“I was completely aware that I was writing crap. I was like, ‘I hope to God people don’t read my advice on how to make gin at home because they’ll probably poison themselves.’”
–A former “creator” at a content farm, who wishes to remain anonymous “for fear of ‘embarrassing’ her current employer with her content farm-hand past” explains what it was like to churn out pieces like “How to Wear a Sweater Vest” and “How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed.” [Via]

Today the New York Times published a story about its parent company: “Times Co. Posts Operating Profit Gain”! Well, that’s… true. (And they mean the second quarter of this year over the second quarter of last year.) But, once again, it’s historical context time! If you look back over the last five years, what you see is the newspaper radically chopping its operating costs.

One way to do that is by firing people! And by making your paper smaller. But you have to be careful how many people you fire and how small you make the paper, because you still have to keep people interested in your product.

This shows how over the last five years, not only has the newspaper cut its operating costs, but also it began to lose the margin between its costs and its total revenue.

The second quarter of 2009 was a squeaker-while overall revenue was $584.5 million, the paper’s operating costs were $561.2 million.

How low can those costs trend while still having, like, newsprint and writers? We’ll find out!

I do think it’s also important to say that this is a very big business! And this is all a great deal of money! This is just so we can all look at the numbers-it isn’t intended to say that the Times is necessarily on death’s door.

It is, however, a radical thing to reduce costs by hundreds of millions of dollars over five years-particularly when your revenue is chasing that number.

Now. Nerds may carry on here! The point being, the Times was forced to trumpet their “operating profit”-because net income was actually down over last year, and was less than a third of 2007’s net income. (Though it was up from 2008!)

(Non-nerds may wish to be reminded that “net income” is income after subtracting all expenses and losses and “operating profit” is earnings before taxes and interest.)

So you know, they’re both pretty far down over five years.

The last sentence of the Times’ story: “The company reported that it had $102 million in cash on hand at the end of the quarter and net debt of $670 million. “

For more answers, I refer you to their circulation figures.

“About two weeks later, on July 1, a man wearing a hat and a bandanna entered Family Loan. ‘He was kind of running in and carrying a gun, and told my employees that he didn’t want to kill anybody, and for them to get on the floor, and they followed his instructions,’ Mr. Chamblee said. ‘He asked the young lady for the cash, and she gave it to him.’ The gunman ordered the three employees into a bathroom and barred the door with a chair. Then he needed to rest.”
–The amazing story of 63-year-old Arthur Williams, who was convicted of committing 134 crimes in the 1970s and spent 33 years in prison before being released last year, only to go on a ten-day robbery spree that ended with his death the Sunday before last in a car accident resulting from a high-speed police, seems to speak to a disturbing addiction to the thrill of breaking the law. That or Williams was auditioning for a role in the new Bruce Willis movie, Red, which I want to see.

Okay, the sub-conversation in yesterday’s copy editor story about the correct terminology for fingering has been vexing me all morning. I have always been a strong partisan for “finger-bang,” but I am told that “finger-blast” is considerably more au courant. Is this a generational divide? A regional one? Not knowing, I cannot say. Although it should be noted that one proponent of “finger-blast” favors that locution because he believes it to be more humorous than “finger-bang,” which does indeed carry with it a certain amount of mustiness (and, of course, gravitas) due to its lengthy tenure as the mot juste when one needs to discuss the act of digital insertion. (I think we can all agree that advocates of the little-used “finger-fuck” are disgracefully crude individuals who have no place in this conversation.) In any event, I think it’s time we settle this once and for all. What’s the word, people?

Fingering: Bang or blast? Bang! Blast! Doesn’t matter, I’m not likely to ever be 12 again pollcode.com free polls

Choose wisely. The winner goes right into the OED.

Do you love Liz Colville the way I do? The author of Five Years in New York: To the Class of 2010 from the Class of 2005 and The Only Three Female Musicians, According to Many Male Music Critics and other bits of hilarity? GOOD NEWS THEN! She’s Kickstarting a book of essays! For just $2, you can be in the acknowledgments. ($200 gets you the dedication page!) Do we live in a great age or what?

Yes, on a very basic level this is a local news story about some goats in Virginia who enjoy hanging out on an IHOP billboard. And even at that basic level there’s something enjoyable about it. But the nearly raw nature of the report-neither of the speakers are identified, there is no voice-over annoyance to disrupt the flow of the footage (in fact, save for a short question at the end, the reporter is not heard from at all)-makes for a much more compelling narrative which, as it unspools, reveals the identities and relationships of the interviewees in a way that echoes the short fiction of Barry Hannah or Padgett Powell. This is a remarkable piece of reportage that should change the way local news is presented from here on out. Alright, maybe I’m overstating the case, but, come on, goats on a billboard! You’re already starting at “win.” Everything else is gravy.

We live in an amazing time for web advertising!

Previously: Ad Obliterates ‘New Yorker’ Website.

I’m not sure TMZ quite understands how the gayness works? In an item this morning headlined “Julianne Hough: I Thought Seacrest Was Gay!,” they wrote: “There’s a reason it took Ryan Seacrest such a long time to score a date with his new girlfriend Julianne Hough — she thought she lacked the proper equipment … genitally speaking.” Either I woke up in some forgotten Ursula Le Guin novel about the “third sex” or TMZ’s big gay boss isn’t properly explaining the birds and the bees and the penises to his young team.

The Silver Lake Walker, also known as Dr. Marc Abrams, has died. While every city has a crazy compulsive walker (San Francisco’s was infamous for wearing tiny, tiny and very unfortunate shorts!), the delightful Dr. Abrams obviously stood out in America’s City of Endless Traffic and also wasn’t actually crazy-he was just very invested in lots and lots of walking. (He also did 4000 push-ups a day.) He was found dead in a hot tub in Silver Lake, and his age is given, improbably, as 58. Presumably, there’s some sort of lesson here about life.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has offered just-ousted Shirley Sherrod a job. No word yet on whether she’ll tell him to stuff it in his spineless face, but there is word from the White House that Vilsack won’t be fired. Huh.