HARKAVY is now blogging at The Smart Asset

Your Monday New York headlines...

Struggling Times says Wall Street Journal and NY Post are dragging down News Corp because of Rupe's stubbornness. Also, Journal management now thoroughly Murdochian: "Memos are for wimps."

Sharpton, meanwhile, wants Rupe to pay for Post chimp cartoon: wants feds to yank Murdoch's license allowing him to own multiple TV stations and newspapers in the same city.

Slumming with Kate and Sean: Complete list of last night's Oscar winners.

LI cop killed by drunk driver who had another DWI less than two months ago.

BMW driver loses control, slams into Queens clubgoers who are saved serious injury because they fall in construction hole.

City giving up on Wall Street resurgence, wants to encourage small start-ups instead.

City's financial time bomb: fire, police retirees under fifty years old.

Flushing Hospital nurse gets $15 million in sex-harassment case.

The Accidental Governor admits he's bungled things, but says he'll run in 2010. Others not so sure.

Krugman: Bank nationalization as American as apple pie.

Catholics: NY's retiring archbishop to be replaced by Milwaukee archbishop with no local ties.

Illegally partitioned apartments -- like the ones that caused two firefighter deaths -- are common in poor parts of the city.

Dems Nadler and Maloney ask Obama to fill empty Ground Zero health overseer role.

"It's a sad case": 45-year-old Bronx grandmother held in death of her 4-year-old grandson.

SEC official who missed Madoff ponzi scheme asked: Were you also asleep for Lehman problems?

Philly dailies file for bankruptcy.

New players no immediate help: Knicks lose in Toronto, 111-100.

Honoring old players also no help: Rangers lose at home to Toronto, 3-2.


Find it in the VOICE:

Michael Musto's blog (La Daily Musto) and column (La Dolce Musto)
Wayne Barrett: news features and latest blogging.
Tom Robbins: the column and latest blogging.

Runnin' Scared, the news blog, featuring Roy Edroso.
The music & arts blog, Sound of the City.
Fork in the Road, the food blog.
Ward Harkavy blogs the apocalypse at The Smart Asset.

J. Hoberman's film reviews.
Michael Feingold's theater reviews.
Robert Sietsema's food column, Counter Culture.
Sarah DiGregorio's food column, Fork in the Road.
Rob Harvilla's music column, Down in Front.
Graham Rayman's news features and latest blogging.
Elizabeth Dwoskin's news features and latest blogging.

HARKAVY now blogging at The Smart Asset

And now, your Sunday New York headlines...

N.A.A.C.P. calls for firing of Post editor Col Allan and cartoonist Sean Delonas over chimp cartoon.

Lupica: NY no longer home to sport's biggest heroes. Now we've got the biggest pinheads.

Mobster serving '55 million years' for 15 murders wants out of prison for a day to help solve the French Connection drug swipe case. Prosecutors not amused.

National Academy of Sciences: 'CSI' really is fiction. Forensic court evidence is generally bunk, scientists say.

Sixpoint brewery's short-lived 'Hop Obama' beer was a brief hit, but was banned after they ran out of it.

Terror in lower Manhattan - the Wall Street bombing of 1920, still a mystery, covered in an 'outstanding' new book.

NJ mini-quakes a sign that a big one coming to Manhattan soon?

School class size growing again as budgets are impacted -- but is that as bad as parents believe it is?

Can't blame Iraq/Afghanistan: Why are suicides up at West Point?

Upper West Side crappiest NY neighborhood -- doggie doo is everywhere.

Mattingly tired of media's A-Rod bashing.

Rangers continue road misery: lose 4-2 at Buffalo.

HARKAVY is now blogging at The Smart Asset

Your Saturday headlines...

Retrain traders? Laid-off Wall Streeters not qualified to give Wall Street tours. Look for work as a butler or party clown instead. (Ouch!)

Brooklyn man leaves suicide note on Facebook before hanging himself in playground.

For years, riders have noticed that the No 2. subway line makes noise that sounds like opening from a 'West Side Story' song.

Paterson blames his staff for smearing Kennedy, which he says "bewildered" him.

Bloomberg dips in polls, but still well ahead of any rivals.

Fashion Week a bummer? "Everyone just seems to be really sad."

Upshot to the NYU protest: 18 suspensions.
 
State yanks license from UES psych who slept with two patients, impregnating one.

12-year-old, talking on cellphone, slips and falls: crushed by bus in Brooklyn.

HARKAVY is now blogging at The Smart Asset

Your headlines for Friday, February 20...

The Post on the subtle genius of Sean Delonas: It was only Post-haters who didn't like the very funny cartoon about homicidal chimpanzees who write legislation.

The Post puts Rihanna abuse photo on front page, The Daily News keeps it inside. The Times, meanwhile, still hasn't said who Chris Brown had an "altercation" with. (And our Michael Musto asks: can the Chris Brown defenders now please shut the hell up?)

NYU students protesting for more time to figure out what they're protesting.

Sue the Times, get to write an editorial: lawyers for lobbyist slimed in McCain sex allegation get to pen a response in return for dropping her suit.

The Times continues its white panic over tough times: 1. New Yorkers facing disastrous life on less than $500,000/year; 2. How's a guy supposed to feed himself on only $160,000? 3. And couple making $55,000 is literally starving to death.

Chimp victim taken to Ohio hospital that performed first face transplant.

Cop fired for getting caught on videotape being a cop shoving a cyclist in Times Square.

Toned down 'Rent' still too hot for high schools in parts of the country where the whole gay thing is still a problem.

Dow falls below 7,500. Which only means something if you want it to.

Bloomberg takes a swipe at MTA for 2nd Ave subway construction killing businesses.

U.S. soldier faces life in prison after being convicted of murder in 4 Iraqi deaths -- jury didn't buy his excuse that months in battle had left him 'dazed.'

The Congo War: a report by Al Jazeera from this past November.

The deadliest war since World War II — the slaughter in the Congo — drags on and on amid relatively little notice.

Arabs and Jews are still killing each other, and Israel's about to elect an even harder-line government.

The Taliban are seizing more and more of Afghanistan, where bloody battles with U.S. troops this spring promise to kill Americans at a shocking rate. (And Americans are still being blown up in Iraq.)

The global economy is melting down, and a frighteningly high number of Americans are losing their jobs, their homes, their pensions, and their minds. And it's banks and hedge funds that are getting "stimulated."

We have a black president — can you imagine! — and even though he's relying on a disheartening number of the Clinton Era's schnooks and more conservative advisers (like Tim Geithner), he's smart, charismatic, and serious-minded, unlike George W. Bush.

But Barack Obama's task is more than daunting: He'll be delivering the worst economic news Americans have heard in 70 years — he's already calling this "the lost decade" — in addition to trying to solve problems that no other president has had to face.

Despite what Seeking Alpha urges this morning, let's get to the important news: Alex Rodriguez's steroid use.

Ultimately, the Yankee Rodriguez is a coward for not coming clean in front of Selena Roberts, who broke the story and has already enshrined him in baseball's Hall of Shame.

And if this is the big news, then jeers to the biggest sports-news organization, ESPN, for allowing Rodriguez to give his confession to Pete Gammons, a high priest of the game among sportswriters and a powerful figure to whom players have to genuflect.

If you were Selena Roberts — who had uncovered the steroid scoop (to Rodriguez's dismay) for Sports Illustrated, you would have the right to be pissed off that you didn't get a chance to confront Rodriguez yourself. After all, you were the lead writer of the story and Rodriguez not only wouldn't talk to you but accused you of "stalking" him and worse.

Gammons, who would go easier on Rodriguez because his goal is to protect the game instead of reporting on it, was a perfect choice for Rodriguez and ESPN, which not only ostensibly covers baseball but directly makes millions by broadcasting and touting it.

It's hard to believe that Rodriguez didn't get to choose his father confessor. And it's too bad that he got to choose, because Roberts, not Gammons, was the one armed with the information that would enable a reporter to call "bullshit" on what Rodriguez said.

You can bet that Roberts, a sportswriter who doesn't specialize in jocksniffing, probably knows more than any other reporter because she dug out the facts of Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids, but only from 2001 to 2003. She no doubt spoke with some of his teammates or at least insiders from that period. So there's a big difference between his having to face Gammons's softballs or Roberts's informed questions (the latter of which he hasn't addressed as I write this).

In any case, even with Gammons, Rodriguez's truth-telling is questionable. And assuming he is telling the truth about his steroid use and his feelings about it at he time, his current perspective on it is quite telling. It helps explain why his teammates have never been particularly fond of him.

Obsessed with his image, Rodriguez tells Gammons that he had "the greatest year of my career" in 2007. And that's the problem. In team sports, as fired Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards famously said, "You play to win the game!"

Rodriguez hasn't delivered a championship to fans in the Bronx, so his "greatest year" doesn't mean much. He's all about himself, in a team sport with a long, long season in which players spend more time with their teammates than they do with their families. And teammates and fans see his selfishness.

As George Vecsey points out in this morning's Times, Rodriguez even had the temerity to rip Derek Jeter before he joined the Yankees, and Jeter — whose stats pale beside Rodriguez's — is widely seen by fans and teammates as the ultimate team player, especially because he doesn't seem obsessed with his stats.

[Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said Selena Roberts works for ESPN, the same outlet as Pete Gammons. She doesn't.]

And now on to other news that might take your mind off the vitally important question of whether Rodriguez's use of steroids will doom his chances of being elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Seeking Alpha: 'Obama's Economic Fix'

New Republic: '¡Viva Chai!: The lefty hot spot in Obama's Washington'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Bam set to do 'Whatever it takes'

N.Y. Times: 'Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout'

N.Y. Times: 'Facing Up to Some Truth Is a Start for Rodriguez' (George Vecsey)

N.Y. Post: 'LIAR. CHEAT. ALEX DROPS A-BOMB: I LIED'

Bloomberg: 'Geithner Says U.S. Financial System Badly Damaged, Needs Aid'

N.Y. Times: 'Video: Obama in Campaign Mode'

N.Y. Post: 'Tragic Hit Kid Back From Hell'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Voodoo made me drown my kids'

N.Y. Times: 'Local TV Stations Face Fuzzy Future'

Seeking Alpha: 'How the World Almost Came to an End on September 18, 2008'

Bloomberg: 'Selling AIG to Scarce Buyers Becomes Mission Impossible for Paula Reynolds'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'A Presidential Plan For the Middle East'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Stimulus bill narrowly survives Senate test vote'

Seeking Alpha: 'When Billions Look Like Pocket Change'

N.Y. Times: 'Rendition Case Under Bush Gets Obama Backing'

N.Y. Post: 'KEY FOR CAPTAIN MARVEL'

N.Y. Post: 'RABBI "ASSAULT"'

Bloomberg: 'JPMorgan Cracks Down on Unused Credit Lines as Banks Seek to Free Capital'

N.Y. Times: 'Months After Plant Closed, Many Still Struggling'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'A Voice for Jews of Color: Yavilah McCoy Advocates for Jewish Multiculturalism'

Bloomberg: 'Harvard's Holdren Wields Oscar-Winning Dire Warning for Obama Climate Job'

N.Y. Times: 'Love in the Time of Prostate Cancer'

N.Y. Post: 'HASID "PERV" BAIL BATTLE'

N.Y. Daily News: 'From Bloomy with love: Safe Valentine's sex'

N.Y. Times: 'Battle Plans for Newspapers'

Bloomberg: 'D.C.'s big doings in spotlight'

N.Y. Post: 'VICTIM PREGNANT: SAD NEW TWIST IN WEST SIDE SLAY-SUICIDE LOVE TRIANGLE'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Anti-war lawmakers worry over Obama administration's plan for Afghanistan'

N.Y. Times: 'Taliban Haven in Pakistani City Raises Fears'

N.Y. Post: 'ISRAEL HEADED "RIGHT" IN ELEX'

The pot's calling the kettle black: The New York Times runs a Reuters story this afternoon about Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. posting an $8.4 billion writedown on the advertising-challenged Wall Street Journal and other properties.

The Times, as we know, is in even worse shape and has even reached out to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

Nevertheless, the snooty paper of record neglected to mention its own troubles — while it saw fit to mention the woes of other media corpses:

The bad news for the Wall Street Journal — the best piece of Murdoch property other than The Simpsons — is that it's apparently dragging down the whole thing.

Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about the Times's own troubles, read this story from Murdoch's Post:

I told you last month that newspapers needed a bailout. But George W. Bush, whose presence on the scene provided mucho grist for the mill, has fled to Texas, and all he left us was this lousy meltdown.

The Bush Error is finally ending, and many of you may see this as the end of a national nightmare.

For reporters, it's the end of a dream presidency.

Apparently, George W. Bush has decided to heed the Constitution, for a change, and leave office after two terms.

In doing so, he's pointedly ignoring my plea in this week's Voice print edition: "Don't Leave, George W.! We Need You to Bail Out the Press."

That's why I'm bailing out for a few days.

Call it bereavement leave.

See you next week.

If you hunger for a good snicker and you're somewhat of a news junkie, what's better than a concise roundup of the best Bernie Madoff news stories — the good parts, the adjectives, the apoplexy?

Look no further than a December 22 court document in the case of another Ponzi schemer and Democratic Party fundraiser, Norman Hsu.

The Clinton pal is facing trial in Manhattan Federal Court, but his lawyer is pleading for at least a 60-day delay to let the publicity about Madoff subside. Too prejudicial to Hsu, the lawyer argues.

Thanks to the Smoking Gun, you can glom the court doc, which rests under the headline "Obama and That Other Ponzi Scheme: President-elect's name may emerge in Norman Hsu fraud trial."

Hsu's lawyer has a point. As the court papers indicate, the Madoff scandal even prompted the New York Times to proclaim that the country has been "engrossed in an orgy of scandal."

Not sure whether the Times would even know an orgy if it saw one, but yes, we have been getting fucked. No, we haven't been enjoying it.

Reading about it is a lot safer than letting someone like Madoff or Hsu touch you in a "bad" place — like your wallet.

Who would have guessed that, with the end of the disastrous Bush regime in sight, we would have been so gloomy on New Year's Eve 2008?

You'd think this would be a time of celebration, or at least some happy whistling to ourselves as we sweep out Dick Cheney's accumulated droppings from the past eight years.

But the dropping's not done, and the deepest suffering is yet to come, as the fallout from Wall Street's wreckage turns from flurries tonight on Times Square into a blizzard next year throughout the country.

It figures that Arctic temps are swooping in to make this an especially cold night in the city.

Global warning: It's hot in the Middle East, where bombs are dropping on Gaza (with Mayor Mike Bloomberg's support). And, to put it mildly, it's intemperate elsewhere: Aside from the numerous places like the auto junkyard in Detroit, builders and contractors will soon be dropping even those skilled workers who never drop tools. At this rate, things will be so bad by next Christmas that even Jesus's dad wouldn't be able to get a carpentry gig.

The shakes aren't typically a warning sign of an onrushing depression, but everybody's got them, especially bosses. The city's dropping Snapple from its vending machines, and one of Mike Bloomberg's aides is dropping his feverish P.R. campaign to give Princess Caroline Kennedy the vacant Senate seat. (See the Post's "MIKE'S AIDE COOLING HIS CAROLINE PUSH."

A whole lotta droppin' goin' on. As usual, few of those who are dropping the ball aren't themselves getting dropped.

And then there are those millions of Americans who wish that Bernie Madoff would simply drop dead. If it does happen, I hope it's on my watch.

Now it turns out, as the Madoff yarn keeps unraveling, that his outrageous behavior is dearly costing a slew of organizations like Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First (see this Bloomberg list), in addition to the big and small charities we already knew about.

So, Happy New Year to civil libertarians everywhere!

Madoff's not the only source of grief. Many journalists are being dropped every day — prompting a jeremiad (in both senses of the word) for Nat Hentoff, a modern-day Jeremiah who I'm pretty sure was a contemporary of the prophet himself. (For Hentoff, I'll drop an IBM Selectric typeball tonight in Times Square; it's the most I can do.)

Whatever you drop, hang onto your laptop. You need it to click on these stories ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Bloomberg: 'Americans Under 70 May Find 2008 Was Their Least Favorite Year'

N.Y. Times: 'Glamour Still Rules, but With Fewer Debutantes'

N.Y. Post: 'UNREAL ESTATE PLUNGE: FISCAL CRISIS HITS HOME AS LOCAL PRICES FALL 7.5 PERCENT'

Crain's New York Business: 'Foreclosure suit filed against developers'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Gaza Strip invasion is right thing to do, Mike Bloomberg says'

N.Y. Times: 'No Mug? Drug Makers Cut Out Goodies for Doctors'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'Even With Aid, Groups Scramble To Cope With Post-Madoff Mess'

N.Y. Post: '"SOFT" DRINK SALES: CITY YANKING SNAPPLE'

Crain's New York Business: 'Big projects mask declines in construction spending'

N.Y. Times: 'Village Voice Lays Off Nat Hentoff and 2 Others'

N.Y. Post: 'CONEY GRINCH BOOTS BOUTIQUE'

N.Y. Times: 'After Unofficial Tally, Senator Trails Rival in Minnesota Race'

Crain's New York Business: 'Yeshiva revises Madoff losses to just $14.5M'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Bernie Burns Bacon: Actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick among Bernie Madoff victims'

N.Y. Times: 'SAT Changes Policy, Opening Rift With Colleges'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'YouTube Yanks Israeli Army Videos'

N.Y. Times: 'Madoff Spotlight Turns to Role of Offshore Funds'

N.Y. Post: 'SPINNING WHEELS OF JUSTICE'

Bloomberg: 'Macy's, New York Times Haunted by Debt Loads From Ill-Timed Stock Buybacks'

N.Y. Post: 'GET SET FOR A COLD LANG SYNE: ARCTIC TEMPS IN TIMES SQUARE FOR NEW YEAR'S BASH'

Bloomberg: 'Texaco Toxic Past Haunts Chevron as Judgment Looms'

N.Y. Times: 'In 2009, Economy Will Depend on Unlocking Credit'

N.Y. Times: 'Ad Agencies Fashion Their Own Horn, and Toot It'

N.Y. Times: 'Still Paging Mr. Salinger'

N.Y. Times: 'As Another Memoir Is Faked, Trust Suffers'

N.Y. Times: 'Films Reach Theaters a Drib Here, Drab There'

Bloomberg: 'Dollar Heads for Biggest Annual Drop Against Yen in Two Decades'

N.Y. Daily News: 'CHURCH-FLEECE PONZI RAP'

Comparing the coverage by the Times and Wall Street Journal.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich will name former Illinois AG Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat.

Read the mid-afternoon versions of that breaking story in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and it's no contest.

The news is that Blago is naming some Foghorn Leghorn guy to the Senate. You gotta hand it to Gov.-not-for-long Blagojevich; he's cleverly playing the race card by replacing a black senator with another black senator. That should blunt some critics. Maybe.

The race angle is for another story. What's relevant here is the WSJ's third graf:

Compare that with the New York Times's second graf:

The snooty Times thumbs its nose at phrases like "thumbing his nose." The Journal consistently beats the Times at analyzing the facts and giving us the gist in colloquial — or at least lively — English that pols and other crooks use when privately figuring out ways to screw the public.

The WSJ is the best daily in the city, obviously for business news, but also for political news. That's because you don't have to read very far into its stories to get the real skinny. After all, its audience is largely those people who skirt the line between being crooks or just barely legal (according to their own lawyers) sharks.

But even if you're not a shark or otherwise scheming just to make money from money, the Journal's still a great read. Sound, detailed, lucid reporting, with plenty of human-interest angles and vivid descriptions, even of callow business people. The paper's a cheap subscription and has a well-tuned website. Besides, it offers a good way for Americans who can't afford million-dollar apartments to try to understand the nefarious activities of those who can.

Considering that the country is falling into a major depression, you commoners (who, after all, will feel the brunt of it) would be better off reading the Journal than the Times. At least you'll get a more accurate and readable measurement of how far you'll fall.

Both papers, incidentally, are likely to still be publishing a year from now. The same can't be said of other papers.