Like the New York Times but don’t like paying a ton of money to subscribe to that paper of record? Today’s your lucky day. $1 subscriptions for two months of digital NYT on Groupon today. Whoot. (ht @Romenesko)
The phone call the night before he left [Turkey for Syria], there was screaming and slamming on the phone in discussions with editors. It was at this time that he called his wife and gave his last haunting directive that if anything happens to me I want the world to know the New York Times killed me.Ed Shadid • Speaking at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee’s convention on Sunday about the fate of his cousin, storied New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid, who died not long after he allegedly made this statement. The New York Times disputes the report, with a spokesperson saying this: “With respect, we disagree with Ed Shadid’s version of the facts. The Times does not pressure reporters to go into combat zones.” (His widow has chosen to stay silent on the matter.) No matter who’s telling the truth here, Anthony Shadid’s work meant a lot to many people, and it goes without saying that we’d rather Anthony was still with us.
[Chairman Arthur] Sulzberger, working with the board and search firm Spencer Stuart, initially put together a list of fewer than a dozen candidates to lead the company, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Executives on the list who have been discussed included aspirational picks such as Google Inc.’s Eric Schmidt and Eileen Naughton, the people said. Schmidt’s digital-media credentials were attractive to Sulzberger, who wants an executive with significant online experience, according to the people.
Schmidt, 57, stepped down as CEO of Mountain View, California-based Google in April 2011, while remaining chairman of the company. Naughton, a top sales executive at the Web- search giant, was president of Time Warner Inc.’s magazine division before joining Google in 2006.
Sulzberger declined to comment on the CEO search, as did Google and Akamai. The Google candidates are unlikely to take the job, one of the people familiar with the situation said.
Schmidt may just be a pie-in-the-sky candidate for the Times, but as Josh Sternberg pointed out in a March article, media companies are starting to think like tech companies. If Schmidt, on an off chance, decided to move from Mountain View to NYC, it’d be the most blatant admission yet that this is the case. (Now, by the way, might be a good time to look back at the New York Magazine’s piece on the departure of Janet Robinson, the company’s last CEO.)
Anthony Bourdain tends to get noticed. The chef turned televised tour guide is macho but not overbearing, profane without being coarse, and tall and handsome. How handsome? I was at an outdoor social event with my wife some years ago when he passed by, and she was so transfixed by him that she walked into a bush. I hate him for that, but am unsurprised that his charmed life is about to add a new chapter.The NYT’s David Carr • Writing about how Anthony Bourdain is all dreamy and stuff. Oh, and his new gig with CNN.
Meet Nick Bergus. He’s a pretty cool guy who once linked to an odd product on Facebook as a bit of a joke — a 55-gallon barrel of lube from Amazon.com. Ha ha, funny, right? But the joke was on him, as Facebook’s algorithms started featuring his smiling face in personalized ads featuring the giant barrel of lube. From there, his story spread — first to his personal blog, then to Gawker, with an amazing headline. Now, Bergus’ somewhat embarrassing (but admittedly kind of awesome) tale is on the front page of the New York Times. All because he once linked to a giant barrel of lube. (photo by Stephen Mally/NYT)
» A corporate whodunit: Months after a high-profile ouster, New York Magazine takes a look back at the circumstances that led to Robinson’s departure. Who was the person who actually pulled the knife? Was it Gonzalez? Did Sulzberger do it himself, or was it his ambitious cousin Michael Golden, who fought with Robinson over the potential sale of the Boston Globe? And what role did digital exec Martin Nisenholtz, who fought a losing battle against Robinson over paywalls, play? And let’s be honest: For all we know, did the butler do it?
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A critic’s notebook article on Monday about the prevalence of standing ovations at Broadway shows described incorrectly the quickness with which audience members appeared to be on their feet at a performance of the current revival of “Death of a Salesman.” Their ovation seemed to occur within a millisecond — one-thousandth of a second — not a megasecond, which is one million seconds.The New York Times • Writing a correction in a piece on standing ovations. Excuse us why we stand up and applaud this one for a megasecond. (ht Hypervocal)
A Republican political branding group, Strategic Perception Inc., is working on releasing a ton of anti-Obama salvo in September or so in the form of a film titled “Next,” in an effort to make the president look as bad as humanly possible — bringing up such good memories as Jeremiah Wright and the one time that he shook hands with the Russian president. (The voiceover they want to use? Jon Voight.) But Republican ad strategist Fred Davis, working with TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, didn’t count on one thing: The New York Times got a hold of it first. Read the whole document describing the ad. It’s comedic.
An obituary on Wednesday about the violinist Roman Totenberg repeated an error from a 1935 Times report on a concert in Washington at which Mr. Totenberg made his United States debut. He performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major — not in D Minor. (There is no such Beethoven violin concerto.) And the obituary misstated the surname of the pianist in the Alma Trio, which also included Mr. Totenberg and the cellist Gabor Rejto. He was Adolph Baller, not Bailer.In which the New York Times corrects a 77-year-old error. (ht Poynter)
Front pages: 5/2/03 vs. 5/2/11
HT @nytjim
It’s almost funny, how sad it all is.
In other words: Bush declared a major victory, while Obama scored one.
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The New York Times Company reported on Thursday a large gain in first-quarter net income, driven largely by the sale of its regional newspapers, the sale of part of its stake in a New England sports group and an increase in circulation revenue at its flagship newspaper.
Net income for the quarter was $42.1 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with $5.4 million, or 4 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Nearly 70 percent of the company’s net income in the quarter came from the sale of its Regional Media Group, which yielded the company a large tax benefit.
Of note: The company’s digital subscription picture looked rosy, but operating profit was still down because of a decline in advertising in both print and digital forms. The company has nearly half a million digital subscribers to the New York Times and International Herald Tribune products, and another 11,000 to its Boston Globe site.
Here’s a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof • In an opinion piece on the death of soldiers after they return home. A few other key stats — more former soldiers have committed suicide after returning home than died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq combined, being a veteran doubles the risk of suicide, and being a veteran between ages 17 and 24 quadruples the risk. Yikes. Read up on this disturbing trend.
Speaking of amateur superheroes, The New York Times describes the man in this video, referred to as “Snackman,” as such: “He was cool incarnate. No weapons. No visible bloodshed. Not even a loud word. A newcomer to the city, munching on chips, and a poker face for the ages.” Real name? Charles Sonder. Real snacks? Pringles and Gummi-Bears.
That’s Apple’s Tim Cook. Visiting a Foxconn production line in Zhengzhou, China. Not many details known about his visit yet, but basically the Apple CEO is in the midst of some PR cleanup after a string of controversial reports about Apple’s manufacturing processes — some of which have been proven somewhat suspect. (photo by Bowen Liu/Apple Inc., via Bloomberg News)
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