Governor Paterson personally ordered two state employees to contact a woman seeking an order of protection against his top aide, sources tell the Times. It was previously disclosed that Paterson had a little telephone chat with the woman, Sherr-una Booker, the day before she failed to appear for her third court appearance in the matter. But in today's installment in the Paterson nesting doll bombshell series, the Times reports that the governor's interference allegedly went beyond just a plausibly innocuous phone call, and now there's speculation that his actions may indeed be criminal. more ›

The paper of record has at last acknowledged the Paterson rumor cyclone that swallowed up much of the chattering class for the past week. But instead of dropping a giant scandal-house on the Governor's head, the Times has left everything up in the air. In a rather coy item posted to City Room without attribution, the Times marveled at the speculative media frenzy, quoted Paterson's rant against the paper at yesterday's press conference, and then refused to accept any responsibility for not clearing the air sooner. more ›

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owns both the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal, has been been put in the humiliating position of asking for a favor from his competitors. The Journal has been getting ready to launch a new edition in April, with an NYC metro section intended as a tough competitor to the Times. Meanwhile, Murdoch’s News Corporation is upgrading the Post’s printing plant in the South Bronx so that it can print the Journal and the Post. But there have been major delays on that, and now Murdoch needs to outsource some of The Post’s printing, so he's been reduced to begging his enemies for help. We do believe a HA-HA is in order. more ›

This whole business of charging readers for access to the New York Times website got us thinking about a slight ethical dilemma we ignore every Sunday afternoon while liberating a fat, neglected copy of the Times from some out-of-towner's stoop. How early is too early to steal someone's Sunday Times? For guidance, we asked a couple NY Times reporters. (They don't get free subscriptions!) One veteran staff reporter, who agreed to speak anonymously, is surprisingly brazen: more ›

This week Sam Sifton at the Times files an unenthusiastic one star review on the flashy Bryant Park location of Charlier Palmer's Aureole. Palmer, a restaurant impresario who made his bones in the kitchen of the River Cafe, relocated his well-liked restaurant from the Upper East Side to the new Bank of America building this summer. more ›

The New York Times announced today that it will cut 100 newsroom jobs—about 8 percent of the total—by year's end. In a memo to the news room, executive editor Bill Keller said, "Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms." Employees already took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year, which was intended to avoid layoffs. more ›

This week the new chief dining critic at the NY Times, Sam Sifton, debuts with a rave for DBGB, Daniel Boulud's casual sausage/beer/etc. joint on the Bowery. The first review from the former NY Press reporter boasts references to The Ramones, Talking Heads, and a declaration that "[Boulud's] food game, as they say in rap precincts, is tight... one bite of the crispy lamb ribs that were served in the bar area when the place first opened — sweetly glazed, grassy meat, with a dab of creamy mint-flecked yogurt sauce — ended all snark: Boulud has opened a very good restaurant. The lamb was sublime, earthy and spicy and rich, evidence of superb technique, the sort of snack that separates his empire from others in the celebrity firmament." more ›

The Post slammed Obama's "One Love" speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday, calling it "pathetic" and hailing the new prez as "naif-in-chief." The Post did not hesitate to pile it on, accusing Obama of "stunning cluelessness" and asking "Who wrote President Obama's speech for the start of the UN General Assembly yesterday — Rodney King?" more ›

This week the Times's Pete Wells (filling in before incoming chief dining critic Sam Sifton takes the reins) reviews Hotel Griffou, the trendy speakeasy-style restaurant from veterans of the Waverly Inn, Freemans and La Esquina. He finds the plating "scattershot" and the service "wildly inconsistent." But the place "does have its allures. Each dining room has a different motif, as if the restaurant were trying to ignite a collect-them-all frenzy. A friend described the Library as 'very man-cavey,' outfitted with wooden ducks, a manual typewriter, a fiddle, a saddle, shelves filled with law books, a football that looks as if it was in play when F. Scott Fitzgerald was at Princeton, and four fox pelts." The Times also has a roundup of the new street food vendors, just in time for the Vendys this weekend. more ›

This week the Times's interim chief dining critic Pete Wells takes a hammer to deservedly acclaimed chef Michael Psilakis, whose latest venture, Gus & Gabriel, is inspired by the culinary tastes of his son, TGI Friday's, and whiskey. Wells's review is disastrous, which means it's a fun read: "When three children under age 10 leave their milkshakes almost untouched, you know there’s trouble." The restaurant's "colossal misfires are almost impossible to believe and harder still to explain." Specifically: "Almost every chef in town is experimenting with techniques for building a better burger. Mr. Psilakis may be the only one to have perfected a new technology that magically strips out all the taste. The skin on what is advertised as 'crispy chicken' was as crisp as a balloon, and the biscuits on the plate were wet and doughy, as if the cook had decided halfway through that he would rather make dumplings." more ›

Developer Bruce Ratner must be relieved this morning to see that big bad Nicholas Ouroussoff at Times does not revile the latest renderings for the Nets arena planned for Brooklyn. You'll recall that Ouroussoff dissed the last designs as "a monstrosity" and "a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city." But bringing young New York firm SHoP on board may be just the lipstick on the boondoggle Ratner needs; Ouroussoff, who had embraced Gehry's vision for the project, calls this new look "somewhat more promising." more ›

This week the Times revisits Danny Meyer's groundbreaking restaurant, Union Square Cafe. Critic William Grimes gave it three stars in 1999, and now Frank Bruni, on his way out the door, takes one of those stars away. But it's only because he cares: "I can’t think of another New York restaurant that enjoys such acclaim, basks in such adoration and yet exhibits such humility... The courtesies explain something else, too: the blind eye many Union Square regulars seem to turn to its slippage; their silence about its drift. In my occasional trips to Union Square over recent years and in a more concentrated series of visits over recent months, I never had an experience whose caliber was consonant with the restaurant’s enduringly lofty reputation. I had a few flatly mediocre meals." The Times also has a glowing review for Bed-Stuy trattoria Saraghina. more ›

You'll be forgiven for not realizing that it's actually illegal for NYC cab drivers to use cell phones—even hands-free—because they all do it. This morning the Times takes a look at chatty cabbies as part of an ongoing series of articles called "Driven to Distraction." Surprisingly, a reporter assigned to ride in cabs as research found that only about one third of his 20 taxi rides featured a driver using his or her cell phone. Almost all of them terminated the call when asked—except for one hack who pulled over and grumbled about a stalled engine. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times, approaching his last month with the Gray Lady, goes gaga for Aldea (photos), where "the cooking is precious, lusty, ultramodern, rustic and a host of other adjectives that don’t normally squeeze together but find themselves in a tight, mostly happy clutch here. Although Aldea has a clean, sleek and relatively spare look, it has a much more complex taste. One minute you’re nibbling on crisp pig’s ears. The next you’re carefully maneuvering your spoon under a translucent, quivering orb of concentrated mushroom broth—one of those liquid ravioli that the Spanish alchemist Ferran Adrià made famous—in an avant-garde consommé." Bruni also takes a look at artisanal pizza parlors this week. more ›

In an Op-Ed in today's Times explaining his aborted mayoral campaign, Rep. Anthony Weiner explains that, unsurprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg's godly fortune had a little something to do with it: "The Supreme Court decision in 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo, which allows candidates to spend however much they want on their own races, makes it possible for billionaires to swamp middle-class candidates. In this case, a sports analogy is apt: If one football team has 110 players on the field, the team with 11 has a hard time getting through the blocking and tackling on the crowded turf." more ›

The reviews are in on the new car-free Broadway's impact on the first day of business since traffic was diverted from the main stem between 47th and 42nd Streets and between 35th and 33rd Streets. Unsurprisingly, the Post has been breathlessly scaremongering in an attempt to milk the populist fear of change for all it's worth, with columnist Andrea Peyser leading the charge in an article headlined "Real NYers 'Malled' by Incredibly Dumb Idea": more ›

The Times is tired of giving it up for free, and at a staff meeting yesterday executive editor Bill Keller revealed two possible scenarios that would force website readers to make an honest woman out of the Gray Lady. One scheme is a "meter system" which would kick in after a reader hits a predetermined limit of word-count or page views. At that point, the meter would start running and further content would come at a price. A second scenario could be a "membership" system akin to public television. Readers who pledge money to the site would be invited to join the cool kids in the "New York Times community" and get sweet merch like Times baseball caps, or tote bags, or plush Moose dolls. The Observer, which got the scoop on the announcement, also quotes Keller as saying—and this has got to be a joke, right?—that "he wouldn't even be opposed to offering a donor access to a Page One editorial meeting as long as it doesn't affect the paper competitively." Well, if that actually happens we are so ready to pay to join those meetings and finally get the Hipster Grifter above the fold where she belongs. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times takes his turn with L'Artusi (photos), the plus-size Greenwich Village twin to the dainty, crowded dell'Anima. Bruni doesn't hate it like NY Mag's Adam Platt, but it's definitely a mixed review: "They have gone not only bigger—with nearly 115 seats, L’Artusi is more than twice the size of dell’Anima—but also bolder, and the uneven results are a lesson in overextension. If they turned a more skeptical eye to some of Mr. Thompson’s inventions, edited the menu to about two-thirds its current length and focused harder on the execution of what remained, they’d have an excellent restaurant. As it is, they have a fitfully enjoyable one." The New Yorker's review is also mixed, and notes that "the décor has an identity crisis." more ›

There's a fun story on the challenges of urban composting in the Times's Home & Garden section today. For those of you who usually skip those pages due to a lack of home or garden, here's the breakdown: The Lower East Side Ecology Center gives workshops for people looking to recycle their food waste without totally stinking up their apartments. One attendee explains, "I’m a little nervous because I’ve heard the stories." She's referring to the harrowing tales of fruit fly infestation and runaway worms; the popular "worm condo" vermicomposting method uses about 1,000 worms to eat through scraps and, over the course of four months, excrete the "castings" that make up compost. (It can then be given to community gardens or distributed as gifts!) But despite one couple's choice to keep their worm condo underneath the bed, these people aren't so radical, just concerned about the environment. And rightfully so; the E.P.A. says keeping discarded food out of landfills does more than twice the good of keeping mixed paper out, because decomposing food that's buried and cut off from air releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at higher rates than paper. more ›

Click on the images above for more details and reviews on each of this weekend's rather modest batch of new releases. Or you can catch up on watching some Oscar-nominated films—details on nominations here. more ›

Restaurateur Rohini Dey holds a Ph.D. in economics, formerly managed foreign investment policy at the World Bank, and owns hit Indian-Latin fusion restaurant Vermilion in Chicago. But despite her supposed business savvy, she just couldn't stop herself from going through with opening her glamorous, 12,000-square-foot New York City restaurant "At Vermilion" last November (photos). Obviously not the best timing, and today the Times checks in on the place, which was deemed a major "flop" by the Village Voice. Dey tells the Times, "From Day 1, we knew that this was a bad time to open, because every investor told us that. I persisted. Why? Well, because fools rush in." And lose their shirts. The place needs $6 million to $10 million a year to stay afloat, which means they have to start serving twice as many diners as they're getting now. No sweat, right? more ›

Over a dozen Broadway musicals and plays will close this month, and Charles Isherwood at the Times is getting a little verklempt about it. The number of productions bowing out amounts to almost half the total number of shows currently on Broadway! According to Crain's, box office grosses increased during the holiday season, but were still 10.6% less than the same time period in 2007. more ›

The Times concludes its epic, four-part think piece on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission today. Yesterday, Robin Pogrebin's series looked into why many churches eschew landmark status (cheaper to demolish), Friday was about how sneaky developers send in the demolition crews mere days before the LPC holds their hearing, and last Wednesday's piece noted the fun fact that LPC chairman Robert Tierney has no background in architecture, planning or historic preservation. Today's coda considers the "delicate dance" between preservationists and developers. DUMBO developer Jed Walentas derides landmarking as "one of the best tools that anti-development people have." But his feisty dance partner, Andrew S. Dolkart at Columbia University, argues, "A relatively tiny proportion of New York land is landmarked. It’s hardly an obstacle to economic growth in the city." more ›

Drivers, it's the last Friday in November—do you know where your car is? The day after Thanksgiving was the most-ticketed day of the last fiscal year, according to an extensive analysis of parking tickets conducted by the Times. The study concluded that parking tickets issued citywide have surged 42 percent since Mayor Bloomberg took office. During the last fiscal year, the city raked in $624 million in parking fines, which is more than the city spends to run the entire Department of Transportation. Officials, maintaining a straight face, insist the parking enforcement is not driven by revenue goals. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times reviews Double Crown, the new bi-level restaurant and bar in the East Village that, in his words, "ponders the glories of culinary cross-pollination, making a promise of 'British-Indio-Asian' fusion that sounds more like a threat, given that it’s a two-hyphen fusion and that one of the words bumping up against one of the hyphens is 'British.' And isn’t India in Asia? Note to self: bone up on world geography... Its take on British imperialism goes something like this: Sure, foreign lands were plundered and indigenous peoples oppressed, but think of the snacks!" Bruni bestows two stars for not taking "its pledged fusing too seriously or executing it too strenuously." more ›

This weekend Times reporters rode the MTA's weekend express bus lines and came back with a total downer of a story about how the elimination of the routes would leave lower income commuters particularly screwed. For instance, 69-year-old Myrtis Williams lives in the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn and is completely dependent on the potentially doomed B57; the subway isn't an option for her because her peripheral artery disease and diabetes make taking the stairs painful. But one strange ray of hope in the article comes from bus driver Mitchell Verley; despite his two decades working for the MTA, this man's faith in city bureaucracy is still miraculously intact: "I think somehow the government or something will come up with the money to keep it going," he tells the Times. more ›

An ongoing dispute over surveillance warrants between the F.B.I.’s New York office and the NYPD "has brought the relationship to a new low," according to the Times, which is reporting on "a highly unusual exchange of letters" between commissioner Ray Kelly and attorney general Michael Mukasey. The acrimony stems from the feds' reluctance to press the FISA court to issue broad warrants for the NYPD, which wants to eavesdrop on "numerous communications facilities," including subway pay phones. Each side is now blaming the other for mishandling terrorism investigations. Responding to a letter from Kelly in which he accused the FBI of making "the city less safe," Mukasey wrote: "Not only would your approach violate the law, it would also in short order make New York City and the rest of the country less safe." Mukasey added that he was "unable to have a meaningful conversation" on the phone because "you were not versed on the facts." Next: Mukasey will get upset with Kelly for staggering home drunk with lipstick on his collar. more ›

Widely-respected critic Clive Barnes lost his battle with cancer yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 81. more ›

Maybe you saw yesterday's Times article about the precocious Upper West Side foodie who took himself to Salumeria Rosi one night last week after his parents called to say they wouldn't make it home for dinner? And when David Fishman, age 12, got home, he wrote a little Zagat-esque review in his "leather-bound notebook"? His verdict: "As I left, I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip’ places in the city." more ›

Today the Times takes a look at the obsessive lifestyles of Yelp nerds, making some of them famous in the process, like local secretary Nina Cheung, 30, who's been "Yelp Elite" for three years. It doesn't just happen, people. Her advice to aspiring Yelpers: "You have to be there to review, not just to hook up." All Cheung's friends are Yelpers, and, as one user puts it, "It’s kind of like a cult, except instead of Kool-Aid we drink alcohol." And Megan Cress, who says she "networks for a living," became one of the site's biggest stars by reviewing the plastic surgeon who enlarged her breasts and posting a picture of her torso in a bikini: "If your wife, mom, sister, or girlfriend are looking for a nice new rackjob or some reconstructive surgery, and they want to avoid hacks and frauds, this doctor is the real deal. He is amazing!" Thank you Yelp—for once Mom won't be getting the same old boring soap basket for Christmas. more ›