Fake NYT Declares War Over

Critics say Friedman, others, are whitewashing the war

(NEWSER) - Scribes all over the place are using Sunday's election in Iraq to declare a victory in the US war there, and that has critics seething that they're just trying to justify their original support for a misguided and costly adventure. Several take aim at Tom Friedman for the column today in which he argues that while the war "should have and could have" been better executed, "George W. Bush's gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right." The price was high, he writes in the New York Times, but "democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq." More»

Blogger, tech site both manage to punk the paper

(NEWSER) - The New York Times got punked—twice!—on April Fools’ Day, and the World Wide Web is having quite a laugh about it. First, the paper fell for a New York personal injury attorney who claimed to have been appointed “official White House law blogger,” going so far as to write it up (and then later retract it) in a City Room post, Gawker notes. 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»

(NEWSER) - Police today arrested three activists who were distributing a parody issue of the New York Post, Daily Finance reports. Volunteers all over New York were distributing the phony paper, which was intended to call attention to climate change. But when some tried distributing it in front of the Post’s building, police came, arrested them, and took their papers. More»

A 'decent and stable' country could set an example

(NEWSER) - Many in the Middle East demanded action after President Obama’s Cairo speech, but the action that’s crucial right now is the Iraq peace process, writes Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. Hillary Clinton must lead us in an effort to establish a “decent and stable political order” in Iraq—a democracy that could set an example for the rest of the region. More»