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15 Dec 2010 11:21

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U.S.: NYT decides to show off by making insane demographic map

  • There’s everyone else, and then there’s the NYT. And we’re proven this fact yet again with his crazy demographic map based on U.S. Census data. You can get very detailed with this thang. We think they’re just showing off this time. source

14 Dec 2010 21:14

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Culture, World: 1931: By 2011, workers and CEOs will all earn the same

  • things have changed in the last eighty years. Of course, no one in 1931 could have predicted the exact nature of those changes, but that didn’t stop people from trying. Back when Herbert Hoover was being hailed as the next big thing, The New York Times asked several prominent thinkers to predict what life would look like in eighty years. The results are part dead-on, part way off, and all highly amusing.  source

14 Dec 2010 20:54

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U.S.: Air Force blocks newspapers that published Wikileaks materials

  • 25 news sites blocked by the Air Force over Wikileaks fears source
  • » What’s the point? Not allowing people to read The New York Times and The Guardian seems a little extreme, and the effect is futile, anyway. Why’s that? Well, see, all they have to do to read the cables is GO HOME AND FIRE UP THEIR LAPTOP. Wow, that’s some effective security there, guys. By the way, the Army, Navy and Marines aren’t doing this, and the Department of Defense is formally distancing itself from the Air Force on this issue.

07 Nov 2010 20:13

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Culture: New York Times once again proves more clever than everyone else

  • There’s journalism, and then there’s the NYT. Today, as runners got past the finish line at the New York Marathon, the New York Times (fresh off Cheesegate) got a bunch of the finishers to take post-race photos, and some of the faces are pretty amazing. Witness the post-marathon glow. (In other news, Chilean miner Edison Pena reached the finish line, too.) source

25 Sep 2010 14:19

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Tech: More magazine-like Web design: Is this a good thing?

  • Is this what people want their web to be? It strikes me as an anti-Craigslist, an anti-Google. It’s a magazining of web content beyond anything we might have expected. It’s attractive! But it’s also a whole lot less.
  • The Awl writer Choire Sicha • Writing some pretty harsh words on both the recent New York Times opinion page redesign and the beta version of Gawker currently floating around. Maybe we’re more designerly than writerly, but an evolution away from Craigslist and Google is probably a good thing for the Web. That said, we’re bigger fans of the NYT opinion page than Gawker, which comes off a little too busy with that standing ad/menu design. The way that stories were listed before made us feel like we weren’t missing anything. (Disclosure: For what it’s worth, after months of iPad use, we find the format of Pulse to be immensely more useful than that of Flipboard, mainly for the reason Sicha suggests.) source

12 Sep 2010 22:18

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Tech: Demand Media IPO: Crap content may be massive cash cow

  • $1.5
    billion
    the potential market cap for Demand Media’s upcoming IPO
  • $1.2
    billion
    the current market cap of the New York Times Company source
  • » To understand how crazy that is, let’s point out what the two companies make. The New York Times (minus the Jayson Blair saga) has been known for creating some of the best journalism known to man. Demand Media, through sites like eHow and Cracked.com, is far more known for shoveling as much SEO-friendly content onto the Web as they can. Yet, they could be worth more in an IPO. What is our world coming to?

06 Sep 2010 23:03

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Politics: A couple New York Times liberals gang up on Obama

  • it’s one thing when the right rips Obama. It’s another thing entirely when he’s feeling the hurt from New York Times liberal columnists who should have his back, but don’t. Paul Krugman went so far as to say “Obama has had no vision.” Ouch. Here’s what we got a taste of yesterday on ABC’s “This Week”:
  • “DJ Pauly D” Krugman “What is Obama’s philosophy of government? He wobbles between sounding kind of like a liberal. Then he says, well, the conservatives have some points, too. He concedes the message.”
  • “Tommy Bahama” Friedman“Look, I’m for more health care. I’m glad we’ve extended it to more Americans. But the fact is, there is a real, I think, argument for the case that Obama completely over-read his mandate when he came in.” source
 

01 Sep 2010 09:48

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Tech: For touch screen story, the NYT found woman who can’t use BlackBerry

  • I had to use my sister’s BlackBerry to make a call, and I just kept swiping and touching. It didn’t even occur to me to use the keyboard.
  • iPhone nut Susannah Wijsen • On being forced to use a BlackBerry at some point and not knowing what the heck to do. Uh, really? We don’t think that someone who works in advertising in San Francisco could make a mistake like that, but whatever it takes to push forward this NYT story about how people love touch screens. source

19 Aug 2010 21:56

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Offbeat: The NYT’s latest fake trend story: People with expensive fish tanks

“Hear that? It’s our owners getting interviewed by some reporter about our mansion.” Anyone who spends six figures on a fish tank needs to be made fun of. source

05 Aug 2010 20:13

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Tech: Did the New York Times totally fail on Google/Verizon article?

  • @NYTimes is wrong. We’ve not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.
  • A tweet from Google’s public policy feed • Denying the New York Times’ claims that they plan to play turncoat on net neutrality with Verizon. We must say, it’s not often the NYT gets a story totally wrong, and, well, this is kind of a biggie to get wrong. To top it all off, Verizon is also denying the claims. Embarrassing. (For what it’s worth, the Times article is still up with no correction in sight.) source