Gail Collins

There's a strict caste system for press passes in Denver. There's the perimeter pass, which gets you inside the general media area, which takes up a large portion of the parking lot to the Pepsi Center; a hall pass which gets you inside the Pepsi Center, but only throughout the concourse; and then there's the super pass, the Floor pass, which gets you in the inside of the arena, where you'd find Michelle Obama giving a speech.

Many media outlets--including us!--only have a handful of the Floor passes, so reporters have to trade off so the Floor Pass and the Hall Pass can circulate around. According to Rick Berke, assistant managing editor of the Times, who was wearing a perimeter pass, that's exactly what the paper of record is doiing. And Gail Collins, with her perimeter pass in hand, was wondering aloud who she could do a trade-off with.

 

An overheated Times columnist Gail Collins was leaving Media Pavilion 4 and heading to a port-a-potty when she stopped for a few minutes to chat. She said she was going to do some reporting, but she was only going armed with a notebook and tape recorder. 

"I've been carrying around the laptop for 2 hours today wandering through the city," she said. "The laptop is in there, and it's not moving. It stays there for the rest of the convention. I'll be moving, but not the laptop. After walking three miles in the sun—it's a presence in your life you'd like to eliminate."

On June 22, the Times public editor Clark Hoyt had a few words for the Times’ Maureen Dowd for several primary-season columns that disparaged Hillary Clinton. "Even [Ms. Dowd], I think, by assailing Clinton in gender-heavy terms in column after column, went over the top this election season."

So two days ago, current Op-Ed columnist (and former editorial page editor) Gail Collins wrote into Mr. Hoyt’s reader's response column to respond: "When the public editor laces into an opinion page columnist for making fun of a controversial political figure, it sounds like a suggestion that all of us tone things down. I hope I’m hearing wrong.  read more »

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

The New York Times announced this afternoon that deputy editorial-page editor Andrew Rosenthal will replace Gail Collins as editorial-page editor January 1. The annoucement quotes publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. calling Rosenthal "a born editorial writer."

And how! The release describes Rosenthal's journalistic background, including stints as a Washington correspondent, Denver bureau reporter and AP sports stringer. It does not mention his earliest connection with the profession--and the Times: his birth, in 1956, to a celebrated young foreign correspondent named A.M. Rosenthal.

Collins will depart for book leave, according to the release, and will return as an op-ed columnist.

Even when he’s not sporting his trademark cowboy boots, it’s tough to take U.S.  read more »

“The goalposts have been moved,” said Dan Gerstein, a former aide to Senator Joseph Lieb  read more »

The Transom is so relieved to finally hear the truth from those liberal fatcats on 43rd Street:

In New Orleans, the mayor seemed to assume all that was beyond his control, just like the mayors in the 1960's who let the riots occur.

They said their cities couldn't survive without help from Washington, which proceeded to shower inner cities with money and programs that did more damage than the riots. Cities didn't recover until some mayors, especially Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, tried self-reliance.

It's so nice to finally hear someone say it! Damn all those mayors and their pro-riot agendas! And affirmative action and that evil, baby-loving Head Start program: actually more damaging than urban riots. "He's just a very interesting thinker," NYT editorial page editor Gail Collins once said of Mr. Tierney. "Just"? Surely that's faint praise for a man who manages to hold down a job on the op-ed page while being too fucking stupid to dress himself in the morning without assistance.  read more »

UPDATE: Hey, didn't Mr. Giuliani actually, like, cause a riot among cops in New York City? Huh. —Choire Sicha

While the political playing field is lined with union bosses, lobbying groups and eminent ex-statesm  read more »

While the political playing field is lined with union bosses, lobbying groups and eminent ex-statesm  read more »

Maureen Dowd and Thomas L.  read more »

"I am someone who's always changed my career a lot," Frank Rich said.  read more »

"I'm looking forward to being surprised," New York Times editorial-page editor Gail Collins said.  read more »

Wednesday 17th St. Patrick's Day!  read more »

The last time Daniel Okrent worked for The New York Times , he was a student at the University of Mi  read more »

From 2001 to this summer, Bill Keller was tucked away in a 10th-floor office at the Times headquarte  read more »

Talk has a problem.  read more »

As things have gone, editors Michael Hirschorn and Kurt Andersen have been pretty quiet about their  read more »

Stepping up his invasion of territory long hostile to New York City politicians, Mayor Rudolph Giuli  read more »