[Ed. note*cough* irony *cough* joke *cough.*] "Reader" email from the tips box:
"I just glimpsed that rather handsome devil, Graydon Carter, as I was passing one of the many gilded mirrors lining my hallway after returning home from yet another of my fabulous, empyreal parties. I must say he was quite dapper in blue denim, Oxford shirt, and modish Paul Smith blazer. His silver coif shining brilliantly in his own astral-like glow. Now I must preemptively admonish you for harboring the thought that I am indulging in my own vanity. May I remind you that Narcissus was not vain, merely mistaken.

NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger's moose, explained: "Mr. Sulzberger instilled a management-guru-influenced corporate culture evident in off-site meetings that made some attendees from the news side cringe. He asked executives to read books such as 'The Leadership Moment,' a series of stories about life-changing incidents. Chief Executive Russell T. Lewis roller-bladed into one meeting to show how the Times was speeding up decision making. Executives sometimes award each other a small beanbag moose to recognize particularly probing questions, a reference to a fable in which a moose is asked to dinner and no one questions why. 'My father and his generation were defined by the Great Depression and World War II, and it created a very strong command-and-control culture,' says Mr. Sulzberger. 'My generation is defined more by revolutions...We deal with the moose.' One moose sits on his office computer, another on a TV set."

From the Daily News' report on the NYT open forum regarding Jayson Blair: "In a surreal moment that reminded one staffer of Shari Lewis' old TV show, Sulzberger produced a stuffed toy moose that he sometimes trots out as a symbol of open communication. [Ed.the Moose of Communication?] Its use struck some in the audience as a tone-deaf and patronizing gesture. Sulzberger handed the moose to Raines, who laid it aside." A stuffed moose? That must have been a gift from daddy Sulzberger. Maybe it came with the newspaper. Oh, wait! I get it! This whole Jayson Blair thing was just one big "moosecommunication"! HA HA HAokay, I'll stop now.
Times chief says he's not quitting [NY Daily News]

Manhattan Judge Orders M.T.A. to Roll Back Fare Increase
By Jayson Blair

Another tip: "In this week's Village Voice there's an article called "Hacking the 'Matrix' Master Code: Reloaded Questions" by Jane Dark. In the opening graph "she" writes, "Someone around here is writing a whole book on the first film, and it won't be the second or third such offering." Who's writing a book about the Matrix? Voice contributor and poet Joshua Clover (for the British Film Institute's series Contemporary Classics series). And who is Joshua Clover? The writer who sometimes goes by the pen name...Jane Dark. It's an open secret in the rock critic community, mentioned on Rockcritics.com and other places that Joshua chooses to write as Jane from time to time (often for the same publications). Is this the first case of "auto-log rolling in our time?"

A reader suggestion: "In the grand tradition you started with "zeta-jonesing" I humbly submit that we give Jayson Blair equal treatment (after all, he's only going to get a cool $1 million to give his side of the story):
— I 'Jayson Blaired' my resume to get a freelance gig at the New Yorker
— I 'Jayson Blaired' my boss into sending me on a business trip to London
(and then I partied in Manhattan and just phoned in "from the UK")
— I 'Jayson Blaired' my way to a free bottle of Cristal at Spa
— I 'Jayson Blaired' my way into Nobu and zeta-jonesed a fistful of eel"
A splendid idea! Intern! Bring me the double-secret hotline phone to Mr. Safire!

The NY Press's Matt Taibbi, who once had an obsession with NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, admits that he once called publisher Arthur Sulzberger's office "pretending to be Friedman himself, [and] screamed at Sulzberger's secretary." ("I told her that I was pissed, that "Arthur better get his car out of my fucking parking space" and that "golf this weekend [was] out of the fucking question.") Taibbi points out that Friedman seems to have an ongoing problem with metaphors: "The hallmark of the Friedman method is a single metaphor, stretched to column length, that makes no objective sense at all and is layered with other metaphors that make still less sense...When you read Friedman, you are likely to encounter such creatures as the Wildebeest of Progress and the Nurse Shark of Reaction, which in paragraph one are galloping or swimming as expected, but by the conclusion of his argument are testing the waters of public opinion with human feet and toes, or flying (with fins and hooves at the controls) a policy glider without brakes that is powered by the steady wind of George Bush's vision."
Cage match [NY Press]

· Top 10 signs something is wrong at the New York Times
· Newsroom in crisis
· Romenesko today: 18 links to stories about Jayson Blair. 2 links to stories not about Jayson Blair (both contextual references in pieces about Jayson Blair.)
· "A Blair tell-all could net $1 million," reports The Post's Keith Kelly. The problem with a big nonfiction book by Blair? "Who would pay for the fact checking?"

Comedian and Daily Show host Jon Stewart on Jayson Blair: "As a fake newsman myself, it s always encouraging to see the profession catching on...If I can inspire one guy to make up all his sources, well then I ve done my job."
Fake newsman speaks truth [Observer]

Reader gossip about Jayson Blair, the NYT reporter who resigned after it was discovered that he fabricated story details:
· Between the linesthe thin, white lines: "Of course the true Jayson Blair story isn't really race and isn't really ethics. It's drugs. Dunno if you met him...but the poor guy had a fatal coke enthusiasm that clearly became a serious problem - the clear reason not only for the unexplained absences but also for the relentless deception, narcissistic fabulism, and so on. Bad of the Times not to spot and stop his journalistic excesses sooner. Worse not to spot and address the excesses that were the root cause."
· "I worked with Blair and i can tell you that his firing probably had nothing to do with his race. He was by far the most inept reporter I ever worked with. He came to my televisied event (with CEO's, politicos and VIPs) wearing jeans and a dirty sweatshirt. He lead us on for weeks after the event, promising to include a mention of us in a feature story he was working on and in the end he ran zilch. Eventually we just gave up on him."

IWantMedia reports a new lifestyle magazine aimed at Asian women called "Audrey" is being launched. (Am I missing the significance of the seemingly arbitrary name? Is this a companion mag to the Austrian laddie mag, "Bob"? Or the Brazilian transvestite glossy, "Marilyn"?) Audrey's mission statement: "Audrey magazine provides entertaining and informative articles on Asian celebrities, designers, fashion and beauty to which all women can relate." Update: Howard says he thinks it's named after the founder's daughter.
Audrey Magazine [via Nuggets via IWantMedia]

Jayson Blair, the NYT reporter who resigned after it was discovered that he had fabricated story details, has been the subject of much controversy this weekend. First, the definitive NYT response: "Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception." 10,000 words. Little mention of race. Everyone else: 10,000 words; and it's all about race. Newsweek's Seth Mnookin: "Blair's close mentoring relationship with Times managing editor Gerald Boyd, who is also black, was not explored in depth in the paper...Blair was known to brag about his close personal relationships with both Boyd and Raines, and the young writer frequently took cigarette breaks with Boyd." Aha conspiracy of smokers! William Safire responds today in an op-ed: "Now about the supposed cost of diversity: A newspaper is free to come down on the side of giving black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose."

Regarding the article on "Friends of Eggers" site owner Gary Baum, which the Atlantic spiked (reportedly under pressure from Eggers), an Atlantic insider writes, "Eggers did not 'appeal' to the Atlantic for anything; he'd been trying, for reasons that had very little to do with the article and a lot to do with his paranoia and self-involvement, to get the article canceled for months, and what he did after his sister died was mount a campaign in which he asked everyone he knew in New York to put pressure on [the Atlantic]. Most of those people refused. Someone also put in an anonymous call to Gary's mom, frantically asking her to get Gary to take down the site. Which is fucked up, frankly. We decided not to run the article because the tone...was all wrong after what had happened, and it would have required a completely different article to get it right. There was really nothing else to do."

Radar's putting out a weekly email newsletter authored by me. ("Me", as in ME.) Like Gawker, but snark...like Gawker. Gawker without the Lower East Side restaurant reports, complaints about the smoking ban, and Anna-in-the-elevator sightings. But with added L.A., Bush administration, and J-Lo. Sign up below.
Register: Radar Report [Radar]

Slate's Jack Shafer on Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, et al.: "...the wrong takeaway from the Blair-Cooke-Glass-Forman disasters is to assume that young people can't be trusted to report. Instead (and how about this for drawing a happy face in a mound of manure?), their sordid experiences in the journalism trade indicate that so many young people get caught making stuff up because you can't get away with it for very long. Journalism ain't perfect, but it loves to eat its sinners."
The Jayson Blair project [Slate]

The jeans and the blazer...talk about business casual gone terribly awry...

From the Delusions of Grandeur Department: Here's Graydon Carter's new Editor's Letter pic. Now, we're not saying we had anything to do with it, or that Graydon actually reads Gawker... But, hey, it's New Yorkwhy not take credit for it anyway? (Even though the picture was taken on March 22ndtwo weeks before we made fun of the old pics.) I actually like the new one better. The old ones were too serious. You just can't evoke gravitas while talking about smoking bans and Hollywood, no matter how furrowed your brow or grayscale your Annie Leibowitz portrait.

Edge of your seat suspense! Cliff-hanging last minute upsets! Anna in the elevator! (Or so I'm told.) It's the National Magazine Awards! The NYT's David Carr reports that Parenting won the coveted Award for General Excellence for a magazine with a circulation of over 2 million. (Even the Editor-in-Chief was surprised.
In surprise, Parenting wins top award for magazines [NYT]

We were still trying to figure out if Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's editor's letter pics were photoshopped to reflect his mood and the topic of the editorial (smile = early 20th century Hollywood; frown = war), so we had someone remove the pixelation. The original revealed a younger, slimmer Carter.

NYT Editor Howell Raines, on Jayson Blair, the 20-something African American reporter who submitted stories with excerpts from other papers and resigned when the NYT began investigating: "The last thing we want to do is demonize Jayson Blair. He wrote a public letter apologizing for a journalistic lapse in integrity. He apologized for it. I can accept that. But my concern is for our readers and our integrity." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz responds, "Look, this was a promising young black reporter. I wonder if a middle-aged hack would have gotten away with 50 mistakes and still be at that job." (Blair also had a history of factual inaccuracies in his stories, although he had recently improved.) Raines fires back, "If someone wants to have some unbecoming speculation on their television show, that's their prerogative. We have a diverse staff, and we manage them in a very evenhanded way."
Off the record [Observer]