leaving the nest! More »
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By Emily GouldComment by waterfall: My father found a giant beer can wrapped inside a "friends don't let friends drive drunk" bumper sticker in the... more » | Other threads
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By Emily GouldComment by Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate: Manweek- clipping hair and more Kimmel takes a hit more » | Other threads
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the new york times is just a fancy blog
'Times' Columnists Cry On Each Others' Shoulders
Judith Warner's 'Domestic Disturbances' TimesSelect blog-column grows increasingly, well, disturbing. Buckling under the stress of "two grade-parent cocktail parties, one all-school gala, a Spring Fling, three music recitals" and other trials, she offers this confession: "I have, there's no question, gone off my gourd." Luckily for her, colleague David Brooks is perfectly willing to be her ad-hoc therapist. More »
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By Emily GouldComment by lawyergay: The die is cast. All the neuroses of Judith Warner cannot stave off the inevitable: Her children, assembled like a... more » | Other threads
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faced on facebook!
Michelle Slatalla Is A Super Creepy Adult
It's only the second installment of Michelle Slatalla's "Cyberfamilias" Times column, which is about how she tortures her family via the Internet, and already she has discovered social networking. No one is happy about this, least of all her teenage daughter: "'You won't get away with this,' she typed. 'everyone in the whole world thinks its super creepy when adults have facebooks.'" In search of refutation, Michelle consulted some of her experts: "Although he didn't go so far as to say he disapproved of my parenting skills, Professor Wesch reminded me that what Facebook's younger users really are doing is exploring their identities, which they may not want to parade in front of their parents. 'Can't I explore my identity, too?' I asked. 'Why does everything fun have to be for them?'" Um. Also: "'I can't really comment on your family dynamics,' said Brandee Barker, a Facebook spokeswoman." Michelle, you creep, get off the Internet before it tears your family apart! More »
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By Emily GouldComment by Trackback: In yesterday's "cyberfamilas" column in the Times, cybermom Michelle Stlatalla addressed something I'm sure she's not the only one asking... more » | Other threads
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all the 'toos that's fit to print
'Times' Still Too Wordy For Young Atoosa
Atoosa Rubenstein still has a bone to pick with the Grey Lady, and it wasn't good enough just to complain to Forbes readers. She also needed to tell her MySpace pals!I probably should be embarrassed to say this, but most news is delivered in the most boring way possible!! I look at the New York Times and as smart as their reporting is, it's just so wordy. I zone out before I can dig in. I know it's not because I'm not stupid - I just think this generation (from my age and younger) just consumes information DIFFERENTLY and the newspapers and news programs are still being made for my parent's generation.
Right, no news is targeted at people in their late 30s. None at all. More »
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By Emily GouldComment by karinmichele: Atoosa is an amazing woman! She is going to be honored at the Step Up Women's Network Third Annual Inspiration... more » | Other threads
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creams and oils
'Times' Loves Dustin Hoffman's Wife
It was less than two weeks ago when Ellen Tien told us What Lisa Hoffman is Wearing, and more importantly, what she's Selling. "She's become such a proficient globe-trotter that this year she created a travel-friendly line of skin care products, Lisa Hoffman Night & Day 24 Hour Skincare. 'Most people shop for upcoming seasons,'' Ms. Hoffman said. 'I shop for upcoming locations.'" Today, we find another glowing mention of Lisa in a roundup of celebrity wives who have beauty businesses as hobbies, full of sentences that read like ad copy, eg, "Lisa Hoffman's line, Night & Day 24 Hour Skincare, packages products in sizes that can probably pass muster with even the most ornery airport security agents." But it's not all fluff! Eventually the reporter gets around to asking Lisa whether her husband's fame has helped her business. "Sure it opens doors for me, but if the product wasn't good, nobody would buy it," she replied. Uh huh. And no one would write about it either. More »
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By Emily GouldComment by MsMuffinMcGuffin: That's her big claim to fame? Her skincare keeps the TSA happy? Glad to know something does. more » | Other threads
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media bubble
Media Bubble: 'New York' to Pick Hot Young Editors, Who May or May Not Be Hot and Young
• New York to anoint hot young editors; those photographed rumored to include TNR's Franklin Foer, The Atlantic's James Bennet, Roger Hodge of Harper's, and the Paris Review's Philip Gourevitch, who, at 44, calls the whole conceit into question. [Media Mob/NYO] More »
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By JesseComment by dotorg greg: maybe Gourevitch is one'a them there "grups." more » | Other threads
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the nation
Navasky Emigrates from 'Nation'
There are several notable facts in a "Media Talk" blurb on The Nation in today's Times. First is the peg, that liberal lion Victor Navasky, who has been the magazine's publisher since he led the group of investors who bought it from Observer moneybags Arthur Carter in 1995, is stepping aside in favor of its editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel. Next is what Navasky will be focusing on instead: "his other job, as chairman of The Columbia Journalism Review," a fact that will make rightie press-crit sorts even more dyspeptic than usual. Then there's a notable financial reality, the magazine's current and unprecedented status as profitable, which, boosted by its oppositional prominence in the Bush years, it has been since 2003. Finally, and perhaps most interesting, is this: Even in light of that last fact, Navasky's beloved chestnut — "What's bad for the country is good for The Nation," quoted repeatedly as though it's new and fresh — makes no appearance at all. More » -
journalism
Breakfast at Michael's, Abridged
We don't much like panel discussions. No one says anything new, no one changes anyone's mind, and the food is rarely any good. But Court TV promised breakfast at Michael's and a crew of media bigshots who don't much like each other, and so it seemed worth showering earlier than we have in months and getting on the E train to midtown. More »
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1-32 of 32 for "The New York Times"
