New York Times Offers Buyouts in Effort to Shrink Newsroom

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The New York Times' roughly 1,150-person newsroom is about to get smaller, the paper announced in article published this morning.

In a letter to the staff, Times executive editor Jill Abramson announced she is "seeking 30 managers who are not union members to accept buyout packages."

"There is no getting around the hard news that the size of the newsroom staff must be reduced," Abramson says in the letter, according to the article published this morning.

The paper cites a "volatile" advertising climate as the reason for the need to trim the newsroom, and notes that the New York Times Company's ad revenue shrank by 10.9 percent, according to the latest earnings report.

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The New York Times's Bill Keller Deals With Twitter Identity Crisis

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If there is one place on the Internet where reality and faux personalities reign free, it is Twitter - the rapid pace of the constantly updating network allows mistakes to proliferate tenfold, sending shock-waves across the web much faster than ever before. And, this morning, Bill Keller, the former Editor of the New York Times, unfortunately learned this lesson the hard way.

It all started when Nick Bilton, the newspaper's top tech writer, tweeted last night at around 10:30pm,

"Important piece by @nytkeIler defending @WikiLeaks and a plea to protect the First Amendment: opinion-nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opi..."

(We would paste the entire tweet but it has been deleted by Bilton since then).

The link posted advertises a column by Bilton's ex-boss, entitled 'WikiLeaks, A Post-Post Script,' that apparently defended the notorious hacker-leaks organization led by Julian Assange as the group falls into financial troubles. Except the piece attached (take a look at it here) was completely false... Bill Keller said so himself.


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Bloomberg Did Not Particularly Like His Nanny Clothes in Ad

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Gothamist.com

Who knew an overdose on calories could piss so many people off?

After Mayor Bloomberg announced his soda ban this past week, the blogosphere and Tweet-world exploded with arguments over whether or not this was a legal move against obesity. And the tensions were high: fellow Voice writer James King vented his frustration against the "nanny state" move and wrote, "Mike Bloomberg says his Big Gulp ban doesn't take away the rights of anyone - which is bullshit."

This bubbly opposition culminated in a full-page ad taken out in yesterday's New York Times, paid for by The Center for Consumer Freedom, an activist business group that is funded by restaurants, food companies and individual consumers, according to their website. The page depicts Bloomberg as a Photoshop-ed Nanny, in the vein of Mrs. Doubtfire, hovering over New York City with the declaration of "New Yorkers Need a Mayor, Not a Nanny."

But the Hozziner was more upset about the clothing choice of the ad then its actual political content.

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Mayor Bloomberg Defends Not Releasing 9-1-1 Report With (Another) Newspaper Analogy

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Sam Levin
Mayor Mike Bloomberg responding to reporters' questions at a press conference today.
Recently, we've noticed that Mayor Mike Bloomberg likes to respond to reporters' questions in a way that he thinks, perhaps, might grab their attention best: newspaper analogies.

While on the defense about a controversial issue, Bloomberg seems to enjoy taking a combative stance with reporters at press conferences by directly bringing the newspaper industry into the discussion. Last month, he defended the barricades at Zuccotti Park by telling the Voice that we should go around thanking police officers for protecting our right to ask the mayor questions. In February, he told reporters that the surveillance of Muslims is necessary to protect them and free press in general.

At a press conference today, he used this technique (maybe he wanted to make sure reporters were really listening?) to defend his administration's position on two controversial issues: his refusal to release a 9-1-1 report and his persistence on releasing teacher evaluation data.

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What Nick Kristof Didn't Tell You in his Sunday Column About Backpage.com

Categories: New York Times

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Kristof
On Sunday, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote about the harrowing experiences of a young woman who had been savagely attacked and forced into a life of prostitution at only 16 years of age. The men who attacked her were prosecuted, and one is serving 25 years.

In his piece, however, Kristof took aim at Backpage.com, a site owned by the company that owns this newspaper. Kristof wrote that when the woman was 16, the pimps offered her for sale on the site.

This claim was the very basis for his column.

And it is wrong.

For our full response, please see the story we have posted this morning, and you'll see what else Kristof failed to tell you about Backpage.com.

New York Times Criticizes NYPD In Editorial; NYPD Says Times Is 'Wrong'

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The New York Times commended Attorney General Eric Holder in an editorial this weekend for investigating the NYPD's Muslim surveillance practices, and called on the Justice Department to examine some of the department's other practices, including stop-and-frisk, the marijuana arrest initiative, and pepper-spraying at Occupy Wall Street. "The Justice Department should also review other practices -- chief among them, stop-and-frisk -- that have virtually eliminated the presumption of innocence and that treat citizens, and even entire communities, as suspect even after they are proved innocent," the Times wrote.

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Fox News Compares New York Times Email Mishap to the Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal

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In a mishap that sent tremors through the media consciousness, the New York Times earlier today sent out an email that was first attributed to spam, possibly a hack, and then acknowledged to be from the Times. It was supposed to go to 300 subscribers; instead it went to 8 million. It was, as they say, an accident. But was it, as FoxNews writes, the New York Times's Anthony Weiner moment? Let us investigate the email. It went like this:

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Scientists Study Jill Abramson's Speech, Find it Unusual

Linguists have actually taken measures to study the famously unusual speech patterns of New York Times executive editor and noted dog-lover Jill Abramson. A video of Abramson talking, in case you're unaware:

You'll be shocked to know that scientists at Penn have found that Abramson's speech differs from other people's.

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Jill Abramson's Newspaper Glowingly Reviews Her Puppy Book [Updated: There Is a Second NYT Review]

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Rosie Gray
Our copy of the Puppy Diaries.
The New York Times review of New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson's The Puppy Diaries is in. They got the guy who wrote Marley & Me to do it, and he loved the "worthy addition to the crowded so-called dogoir genre." Amazing.

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The New York Times' Luxury Rich Person Toilet Review: A Review

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The Numi, doing its thing.
At the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print" sometimes translates to "All the toilets that are fit to review." And that includes the Numi, a $6,400 luxury toilet made by Kohler. The Numi is basically a spaceship for your bathroom. Only the finest commode will do for all the opulent rich one-percenters out there. It can do literally everything ever:

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