The Times may have backed off from its comparison of Caroline Kennedy to Sarah Palin last week, but there was no retreat in today's coverage of the senate hopeful's finance secrets.

The Times accurately compared Caroline Kennedy's "controlled" press strategy to that of Sarah Palin. A Kennedy supporter buttressed that view on MSNBC. So why did the Times delete the comparison forever?

Caroline Kennedy is seeking a senate seat with few qualifications. She's also close (maybe very close!) friends with the publisher of the Times. So we're keeping an eye on the paper's coverage.

Don't even bother to leave a comment at the Times local news blog suggesting a sexy patrician affair between the Senator-to-be and the publisher of the Times.

Prospective senator Caroline Kennedy is "close friends" (ahem) with Times honcho Arthur Sulzberger, and has maybe been feeding the paper scoops, but apparently some Times writers are now trying to publish damaging dirt. Awkward!

Caroline Kennedy, do you seriously want to be a Senator? Don't you know people are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about, say, your marriage?

Look, a "note from Arthur." He probably wants to wish us merry Christmas, right? No, he is announcing that he will give none of you a raise in 2009.

Though apologist analyst were apparently out in force, and though the firm bragged about selling $1 million in Barack Obama knicknacks (whee!), there was no hiding the New York Times Company's financial distress at a bank's media conference in New York Tuesday. The most alarming report in the wake of the event: Word that the Times will try to renegotiate at least some of its more than $1 billion in debt and is preparing to do without much of a $400 million credit line expiring in May.

♦ Roger Ailes (left) has renewed his contract with News Corp., which will keep him by Rupert Murdoch's side for at least five more years (and keep him running the show at Fox News for at least one more presidential election). [NYT]
♦ New York has fired longtime restaurant critic Gael Greene. [Feedbag]
♦ The Runway battle continues: Lifetime has sued NBC over claims it is blocking the cable channel from airing future episodes of the reality TV show. [NYP]

After two years as a reporter at the Portland Oregonian, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III will return to New York to work at his family's Times, Portland alternative paper Williamette Week is reporting. Sulzberger wouldn't comment for the paper, but his return to New York appears at first glance unrelated to staff cuts at the Oregonian. So what's the 28-year-old son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (pictured) up to? In all likelihood, trying to help to stabilize not only a faltering newspaper company but a ruptured family.

After Moody's threatened to downgrade the New York Times Company's debt to junk status Thursday, Standard & Poors went ahead and actually made such a move, bringing to reality a development foretold fully two months ago by Bloomberg. The Times Company is only now considering reducing its outsized dividend to shareholders, including most prominently to the Sulzberger family that controls the company. Having failed one test, involving credit, the Sulzbergers now face another, involving their hold on arguably the most important journalism franchise in the country.

♦ Not surprisingly, ratings for SNL this past weekend exceeded expectations. Some 10 million people tuned in for Tina Fey's Sarah Palin skit. [WSJ, THR]
♦ Michelle Obama will appear on Jon Stewart on Wednesday. [HuffPo]
♦ Beverly Hills Chihuahua took the top spot at the weekend box office with $29 million. [Mojo]
♦ Joe Hagan takes a long look at the Times-owning Sulzbergers in this week's issue of New York. [NYM]
♦ AdAge has released its list of the 10 best magazines. [AdAge]
♦ Campbell Brown is working out nicely for CNN: Ratings are substantially higher than they were for Paula Zahn and she's beating Keith Olbermann most nights, too. [NYT]
♦ Ratings for Desperate Housewives continue to decline. [TVDecoder]
♦ HBO's Entourage has been renewed for a sixth season. [THR]

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. hasn't had the easiest year: the paper's revenues are declining, hedge funds have taken hold of two seats on the Times Co. board, and he moved out of his Central Park West apartment when he split up with his wife of more than 20 years. Hopefully he'll be in a better mood today when Bill Keller wheels in a giant birthday cake to celebrate Sulzberger's 57th birthday. Others celebrating today: Art work fixture (and Studio Museum chief curator) Thelma Golden is 43. NBA commissioner David Stern is 66. Shubert Organization chairman Gerald Schoenfeld is 84. Bonnie Hunt is 44. Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli is 50. Retired Rangers star Mike Richter is turning 42. And Scott Baio is 47 years old.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. met with the paper's employees yesterday to reassure them that everything is just fine at the Gray Lady and they have absolutely nothing to worry about even though bad-ass hedge funder Phil Falcone and now Mexican mogul Carlos Slim have significant stakes in the company. Sulzberger also demonstrated that he's totally in touch with what the kids are listening to these days on those newfangled little portable music players manufactured by Apple: His slideshow was set to the background of Coldplay's "Clocks." And some employees describe him as "tone deaf"? [NYO]

For some strange reason, the Post's Page Six today published a long item on the book Black & White And Dead All Over, a newsroom roman a clef by a 40-year Timesman. The timing is a bit odd because this book was reviewed in the Post in late July, around the time we posted our second item on it, and according to Amazon it's been on sale since July 29. But Page Six does reveal the book contains a hard-to-believe interaction we somehow missed, between elder Arhur "Punch" Sulzberger and his son Arthur Jr.:

Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. looks increasingly backed into a corner. Bloomberg yesterday marshaled a wide array of evidence, including quotes from analysts and the mounting cost to hedge against a Times Co. bond default, to establish that the company's bonds are close to falling to junk status. The already-bludgeoned stock quickly fell another 6 percent. Implicated in the credit deterioration: The company's decision last year to hike its dividend payout 23 percent, a move no doubt popular with Sulzberger's stockholdling relatives but one that is gobbling up nearly all the company's free cash flow. The family has already conceded board seats to the corporate marauders from Harbinger Capital Partners and an affiliated partnership, and Harbinger now controls nearly 20 percent of the company. Sulzberger faces some unsavory choices — cut the dividend, slash costs (probably via layoffs) or flirt with selling junk bonds — all of which carry the whiff of defeat. He is running out of room to maneuver.

Though Bloomberg News' decision to hire former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine is probably bad news for the news wire's tyrant editor, Matthew Winkler, it seems likely to open up opportunities for recently-installed Bloomberg executive Dan Doctoroff, a former Lehman Brothers dealmaker. The Times sees hints Bloomberg is getting ready to make some acquisitions:

"Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and his wife, Gail Gregg, have decided to separate, they said in a statement issued Friday. Mr. Sulzberger, 56, who is also publisher of The Times, and Ms. Gregg, also 56 and a painter and writer, said the decision to end their marriage was amicable."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (or "Pinch") is the chairman and publisher of the New York Times, which his family has owned for more than a century.

Last week, Keith Kelly claimed that the New York Times will finally end the long national joke that is TimesSelect—you just know Maureen Dowd is cursing those Freakonomics guys right now for being able to refuse to have their blog behind the TimesSelect pay wall!—and a quick look at the just-out July numbers confirms that the core group of 225,000 or so people who signed up to pay for the service in the first place are pretty much the same people who still subscribe. (Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.) Whenever it does get shut down, it'll be a speck of egg on the faces of Times CEO Janet Robinson and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. But the failure of TimesSelect is probably the least of their worries right now: Their ad revenue, especially in the Regional Media Group (all those little papers they own in places like Lakeland, Florida) and classifieds across the board, is having a bit of a summer slump.