As a sort of appendix to thoughts about the New York Times and Carlos Slim, there are also these excellent thoughts about what makes a tabloid newspaper a news operation. A news product is, in many ways, made of its own delivery vehicle-and this is a point that's obvious to a man who, for example, essentially gave away cellphones to millions of people to then charge them for cell phone service. Hello! The basic circumstances that may make a story impossible to put on the cover of your newspaper on a given morning are not in the control of the editors: How is the paper distributed? When does [...]

I have emerged victorious from reading Lawrence Wright's Carlos Slim profile in this week's New Yorker. (The article is about the Mexican billionaire-mogul, in light of his financial entanglement with the New York Times.) Here are a few thoughts.