Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Dec. 11, 1995.
In one of the few instances of the Justice Department strong-arming journalists since the Nixon Administration, U.S. attorneys in Miami have convened a Federal grand jury to discover the identities of two reporters’ sources. In the process, Federal Government lawyers on the case have Read More
Video
You know that phrase, “I could listen to him read a phone book”? The implication is that said person is so talented, that they could give a nuanced performance to the most boring material, and you’d still be enthralled.
Unfortunately, there is another saying in showbiz: “If you have to explain it, it’s not funny.”
That being said, here is the very talented Jerry Seinfeld talking in a New York Times video about why words like Pop Tart, chimps, dirt, playing and sticks are all very funny. Read More
Albany bureau chief Danny Hakim will leave the state capital for London, where he will take over as the European economic correspondent.
“After two plum assignments – in Detroit and Albany – Danny Hakim is taking a turn at a hardship posting, as Business Day’s European economic correspondent based in London,”said an email that went out to staff earlier today. The move was first reported by Talking Biz News. Read More
It didn’t feel much like winter.
It was balmy: 60 degrees and sunny. The holiday decorations felt out of place in the mild breeze. But the frost was creeping in—media winter (as foreshadowed in October by the fall of Newsweek) was in full swing by 9 a.m. on the first Monday in December.
First came the announcement that The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s foray into iPad journalism, was being shuttered after less than two years and many millions of dollars. The news wasn’t wholly unexpected. A third of the staff had been laid off over the summer, and a sense of doom and gloom had hung over the ninth floor of News Corp. HQ ever since. It was a matter of when, not if, the tablet app would disband. But, as with any death watch, just because it’s expected doesn’t make it any less humbling. Read More
Imagine your first two months as an editor at The New York Times.
You sell your house and car in Buffalo, move to the Flatiron District, plunk down in the Times newsroom and one by one take public swipes at your new colleagues—the incoming CEO, the celebrity profiler, the foreign desk in war-torn Libya, the nation’s most popular political forecaster.
“The role of public editor isn’t to be a friend,” Margaret Sullivan, the Times new public editor and first woman to hold the title, told The Observer from her office in the third-floor newsroom.
In a short time, Ms. Sullivan has taken what was previously a low-profile emeritus post for pre-retirees and transformed it into a bully pulpit of sorts. Rather than filing biweekly print columns like her predecessor Arthur Brisbane, she is tweeting, blogging and interacting with commenters. She has modernized the role of the public editor—a curious job, to be sure—and put more than a few ink-stained noses out of joint. Read More
Storm reporting mobilized newsrooms across the city, and apparently, The >New York Times was no exception. ”City Struggling For Footing, Some Transit Restored“, the Times article by James Barron about storm recovery, lists 56 contributing writers. Read More
The Chinese government blocked The New York Times website after the paper published an article about prime minister Wen Jiabao’s family’s hidden fortune, the Times reported.
The English- and Chinese-language websites went down just a couple hours after the story went up on Friday morning there. When the article was mentioned on the BBC, the station suddenly went black, tweeted Louisa Lim, NPR’s Beijing correspondent. The topic has been banned from Weibo, a Chinese social network similar to Twitter. Read More
There’s a simmering fashion feud percolating between New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn and Hedi Slimane, the designer who has taken over Yves Saint Laurent and is widely credited with Dior Homme’s skinny silhouette. The beef led to Ms. Horyn not being invited to the YSL show, which didn’t stop her from reviewing it in The New York Times on the Runway blog using publicly available photos. Needless to say, her take wasn’t overwhelmingly positive.
“I was not invited. Despite positive reviews of his early YSL and Dior collections, as well as a profile, Mr. Slimane objected bitterly to a review I wrote in 2004—not about him but Raf Simons,” wrote Ms. Horyn.
As best we can tell, the deliberate non-invitation was a result of Ms. Horyn’s doubts about the origins of the skinny-silhouetted suit. Read More
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld took the time from his busy schedule on this rainy Tuesday afternoon to register a formal complaint with a letter to the editor about Neil Genzlinger’s rant in today’s New York Times. Mr. Genzlinger wrote about the overuse of the word “really” when “delivered with a high-pitched sneer to indicate a contempt so complete that it requires no clarification.”
A note to Neil Genzlinger (“The ‘R’ Word: Really, Really Overused,” Arts pages, Oct. 2):Your Critic’s Notebook column about the overuse of the term “Really?” was so deeply vacuous that I couldn’t help but feel that you have stepped into my area of expertise.
Really, Neil? Really? You’re upset about too many people saying, “Really?”? I mean, really. Read More
The New York Times launched a new HTML5 Web App for iPad this morning. They are calling the new app, which is only available to subscribers, “experimental.” The new mobile platform is part of the “NYT Everywhere” strategy.
“We are using this as a way to give exisiting subscribers a widow into our journalism,” said Alexandra Hardiman, director of mobile products at NYTimes.com. Read More
