The New York Times has written another letter to the NYPD urging the department to stop harassing journalists and better inform their employees on the rights of members of the press. The letter, obtained by Capital New York and addressed to top NYPD spokesman and wooden Italian marionette Paul Browne, details further police interference and abuse, and strongly urges the department to "not underestimate our resolve in working to rectify these issues." more ›

Yesterday the Times profiled Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, the rapidly gentrifying boulevard and the "epicenter of renaissance" previously seen in Park Slope and Williamsburg. Though there are plenty of residents in the historically black and Hasidic neighborhood that welcome the influx of students, young professionals and families, a Crown Heights native and Medgar Evers professor notes,"There's a social cohesion gap right now." And Nick Juravich, a Columbia grad student and Crown Heights blogger, tells us, "There definitely is to certain degrees. But there are also signs that the groups living in the neighborhood are becoming remarkably integrated." more ›

Was the New York Times' precious email list of subscribers just hacked? Are you and your children safe from "hackers" who will try to "hack" away at your "cyber limbs" until you bleed binary code? When will we finally stop trusting the Times and just succumb to the warm, hermetic embrace of News Corp? An email that lots of important people received today from "nytimes@email.newyorktimes.com" told them they had cancelled their home delivery subscription, even if they hadn't, and urged them to reconsider. Via Twitter, the New York Times denies sending it, and calls it a "spam message." Can you win a Pulitzer for "Most Polite, Grammatically Correct Spam email?" more ›

Earlier today nearly 20 protesters were arrested in the atrium of the World Financial Centre following a protest against Goldman Sachs. This video appears to show a credentialed photographer attempting to photograph the arrests of protesters, being pushed back with a baton by one NYPD officer. Another officer continues to block his line of sight. "Touch me again," the photographer warns the officer before taking his name and badge number. The officer continues to block his vision, and he pulls out an iPhone to document what was occurring. more ›

Journalists widely reported being kept from last week's NYPD raid of Zuccotti Park. 10 reporters have been arrested in New York since the protests began, and several have claimed that they were injured by NYPD officers while on the job. In response, New York Times Company Vice President and Assistant General Counsel George Freeman has written a letter to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne condemning the actions of the police and requesting an "immediate meeting" with Browne and Commissioner Ray Kelly. It is signed by representatives from the New York Post, the Daily News, NBC, the Associated Press, and Dow Jones among others. more ›

While the rest of the city is occupied with, oh, you know, revolutionary stuff or whatever, the most important news of the century has just been announced: current New York Times dining editor Pete Wells will be the paper's new restaurant critic. Officially. more ›

After two years and many stars, Sam Sifton is no longer the restaurant critic at the Times. Which brings us back to the oft-asked question: Why is the Times critic so powerful? How is it that, in an age of Yelp and the Googagat Survey, when everyone and their grandmother seems to put their feelings about their meals onto the Facebook, people still are so caught up in the opinions of one man or woman working from a desk across the street from the Port Authority? There are lots of reasons, but a post on Zagat Buzz today that talks about Sifton from the perspective of a restaurateur under review dances around a major part of it. The Times critic still matters because people and restaurateurs seem to want it to (even if they don't like the results). So the question then becomes: What is the Times doing about its power? more ›

Just as we predicted following the announcement that Sam Sifton will be leaving his post as restaurant critic at the Times, there's been a whole lot of speculation about what will happen next. But is getting paid to eat out every night really the dream job that it appears to be? Maybe not so much. more ›

After a relatively brief stint of just two years, New York Times food critic Sam Sifton announced today that he's moving on up to become the national editor of the Times (you can read Jill Abramson's full statement here). There is no word as of yet on his replacement, but at least we know he wasn't fired. Also, this means fans of reading about fine dining will, once again, get to indulge in the age old game of "restaurant critics, what are they good for?" while not checking out all those new fall openings. Let the wild speculation commence! more ›

In a post on his New York Times blog "The Conscience of a Liberal," Nobel-prize winning economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman asks, "Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?" He then goes on to explain why: "What happened after 9/11…was deeply shameful. Te [sic] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heros like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror." Krugman then declares that "the memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it." more ›

In case that paywall didn't tip you off already, the New York Times wants you to know that you're too poor to be laying your calloused, peasant hands on its newspaper. Two stories in today's Times are for Rich People's Monocles Only, and make that whole "bartenders make a house party sophisticated" trend seem tackier than forgetting coasters on your Gulfstream. more ›

These days it's just not enough to cough up $40K to ensure that little Sebastian Higgenbottom IV goes to all of his classes at Riverdale Country School or Dalton, or one of the city's other prestigious high schools. Now you need an equal amount of cash to make sure he actually learns things there. The Times reports that "prepping," which sounds awfully close to "studying really hard with a tutor," is costing parents of overachieving students up to $795 per 50 minutes, and as much as $35K for the entire year. Kids: just talk your parents into giving you $40K a year by dropping out. For those of you that don't have tutors, that's a savings of almost 50 percent! more ›

For the first time in its storied history a woman will soon be running the Gray Lady. Effective September 6, Bill Keller will no longer be the Executive Editor of The New York Times, he will be replaced by Jill Abramson. The move is a major milestone for the paper, where not too long ago women were few and far between. more ›

Crashing with friends, friends of friends, or complete strangers does require a certain mental constitution; from locating the least-creaky floorboards to mask your midnight fridge raids to taking 90 second showers, you must survive on as much kindness/cunning as possible without irking your host. But is it ahrrrt? This morning the NY Times looks at the life of nomadic artist Kenya Robinson, who has dubbed her 13 week odyssey in other people's apartments "The Inflatable Mattress." more ›

In case you weren't WASPy enough to attend what is sure to be the social event of the year a party where a bunch of 18-year-old girls in white dresses parade around while their overbearing mothers get sloshed on white wine, the Times will have the pleasure of introducing you to attendees of Wednesday's International Debutante Ball. One of the girls who will be "introduced" to society is Hadley Marie Nagel, whom the Times describes as the "most swell." But don't worry! She still knows how to rough it with us plebeians. She says of being a debutante, “I mean, you still have to pay for your coffee at Starbucks." And here we thought that all descendants of the founding fathers got a free-coffee-for-life coupon. more ›

According to the State Freedom of Information Law, the police are required to provide certain information to the press if they file the proper paperwork and wait patiently. But it looks like the NYPD doesn't really like revealing all their secrets, and now the New York Times is suing them for repeatedly delaying or denying their requests for information. David E. McCraw, a vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company tells, well, the Times, “We’ve become increasingly concerned over the last two years about a growing lack of transparency at the NYPD. Information that was once released is now withheld. Disclosures that could be made quickly are put on hold for months." more ›

Remember the Gorilla Coffee walkout of last spring? Two weeks after all of their employees abandoned the Park Slope mainstay due to a “perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment," they reopened with new staff and a positive, if unapologetic, attitude. Now, according to Fucked In Park Slope, Gorilla Coffee has filed suit against the New York Times, a NYT reporter and eight former employees for participating "in the preparation and publication of [a] false, defamatory, malicious and libelous article." more ›

Today, 52 cities across 5 continents will be protesting BP, and will apparently be "wearing black and/or black ribbons to show solidarity, support and mourning for the Gulf and the folks who live, eat, sleep and work there." The New York City protest will be meeting outside the New York Times building at 11 a.m., a location chosen "because of full page ads run by BP’s money wasting PR team in The New York Times as well as other major media outlets." Looks like those apology ads really aren't working! The Facebook event also asks protesters to "please make sure all words on the signs are spelled correctly." more ›

As part of its dogged attempt bring the New York Times to its knees, the Wall Street Journal is slashing its subscription prices by as much as 80%. As it prepares to unveil its "Times-killing" city edition on April 12th, the WSJ has sent offers for a $10 a month subscription (about 1/4 of the average Times subscription) to some Times subscribers. Reuters also reports a similar $2.29 a week subscription offer for people who sign up online. more ›

Media baron Rupert Murdoch has made it clear that he intends to destroy the New York Times. And now, the Times is starting to fight back. Just days after the Gray Lady abandoned its hiring freeze to poach a Wall Street Journal arts reporter who could potentially reveal all of the secrets of the Journal's planned "Times-killing" metro section, the paper of record gives some ink to the pending newspaper war, making it clear there's no love lost on either side. more ›

The New York Times can't catch a break. Just before the launch of Rupert Murdoch's planned Wall Street Journal metro section, the cash-strapped publication lost its stranglehold on one of the few places where people still read print newspapers—Starbucks. For nearly a decade, the Times was the only national paper sold at 6,500 Starbucks locations nationwide, Advertising Age reports. But starting soon, the chain will begin hawking copies of USA Today beside the Gray Lady. A Times spokeswoman said the paper is "delighted" to share Starbucks' shelf-space. "Customers will have more choices, just like they do online and on every newsstand," she said. But how will the Times feel when Murdoch starts trying to get the Journal into Starbucks? more ›

Today the Times has a list of the top 30 places to get coffee in the city, praising New York for finally shedding its shackles as a "second-string city when it came to coffee." With places like Abraço and Café Grumpy, we can stop relying on fancy pants San Francisco companies to roast our beans and do it ourselves. Of course, this kind of dedication comes with a price, with some shops refusing to serve espresso in anything but a warm ceramic cup, or saying goodbye to cappuccino because "milk would overpower the subtle flavors of the coffee." Of course, all this hype means a backlash must be brewing, and we predict the Times will soon be running a trend piece about clean-cut scenesters swearing by their Folgers crystals. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW]: Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has never liked the New York Times. In fact, ever since the Times editorialized against his bid to purchase the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has had "an Ahab-like obsession" with destroying the Gray Lady, according to New York Magazine. And next month he hopes to plunge the final, fatal harpoon into her heart. more ›

"In a number of business articles in The Times over the past year, and in posts on the DealBook blog on NYTimes.com, a Times reporter appears to have improperly appropriated wording and passages published by other news organizations," reports the NY Times in an editor's note today. Although the Times doesn't drop the P-word, that's essentially what reporter Zachery Kouwe is accused of doing. His thieving was brought to the Times's attention by the Wall Street Journal, which noticed that Kouwe repeatedly recycled language just like we did above, but without the all-important quotation marks or attribution, which are really the easiest things in the world to use. For instance, the Paper of Record also reports: more ›

It's almost unheard of to attend an evening of theater without some jackass's cellphone going off and ruining the performance. (Here's that agonizing video of Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman begging an audience member to shut off a cell phone during A Steady Rain.) We believe anyone guilty of this offense should be slowly impaled while simultaneously forced to watching a continuous performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express. But the chief theater critic at the NY Times disagrees, and has revealed a sudden sympathy for cell phone miscreants: more ›