New York Daily News

What else do you call a day when the comedic actress and writer is seemingly everywhere all at once?

First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those behind-the-scenes videos of Ms. Fey's photo shoot that all magazines' Web Editors are convinced Internet users love. (In an example of too-weird-to -ignore/too-geeky-to -explicate life imitating art, a very Maureen Dowd-like character played by Christine Lahti once wrote a profile of the protagonists' of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show, like Ms. Fey's 30 Rock, set behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show very much like Ms. Dowd's launchpad, Saturday Night Live.)

Ms. Dowd's story was dutifully picked up by The Daily News, The New York Post (whose Page Six also had an item about Ms. Fey today), and The Associated Press, and TMZ. (Apparently a lot of people have been wondering why Ms. Fey has a scar on her face.)  read more »

In today's New York Daily News, Piper Weiss introduces readers to the city's "Heebster movement," which we are told is "led by local tastemakers hell-bent on pushing the boundaries of traditional Jewish culture." They wear "self referential T-shirts" (presumably with the word "T-Shirt" emblazoned on the front) and perform racy "Hasidic Strips" that have women "dressed up as Hasidic Jews, and [...] do a striptease to reveal Jewish star pasties and tightie whities."

After listing a series of events with pun-filled names like "Heebonism," Ms. Weiss concludes, "But don't call these events 'cool.' Identifying the Heebster movement may just be its downfall."

If that's the case, then this movement's been in decline since at least the late '90s when reporters began covering it.

Some samples after the jump:  read more »

Good morning!

Officials Try to Stem Crisis; Fed to Meet, The New York Times

Bank Turmoil Slams Asian Indexes, The Wall Street Journal

Here's what you need to know about the financial crisis, The New York Daily News

NY WILL TAKE $1B HIT: GOV, The New York Post

Wall Street Woes Endanger Funding for the Arts, The New York Sun

Stocks Plunge as Crisis Intensifies, The Washington Post

Banking free-fall not over, The Chicago Tribune

Businesses could face tighter credit after Lehman bankruptcy, The Los Angeles Times

Lehman bankrupt, but misery only beginning, Crain's New York Business

Crisis On Wall Street, Forbes

The end of Wall Street, Fortune

"The tears will flow.

Then they will stop.

People will try to get along.

And America will proceed with its business - of vanquishing its enemies, and pursuing its cherished way of life."–New York Post editorial, September 16, 2001.

Even this populist Democratic National Convention has a seating chart, and therefore a social hierarchy.

According to the DNC's rubric, The Washington Post is deserving of the better seat than The Times, and Jezebel and Glamour deserve a closer seat than The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones and Portfolio.

First, a little background. There's really no bad seat in the Denver Broncos press box in Invesco Field, but there certainly are better ones. There are two rows of tables that curve in the press box from the end zone to about the 20-yard line. You want to be in that first row, which features delightfully unimpeded views of the whole stadium other than the glass that surrounds the front of the press box from floor to ceiling; in the second row, you'll see Barack Obama pretty nicely, but you'll also be staring at the back of someone's head.  read more »

Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria ... and this! Tim Arango at The Times is reporting something that was probably once unfathomable but utterly plausible in today's bleak, sad newspaper climate: Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman are negotiating a plan to combine some back offices to ease operating costs for The New York Post and the Daily News.

He reports:

Lawyers for both newspapers are trying to find a structure for an agreement that would not require signing a Joint Operating Agreement — a mechanism other papers have used that would require creating a separate entity with a separate board and essentially mean merging all business functions while maintaining separate newsrooms.  read more »

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The Associated Press is reporting that the defamation lawsuit brought by former New York Post writer Jared Paul Stern against Ron Burkle, The New York Daily News, and Bill and Hillary Clinton has been dismissed by State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub. (This comes via Jim Romenesko.)

In April 2006, The Observer's Choire Sicha profiled Mr. Stern at his Catskills cottage and reported on his book deal which was subsequently cancelled .

While The New York Daily News and The New York Post had identical takes on yesterday's double publicity stunt at The New York Times Building, one Post employee managed to find a new angle on the story. Herself.  read more »

Yankees slugger Jason Giambi admitted to Portfolio's Franz Lidz that when he goes into a slump he wears a lucky thong. Not a jockstrap. A thong. Sometimes when other Yankees go into slumps—like Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, Robinson Cano and Robin Ventura—they've worn his tiger-striped thong too.

And here's how the papers and blogs headlined it over the weekend:  read more »

The New York Daily News reclaimed the title of New York's most read tabloid this morning. The Audit Bureau of Circulations released a study of daily average circulation over a six month period, ending on September 30, that showed the News had over taken the New York Post.

The News had a daily circulation rate of 681,415 (down from 693,423 last year); The Post had 667,119 (down from 704,011 last year).

Last year, the Post bragged about beating the News, so expect some payback tomorrow.

The roof of the Daily News remains intact. But, according to several News staffers, if it’s not the roof, it’s the floorboards.  read more »

Rival tabloid editors’ latest price-chop catfight.  read more »

Daily News columnist Errol Louis gave a peek inside a reporter’s mind--and wallet--at Thursday morning’s PlaNYC panel at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, when he asked:

“If you are someone like me--I’ll plead guilty--who has press plates and you do have to drive in, because the story that you work on that day might be on Staten Island, or it might be in the Bronx, and you actually don’t know until it happens and so forth--the $8 doesn’t seem like a disincentive to me. Frankly, it’s not high enough.”  read more »