Mr. Thomson spoke to the Murdoch-owned The Australian and discussed regional coverage in the New York area:

"The distinction here is that we are using Journal journalists while The New York Times is out-sourcing its regional sections.

"For a paper blighted by the plague of plagiarism to risk its reputation for a few pennies is quite remarkable. They should have more faith in their own journalists -- it is unusual that the tut-tutters of the American journalist establishment have not recognised the infelicities of this arrangement."

The paper has had a few examples of plagiarism over the last seven years, but it's a curious attack. It's true that when the Times does a story from Jersey or Westchester, the paper does use stringers and freelancers for its metro coverage in addition to its own reporters. While there have been some moments where the ethics cops at The Times haven't been happy with outside reporters, we can't think of any glaring examples of bad journalism from metro stringers in the last few years.

Moreover, Mr. Thomson told us an in interview that the Journal would be using stringers for its suburban coverage itself.

"We're setting up a stringer system," he said, when we asked about how he would cover the region.

He said that the paper would use a core of Journal reporters who would be assigned to specific areas in the suburbs. In other words, based on his description then, it sounds similar to what The Times is doing: A mix of reporters and stringers.

But in any event, it's another day with another attack on The Times.

"The commercial objectives are to broaden our audience in New York, in part, at the expense of The New York Times, and to widen our revenue base in the country's most important region," said Mr. Thomson to the Australian.

It was just after 9am on Monday morning, and Mr. Hinton was providing opening remarks at the Journal's launch breakfast for its Greater New York section. The event was held in the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza. Lox, cream cheese and bagels, along with yogurt and quiche, was served. Mostly advertisers and reporters filled the room.

Outside the hotel, the evidence of a broadsheet war was evident, with New York Times street hawkers positioned at every corner of the hotel, offering $2 copies of The Times. The paper put a Michael Bloomberg investigation on its front page. An hour before the press conference, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and CEO Janet Robinson sent out a memo that was widely circulated to the press that listed demographics--and some dry jokes--at why Times readers are so loyal and loving.

By time Journal editor Robert Thomson presented to the audience this morning it took him a mere 58 seconds to land a punch at The Times.

"There is no doubt there is demand for a competitor in this market," he said. "Over the past decade, the New York Times circulation, in this region, has fallen by 40 percent. It has been a decade of decline. And that is not just because of the upheaval in the newspaper industry. Readers have voted with their purses, wallets and credit cards."

That's been Mr. Thomson's pitch since we chatted with him two weeks ago. New Yorkers want a new newspaper to read. Mr. Thomson believes it'll be the Journal (particularly readers who--ahem!--carry purses, the women readership being a key part of their fight).

The first 20 minutes of the presentation were led by Murdoch lieutenants with funny accents (Mr. Hinton is British, Mr. Thomson, an Australian). Then chief revenue offier and self-described native New Yorker Michael Rooney took the stage with the salutation, "How ya doin'?," finally showing that this wasn't an entirely alien operation.

The boys on the stage were on good behavior when it came to the Times-bashing. There were little pokes here and there, but for the most part, they stayed quiet.

"It's appropriate to have competition and you get a little bit of the argy-bargy that goes with competition," said Mr. Thomson, when a reporter tried to bait him to say something nasty about the Times. ("Argy-bargy": Now there's a term you don't often hear in greater New York!)

Instead, Mr. Thomson emphasized that the New York section's war doesn't just include Mr. Sulzberger's newspaper.

"We're not just competing with the old print media set," said Mr. Thomson.

He referred to the second newspaper as "anachronistic," adding that they're competing with whatever number of news sources you read on your BlackBerry.

"We have to be extremely flexible with who we think our competitors are, not just in the nature of content itself, but in the way people receive it," he said.

Most of them stayed on message, and seemed to review their talking points memo carefully. Both Mr. Hinton and Mr. Rooney kept discussing how the New York section makes the Journal a "complete paper;" Mr. Thomson and section editor John Seeley, both said the New York section will provide a "wide canvas" of coverage.

If there's one point that doesn't seem to have the clearest of messages quite yet it involves WSJ.com.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Thomson told us that "nothing, virtually nothing" would be available for free. If you click on wsj.com/ny today you can find a whole series of articles available for free. I asked Mr. Seeley if today was a special exception and he said that the amount of New York content would reflect the rest of the site-some free, some not free.

That seems to suggest that more will be available, at least at first, then Mr. Thomson let on.

Mr. Seeley did say that the Metropolis blog--what appears to be the Journal's version of City Room or Daily Intel--will be free.

How long will this last? It's unclear, but Mr. Thomson recently told us that, "if you look at where the wall is at The Journal, the wall is moving in one direction."

Indeed, that was another point he made today, after he spit at the "superciliousness" of the "bourgeois" journalistic elite that couldn't make up its mind on whether or not to charge for content.

By time the breakfast had ended, there were gift bags for a room that included mostly advertisers. Inside, there was a ceramic mug bearing the section's new name, courtesy of MoMA, and a free copy of the Journal.

Then there are the more troubling signs: Internet advertising revenue went down again, this time 14.3 percent. But during a conference call with investors this morning, Denise Warren, the general manager of nytimes.com, was quick to defend the numbers.

Ms. Warren said that last year the Times had a “really, really, really” robust second quarter and that they were “up against” that. Though digital only makes up 13.4 amount of total revenues, the Times is given to wild exuberance when it comes to how much money it brings in. Bill Keller said at a staff meeting earlier this summer that it makes “a lot, a lot of money.”

CEO Janet Robinson said that the Times cleans up against all competition, which basically means: Sure, there isn’t much money to be made there, but at least the Times can claim the lion’s share of the pocket change!

After Ms. Warren spoke, head of digital operations Martin Nisenholtz came on the call and said that he couldn’t tell you exactly how much money nytimes.com makes, but let’s just put it this way: Yahoo announced this week that it had a 14 percent decline in display advertising. The Times’ display performance was “better than that,” he said.

In other conference call news: Times executives were very proud of their debt reduction. At the end of the last quarter it was $1.3 billion. Today, it’s $1 billion.

On circulation, Ms. Robinson said that the increased revenues from circulation was “encouraging” and after raising the newsstand price that “cancellations were well below our expectations.”

She added that the sale of the Times’ minority interest in the Red Sox and Fenway Park was “moving ahead” and she expected a sale by the end of the year.

Then, she talked Internet: that the Times is studying how many people would feel comfortable paying for nytimes.com and—as we reported first—that they are considering two systems: the meter and the contribution model. She said she would have more to say at third-quarter earnings report.

The Times is beginning to turn the conference call into an art. After Ms. Robinson and CFO Jim Follo spoke for about 20 minutes, they took only about 15 minutes of questions—far fewer than in the past. Maybe there were actually fewer questions? Or maybe the Times is learning less is more.

Either way, Wall Street seemed pleased. As of this writing, Times Company stock is inching toward $7.

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.

Back in October, executive editor Bill Keller held one of his regular "state of the newsroom" meetings ("Throw Stuff at Bill," they are informally called even by Mr. Keller himself). At this one he addressed a notorious and much-maligned story about John McCain's "friendship" with a certain lobbyist.

“In one case, the famous McCain and the lobbyist story, if I had to do it over again, the one thing I would do differently: I think I would have planned for the blowback better,” he told the staff, according to a recording of the proceedings obtained by The Observer. “It really took a day and a half to decide that we just weren’t going to let the story speak for itself—we were going to speak for ourselves. And by then, they had defined what the story was and, with Fox News as their megaphone, the world now believes it was a story about McCain sleeping with a lobbyist, which it was not. That one I’d wish we did differently.”

Nowadays The Times is showing no such hesitation.

In January, Michael Hirschorn wrote a well-circulated piece in The Atlantic about the Times’ ostensibly crumbling empire. The Times, arguably the most powerful news institution in the country, had been accustomed to unsticking spitballs from its cheek over the course of decades of unflattering feature stories, books, and news items published here and elsewhere. It goes with the territory. Not this time.

Catherine Mathis, the paper’s spokeswoman, shot off a letter to the editor of The Atlantic: "Your article “End Times,” which speculates on whether The New York Times can survive the death of journalism, leaves a lot to be desired from the standpoint of . . .  well, journalism." Yow! She denigrated the piece as "uninformed speculation," and ridiculed what she characterized as the factual errors in the piece.

This week, Mark Bowden wrote a giant, 11,000-word profile of Arthur Sulzberger for Vanity Fair. There wasn't a lot of new stuff here (anyone who has read Tifft and Jones or follows The Times regularly can tell you that). But it certainly was no kinder than Mr. Hirschorn's piece. A chief theme: Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is unqualified to lead the organization into its digital future.

Bill Keller himself wrote a letter to the magazine: aside from the "bombast, the recycled anecdotes and the mistakes an elementary fact-checking" Mr. Bowden hadn't written much of a story. The Times has 1,300 staffers in its newsroom, Mr. Keller pointed out in the letter, not 1,300 reporters, as Mr. Bowden wrote. And he defended Mr. Sulzberger's strategic vision for how The Times can flourish in the digital era: "I'll bet on Arthur Sulzberger finding the answer to that question before Mark Bowden does."

And that wasn't all! Vivian Schiller, former general manager of nytimes.com and the current president of National Public Radio, fired off a letter to the editor of Vanity Fair calling the piece "wildly imbalanced," and concluding the letter thusly: "The business model for Internet news in general is indeed in flux and uncertain, but I am sure that if anyone can figure it out, it is The New York Times of Sulzberger."

Letters like this are new enough for The Times; as we here know, personal correspondence with reporters and editors about these kinds of stories are not rare, but they are rarely written for public consumption. But even publication in the letters section of Vanity Fair, which would not have appeared in the magazine until its July issue because of lead-time, according to a spokesperson for the magazine, was not enough. And so both letters were also sent to Jim Romenesko, the Poynter institute blogger whose links to media news stories constitute the trade home page of the American media industry. Both were published, and both are setting off sparks.

Unflattering features have been written countless times about The Times. But at a moment when every bit of news seems critical to establishing public opinion about the institution—and perhaps more essentially, investors' confidence in the company—The Times is sticking up for itself. That it has to at all is, we think, news fit to print, or at least to publish online.

By the way, according to the Vanity Fair spokesperson, that detail about the number of reporters at The Times will be the subject of a correction in July editions of the magazine; it takes a long time to print and distribute a big volume of glossy paper.

And you won't find one right now on vanityfair.com.

Update 11:20 a.m.: A VF spokesperson clarifies that the story has been changed on the Web, and a proper correction will be forthcoming in the magazine.

The news comes on the heels of The Times’ salary cuts. 

The newsroom has been buzzing about the imminent demise of the City Section since Thursday afternoon, when Bill Keller gave a newsroom address and said that the paper was looking to cut back on freelancers as much as possible. A staffer asked what that would mean for the City Section, the regionals and Escapes, which use material almost entirely written by freelancers. Mr. Keller said that the masthead editors were reviewing their options, which didn't spell good news to several attendees.

Connie Rosenblum, the City Section editor, referred a phone call to New York Times Company spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. Ms. Mathis, when reached Sunday night, said, “We are going to decline to comment.”

Mr. Keller has been working with top editors at the paper in trying to find a way to preserve content from the weekly sections. For instance, they are still drafting a plan that would allow an extra page or two of space within the paper's New York section where they could use material that would have gone in the stand-alone sections in the past. Likewise, Escapes material could be used in the Travel section.

The City section, unlike the paper’s local news section, has always tried to feel like a small-town paper nestled in the Sunday Times. Stories about how the South Brooklyn Casket Company inspires poets and artists sat side-by-side with paeans to Riverside Park. The section has also been a comfortable space for essayists like Sloane Crosley and Thomas Beller to muse on various off-news-cycle topics like dance or dropping an iPod on the subway tracks.

The regionals were stylistically the same, but since a decision reached in 2006 to eliminate most of the original content specific to each region in favor of consolidated material used for all the regionals, it has been a shell of what it once was. Last month, the paper started The Local, a blog that is aiming for that small-town feel in parts of brownstone Brooklyn and suburban New Jersey.

"This was a very difficult decision to make," Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Robinson wrote in a memo. "The environment we are in is the toughest we have seen in our years in business."

Times editors and corporate managers at the Times Company will be given extra vacation time to compensate. Members from the Times Company will meet with the Guild at 2:30 p.m. this afternoon, according to Grant Glickson, the grievance chairperson for The New York Times unit of the Newspaper Guild of New York. They'll ask that members of the Guild also agree to a 5 percent cut and take an additional 10 days off "in a spirit of shared sacrifice and as a way to otherwise avoid layoffs in the newsroom," wrote Mr. Keller, Times GM Scott Heekin-Canedy, editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal and global editions editor Martin Gottlieb in a memo.

They said that salaries would be restored to their normal level next year, but they warned that even that "depends on the state of our business."

Additionally, The Times' Richard Pérez-Peña reports:

The Times newspaper also will take several steps to cut production costs, including doing away with the expanded index to the paper, created last year, that appears on the second, third and fourth pages every day. The Times will return to something more like the smaller guide to the paper that used to appear on the second page, saving several millions dollars annually on newsprint.  The newsroom will reduce its freelance budget. And there may be some further merging of sections of the paper, which saves on printing costs.

At 3 p.m. today, Bill Keller will address the entire newsroom on the third floor and answer questions from today's announcement. The last time he addressed the newsroom like this, it was last year for Pulitzer day.

The mood, not surprisingly, is not particularly upbeat at 620 Eighth Avenue.

There's a sense that this had to happen, and a sense that this won't be the last round of bad news. Update, 2:36 p.m.: "An already fearful newsroom just became terrified," said one reporter.

"Devastated," said one source, who added that the newsroom is doing its best to "keep its head high."

Unlike nearly every other newspaper in the country, The Times has gone to incredible lengths to avoid job cuts. In February 2008, well before we knew where the economy would turn, and well before it was clear how disastrous the upcoming year would be for newspapers, the paper announced 100 jobs cuts. The paper has not cut from the newsroom since.

At 1,300 people, The Times' newsroom total is by far the largest in the country.

Here are the memos:

"Dear Colleagues,

"As you know, the global economic crisis is taking its toll on a broad range of businesses and sectors, here in the U.S. and around the world. We have reported in our own newspapers and on our own Web sites that the economy is likely to continue struggling throughout this year and possibly longer.

"Given this economic outlook and the changes occurring in the media business, we, regrettably, must take even more steps to lower costs. We have been, and continue to, reorganize and reduce our staff, which means we are saying goodbye to many of our close colleagues. Now, in addition, we are lowering salaries through the end of this year for all remaining nonunion employees and, in exchange, providing additional time off. We plan to approach the Newspaper Guild in New York to ask for its participation in the program and to continue working with our unions in Boston and our other locations on lowering our costs, including wage reductions.

"The salaries of all employees at The New York Times Media Group (with the exception of the IHT, which is working on other cost reduction measures), The Boston Globe, Boston.com and Corporate in New York will be rolled back by 5%, starting this April, and these employees will receive 10 additional days off to use before the end of the year.

"At the About Group, Baseline, Globe Direct, International Media Concepts, Regional Media Group, Shared Services Center and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the approach is similar, with salaries being rolled back by 2.5% with five additional days off. We made the distinction between the two groups by taking into account location and other factors. Next year, we plan to return salaries to their current levels. Of course, such a decision depends on the state of our business.

"Many of you will have questions about these actions. Your manager or department head has been briefed with more details and is your best source of information.

"This was a very difficult decision to make. The environment we are in is the toughest we have seen in our years in business. Across our Company, you and your colleagues have worked hard to introduce innovative products and services, reduce expenses and improve productivity. We are deeply grateful for your efforts and proud of your achievements. As we take these painful steps together, we remain confident that our great Company will keep moving forward to better times.

"Sincerely,

"Arthur & Janet"

"Dear Colleagues,

"In a note just distributed, Arthur and Janet informed us that the company, regrettably, must take even more aggressive steps to control our costs.

"Clearly, our course is not getting any easier. The recession, especially the deteriorating advertising climate, is exacting a bitter toll, despite all that we have already done to reduce spending. This morning, we notified about 100 employees on the business side of The Times that their jobs were being eliminated. We thank these dedicated colleagues for all they have contributed to The Times over the years.

"The broader announcement today outlines a temporary salary reduction for the remainder of the year for all non-union employees, including the top leadership of the company. It is our hope that these cost-cutting measures will allow us to avoid further layoffs.

"The details of the salary reduction will be communicated to you shortly by your senior managers. Although employee pay will be cut by 5% for the remaining three-quarters of the year, you will be entitled to 10 additional personal days off over the nine months. Next year, we plan to return salaries to their current levels. Of course, such a decision depends on the state of our business.

"In addition, we will be asking that our Guild-represented colleagues make a similar sacrifice. The Company plans to discuss this with the Guild leadership this afternoon, in a spirit of shared sacrifice and as a way to otherwise avoid layoffs in the newsroom.

"Navigating this difficult passage for our business has not been easy. We need to do what we can to reduce spending in the face of falling revenues. At the same time, it is vital we do everything possible to maintain the quality and reach of the journalism that is the hallmark of The Times and to support the resourcefulness and competitive edge of the Media Group's business operations.

"Decisions such as today’s underscore the scale of the challenges facing us as we confront not only the structural changes reshaping our industry but also the deepening global recession.

"We honor those who will no longer work alongside us and extend our gratitude to them for their contributions. Further, we want to thank every one of you who are sacrificing a portion of your pay over the remainder of the year.

"Sincerely,

"Scott, Bill, Martin & Andy"