ROFFLES: NY Times' obnoxious "Metropolitan Diary" is SONNED!

Especially in this post-9/11 world.

1) http://gawker.com/news/metropolitan-diary/prank-might-kill-metropolitan-diary-237136.php

We hear that the WFMU v. NY Times incident might spell the end of the Metropolitan Diary column. (The incident: an WFMU intern submitted a funny fake item, lied when Times editor Michael Pollak called to verify, and got chewed out on the air after it was published.) We hear Pollak has been opposed to the feature for a while, even though it's the sole solace in the lives of some elderly New Yorkers, because he hates that the items in the column are impossible to verify. In the words of our informant, he "knows" that this isn't the first false item that's slipped in. We shudder to think that this prank might just be the ammo Pollak needs to convince his higher-ups that MetDi should close up shop. What will the old folk do for fun now?

Michael Pollak ... testily informed Andy and I (aged 50 and 48 respectively) that the New York Times is a "smorgasbord" which does not publish exclusively for "young trendies." He lauded the Web 2.0 nature of The Metropolitan Diary, a column with an audience of elderly people "who look on it as a kind of one bright spot in a week of otherwise gloomy news."

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/02/the_new_york_ti.html

http://sevenseconddelay.blogspot.com/2007/02/spot-fake.html

http://gawker.com/5867586/ this is v good, i don't really read times columnists so didn't actually know who this guy was