Results tagged “nytimes”

After suspicious pasta salad (allegedly) took out fifteen New York Times employees who ate it in the paper's cafeteria, The Daily Finance had the bright idea to peruse the health inspection records of the Gray Lady's fancy office eatery. While the cafeteria's most recent inspection resulted in 10 violation points (lower than the city-wide average of 14 points), it's a horse of a different putrid color over at their printing plant in Queens. In February of last year it was cited for "evidence of roaches or live roaches in food and/or non-food areas," "conditions conducive to vermin" and improperly installed or maintained plumbing, earning it 18 violation points. That's not enough to shut it down, but apparently the Times thinks that's good enough for their blue collar workers.

We've been getting some inquiries about when this year's Ringling Bros. Elephant Walk may be (it's usually at the end of March)... but before you get all amped up to see the mammals march through Manhattan, PETA has put a nice, big reminder in the NY Times today. The full page ad shows images of elephants being treated poorly, with the words "an elephant never forgets." It was last summer that the organization released incriminating video of animal abuse at Ringling, so it'll be interesting to see if that effects the turnout for this year's walk.

A coffee war is brewing in Crown Heights, so you know the NY Times is on the scene to count the bodies (and the beans). Two new coffee shops, The Pulp and the Bean and The Breukelen Coffee House, began trading insults and blog posts leading up to opening this month on Franklin Avenue, two blocks away from each other. Besides vows to “buy your coffee machines in about eight months when you decide to close up,” it's actually a pretty friendly fight, but the Times sees a bigger picture, commenting on the neighborhood history and the new opportunities for local rivalries to bicker through the internet. The owner of The Pulp and the Bean sums it up nicely though: “I’d rather see more coffee shops and restaurants open than bodegas and nail salons.”

According to the AP, police officers raided the circulation offices of the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, and El Diario today "as part of a union corruption probe... Investigators were seeking paperwork related to the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union, which packages and delivers newspapers across the region."

Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz and director Pedro Almodovar are the main feature of the NY Times' Holiday Movies section. But don't ask about Cruz's relationship with Javier Bardem! "Asked if a wedding is in the works, she said, with a pleasant smile and eyes of cold steel: 'You are a writer for The New York Times, yes? I think maybe you are not supposed to ask that kind of question.'"

In reporting its parent company's $35.6 million third quarter loss, the NY Times notes that it "collect[ed] more from readers than from advertisers, in an industry where advertising traditionally outweighed circulation in revenue by at least three to one. At the company’s New York Times Media Group, which includes The Times and The International Herald Tribune, circulation revenue reached $175.2 million in the third quarter, while ad revenue dropped to $164.5 million." Earlier this week, the Times announced 100 newsroom positions would be slashed.

Today, the NY Times launched announced its new editorial series on the incompetence of the NY State government, called "Failed State." A year away from state elections, a fired-up Times rails against the "inbred system [which] allows so many lawmakers to abuse the public trust," summarizing some of the more egregious abuses of the past couple years and some of the major grievances which they plan to address in the series. Warning—if you don't already want to head up to Albany with a pitchfork, you will now:

The New York Times posted an article today for anyone who's ever had to endure subway transfers to get to their beloved. They track the story of one couple, Peter Horan and Afton Vermeer, who must trek nearly an hour and a half to see each other in the same city (Horan lives in western Harlem, Vermeer in Sunset Park.) While this is not news to many couples in the city, the Times reports that it seems to be happening more and more, with a variety of repercussions.

After looking for bids since July, the NY Times Co. has decided not to sell the Boston Globe. The NY Times reports, "The Globe did not draw high bids, and the company chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said last month that the paper’s finances had improved enough that the company no longer believed it had to sell if the offers were not attractive enough."

This week the new chief dining critic at the NY Times, Sam Sifton, debuts with a rave for DBGB, Daniel Boulud's casual sausage/beer/etc. joint on the Bowery. The first review from the former NY Press reporter boasts references to The Ramones, Talking Heads, and a declaration that "[Boulud's] food game, as they say in rap precincts, is tight... one bite of the crispy lamb ribs that were served in the bar area when the place first opened — sweetly glazed, grassy meat, with a dab of creamy mint-flecked yogurt sauce — ended all snark: Boulud has opened a very good restaurant. The lamb was sublime, earthy and spicy and rich, evidence of superb technique, the sort of snack that separates his empire from others in the celebrity firmament."

After two entertaining yet vicious slams on Hotel Griffou and Gus & Gabriel, interim Times dining heavy Pete Wells throws a one-star bone to The Standard Grill, which has been winning over critics despite the grotesquely exclusive velvet rope scene at the door. Wells declares that "it is not the place I would send friends who want to study the latest contortions of the yoga masters of haute cuisine. But it is exactly where I would direct anybody who needs to recharge by plugging straight into the abundant, renewable energy source that is downtown Manhattan." And yet! "The tiled, barrel-vaulted ceiling makes for treacherous acoustics. At times conversations across the room are beamed directly to your table. Sitting by the open kitchen one night, we heard an expediter shouting out orders as if he were communicating with cooks in Jersey City." Still, "with 100 seats in this room, another 100 in an even noisier antechamber, and 85 more on the sidewalk, it is a marvel that the kitchen reliably bangs out solid, flavorful food."

Since it would be a shame if you missed this and walked around Williamsburg like a fool without a coconut, here's the latest NY Times style piece about walking around Williamsburg with a coconut. Although we share NYMag's apprehension of this "trend," as we've actually never seen anyone doing it, and even if we did, there's allegedly no alcohol in these coconuts; we are simply not interested in your virgin trends, Gray Lady.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced 24 "Genius Awards" recipients today, including New Yorkers Theodore Zoli, Deborah Eisenberg and Rackstraw Downes. They also include L. Mahadevan, "an applied mathematician at Harvard who investigates behaviors like how flags flutter and how skin wrinkles." Apparently, studies like this merit $500,000? The Times has a full list of the winners.

Having blown one of the most coveted jobs in journalism through sheer mendacity, laziness, and drug abuse, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair has found work coaching others on how to live their lives. It was over six years ago that Blair caused a huge scandal at the Times, after it was discovered that he'd fabricated a number of articles, deeply embarrassing the paper of record and bringing down executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald M. Boyd with him. But now Blair's turned the beat around and is certified to coach lives, at a mental health practice in northern Virginia—here's his website. Blair tells the AP, "People say, 'Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense. Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say 'Wait a minute. It does make sense.'" And Blair's boss, psychologist Michael Oberschneider, coos, "Very few people can go through what he did and come back. He really is a success story." Unfortunately, that's exactly what Raines thought before Blair went and burned his house down.

Today Frank Bruni ends his five year gig at the Times with a review of the Redhead, an East Village bar that gradually evolved into a casual restaurant with, some say, the best fried chicken in town. Quoth the Bruni: "It isn’t exactly like any other downtown restaurant I know—its semi-polished, Southern-inflected pub grub is all its own—but it sharply reflects a few of the most prominent and rewarding developments in Manhattan dining over the years during which I’ve had the privilege of serving as The Times’s restaurant critic.

JC Penney has arrived in Herald Square, leaving locals disaffected and tourists hurling towards a familiar sight. Is Penney's our TGIFriday's of retail? The NY Times reports on the department store's new digs, look and goods with, dare we say, a biting tone that's less becoming than a plethora of polysynthetics. Miss Size 2 reporter guesstimates that 96% of the inventory is made of polyester, and it's nearly impossible to find anything below a size 10. She adds, "it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of Roseanne.” Hopefully there are enough airbrushed magazine covers out there to combat this, lest little girls grow up thinking it's okay to be anything more than a size 2.

This week outgoing Times dining critic Frank Bruni files on Table 8, the new venture from California chef Govind Armstrong located in the controversial new Cooper Square Hotel, where disgruntled neighbors have hung soiled underwear on their clotheslines to undermine the cachet. "I spotted only one sad, fluttering garment on the evening when I ate on Table 8’s street-level patio," reports Bruni. "And it did less to ruffle my serenity — the patio is a pretty, breezy treat — than the door that crashed into the back of my chair when someone decided to step outside. Placing a table for diners smack in the door’s way exemplifies the curious planning at which Table 8 excels."

This week Frank Bruni at the Times weighs in on Locanda Verdi, the reboot of Robert De Niro's failed Ago, which the critic had such fun eviscerating last summer. His two star review radiates adoration for new chef Andrew Carmellini, whose "talent demands a bigger stage, and luckily for both him and us, Locanda Verde came along in the nick of time to give him that. It opened two months ago in the TriBeCa space inhabited briefly — and disastrously — by Ago, may it rest in peace... But it doesn’t amount to the exactly right situation or perfect fit for him. It’s not the Carmellini restaurant that many of us have been waiting and hoping for, though it has plenty to recommend it. Hit the menu’s strong spots and you’ll have a terrific meal at a reasonable price."

Writer Jed Lipinski, who infiltrated the secret Brooklyn climbing gym and then wrote about it on the NY Times' Local blog, is allegedly the most hated man in the borough now. To recap, there's a secret climbing gym in Brooklyn that probably not that many people actually care about, but The Local hyped it up and then promptly took the story down, and then everyone else wrote about it and about how the Times unpublished the secret, and now the gym is closed! Or so they want us to believe. Animal reports that "the 'bizarre hybrid of subterranean climbing gym and hippie speakeasy' has been shut down. An ex-climber from the once covert space confirms, via email, that 'the gym was closed due to this story. It is uncertain when or if it will ever be open again' making Jed Lipinski the most hated man in Brooklyn." People are calling him “the world's greatest douchbag," and saying he "betrayed a trust." You'll never climb in this town again Lipinski!

This week Frank Bruni at the Times files a one star review of Monkey Bar, "a big-city big-game reserve for the lions, gazelles and jackals of the urban veldt.... They’ve come because Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and one of the principal architects of this experience, summoned them. On top of everything else the Monkey Bar is his social pulpit, affirming his ordination as the high priest of a certain fame-focused, power-obsessed sect of Manhattan society... And he fashions a fantasy New York where arrivistes bask in mutual recognition and reciprocal adoration, each mirroring the others’ sense of triumph, the unruly city edited down to one preposterously romantic room for the most unromantic of pursuits: back scratching and social climbing."

Yesterday, NY Times reporter David Rohde returned to the NY Times newsroom, a week and a half after escaping seven months of captivity in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Taliban kidnappers. He appeared with his fellow kidnap victim, Tahir Ludin, a reporter who worked as his translator and guide; the Times' Clyde Haberman wrote, "In an intensely emotional moment, the two men walked into the Times newsroom to enormous waves of applause from scores of reporters and editors... As the long ovation continued, Mr. Ludin wiped away tears. Some in the newsroom seemed near tears themselves."

This week Frank Bruni at the Times reviews Meatpacking District hotspot Spice Market, where chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's menu is inspired by Asian street food. Interim dining critic Amanda Hesser gave it three out of four stars in 2004, but the paper was forced to issue a statement acknowledging that Hesser should have disclosed the glowing jacket blurb Vongerichten wrote for her book.

The Afghan reporter who was kidnapped by the Talban, alongside NY Times reporter David Rohde, in Afghanistan last November described how he and Rohde escaped the compound where they were being held. According to the NY Times, it was a "desperate attempt by two severely demoralized reporters who believed that the Taliban were not seriously negotiating and would hold them indefinitely." Tahir Ludin says he and Rohde planned their escape on a day when the electricity was on, because the air-conditioning would mask sounds of their getaway. After their guards fell asleep, the men "made their way to the second floor" and cleared a five-foot wall, but then Ludin "was greeted by an unnerving view: a 20-foot drop." Ludin climbed down a rope that Rohde found (and hidden away), but injured his foot in the fall; Rohde managed without injury. When they arrived at a Pakistani militia camp, guards initially suspected they might be suicide bombers. However, once their identities as journalists were confirmed, "they were treated well." Times executive editor Bill Keller explained that Rohde's kidnapping was not reported on because "All along, we were told by people that probably the wisest course for David's safety was to keep it quiet."

Well, fancy that: A TPM Cafe blogger noticed how a passage in Maureen Dowd's Sunday op-ed column was very similar to a Talking Points Memo column, posted on Thursday, by TPM editor Josh Marshall. Dowd's passage read, "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq." Marshall's was exactly the same, except he used "we were" instead of "the Bush crowd was." Dowd later admitted to the Huffington Post that it was a mistake—she was discussing the column with a friend "who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me." Gawker calls it BS and Politico's Michael Calderone has emailed Dowd, asking "if it's common practice to take an entire passage from a friend and weave it into her column." In the meantime, Dowd's column is updated, acknowledging Marshall.

According to Fortune, David Geffen, the record executive turned Dreamworks co-founder, made an offer to buy the 19% stake in the NY Times owned by hedge fund Harbinger Capital. The Financial Times says, "His offer was rebuffed, two people familiar with its details said. One of these said the offer was made at the prevailing market price but Harbinger wanted a premium, adding that Mr Geffen remained interested in owning the company and would be "a patient buyer'." Geffen previously made a $2 billion pitchto buy the LA Times, which was rejected by the Tribune company. Fortune, which also mentions that Google briefly considered buying the Times but then passed, details the Times' financial and "esoteric" troubles; the latter is described as how the "company suffers from a kind of genetic disorder stemming from the high-minded public goals of the Ochs-Sulzberger trust...and the demands of running a public company." Gawker thinks a Geffen-owned Times is great news for the Times' gay mafia.

The NY Times' financial woes are well-known, but now the NY Post reports, "The family that controls The New York Times empire has lost more than 86 percent of its fortune and may have sell their controlling stake to get out of debt. The Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has run the venerable paper since 1896, may also face unusual pressure from about two dozen descendants to cash out and restore their comfortable lifestyles snatched away suddenly by hard times." The Post has a graphic detailing things like how the family fortune was once $425 million and how their annual income is just $4.5 million (down 50% from recent years), complete with an actual image of Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger with a black eye (Sulzberger's dad's nickname was Punch). The tabloid also explains that Mexican media mogul Carlos Slim, who loaned $250 million to the Times, "is poised to become the biggest Times shareholder of common stock because he's allowing his loan to be repaid in six years with stock -- either from the family's main trust or a weakened corporate treasury."

Now that the MTA's fare hike may just be 25 cents, you can put your savings towards the NY Times. The AP says the paper is raising its prices: Starting June 1, weekday and Saturday editions will cost $2—up from $1.50—and the Sunday NYC edition will be $5—up from $4—and the Sunday national edition will be $6—up from $5. The paper last raised its prices in July. The NY Times' parent company, the NY Times Co., has lost $74 million during the first quarter and is looking to make cuts and even threatened to shut down the Boston Globe if union concessions weren't made. Yesterday, the NY Times' members of the Newspaper Guild agreed to a 5% pay cut in order to avert layoffs and today management sent employees a thank you memo.

After threatening to shut down its plant if unions did not make concessions, agreements have been made between Boston Globe management (the paper is owned by the NY Times Co.) and three of four unions, thus allowing the Globe to survive a little longer. The Boston Newspaper Guild is the lone holdout and the Globe reports, "The possibility of a shutdown remains if the company can't reach agreement with the Guild over $10 million in cost reductions, as well as contract changes, particularly the elimination of lifetime job guarantees enjoyed by about 190 Guild employees." However, spokesperson is optimistic and says those savings could be achieved in other ways. Over in NYC, the NY Times' Newspaper Guild members agreed to take a 5% pay cut in order to avoid laying off dozens of people; the pay cuts will be restored if ad revenues bounce back.

The NY Times Company, which has been trying to slash costs and taking loans on its building and from a Mexican billionaire, announced a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million today. The Times reports this "compare[s] with a loss of $335,000 in the period a year ago, as it joined the roster of newspaper companies recording the steepest advertising declines in generations." Advertising revenue dropped 28% (including online advertising drop of 8%), but the "worst drop, 31.4%, hit the New England Media Group, which consists primarily of The Boston Globe and its site, Boston.com. The company has told unions at The Globe that the paper is on track to lose $85 million this year, and that unless deep cuts are made, the paper will be sold or closed." The fate of the Boston Globe has prompted Senate John Kerry (D-Mass) to hold Senate hearings about the newspaper industry next month. Update: Henry Blodget thinks the Times will run out of cash in 12 months.

After rumors, the NY Times has confirmed that it will be cutting a few sections as part of its cost-saving measures. According to the Observer, "The City section, the regionals and the Escapes section will be eliminated as stand-alone sections in The Times. Instead, they'll just use material that may have appeared in those sections in a Sunday metro report." Times executive editor Bill Keller told employees, "We will consolidate Sunday Metro area coverage in a new Sunday feature section, which will be a showcase for news and features from the city and beyond. (Metro area breaking news will be incorporated into the A-book.)" Also, the Sunday Times Magazine will no longer have fashion spreads—they'll be going into the T magazine.