Jim Romenesko provides a nice roundup today of how most of the nation's newspaper ombudsmen weighed in on the major media-ethics question of whether papers should stand up for free-speech rights and publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons that have sparked worldwide protests or respect religious sensitivities and refrain from publishing them. Some of the dozen columns highlighted included:
We always love our slutty sister Wonkette, but we particularly love her at times like this, when she's busy digging up — by which we mean idly sitting back and waiting for others to tell her about — a potential journalism scandal involving none other than The New York Times. Wonkie tried to tip us to this last week, but there were no explicit mentions of Nicole Richie or gay sex or Alessandra Stanley, and so our eyes just glazed right over. Today, however, sis drops in phrases like "Jill Abramson" and "Sharon Waxman" and "Big Ol' Journalism Scandal," and now she's got our attention. Here's the charge:
Of course you love New York. But, as Milton Glaser reminds us, everyone loves New York, and everyone doesn't feel the need to actually live here. And sometimes you start to wonder whether you really need to live here, too. When the subways aren't running right, and when it's freezing cold, and when you spend all weekend stuck in your apartment, which is a third the size of the place your friends have in L.A., or in D.C., or in the sixth borough, and which you share with two roommates, and which costs a fucking fortune, and where there's always way too much heat, or way too little, and when it's all just such a fucking pain in the ass, that's when you wonder if maybe you should move to some normal place, too.
Now that we all watched the marathon Arrested Development finale Friday night — or, far more likely, now that we all DVRed the Arrested Development finale Friday night and watched it, hungover, Saturday afternoon — we know that the two hours of Bluthiness contained, like all episodes of the show, lots of densely layered facts and details. It's the perfect opportunity, then, for the Times's talented Ms. Stanley to show off her special skill — the utter inability to get facts and details right — and, to fully appreciate that skill, we really must flash back to her Friday review of the shows and see what she got wrong.
CNN headline, right now:
Know someone who works for The New York York Times Company who's done a particularly stellar job this year? Has this employee has exemplified "a commitment to [the] Company's Core Purpose, Core Values and Rules of the Road"? Did he or she did so while "contend[ing] with numerous journalistic challenges — such as, [sic] the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the devastation as a result of Hurricane Katrina, Lance Armstrong's seventh Tour de France victory and the controversial claims of a South Korean cloning scientist"? And, most important, was all that accomplished while "adapt[ing] to a changing media landscape with speed while maintaining a disciplined approach to costs"?
So you know how there's a perpetual circulation battle going on between the Daily News and the Post? And you know how there's all sorts of circ scandals going on at papers across the country, the most notably local example being at Newsday? And you know how the Post keeps gaining on the News's circ margin, but we're supposed to think that because the Posties are incendiary and irresponsible and the Newsies are the good guys, if somewhat plodding?
If you're like us, you every now and then wonder what your favorite Times critics do when they're not busy criticizing for the Times. A.O. Scott, we imagine, stays up late critiquing the cinematography of Time-Life book-series informercials; Frank Bruni, we suspect, indulges a secret fondess for bologna and Velveeta on white; and Michiko Kakutani must sit around limning everything in sight while Alessandra Stanley, over at her own place, consistently dials wrong numbers. And what about second-string theater critic Charles Isherwood? What does he do in his spare time? An intrepid reader recently discovered:
We're quite fond of our broker at Stribling. We really are. But after flipping past page A15 of today's Times, we can't help thinking that we would have quite enjoyed looking at the things Corcoran had to show us.
"Not being able to walk is just fine. As long as I can still go to the... what? no? really? Shit."
A correction from today's Dining Out/Dining In section:
A vigilant reader forwarded us an inquiry spotted today on ProfNet, the blast-email service that helps reporters find overeager sources:
Americans — even New Yorkers — are nothing if not gluttonous sorts. And so it's not surprising that articles telling us maybe it's OK to do things — drink red wine during pregnancy, smoke cigarettes — that we've long been told we're not supposed to do. So it's entirely unsurprising that today's "Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds" would shoot to the top of the list.
We like it when our op-edsters climb down from their inky pedestals and mix things up a bit. Which is why it's always a happy day at Gawker HQ when Nick Kristof decides to spend his 750 words taunting Bill O'Reilly about the Fox News blowhard's unwilling to bloviate about real problems instead of imagined ones. Kristof wants O'Reilly to travel to Darfur with him, and today's trash-talking is even more fun that the usual:
An odd synchronicity showed up in our inbox.
And finally, on the front page of today's Arts section, Warren St. John finally brings us the JT Leroy denouement:
Yeah, that's right: we totes saw our favorite anal-sex-memoirist Toni Bentley's review of Gail Sheehy's sexy old lady book, but we're not going there. The assfucking grandma jokes are just too easy, you know? Instead, Intern Alexis laughs at things that moan for dick. Six of one half, two dozen of the other. After the jump, her weekly rundown of what the literate people are reading.
