Have you been keeping track of how much you really like Maureen Dowd? Turned to Paul Krugman for an economic analysis of the utility of his columns? They warned us about this months ago, and now the day is nearly here: NYTimes.com editor-in-chief Len Apcar shows up with a note on the site's homepage today reminding us that TimesSelect kicks in on Monday, and you'll no longer be able to read the op-ed columnists for free online.

Among the many charms of Reference Tone proprietor John Cook — and they are legion — are his smug certitude and his obsessive devotion to a good bit. This, together with his previous job as a Chicago Tribune TV reporter, makes him the perfect investigator to examine, as he did today, just how wrong Times television critic Alessandra Stanley can be. While we prefer to ridicule Stanley's critical colleague Virginia Heffernan, we must give due credit to Reference Tone's exhaustive study, which unearths more than one correction a month since 2001 - and 11 percent inaccuracy rate in that period, Cook says, and a 14 percent inaccuracy rate this year — and lists them all.

Six or seven years ago, a bunch of friends got together to buy half of us a karaoke machine for our birthday. One person collected the money and was in charge of buying it, but a few deals fell through and then she left New York for law school, and so she gave us a check for the money they'd collected and told us to buy the machine ourselves. We never did, and we still feel a touch of guilt about the cash, which we never returned.

What's that above-the-fold, A1 byline — appearing, we must point out, in, er, boldface? Congratulations, Boldface gossiper Campbell for miraculously turning into a real journalist. (God knows we never could.)

Because they simply can't beat Google on the search engine field, online portal Yahoo.com has hired veteran television journalist Kevin Sites and his biceps to create original content for the website. Appropriately entitled Kevin Sites in the Hotzone, the website launches September 26 and will cover international conflicts at their source, from approximately 36 different countries.

Haven't yet caught Timesman Charlie LeDuff's new Discovery Times Channel documentary series, Only in America? (Can't imagine why, when it premiered at 10 p.m. on the Friday night leading into Labor Day weekend.) Each week he delves into a certain only-in-America subculture, taking part in its rituals while reporting on it. And this week, when LeDuff participates in the gay rodeo circuit, is perhaps the perfect time to be introduced to the series.

What we have here is what they call a teachable moment.

Well, yes. 'Remarkable' is one world for it. We could think of others.

Although he is, apparently, a rock star. That one we didn't know.

The intriguing and amusing newspaper-corrections blog Regret The Error today kicks off its new interview series by talking with Seth "Mr. Accuracy" Mnookin and his shirt.

You've got to admire a graceful acknowledgement that one's 15 minutes are up. From the internal Times blog:

We're always here for our readers, even when they're asking really, really strange questions. Like this one, received in the wee hours of this morning:

We never thought we'd see the day: Effective September 18, a weekly comic strip will appear in The New York Times.

• Are things as bad, business-wise, at Dow Jones and the Journal as you've heard they are? Yes. Yes they are. [NY Mag]
• Inc. mag looks at how it got sold. [Inc.]
• What will the Times of the future look like? Tabloidical, quite likely. [Ad Age]
• Once again, soft news beats hard news: Celeb mags see good newsstand numbers, and the newsweeklies don't. [Mediaweek]
• Jack Shafer hates TV news. [Slate]
• Simon Dumenco calls AMI chief David Pecker stupid. [Ad Age]
• Poppy Bush criticizes the media for picking on his son. [E&P]
• Coming to a Sirius receiver near you: Cosmo on the radio. [WWD]

• Metro section, Sunday: "The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make — $365,826 compared with $7,047 — which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia, according to the Times analysis of 2000 census data."

People say there's never any shared sacrifice in Bush's America. That's not true. Consider the sad plight of Martha Jane Tassin, a Baton Rouge city council member, who now has relatives from New Orleans staying with her:

Of course we adore the Times — we tease because we love — but we usually skip right past the editorials, because they're boring. (We're bloggers; we like our opinions face-paced, sarcastic, and ideally obscenity-laced.) Which is why it was fun this morning to notice that the editorialists now hate Bush so much they can't even be stentorian any more.

An automatically served (we presume) ad alongside "Superdome: Haven Quickly Becomes an Ordeal":

The Cambodian Baby Hawkapoo: Brought to you, of course, by Thursgay Styles.

You know you're really behind in your reading when even a few months in prison won't leave you enough time to catch up. We learn of this bibliocrisis from a memo sent yesterday to the Times staff.