If you're not from the suburbs — and, come on, deep down, though you may not admit it, aren't we all at some level — you may not be familiar with the weekly regional sections of the Times. They're the suburban equivalents of the City section, part of the metropolitan edition of the Sunday paper — as distinct from the national edition — in New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and Westchester. (Factoid: In Rockland County, a suburban county in New York State but west of the Hudson, you get the New Jersey section.) They're actually pretty interesting, with a nice mix of news and features tailored to each of these major suburban areas. Or, at least, that's what they were. And freelancer for the Long Island section forwards along this news:

Only because we want to provide you with all the information you might need for effective stalking of Graydon Carter or Anna Wintour, we feel obliged to pass along an admittedly fairly boring internal Conde Nast memo from earlier in the week. It's real-estate news:

Bill Keller makes it official this morning: Boldface, the Times kinda-sorta gossip column, will end its amusing and sometimes awkward run Friday. (Related question: What is this damned column actually called? In the current design of the Metro section, it's clearly slugged as merely "Boldface." People refer to it as "Boldface Names," which we assumed that was a mere vestigial holdover from previous layouts, when the column actually bore that title. But now Keller is calling it "Boldface Names" as well, and one would assume he knows. So maybe B2 simply gets the name wrong, and we're wrong to follow B2's lead? We have no idea.) Keller also confirms that bearded Boldfacer Campbell Robertson is having "a romance with the Culture Department," which we're taking to mean his rumored move to the Broadway-reporting beat is in fact in the offing. We've asked Campbell for comment; we hope to have something appropriately witty and narrative — perhaps with a showtunes reference! — shortly.

The Gawkerites moved into new digs — did you hear? — painted them dark and depressing, shipped a couple of sofas from upstate, and then ran out of energy. So, as usual, we're hoping for a bailout by a Gawker reader. (When in doubt, we throw ourselves on your mercy.)

We know it's been bugging you. Why can't the Times have freelancers and stringers who are as ethical as its staff reporters? (Because Times staffers are always paragons of ethics, right, David Pogue?) But now there's no more need to worry, kids. A mere three years after the Jayson Blair scandal broke, and a lickety-split year after the Siegal Committee delivered its report, the paper is pleased to announce its finally figured out how to ensure freelancers' integrity. Effective today, all Times freelancers and stringers won't be allowed to work for that paper until they have — of all onerous burdens — completed a questionnaire.

If you've had trouble getting your morning Valleywag fix, I'd like to proudly pass the buck to Network Solutions, who suffered an outage.

The New York Times debuts an exciting major redesign of its website this morning. The fonts are different! It's wider! There are new navigation options! And perhaps most interestingly, there's a new feature for personalized home pages, called MyTimes. Explains NYTimes.com EIC Len Apcar:

Sometimes people send free things. An update to the Valleywag schwag watch:

The tipster who panned Jeremy Liew (saying the AOL exec ruined the already dying Netscape brand) wasn't, of course, being fair. So Jeremy (pictured) took matters into his own hands, e-mailing his former Netscape reports and co-workers asking for positive comments on the post.

Health-and-fitness people tend to be rah-rah enthusiastic sorts — folks like us prefer sloth, booze, and cynicism — and so it's not particularly surprising that Rodale CEO Steve Murphy sent a 10-paragraph, 800-word internal memo congratulating his staff on the company's eight finalists for this year's National Magazine Awards. Still, even so, the hyperbole is a bit, well, over the top:

A memo just out from Bill Keller this afternoon announces that Gerry Marzorati, the editor of The New York Times Magazine since Adam Moss decamped for New York, will get a promotion to assistant managing editor and, with it, a spot on the paper's masthead. It seems as though he'll still be doing his same old job — producing the magazine each week, overseeing the various monthly and quarterly and biannual supplementary magazines. But with the great new title, it seems, comes great responsibility. "We want him to help identify and develop the next generation of editors for the magazines and magazine-like sections of the paper, particularly from within the paper," Keller writes. "We want him to be a bridge between the magazine and the newspaper on big enterprise, lending a hand (or the hands of his editing staff) to Glenn where appropriate on long narrative enterprise that can use a magazine touch, and making the magazine's pages more available as a showcase for projects that originate in the newsroom. We want him to work with the Web on developing a unique Times Magazine presence on our website, including an Internet luxury magazine."

Valleywag is looking to add another writer to expand our coverage of Silicon Valley and its re-inflated bubble insanity. Trade journalists won't be right for this — in truth, we'd rather you get most of your intel from instant messenger.

Lifehacker gives corporate bull some toreador action by featuring Bullfighter, which strips the jargon from documents like a spellchecker. Favorite Bullfighter message: "Cliche, with a hint of arrogance and a dash of pompousness." [Lifehacker]
The Go Flock Yourself for gentle people: New blog "bloat!" kicks off with a rundown of the top Web 2.0 personalities. (Caveat: Nick Denton is so Web 1.0.) [bloat!]
Tech show three-ring circus PodTech.net pulls in a healthy little Series A funding round. "John Furrier got $5.5m?" asks a reader from another dot-com. "That makes the bubble official." Hey, with Furrier interviewing VCs all day, it was bound to happen. [PodTech.net]
Six Apart takes $12 million in VC cash; another $20 million raised by date-auctioning Valleywag Hottie Ben Trott. [Six Apart]
Look ma, I'm on TV! Tune into CNBC at 7:25ish EST (4:25ish PST) to see me examine those Lucy and Larry pics. Analyzing the placement of Lucy Southworth's sweater: it's the hard-hitting investigation you demand from modern media.

The longtime Village Voice publicist, Jessica Bellucci, left the paper after the New Times acquisition, when it was clear management didn't see the need for her job. Village Voice Media HQ in Phoenix — nee New Times Media HQ — has no publicist. So, tell us, you got a better idea on how to make a corporate announcement?

It's like Burning Man with clothes on: South by Southwest Interactive, the confabulous geekfest and opening act for Austin's SXSW Music Festival. This weekend, Valleywag will be on the scene, getting startup owners drunk and telling you all about it.

Noting the creeping incestuous corruption that threatens any tech writer (even a fake one), I decided to either stop the crooked dealing, or just tell you all about it for jealousy points.

You're familiar, naturally, with the work of The Teaching Commission, yes? No? No. Darn. It's a nonprofit put together by a bunch of corporate bigshots dedicated to improving the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers. That neither you nor we have ever heard of this organization could, one might think, be blamed on its "director of strategy and communications." But that couldn't be the case, because the well-managed Daily News has just hired that guy — Josh Greenman is his name — as a member of its editorial board and its new op-ed editor. Greenman wants you to know with a new sheriff in town, "the paper is in the market for sharp, well-argued commentary on city, state, national, and international politics, as well as pieces on culture, sports, and anything else (including humor)." We're confident he'll make sure your writing gets lots of attention.

The good people at The Book Standard pass along this press release, just issued. They assure us it's for real, though, sadly, they did not also send along barf bags:

A memo today from Times deputy managing editor Jon Landman, he of the famous "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now" messsage, announces some backed staffing changes at the paper. The guy who's been running the continuous news desk, Bill Brink, is moving over to be managing editor Play, the new sports mag, and also work on "rich web projects" during the lulls in the quarterly production sked. Jim Roberts becomes the new director of continuous news. But he'll be doing more than Brink did in that capacity, because apparently the Times now thinks this whole online-news thing might be worth paying attention to.

Today Gawker and Defamer proudly announce our latest attempt to distract you from your real life: Gawker Mobile, in which subscribers receive a daily text message sent to your mobile phone from either Gawker or Defamer. Why? Because we're not musically talented enough to compose a Gawker theme song and sell it as a hot new ringtone.