• Funny People debuted at No. 1 at the box office this weekend, although it was still the worst opening for an Adam Sandler movie in five years. [Reuters]
• Mort Zuckerman is selling shares of his real estate company to pump $50 million into the Daily News to pay for new printing presses. [WSJ]
• Lou Dobbs has become a PR nightmare for CNN. Presumably the fact that Media Matters is airing an anti-Dobbs commercial won't help matters. [AP, HP]
• Is the peace pact between Olbermann and O'Reilly a sham? [TDB]
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board of directors. [BN]

Catherine Mathis, the New York Times Co's chief PR person, is leaving the company. Her next job is bound to be easier. The full staff memo and a slight appreciation, below.

The New York Times Co. is striking back (in letter form) against Michael Hirschorn's excellent Atlantic essay on the paper's gloomy immediate future. Below, a factual look at the NYT Co.'s financial future:

By year's end, the New York Times will cut 100 newsroom positions, executive editor Bill Keller announced this morning at his regular "Throw Stuff At Bill" meeting. "At the end of the year, the newsroom will be smaller than it is now," Keller told the group, warning that staffers should prepare for layoffs. "The newsroom leadership will share in the sacrifice," he said, according to an attendee. When the Times announced the elimination of a dozen support positions last fall, Keller said the paper would cut "a few management jobs in administrative areas," a far cry from today's announcement. Despite the planned cuts, Keller said today, the Times will still have 150 more newsroom staffers than any other paper; spokeslady Catherine Mathis tells Jeff Bercovici the newsroom's staff is currently 1,332. "As you know, we have not been reducing our staff. It's been quite the opposite," she told him. "We've been increasing the number of newsroom staff. [But] right now we're in the midst of a very difficult time in the business." Well that's odd. During the December cuts, Keller said something completely different!

Guess what? New York Times flack Catherine Mathis was totally promoted today! According to a Times press release, the company has made Mathis a senior vice president of corporate communications; she was a lowly old vice president just yesterday! "Catherine is the consummate communications professional. She has a deep understanding of our business and, under her leadership, we have taken a smart, strategic approach to media and investor relations," NYTCo chair Janet Robinson says in the release. We can't really argue with that, seeing as how the release also announces a promotion for the paper's general counsel, but just breezes through his CV. Now that's owning the story.

"It's been kind of a depressing day," said Bill O'Meara, president of the Newspaper Guild of New York, when we asked him how Times staffers were taking the news today of layoffs in the newsroom. "It went all through the building very quickly, people were not happy," he said.

When we spoke to New York Times flack Catherine Mathis on Tuesday, she told us that the "$14 to 16 million" in planned staff reductions for this fourth quarter of the year were "not unusual." Mathis said she had "in front of me a chart that goes back to the first quarter of '06 and we've had buyouts in place in every quarter over the last seven quarters." This is an excellent example of providing selective information!

New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis wouldn't disclose today where the $14-16 million in staff cuts will take place during the next three months. She did say: "Nearly every quarter we do have buyout expenses, this is not unusual—certainly not the largest that we've had. For every quarter, I have in front of me a chart that goes back to the first quarter of '06 and we've had buyouts in place in every quarter over the last seven quarters. We have an ongoing program of focusing on costs and efficiency. What we've said is we'll continue to focus on reducing costs, improving the efficiency of our business, taking into account our long-term goals, the quality of our journalism, and making sure our operation functions smoothly." Update: Ms. Mathis now says that "most of the reductions are associated with the consolidation of the two printing plants in College Point and Edison, NJ." But we don't understand why that would be the bulk of reductions in Q4; for one thing, the sale of the Edison plant closed way back during Q2.

Now that every department at the New York Times has moved into the new building, you're probably wondering where everyone has gone! So let's go floor-by-floor, shall we? And as we work our way up, we'll see who really matters in the Times organization.