Courtesy of the NY Times:

“Bob Herbert, a columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed page, is leaving the paper after nearly 20 years. Mr. Herbert’s resignation was announced in a memo to Times staff members on Friday. His last column will appear in the paper on Saturday. Mr. Herbert, who started his Times column in 1993, was known for his combative style, blunt language and progressive politics. In a message accompanying the announcement, Mr. Herbert, who is 66, said he was eager to move on to a new form of writing.

“The deadlines and demands were a useful discipline, but for some time now I have grown eager to move beyond the constriction of the column format, with its rigid 800-word limit, in favor of broader and more versatile efforts,” he said. “So I am leaving The New York Times and the rewards and rigors of daily journalism with the intent of writing more expansively and more aggressively about the injustices visited on working people, the poor and the many others in our society who find themselves on the wrong side of power.”

Read more here…

If you read this amazing NY Times article, you might drive yourself to ponder that very question.

David Carr describes a fascinating work environment to say the least. Here’s the scene of former Radio executive Randy Michael’s arrival (keep in mind – this guy was “hand picked” by Sam Zell):

“After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

“Mr. Michaels, who otherwise declined to be interviewed, said through a spokesman, “I never made the comment allegedly attributed to me in January 2008 to a waitress at the InterContinental Hotel, and anyone who said I did so is either lying or mistaken.”

Read the explosive piece here…

McClatchy & Co. was honored for its coverage of the economic meltdown, and the NY Times swept up 3 awards as well.

The Loeb Awards, among the highest honors in business journalism, have been presented for 36 years by Anderson School of Management at the University of California at Los Angeles. They were established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a financier and founding partner of E.F. Hutton, to encourage quality reporting in business, finance and the economy. Read more here

Disturbing article in the NY Times regarding journalists getting attacked by thugs for reporting:

“Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,” Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. “A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?” Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.

Uh oh, a big note for Apple: Going after a blogger who’s website coughed up 5k for a prototype of your product, that one of your own developers foolishly left in a bar, isn’t really the best way to win Good PR these days. The NY Times forgot to use the word “arrogant” in their article about how Apple is looking rather “churlish” as a result of the Gizmodo episode.

While Steve Jobs is at home writing 1,500 word diatribes about how he thinks Flash isn’t worthy of their devices, the NYTimes piece does a great job of explaining how the golden chariot of the press may be soon leaving Apple in the dust, and they won’t look away so fast when the anti-trust regulators come knocking again….

As President Obama traveled to Louisiana on Sunday for a briefing on the oil spill, federal officials in Washington said they were putting their hopes on drilling a parallel relief well to plug the leak. Drilling such a well could take three months. For a breakdown of the options, the NY Times has a fairly comprehensive breakdown.

The“CBS Evening News” and ABC’s “World News” have just closed their worst quarter on record. The New York Times’ Bill Carter takes a look at the first quarter ratings numbers for the network evening news broadcasts, and reports that both Katie Couric’s and Diane Sawyer’s broadcasts have “sunk to the lowest numbers the programs have had in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987.” Why aren’t we hearing about FOX News? Anyone? Anyone? Read more at the Huff Post….

According to the NYTimes, there’s only 1 homeless person left in that part of New York City. Compared to the early 80’s, this is remarkable to even consider. Here’s their take:
“As long as there have been homeless people sleeping in Times Square, there have been social workers and city officials trying to persuade them to leave. In the past, the homeless were offered a free ride to one of the city’s warehouse-like shelters. These days, workers for nonprofit groups help people move into apartments, keeping track as the number of the chronically homeless in Times Square goes down. According to their records, by 2005, there were only 55. Last summer, it was down to 7. Now there is one. His name is Heavy, and he has lived on the streets of Times Square for decades.” Read the article here

According to New York Magazine’s blog Daily Intel:
“The New York Times will begin charging readers for access to NYTimes.com in coming weeks, New York magazine reports this morning, citing anonymous sources at the Times. Gabriel Sherman, the author of the New York piece, which was published on the popular New York blog Daily Intel, points out the move could be timed to sync with the release of the Apple Tablet.” Read it here…

The NY Times published a piece today about how more & more newsrooms across the country are lifting their content from “upstarts” who might be less then trust-worthy then (heaven forbid) – the AP and Reuters.
They state: “Publishers and broadcasters have always called on freelance journalists. But a generation ago, if they used material from another organization, it was usually limited to a handful of large, well-known and respected ones like The Associated Press or Reuters. With established newsrooms shrinking, a raft of smaller news outlets have cropped up in the last few years, selling or simply giving news reports to the traditional media — groups like ProPublica, Global Post, Politico and Kaiser Health News.”

In other words, the NY Times can point out other newsroom-cash-for-stories-flaws all they want, as long as they avoid hiring reporters like Jayson Blair in the future…