Times Cans Stein Over Credit Report Ads

(NEWSER) - Ben Stein is miffed about his summary expulsion from the New York Times’ Sunday business section, and he explains why in a lengthy piece for the American Spectator. Booted over a TV commercial he did for an online credit reporting service—not his first commercial, and not a subject he ever writes about—he argues that the spot “was red meat for the Ben Stein haters. Somehow, these people bamboozled some of the high pooh-bahs at the Times into thinking there was a conflict of interest.” More»

Krugman, Friedman, Dowd, Rich, editorial board all pile on prez

(NEWSER) - The Obama administration bore an avalanche of criticism this weekend from the usually friendly New York Times. Influential columnists Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd—plus the paper’s editorial board—all piled on a president who “is increasingly overwhelmed, and not fully appreciative of the building tsunami of populist outrage,” Politico reports. More»

Gail Collins hits back at the Donald

(NEWSER) - Last week it was apparent that there's no love lost between Donald Trump and New York Times columnist Gail Collins , but this week it's all-out war. Seems the Donald responded to Collins' column, which tweaked him as a loopy birther, with a letter to the editor tweaking her in turn as a no-good hack for writing "nasty and derogatory articles about me." "Actually," Trump writes, "I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level." Snap! More»

Business writer copied from Wall Street Journal , other sources

(NEWSER) - A New York Times business reporter has been caught cribbing text directly from the Wall Street Journal and other sources, the Times sheepishly admitted in an editor’s note today. The Times says the Journal alerted them to uncanny similarities between a Journal article published Feb. 5, and a Times DealBook blog post by Zachery Kouwe that went up two hours later. Though the Times studiously avoids the word “plagiarism” it says “several passages are repeated almost exactly.” More»

Newspaper lays groundwork for reinstituting paywall

(NEWSER) - Two-plus years after making its entire website free, the New York Times is about to roll out a plan that will charge readers for online access. The announcement may come within 2 weeks, but the pay wall won't be in force for several months, New York magazine reports. Rather than charging for everything or for predetermined categories of content, the paper will use a "metered" system similar to the one the Financial Times employs, allowing free access to a certain number of articles before requiring payment. More»