In your friendly Friday media column: the NYT's standards editor retires, a Russian journokabob scandal, Time Warner really loves this "magazine" business, and the magazine industry has big plans, sure.

Craig Whitney, the man who kept all the thug motherfuckers in check as the Standards Editor of the New York Times, is retiring after more than four decades at the paper. You can read a very gracious speech about him by Bill Keller by clicking here, or just read this excerpt, which is Whitney's career highlight:

And along with Phil Corbett, his successor, he has worried about all the words that appear not only in the paper but, now, on the web (a recent exchange with a department head involved the appearance of the word "pooping" in one of our sites).

Poop well in whatever you move on to, Mr. Whitney.


Just like in America, Russia has cranky old ex-military wingnuts. But over there they seem to have slightly more influence! Example: Someone wrote a story ("media" peg alert!) about a kabob house called the "Anti-Soviet Kabob House." Uproar ensued amongst Soviet wingnuts! Somebody else wrote about how ridiculous this was and now he's subjected to even more intense wingnuttery, to the point where his life may be in danger. The moral of the story is, God Bless America, where our wingnuts kill journalists less often than their wingnut counterparts elsewhere do.


Is Time Inc. for sale? No, says Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. He said at a conference that they'd still have it five years from now. Although if he could go back in time two years and sell it he totally would, in a flash.


Boy, the magazine industry sure isn't going to let Apple come between it and its readers, like Apple did to the music industry with iTunes. No way. The magazine industry wants to make its own iTunes-type thing, to cut out the middleman, and grab the dough. Well, you know how it is. Five years from now you walk back into the same bar and there's the magazine industry, sitting on the same stool, sipping the same beer, still talking about how it's gonna make that awesome new iTunes thing for magazines. Good luck, guys.