Meet the new NYT homepage editor. Hide your children.

The New York Times finally resolves its 'Pussy' issues, a Gawker writer gets a book deal inked, a media outlet's social media presence gets feisty, and more. Here are your Friday Power Lunch Media Briefs:

The Times Gets 'Pussy' In: There's been much discussion over a highly semantic and silly issue: Which newspapers are too prudish to use the name of embattled Russian band Pussy Riot? This Guardian story notes the fact that The New York Times wouldn't use the word in its copy; the Guardian story, filed at 12:21 EDT, is wrong.

It looks like the Times has finally given in after previously taking the conservative route in writing about the band, as the words "Pussy Riot" are on the front page of the Times’swebsite right now. See for yourself:

In the actual filing, the band's name makes the second paragraph. [NYT]

Tiananmen-Warner Center Coming Soon: The big New York Times Magazine story this week is about the Chinese state news agency spreading its influence. Not good. (The influence of state-run media, not the story.) [NYT]

Big Daddy Drew: Deadspin's poet laureate ("LeBron James is a Cocksucker") and Gawker's resident intellectual ("Is It Possible to Make a Successful Black Joke About Obama?"), Drew Magary, The Most 'Read Later' Man Alive, is getting another book deal, this one about parenting. From the Publisher's Lunch email list of new deals: "Deadspin and Gawker columnist Drew Magary's PUDDING SHORTS, a heartfelt and humorous memoir of the reality check that is American parenting." Yes, Drew Magary just made the most bold entry in "Scatological Book Title Jokes in the Parenting Section" since Everybody Poops.

Newsweek Clocks Time: One of the crafty scoundrels over at Newsweek’s Tumblr notes the one-month lag time between its own story about being far too interconnected via electronic communication (published in July) and a nearly identical premise for a Time cover story (published in August). BURN, Newsweek. BURN. You are the danger. Except for one thing: These are both massively outdated dead-horse premises that have been kicked beyond recognition and wrung dry by everyone but America's two major newsweeklies. Then again, its Tumblr will turn your pointer into a mustache, which is neat, because you can go around giving everything on its Tumblr a mustache. Try it, it's neat. [Newsweek Tumblr]

No Guff for Griffin! MSNBC president Phil Griffin called CNN "desperate." Because cable news networks are almost unilaterally despicable and useless to begin with, we should note here a particular lack of a dog in this fight—suffice to say that "desperate" is a very subjective term when we're discussing the depths cable news networks will descend to, and that the only decent measuring stick here is, quite frankly, who has less money. Also, if CNN is "desperate," at least it's making inspired moves (i.e. hiring Anthony Bourdain). [HuffPo]

Money Mark: If you were concerned The New York Times Co. would hire its CEO and not pay him enough, well, worry no more (also: Who are you and what are you on?). New Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson is going to make $1M a year, and $3M in performance-based stock and stock options.  Also, please note the Huffington Post's slideshow of the Times bureaucrats. [Reuters via Huffington Post]

HuffPo Gives Heave-Ho to New Ad-Sales Guy: Speaking of the Huffington Post, it kept its new sales chief on for only three months before canning him; he was one of three big new hires made for the restructuring that also included Lauren Kapp (a former NBC flack-turned-HuffPo flack who already bailed) and Janet Balis (the new HuffPo publisher). It was supposedly because of an old DWI that turned up on a background check, but something about this smells off, like everything else about "Arianna's" restructuring. [AdAge]

Geraldo, as Ever: If you're curious as to what class of clowning Geraldo Rivera has ascended to in his old age, there's this.

That's it for lunch. Not much shaking today, unless you've heard of something. Anything? Please send your Tips, Drudge Bait and "Too Soon" Yakov Smirnoff jokes regarding the delicate matter of Pussy Riot right this way.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Fear not, though. The modest opening of the Barclays Center (the new home of the NBA's Nets, of which, Jay-Z is an investor) will now shove this seemingly arbitrary but actually earth-shatteringly important query into irrelevance, as Jay-Z will not be playing one, or two, but three shows to open the new stadium, this September.

Ticket prices aren't out yet, but DNAinfo notes that over 7,000 tickets for the shows—September 28th, 29th, and 30th—will go for under $30 (the other prices have not been announced). What they didn't say is how much those $30 tickets will go for after a bunch of awful scalping robots vacuum them up and resell them on StubHub or Craigslist for over 7,000 times their original face value.

If anything, however, this presents a wonderful out, so you don't have to choose between wearing your Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn shirt, your Occupy All Streets shirt, and your I'm Still Calling It Pacific-Atlantic shirt to Jay-Z's Barclays Center opening.

Now, you can wear all three.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

What is that like?

The New York Times profiled Rivers in this capacity, so we now know:

Not very funny ("There's no humor when I'm there").

And not likely to change, as she's been the mostly uncontested president of the building's board for nine years (unless she sells her apartment, which has been on the market for three years, at $29.5M).

But she does apparently get that which needs to be done, done. Even if it means bringing in a Jewish voodoo priestess:

Ms. Rivers counts among her proudest board achievements sprucing up the lobby. When she moved in, she explained, its furniture consisted of a card table and an old desk chair. As a neighbor, she said, her most substantial contribution to the building came about 20 years ago, when she brought in a voodoo priestess named Sallie Ann Glassman to clear out a ghost. "God bless her," Ms. Rivers said. "A Jewish voodoo priestess."

Also, the Times had to issue one of the better corrections of late in this piece:

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a voodoo priestess. She is Sallie Ann Glassman, not Sally Ann.

And now you know: Addressing building problems with Joan Rivers isn't quite the blast that Fashion Police is. But at least they get addressed.

For Comedian, Role on Condo Board Is a Serious Matter [NYT]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

In other words, gird your locales.

WNYC and The Guardian partnered up and took it upon themselves to compile a list of all of the locations that 'Girls' has filmed at, and then throw them into the despicably handy form of a Google Map.

Among the locations are:

• Weather Up
• Washington Commons
• Cafe Grumpy
• Tom & Jerry's

And so on. The result of this has the potential to be wildly amusing. There are the resentful locals who despise 'Girls' for its facile-yet-generally-accurate portrayal of their lives, and the tourists who are inspired to follow in Hannah & Co.'s footsteps, mixed together.

If you live near or frequent these locations, and the threat doesn't seem considerable, then consider this: Instead of out-borough tourists just going to "Williamsburg" or "Brooklyn"—simply because of their reputations as destinations for "alternate" cool—all of those people now have a television show explaining where they should go, specifically.

Another way to put it: Do you know remember what Pastis was like before 'Sex and The City'?

Neither does anybody else. And the most embittering part of all?

The creators and cast members now make enough money to emigrate from the Brooklyn that inspired their masterwork. To Manhattan. And to parts of Manhattan where they will, in all likelihood, rarely encounter the tourists who come in search and/or tribute of them.

Here's the map. Batten down those hatches:

http://project.wnyc.org/girls-map

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

ZOMG SEX.

Now, in keeping with the times, they are apparently adding one more item to the cornucopia of sexually-enabling wares they already offer:

Fifty Shades of Grey.

Yes, the bestselling novel ostensibly with some kind of plot but most significantly with characters engaging in bestselling BDSM sex within its pages that have enraptured and titillated so many Americans horny suburbanites and overwrought newspaper columnists already is, at least in one bodega, as crucial to their supply as a box of Mallowmars in December.

Writer and founding editor of Jezebel.com Anna Holmes Tweeted out "There are now bodegas in NYC selling 'Fifty Shades of Grey'" with the following photographic evidence:

To be fair, the top books are Fifty Shades Freed, one of the titles in the Fifty Shades series. And it's only one bodega! That said, the bodega industry operates much like the collective consciousness, which is to say: Once an idea's out there, they're all on it. Like selling K-2, or whatever the latest fake synthetic drug is. Which also goes without mentioning they all use a bunch of the same suppliers.

Seeing a bodega stock a popular book isn't uncommon: When the last few Harry Potter books came out, not a few bodegas snatched some copies and marked them up in exchange for the convenience of having them around for their neighborhood regulars. But copies of Fifty Shades, while selling well, aren't inducing bookstore-raiding pandemonium. But it apparently has enough of a draw to appear on a bodega register. And if there's one constant among all of New York City's bodegas and the unique, unlikely items they sometimes sell, it's that someone will always buy it.*

Regardless, for whatever the milestone "A Book Carried by New York City Bodegas" is worth, Fifty Shades of Grey has finally reached it. Duly noted.

[*Exception: The cat. Nobody ever pays for boedga cats. If you've ever paid for a bodega cat, you have been despicably hosed.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek/