New York Times

New York Times truck drivers voted to end their three-week labor dispute, ratifying contracts that guarantee jobs in exchange for concessions to the paper and wholesale newspaper distributors. The vote Thursday ended a sometimes violent dispute that had hampered newspaper deliveries. Although the contracts will directly affect about 1,100 drivers, the voting was open to all the union's 2,900 members. The four contracts were approved by percentages ranging from just more than 50% to nearly 70%.

The New York Times has a 1st Amendment right to protect the confidentiality of its sources by denying the government phone records in certain instances, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled in New York. Saying that secrecy in government appeared to be on the rise, Sweet refused to toss out a 1st Amendment lawsuit the newspaper filed last year to stop the Department of Justice from getting records of phone calls between two veteran journalists and sources.

Planned Parenthood's newspaper ad attacking the networks for rejecting commercials about contraceptives met with some rejection of its own: The New York Times refused to run it. The problem was the headline: "They did it 9,000 times on television last year." "It was a question of taste," Bob Smith, manager of advertising acceptability for the newspaper, explained Wednesday. "These are very subjective things. We just felt the language was a little bit more risque than we would like to have."

New York Times Co. said it will cut staff across all of its business units in response to the deteriorating advertising market, higher newsprint prices and the weaker economic outlook. Separately, Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, confirmed plans to lay off 202 people, or 2% of its staff, and eliminate 300 open positions, as it reported an 81% drop in first-quarter earnings.

Jane Pauley has sued the New York Times for fraud, according to documents posted on thesmokinggun.com, claiming that the newspaper duped her into granting an interview for what turned out to be a drug company-funded advertising supplement. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, the 55-year-old broadcaster charges that she believed that the Times interview was for a news article on mental health issues. In September 2004 Pauley disclosed her battle with bipolar disorder.

Janus Capital Corp. and Fidelity Investments, two of the biggest U.S. mutual fund companies, are taking opposing views on the New York Times Co. Denver-based Janus, the best-selling fund group of recent years, was the largest buyer of Times shares in the second quarter, siding with those who say the "Gray Lady of 43rd Street" is an undervalued moneymaker. It trades at about 19 times forecast earnings, less than the Washington Post Co.'s 29 times and Tribune Co.'s 27.

United Press International suffered a major blow Monday as the New York Times said it would drop UPI's news report on Dec. 31. Insiders said the decision could make it easier for other papers to drop the wire service and will mean a loss of an estimated $900,000 to $1 million a year in revenue to the struggling agency. Newspaper editors also viewed the decision as a setback to Mexican newspaper magnate Mario Vazquez Rana, who purchased UPI out of bankruptcy in June.

The New York Times on Saturday named Editorial Page Editor Max Frankel to succeed the retiring A. M. Rosenthal as executive editor, one of the most important posts in American journalism. Rosenthal, 64, will become a twice-weekly columnist and assume the title of associate editor, according to an announcement by Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger in the newspaper's Sunday edition. Rosenthal, who will turn 65 in May, is stepping down, effective Nov. 1, under the paper's mandatory retirement policy.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that correspondent Judith Miller, who went to jail for 85 days rather than divulge a source in the CIA leak investigation, had resigned, effective immediately. Miller had become a contentious figure in journalism, both for her actions in the leak case and for her reporting on Iraqi weapons programs in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Here we go again. The World Series is underway, featuring two teams from California, and yet, once more, the scheduling of the entire series is geared to please the Only People Who Really Matter: the East Coast television audience. Telecasts of every game in the series will start at 5 or 5:30 p.m. in the West -- because that's 8 or 8:30 p.m. in the East. Prime time on the East Coast, drive time on the West Coast.