Mere months after Sam Dolnick bought a $1.8 townhouse in Carroll Gardens, Arthur G. Sulzberger, metro reporter and the son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., has also embedded himself in Brooklyn, leaving his Upper West Side digs at 1 West 64th Street for a $610,000 one-bedroom in Cobble Hill.

Mr. Sulzberger scrawled his name on the deed of the co-op at 4 Tompkins Place, paying a little bit below the $625,000 ask—a valuable economy given that reporters at the Gray Lady have have been feeling the pinch during a protracted labor battle—although we'd assume that Mr. Sulzberger probably has more cash in the bank than most reporters.

Nonetheless, a well-lit townhouse co-op apartment is a nice way for Mr. Sulzberger to celebrate his return from exile in Kansas City. And we're almost certain that he'll be able to find some nice vegetarian options in Brooklyn, even if everyone who lives there seems to be into farm-fresh meat and foods cooked in duck fat these days.

And the apartment comes with a renovated chef's kitchen with "an abundance of cabinets" which would be great for for cooking at home, or "just relaxing while overlooking the serene brownstone gardens listing," as the listing, held by Corcoran broker Steven Gerber, helpfully suggests.

The seller, Dana Fiddler, bought it for $596,000 in 2007.

The apartment is not as lavish as Mr. Dolnick's place, which has restored Carrara marble wood-burning fireplaces and "pumpkin pine wide plank floors,” but it does have some nice touches, like oak sound-dampening floors, a skylight in the bathroom and "a large wardrobe from Boconcepts, which has lots of storage including drawers and cubbies." (That probably means no closet, right?).

After taking the leap of home ownership, perhaps Young Sulzberger is finally ready for his own Ochs family nickname?

kvelsey@observer.com

An embedded reporter? Dolnick's Brookklyn townhouse.

It's no wonder that Sam Dolnick, metro reporter for The New York Times and grandnephew to former Times publisher Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, has purchased a townhouse in Carroll Gardens. After all, The Times is obsessed with the borough and all of its charming, artisanal ways.

Mr. Dolnick and his wife Heidi are leaving their townhouse in the still-up-and-coming Prospect Lefferts Gardens for a strikingly-similar one in the well-established, Barneys-bearing neighborhood of Carroll Gardens.

The Dolnicks purchased 473 Sackett Street from Karnig Kaprelian and Miriam Trautman for $1.8 million, a good bit more than the $1.69 million ask, according to city records. It was on the market for a mere 22 days. But the couple has a lot of cash coming in from the sale of their old home, whose $1.15 million sale was first reported by Curbed. That house is currently in contract.

The Carroll Gardens townhouse, listed with Corcoran broker Deborah Rieders, looks like a comfortable spot to file a news story from. The place has skylights, two  restored Carrara marble wood-burning fireplaces, "pumpkin pine wide plank floors," and "mullioned French doors opening to a sleek steel terrace and landscaped garden."

"This is the exact home that you would create if you could renovate your own home from scratch, but without the hassle of doing the work yourself!" the listing exclaims. Much like the Dolnicks' previous house.

Mr. Dolnick is the son of Lynn Dolnick, a former director of the Smithsonian Zoo. Mr. Dolnick and A.G. Sulzberger are the only Sulzberger-Ochs family members who work in the newsroom.

kvelsey@observer.com

First, a little background: There was a shooting in Cooperstown last Friday. It involved two teenagers. No one died. One was black, one was white, but it isn't clear if it the shooting was motivated by race. The Times sent Mr. Sulzberger to do a small-town-shocked-by-violence piece, which he filed for  Tuesday's paper.

Yesterday, the Cooperstown Daily Star published a piece about Mr. Sulzberger's trip to town and what a good egg he was!

For starters, he took a few of the local leaders to a restaurant to ask them questions. They had drinks. He ordered a Diet Coke.

Times editors—and especially his dad!—should be thrilled that he's a thrifty one, too:

Waller said Sulzberger had commented that he was on an expense account and asked about less-costly lodging than the Holiday Inn, and she referred him to a bed and breakfast operated by friends.

Whatta guy! Well, it turns out he didn't stay overnight. The local officials asked him to stay for dinner. He declined and explained he had to skip town to make up a canceled date with—wait for it—his new girlfriend!

But Sulzberger said he had broken a date with a new girlfriend for the Cooperstown assignment, and he wanted to make amends, Waller said, and the reporter left Monday night.

What a charmer! And just to take it one step further, the Cooperstown officials loved Mr. Sulzberger's story:

Waller said she e-mailed A.G. Sulzberger compliments on his story.

''He wrote an accurate, true article based on the facts he was given,'' she said.

The man can do no wrong.

The Observer has learned that Sam Dolnick, a reporter for the Associated Press and grandnephew to former Times publisher Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, is joining the metro desk at The Times. His first day is September 14, a Times spokeswoman said.

Mr. Dolnick most recently had been working in New Delhi for the Associated Press. His stories with New Delhi datelines stretch back to 2007.

Back in 2001, when he was cutting his teeth as a reporter, he was an intern for The Village Voice's investigative writer Wayne Barrett.

"He’s really a sweet guy," said Mr. Barrett. "He came to me as a raw reporter. It was at the very start of his reporting career, but he really had the right instincts."

Mr. Barrett said he wasn't aware of his relation to the Sulzberger-Ochs family until Mr. Dolnick's internship was winding down. He never wanted to be judged by his bloodline, Mr. Barrett said.

"He had an engaging interview style as a young guy—he could get people to talk to him," said Mr. Barrett. "Some young people can’t get on the phone because they feel like they have to be an expert before they talk to someone. He understood instinctively you go with what you know and the person on the other end doesn’t expect you to be an expert."

Mr. Barrett said he remembered Mr. Dolnick left the internship and worked for The Staten Island Advance, where he had bylines.

We've taken a small look at his writing, and he's got a flair for style! Especially for the AP:

NEW DELHI — While the grill man stirred the glowing coals and the bread man rolled balls of dough, Akram Khan, the waiter, watched the traffic rumble down the pocked road.

Soon, crowds would start arriving at this sidewalk kebab stand, families in expensive cars and partygoers fizzy with drink.

Fizzy with drink! Alan Feuer, watch your wallet!

Mr. Dolnick will be joining his cousin, A.G. Sulzberger, son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, on the metro desk. A.G. Sulzberger started at the paper in February, and has been reporting and writing under the glare of an awfully bright spotlight ever since.

Mr. Dolnick is the son of Lynn Dolnick, a former director of the Smithsonian Zoo; his younger brother, Ben, is a fiction writer, according to a New York magazine piece about the Sulzberger-Ochs family.

Mr. Dolnick's stint at the AP reflects the early career of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Mr. Sulzberger worked in the London bureau of the AP from 1976 to 1978 before he joined The Times' Washington bureau.

Come the middle of September, two family members will be trawling the hallways of The Times' third floor, maybe even competing on stories! Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said that there are no other family members who work in The Times' newsroom.

Anyway! The Rocketman story concerns an RAF pilot escaping from a crashing plane using his jetpack; the RAF confirms that the near-fatal crash resulted from engine failure and not enemy fire. In print, the inside pictures are pretty spectacular. As is often the case with the tabloids, when the photography on a story is rough, the top position is given to a beautiful photo treatment, while the bottom of the page is taken up with the less photogenic news story. Important to make sure the text on the bottom story, if it's leading the paper, is very, very big, and very, very black.

This is accomplished with the headine "SWINE DEATH." Subheading: "1st city casualty; 5 schools shuttered." A postage-stamp-sized picture of Mitchell Wiener, the assistant principal who died last night of complications from swine flu, accompanies the story. This is big news: the first death in New York City from America's favorite new pandemic, and, just possibly, a fracas over the city's handling of school closings amid the panic? Not really. Most of the story, rather uncharacteristically respectfully, is given over to news of the five new school closings announced yesterday afternoon and remembrances of a math teacher and school official who was by all accounts popular and dedicated.

Daily News: Another way to deal with a story that doesn't have much strong photography is to fill the whole page with headline. This is a great tactic when the story deserves to really scream. But it looks really screamy when you do that. Which is one of the reasons the front of today's News feels a little odd. It's really long: "SWINE FLU CLAIMS 1st NYC VICTIM" reads the main head, after a superhed lead-in of "11 SCHOOLS SHUTTERED AS ..." The first thought we had when we read that was, "the Post is saying five schools were shuttered; did the News scoop the Post on six schools? They didn't: five schools were closed yesterday afternoon, which added to the six closed late last week brings us to a total of 11. Of course, that means that as Mitchell Wiener was dying of complications from the virus, five schools were shuttered; six were shuttered before Wiener's condition was clearly life-threatening. So this is a little misleading. We also wonder—this isn't a rhetorical question, we really are unsure—whether the News headline would actually mean anything to anyone who hadn't already heard of Wiener's death either by logging on or switching the television on pretty much any time since 7 p.m. last night. Couldn't "SWINE FLU CLAIMS 1st NYC VICTIM" refer equally to a first case of swine flu as a first death from swine flu? Perhaps this seems nitpicky. But it at least serves to demonstrate that the News did not hit the nail on the head.

General observations: A thing we rarely do is attempt to break a tie by expanding our scope beyond the two New York City tabloids. But reading this morning's version of the story in The New York Times was instructive about how the tabloids' own reporting ethos is sometimes self-vitiating. From this morning's story by Anemona Hartocollis (with additional reporting by A.G. Sulzberger, among others!):

Health officials said Sunday that the death was not surprising, since even in a normal flu season, thousands of victims die of complications from the disease.

Mr. Wiener had a history of medical problems that may have put him at greater risk, the officials said. His family said that he had suffered from gout but that it was under control with medication. [snip]

His wife, Bonnie, a reading teacher, blamed the city for failing to act sooner to close the school where she and her husband both worked. “I know we have a duty to educate the children of New York,” Ms. Wiener, who is not sick, said on Friday. But, she added, “something just doesn’t fit right.” [snip]

In one shift in the way the city was responding to the disease, hours before Mr. Wiener’s death, the health department issued a statement urging New Yorkers who suffered from underlying health issues like emphysema, diabetes or asthma and who were exposed to the flu to see their doctors to determine whether they should take antiviral drugs as a precaution.

Dr. Frieden said Sunday that city officials did not expect to stop the flu from spreading at this point. But he said that the school closings and the warnings to people with underlying health conditions were an attempt to keep people from getting seriously ill, as Mr. Wiener had.

Why does this dispute matter?

On Friday, Dr. Frieden was named by President Obama to head the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he will have to make critical decisions about how to deal with the spread of the disease. He starts in June. He has urged the federal government to mount a Manhattan Project-type effort to develop a vaccine.

Over the weekend, the tabloids presented the dispute between Ms. Wiener, arguing that her husband had become sick because of the school's failure to close quickly enough after the swine flu hit, and the city; there isn't much to add to that story since the event of Wiener's death, except that the city's efforts to characterize Mitchell Wiener's death as exceptional due to unspecified underlying medical conditions or unexceptional in that a thousand people die of more typical flu strains each year probably deserves some further investigation. What's more, the city both explicitly linked Wiener's death to underlying conditions and did a bit of quick policy work, issuing a warning to anyone exposed to the virus who has an underlying condition to be tested even if they have no symptoms. Is this a public-relations problem that is translating immediately into policy?

If the situation had been slightly different—let's say, a police officer is involved in the shooting death of a civilian, and the mayor acts prematurely to excuse his administration or city agencies from culpability—the tabloids would typically leave no stone unturned until they could break the tie between the victim's family and the city. Here, the tabloids seem satisfied with a "he-said, she said." They may not have the information they need to dig deeper, but you might expect them to present the matter to the reader at least, and indicate somehow their intention to follow up. We'll see whether it is soon enough.

We tend to think that the News got little advantage from its front-page swine-flu takeover, since the treatment was so much sloppier than the treatment in the Post. So we won't bother too much about what stories actually are on the front page of the Post you've got in your actual, meatspace hands. (We got Rocketman.) No matter what the two other stories on the Post cover are for you, the Post beats the News on the swine flu, and there's nothing else the News can offer.

Winner: New York Post

First out of the gate was Gawker.com, whose Ryan Tate offered a list of the Most Humiliating Moments in Vanity Fair's Arthur Sulzberger Profile. Next up, PoynterOnline's Jim Romenesko, who came away with the impression that "Sulzberger seems clever enough, but he fails to impress."

A few hours later, Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici offered one of his patented Deep Read posts, in which he called back to Ken Auletta's 2005 New Yorker piece (alluded to in Mr. Bowden's piece) that shared both Mr. Bowden's subject and headline and wrote, "If Ken Auletta's December 2005 New Yorker profile of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was what persuaded the New York Times publisher not to cooperate with any more reporters for awhile, then there's scant chance Mark Bowden's 11,000-word Vanity Fair portrait will change his mind." Editor & Publisher's E&P Pub blog (you know, where awful news of layoffs and newspaper closures are given a breezier, bloggier treatment) wondered if Mr. Sulzberger is, The Incredible Shrinking Man? (EXTRA: Newspaper Publisher Trapped In Over-Determined '50s B-Movie Metaphor!) Via Amtrak's Northeast Regional from Boston, The Phoenix's Adam Reilly implored readers, "Whatever your reading plans are for the next few days, make sure they include this outstanding Vanity Fair profile of NY Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr."

Soon, Politico's Michael Calderone weighed in by asking, Can Sulzberger save the Times? (Yes! Um, no? What was the question again?)

The next day (Tuesday, March 31), The Guardian hosted Dan Kennedy's Who killed the New York Times? (Judy Miller in the library with the WMDs?), in which the author offered a round-up of reactions to Mr. Bowden's piece and this bit of criticism: "The problem is that Bowden can't tell us how things might have been different with more visionary leadership. No one can."

That same day, Slate's Jack Shafer, who got right to the point with the headline Are Times Publishers Born Stupid?, reached all the way back to Adolph S. Ochs and ends with a glancing blow to Metro desk boy wonder A. G. Sulzberger.

On the third day (Wednesday, April 1), New York Times executive editor Bill Keller decided to send a letter to Vanity Fair's editor, which he kindly "cc'd" to Jim Romenesko, and, by extension the segment of the media world (a) still working; (b) still able to afford Internet access; or (c) curious enough about their former industry to check Romenesko from the library Internet terminal before taking a nap in the reading room and washing themselves in the public bathroom. That same day, Vivian Schiller, former digital chief of The Times' Web site, sent her own letter about Mr. Bowden's story to Mr. Romenesko, in which she called the article "wildly imbalanced."

The next day (the fourth for those trying to keep up), The Observer's John Koblin picked up Mr. Keller's letter for Vanity Fair and looked at how The New York Times Puts Up Its Dukes. Also on the fourth day, the Daily Beast's Eric Alterman pulled a Chris Crocker by pleading, "Stop Picking on Pinch." (Mr. Alterman also had a round-up of links in case you missed Mr. Kennedy's.) Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson added NYT Publisher "Elicits Not Admiration So Much As Pity" to the conversation.

What about Twitterers, you ask? (Why do you always ask that?) What were they tweeterering about Mr. Bowden?

Well, NYU's Jay Rosen summarized the 11,000-word story with "'The Times is platform agnostic.' Mark Bowden's Sulzberger piece in Vanity Fair explains why that statement is ... off." Rodney Barnes, whose bio describes him as Toronto-based "Ryerson J-Schooler and aspiring literary journalist," noted, "'Journalism sells ... simply isn't true. Advertising sells, journalism costs.' - Mark Bowden at the NYT on Sulzberger." Mr. Barnes' countryman David Hayes called Mr. Bowden's piece, the "Must-read media story in Vanity Fair by Mark Bowden." Ad Age's Ken Wheaton tweeted, "Excellent Vanity Fair piece by Mark "Blackhawk Down" Bowden about NYTimes' Arthur Sulzberger" (Mr. Wheaton supplied no period—it's Twitter.) Confusingly, before the piece hit the Web, Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell wrote, "Mark Bowden in upcoming Atlantic profiles Arthur Sulzberger, who would not talk to him--or allow staffers to do it (but many did)." Point of clarification: Mr. Bowden ended his exclusive contract with The Atlantic in October 2008. (Go gently on Mr. Mitchell: Last week he wrote a column headlined, My First Day on Twitter.)

Today is the fifth day since Mr. Bowden's piece appeared online, and in the twitchy, Twittery new-media landscape, that makes it more or less as old as a Dead Sea Scroll. What can media watchers expect? Maybe Mr. Bowden or his editor, Graydon Carter, will come out in defense of their piece? Maybe Michael Wolff has something to add? (Nope. His Newser blog is currently occupying itself with thoughts of 20-something blondes—not that one, smartass!) Will Arianna Huffington or Tina Brown take it upon themselves to comment? (Ms. Brown is more concerned with whether the first lady is a talk show hostess or something.) Can David Carr add something? Or Howie Kurtz? Jon Friedman? Little help? There's still some skin on this ball! Hello?

In the meantime, what about another—even more insanely detailed—round-up of links? Hey, you got it. You're welcome.

A.G. Sulzberger, 28-year-old son of Arthur Jr, has produced seven bylines already.

In February, a Times spokeswoman told The Observer that Mr. Sulzberger would be working for the City Room blog. True, but not exclusively! Quietly, Mr. Sulzberger's been working for the paper’s continuous news desk, serving as a pinch-reporter (no pun intended) and rewrite man for the paper, the Web and several blogs. He’s even landed an A1 (shared) byline!

More remarkably, he’s figured out the secret trick of life on the Web: Blog bait! Like this post about a Purim party thrown by a Daily Show With Jon Stewart writer.

Inside the newsroom, we hear he’s got all the attitude and presence of an intern. He’s shy and has a nose-to-the-grindstone work habit. He leaves work right on time every day and we’ve had two Times sources tell us he seems a bit intimidated by his surroundings. (Don't worry, A.G.! We have a feeling you have nothing to worry about.)

Mr. Sulzberger's first post for City Room, which ran on March 2, was a classic rookie item about snow, drawn from a briefing Mayor Bloomberg made to reporters. Written in a somewhat flat style that relied heavily on quotes and figures (did you know the city has 6,000 miles of roads?), it garnered only five comments, including one in verse ("I went to school in snowstorms,/ In blizzards and the like,/ Today t’would trigger brainstorms/ If through snow kids did hike").

Next, Mr. Sulzberger got top billing on a shared byline with The Times' answer to John Henry, Sewell Chan (with some additional reporting from Jennifer 8. Lee, Joel Stonington from New York, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi), on March 5. The post, about an auction of Gandhi's meager possessions, also ran on A1 of the paper and sparked 156 comments that focused on the politics and ethics of the sale. No one seemed to realize what a big deal it was for young Mr. Sulzberger to go from one blog post (about snow!) to A1 in three days: That's like a newly hired chorus girl suddenly promoted to star of the show. (Then again, it is a chorus girl whose father owns the theater.)

Mr. Sulzberger's reporting on snow found its way into a story by Robert D. McFadden on March 2, “Biggest Snowstorm of the Winter Sweeps Across the Northeast,” which Mr. Sulzberger followed up with a bylined story headlined “East Coast Cleans Up After Snowstorm.” (Way to stay on the story, Gee!)

He also contributed reporting to Patrick McGeehan's March 10 story on New Jersey-based job cuts created by  the merging of Merck and Schering-Plough.

He also shared a byline on March 6 with Robert Mackey of The Lede on Iran's plans to release journalist Roxana Saberi and with Shaila Dewan's “Officials Identify Alabama Gunman” from March 11.

Not bad for a rookie. Imagine what he'd get done if he worked late.