New York Times

Most reporters would love to make $75,000. In a year. So it set my eyes to blinking when I read that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman got paid that much for a single speech, sponsored last week by the San Francisco Bay Area's clean air district.

I have to admit it would be fun to join the rollicking beat-down of the New York Times and Alessandra Stanley that has followed the chief television critic's egregiously error-ridden tribute to Walter Cronkite. Wasn't the public fascinated, after all, to learn that Stanley and the nation's Paper of Record managed eight mistakes in an almost 1,200-word tribute to Uncle Walter?

New York Times Co. and business news channel CNBC will share video and stories from each other's websites in an alliance that could bolster them against an expected assault by News Corp. Under the deal, New York Times stories will be posted on CNBC's website and the Times will use CNBC video for its site. Neither company will pay the other for its news.

A controversial New York Times story accusing Sen. John McCain of an untoward relationship with a Washington lobbyist set off a furor among readers and journalists, and seemed to unify conservative commentators around the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For much of Thursday, a debate raged across the Internet, cable television and talk radio about the Times story, "For McCain, Self-Confidence of Ethics Poses Its Own Risk."

Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who designed the New York Times tower on 8th Avenue at 40th Street in Manhattan, made a point of keeping the building transparent at ground level. His goal, he said before the building opened last summer, was to avoid the forbidding, fortress-like appearance that marks other post-9/11 towers in Manhattan. He wanted the final product to look inviting. He may have succeeded too well.

John McCain has felt the sting of rejection for what he no doubt considered a finely wrought piece of prose (we know the feeling). But it appears that for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee (and perhaps one of his ghost writers), all's well that ends well. As first reported on the Drudge Report, the New York Times rejected an opinion piece submitted by McCain that sought to counter an essay on Iraq by Barack Obama that appeared -- prominently -- on the paper's Op-Ed page July 14.

Newspaper people are an odd, conflicted sort. They desperately love to be where the action is. They crave the chance to identify a new phenomenon. Then they race to be first to reverse direction -- declaring the new and different hopelessly overblown, or just more of the same old thing.

Defense attorneys for a codefendant of indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano have accused federal agents pursuing a wiretapping case against the pair of leaking confidential information. In a motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, lawyers for entertainment attorney Terry Christensen call on the court to force New York Times reporters David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner to reveal the names of their sources for a report published Jan. 11 in the newspaper.

Former Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet was named Washington bureau chief of the New York Times on Tuesday, which positions him as a leader at one of America's top newspapers while dashing hopes that he might return to the paper he left after protesting proposed staff cutbacks. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller joined Baquet in the Washington newsroom to announce the change Tuesday morning.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Monday that it had fired an employee for recording phone calls between its public relations staff and a newspaper reporter and for intercepting text messages. The retailer said its employee was acting alone. The incident was the latest involving companies or their employees snooping on reporters' sources. In this case, Wal-Mart said an unnamed computer-systems technician was not authorized by the company to seek or obtain the information.