Times Reporter Shared Maureen Dowd Column With C.I.A. Before Publication

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

A New York Times reporter provided a copy of a column written by the columnist Maureen Dowd to an official with the Central Intelligence Agency before it was published, a spokeswoman for the newspaper has confirmed.

The spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, said the action by Mark Mazzetti, who covers national security issues from The Times's Washington bureau, was “a mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards.”

Her statement offered some context: “Last August, Maureen Dowd asked Mark Mazzetti to help check a fact for her column,” she said. “In the course of doing so, he sent the entire column to a C.I.A. spokeswoman shortly before her deadline. He did this without the knowledge of Ms. Dowd.”

Both Ms. Dowd and Mr. Mazzetti declined to comment.

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch discovered that Mr. Mazzetti had sent over the article before publication through a Freedom o f Information Act request.

The news site Politico reported the news on Tuesday. In an update to its post, Politico quoted The Times's managing editor, Dean Baquet, as saying: “I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.”

Reached via e-mail, Mr. Baquet referred questions to Ms. Murphy.

Sally Singer, Editor of The Times\'s T Magazine, Is Leaving

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Sally Singer, the editor of The New York Times style magazine T for the last two years, is leaving.

Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement, “Sally's contributions are clear to anyone who's read the magazine during her tenure. Gorgeous visuals, interesting stories and enterprising features - both in print and online - have been hallmarks of her stewardship. We wish her every success.”

Ms. Singer joined the Times in 2010 from Vogue, where she worked for more than a decade and oversaw its fashion news and feature departments. She had also worked for New York Magazine and Elle.

In her editor's letter for the latest issue of T, dated Aug. 19, Ms. Singer thanked the three fashion editors who work for her. She wrote, “Without their eyes, the season's offerings could appear - even to me - to be just clothes and more clothes, a big, beautiful blur.”

Ms. Singer did not resp ond to a call and e-mail for comment.

Ms. Abramson said in her statement that The Times was looking to replace Ms. Singer immediately.

Negotiating Home Delivery of Your New Car

By ANN CARRNS

It might not be quite as easy as having a pizza delivered, but automotive site Edmunds.com advises that you can have your new car brought right to your home, instead of going to pick it up at the dealership.

Why would you want to do that? Buyers can spend hours on location at dealerships finalizing the purchase and delivery of a new car, Edmunds says. By having the car come to you, you can “eliminate waiting times and also the inevitable hard sell for additional products and services that takes place in the finance and insurance office,” the site advises.

Negotiating for a home delivery works best when you're shopping and bargaining for a car remotely-either online, or on the phone, says Philip Reed, senior consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com. But it could also be done if you're at the dealership, and it's particularly crowded and you don't want to wait around while the paperwork is finalized and the car is cleaned and otherwise readied for you.

The catch here is that you have to request delivery while you're in final stages of negotiations, Mr. Reed advises. You could negotiate the deal and then, before finally agreeing to it, say something like, “Well, I'd be happy to buy it today if you're willing to deliver it to my office or home. I just don't have time to get to the dealership.”

Why would a salesperson agree to this? He or she is eager to make a deal. “The dealership is looking to make you very happy,” he said.

Edmunds offers the following tips for getting home delivery:

1) There should be no additional cost for delivery within 50 miles of the dealership. If a car has to travel beyond that radius, consumers can expect a delivery fee of around $75.

2) When the car arrives, verify that the vehicle is the year, make and model you chose and that it has all the agreed-upon equipment. There should be no dings or scratch es and the odometer should read less than 100 miles.

3) Internet managers are increasingly more open to evaluating trade-ins sight unseen, so home delivery can be an option even if you're using a trade-in. A price range is often given to the buyer for the trade-in over the phone, and the final price is locked after an onsite inspection - at your home. (The dealership will send two people-usually, a salesperson and a porter, who runs errands for the dealership).

If you're skeptical that the trade-in portion of the delivery will go smoothly, Mr. Reed notes that online salespeople are getting quite savvy about pricing cars remotely, based on information like mileage (they can also get CarFax reports, showing the vehicle's history). You may be given a range for the trade in, rather than a hard price, subject to inspection, in case there are dings or scrapes you didn't mention.

Have you ever had a new car delivered to your home? How did it go?

Release of Book on Bin Laden Raid Is Moved Up a Week

By JULIE BOSMAN

In response to a crush of media attention, criticism and consumers clamoring to buy the book, the publisher behind the first-hand account of the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden has decided to move up the release date to next Tuesday.

Dutton, the imprint of Penguin that acquired the book in secret, said that “No Easy Day,” which will appear under the pseudonym Mark Owen, will go on sale Sept. 4, a week ahead of the planned date, Sept. 11.

“The publisher now feels it is important to put ‘No Easy Day' on sale and let the book speak for itself,” Dutton said in a statement.

The author defended himself in a statement to The Times on Tuesday. “ ‘No Easy Day' is a book that I'm proud to have written,” he said. “My hope is that it gives my fellow Americans a glimpse into how much of an honor it is to serve our country. It is written with respect for my fellow service members while adhering to my strict desire not to disclose confidential or sensitive information that would compromise national security in any way.”

The publisher and author have endured some public criticism for failing to provide a copy of the manuscript for government vetting before the book was announced. The Defense Department said last week that the author had violated department regulations requiring review of any official information intended for public release that relates to military matters, national security issues or subjects of significant concern to the department.

The Pentagon now has a copy of the book, a department spokesman said this week, but no immediate decisions will be made about the book.

Demand for the 336-page book has been enormous; it is currently No. 1 on the best-seller lists at Amazon.com and BN.com.

Christine Ball, a spokeswoman for Dutton, also said on Tuesday that the publisher had increased the planned print run to 575,000 hardcover copies from the original total, 300,000.

Less than 24 hours after the existence of the book was reported last Wednesday, the author, a former Navy SEAL who was present at Bin Laden's death, was revealed to be Matt Bissonnette, 36, who has been awarded five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Dutton declined to confirm his identity for security reasons.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Magazines You Miss: From Skateboarder to Metropolitan Home, but Mainly Gourmet

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY and NOAM COHEN

After more than 140 responses, what can we conclude from the answers of Media Decoder readers to the question, what magazine do you miss the most?

Gourmet, which published its last issue in November 2009, was the dearest of the dearly departed - appearing in more than a quarter of the comments left, a reaction that mirrored that huge response Media Decoder received when it reported the news about the magazine's closing.

Readers longed for the section that reviewed cookbooks and especially the holiday issues in November and December. One commenter, appearing under the journalistic nomme de plume Hildy Johnson, wrote, “I've tried filling the void with Bon Appetit or Saveur, but it's like eating nonfat yogurt instead of fresh custard.”

Other top contenders for most missed magazine included Spy, Talk, George, McCall's and House and Garden. (Bird Talk, which stopped printing this m onth prompting our question in the first place, got a few shout-outs as well.)

Readers wrote how they loved the way Spy used to rankle Donald Trump and how Talk Magazine was ahead of the curve on helicopter parenting. One vote for George, the magazine co-founded by John Kennedy Jr., appeared cynical: “Just because it was a great example of our media's navel-gazing and infatuation with celebrity in all its forms.”

Many readers took the question loosely, grieving over still-published magazines that commenters wrote had lost their way, stalwarts like The New Yorker (“which published really long, really substantive articles”), Rolling Stone (“when it mattered”), The New York Times magazine (“that used to be printed in a font size that was comfortably readable and wasn't the physical size of a comic book”) and Scientific American (when it “had a number of monthly columns like ‘The Amateur Scientist' that were gems of originality and laboratory crea tivity”).

With a similar looseness, some plainly “missed” magazines that they had only known in the past tense, like Alanis, who nominated The Masses, the radical magazine that was closed by the United States government in the red scare of 1917. Either that, or our readers are older than we thought.

A few commenters even listed catalogs, whether from B. Altman or Bonwitt Teller or more generally, as News Viewer wrote, “What kid didn't drool over the Christmas toy catalog?“

The comments often told a story. Some, sparingly, through a list of titles,like Erica's “Flair, Look, Gourmet, Connoisseur”; or Julie's “East-West Journal, Spy”; or JPL's “Premiere, Magazine of Invention and Technology, Biography, Psychotronic Film.”

Others, by telling of their experience following a single publication, as DennisD did: “I sorely miss Country Journal - a great magazine on rural living that I discovered in 1983, th en published by Blair & Ketchum. It had nice photos, informative how-to articles, and featured essayists such as Noel Perrin, Wendell Berry, Charles Elliott , etc. It later mutated into a suburbanite magazine, changed ownership and editors multiple times, and died a slow death by 2002. No magazine has ever filled its niche.”

The most intense reactions seemingly were for the magazines that had the smallest circulations.

Charlie Samuels wrote in a tribute to Skateboarder magazine, “It was our bible, our lifeline and our ONLY way of finding out what the rest of our microcosm was doing in the late '70's. I couldn't wait for my copy to come in the mail wrapped in brown paper. Its influence shaped the movement all the way to today and had incredible ads, writers and photographers â€" it inspired me to be one.”

The Tally

Gourmet: 40
Spy: 26
Domino: 12
House and Garden: 9
Premiere: 7
Brill's Content: 6
Life: 6
George: 5
Metropolitan Home: 5
Saturday Review: 5

Among the titles that gathered single votes were New Yorker Rocker, Grand Royal,  Big Brother and Suede. The polls are still open.

 

 

Is a Penny Rounded a Penny Lost? Ask Chipotle

By ANN CARRNS

My children are fans of the food at Chipotle Mexican Grill. Soft, fresh tacos; black beans; melted cheese - what's not to like? So I was intrigued when I read about a payment policy that the restaurant chain uses in some locations. It's called “rounding” (which, by coincidence, my daughter is learning about at elementary school).

The Consumerist recently riffed on a column in The Star-Ledger, which reported on Chipotle's practice of rounding the change in receipt totals for cash transactions at some restaurants. These locations do this so that cashiers don't have to handle lots of coins, which tends to slow the lines down. If you've ever been to Chipotle, you know that the food is dished out in assembly-line style, where you place your order and then walk along the counter, telling the staff that, yes, you'd like some guacamole, please, but hold the rice. You pay at the end of the line.

As The Consumerist pointed out, rounding to the nearest nickel isn't really a big deal, as long as the restaurant is rounding down. But if it rounds up, you pay extra - even if it's just a penny or two.

In one sense, this seems like a smart idea. Who wants excess change clogging up their pockets, anyway, especially if it means you'll get your food faster? But at least one customer objected to this “Chipotle-style math,” the New Jersey newspaper reported, and sent in his receipts for review:

“On the first, dated July 13, the nine items added up to $32.93. There was $2.31 in tax. The total should have been $35.24, but next to the ‘total' line on the receipt, it said $35.25. The next receipt, with the same sale date, showed a subtotal of $8.64. The tax was $0.60, so the grand total should have been $9.24. But no. With Chipotle-style math, the total was $9.25.”

I called a Chipotle spokesman, Chris Arnold, who said the chain uses rounding in a few “high vo lume” markets,  including New York, New Jersey and some locations in Boston. The idea is to reduce the time cashiers spend doling out pennies, to keep the lines moving quickly. (In some locations, he said, “there are lines out the door as soon as we open.”) The total, he said, was previously rounded either up or down, to the “nearest nickel.” The result generally was a wash for the restaurant, he said. And for most customers, he said, “I think generally it's been a nonissue.”

But a few penny-pinchers (my description, not Mr. Arnold's) did object. So as of August, he said, the chain is only rounding down. (Also, receipts should now have a line showing the impact of the rounding math.) He said he didn't know of other outlets that round receipts.

Do you think rounding of meal receipts - up or down - to eliminate pennies is a reasonable policy for a busy restaurant?

Newspapers in Syracuse and Harrisburg, Pa., to End Daily Distribution

August 28, 2012, 12:54 pm

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Newhouse Newspapers, which earlier this spring announced that it would stop printing a daily paper at The New Orleans Times-Picayune and its Alabama newspapers, said it would end the daily distribution of two more of its newspapers, The Post-Standard in Syracuse, and The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.

The papers will merge their content with local news Web sites and deliver the printed newspaper only three days a week.

Starting in January, The Post-Standard will publish on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. The Syracuse Media Group, the company formed to oversee The Post-Standard, is still considering whether to publish a newspaper that it would not deliver to homes and businesses on the other f our days.

The news prompted more than 100 comments by readers on the Web site Syracuse.com who expressed their concerns about life without a daily newspaper.

One reader wrote: “If we lose the ‘fourth estate' which slowly appears to be diminishing, government at all levels will run wild. Hopefully, the new business model will work and I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee to retain local reporting.”

It's even less clear what the future publishing schedule looks like for The Patriot News. According to the Web site PennLive.com, executives still have not decided what days they will publish a newspaper (other than Sunday) and are doing more research on what are the best days to print. But they plan to introduce a new publishing schedule in January.

John Kirkpatrick, president and publisher of The Patriot-News, wrote in a letter to readers that he planned to increase the amount of online coverage and continue produ cing higher quality journalism. “The plan to reinvent ourselves into a digitally focused organization with a quality print product three days a week is aimed at making sure that kind of work continues long into the future,” Mr. Kirkpatrick wrote.

Sara Ganim, a Patriot-News crime reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Penn State scandal, shared details about the announcement from a live meeting for the newsroom on Twitter. She said the paper planned to keep just as many pages, only condensed into three days. But it appeared that many details still had to be worked out.

Ms. Ganim wrote: “There are unanswered? s. price of paper, which days will publish, no. of positions, organization mode.”

While readers lamented the end of their daily paper on PennLive.com, they also pleaded with executives at the new publishing company to improve the quality of the Web site.

One reader wrote, “I hope before this begins (January) that you do something about the bouncing when you scroll down a page, the LONG time for opening a page and general confusion on some pages. My PC is up-to-date and high-speed, so that's not the problem.”

David Farre, editor of PennLive.com, told readers that there will be improvements to the Web site soon.

The Breakfast Meeting: Isaac Still Stealing the Show, and Signs of Apple v. Google

By NOAM COHEN

Tropical Storm Isaac on Tuesday was fast becoming a hurricane, with landfall expected Tuesday evening along the Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines, Campbell Robertson reported, with officials warning that the greatest danger could be from flooding, rather than the winds. For now, the networks were leaving their anchors 700 miles away in Tampa to cover the Republican National Convention, Jeremy W. Peters reported. Still the networks said they were being flexible in their planning; for example, NBC said it was prepared to send Brian Williams to New Orleans if the storm strengthened to a strong Category 2 or 3 hurricane.

• The Republican convention may have been postponed, in deference to Isaac, which had been thought to be heading toward Tampa, but the media coverage continued, Alessandra Stanley writes. The reporters and anchors in skyboxes didn't have any convention activities to cover, so their comments frequently went to a storm that took almost the exact same path on almost the exact day seven years ago: Hurricane Katrina.
• While the storm has certainly complicated the Republicans' planning, it also raises questions for President Obama's re-election campaign, Michael D. Shear writes. The Obama campaign had planned an aggressive posture in response to Mitt Romney's official nomination, but, depending on the severity of the storm, such partisanship could come off badly.
• On his daily radio show, Rush Limbaugh focused in on the initial model projections that showed Tropical Storm Isaac as likely to strike Tampa, Politico reported. He insisted that he wasn't saying there was a conspiracy, but on Monday he noted that the projections had cast a pall on the proceedings even before they had started: “I'm not alleging conspiracies here. The Hurricane center is the regime; the Hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It's the government. It's Obama.”

For all the sig nificance of Apple's courtroom victory over Samsung, which led to a jury's $1 billion damage award for patent infringement, an even larger fight could be looming, Claire Cain Miller and Brian X. Chen report: Apple v. Google. The Samsung products that Apple challenged use Google's Android software, and as Google begins to develop its own hardware, it will potentially face the same kinds of allegations unless it makes important modifications in design. In the background are comments made by Steven P. Jobs to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, about Android, calling it a “stolen product,” and adding, “I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

• On Monday Apple asked a federal judge to order eight Samsung products pulled off the shelves, in light of its courtroom victory. However, experts said that it was unlikely that a judge would grant the request.

Tuesday Reading: Treating Illness When The Mango Bites Back

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.