Catherine Mathis

Newspapers dead?

Today's day-after the election issue of The New York Times—the one with the OBAMA banner headline that the paper's masthead decided on after consulting some of its readers—is selling out fast. (Need proof: Check out this photo from Gawker.)

The paper's spokeswman, Catherine Mathis, has told us that the paper is printing an extra 50,000 copies for the afternoon rush at transit-hubs like Grand Central, Penn Station, and Port Authority. It's a veritable P.M. editition of The Times!

"We had increased our print run for single copy sales today by about 35%," she writes. "In 2004 we saw an increase in sales of around 50,000 copies the day after the election and based on what we've seen today, we expect to significantly surpass those sales.  read more »

Barry Bearak is on his way home. Here's the statement from Bill Keller, sent to us through the Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis:

Barry's family, friends and colleagues are overjoyed that the court threw out the preposterous charges against him, and that he is on his way home. His only offense was honest journalism, telling Zimbabwe's story at a time of tormented transition. He had no intention of becoming part of that story.  read more »

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Neal Ungerleider of FishBowlNY is reporting that the New York Times "has made an offer to buy" the New York and Boston editions of the free daily Metro. Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for the Times, said she couldn't comment to Mr. Ungerleider because of company policy.  read more »

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. has been juggling two things when considering ads like the one that dominated the New York Times home page yesterday: good money from advertisers versus frustrated readers. His decision: to limit those ads to once a month.

Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis writes Media Mob:  read more »

The New York Times corporate communications chief has been given a title upgrade: Catherine Mathis has been named senior vice president of corporate communications.

In the release, Times CEO Janet Robinson said of Ms. Mathis: "Catherine is the consummate communications professional. She has a deep understanding of our business and, under her leadership, we have taken a smart, strategic approach to media and investor relations."  read more »

We’d just like to have more and more and more,” said Andrew Rosenthal, the New York Time  read more »

This morning's New York Times provides the latest installment in the saga of reporter-cum-memoirist Alan Feuer: an Editors' Note reports that the paper "asked its Baghdad bureau staff to recheck" an April 14, 2003 story by Feuer after Feuer claimed, in his book about war reporting, to have fudged facts in that piece.

On reinspection, the Times says, the facts--a name and an age--check out, though Feuer did get another name wrong in the piece. That's consistent with the Times' reaction when the Observer first asked about the contents of Feuer's memoir: reporter Alan Feuer can be trusted; it's the memoirist Alan Feuer (or his alter ego, "T.R."), who embellishes stuff.  read more »

Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis said via e-mail that the review of Feuer's Iraq work was limited to the one article in question. "In the midst of covering a war, it is hard to take time forthat kind of research in the absence of specific reports of possible error," Ms. Mathis wrote.