The Dutch call it a woonerf—a “livable street” resplendent with wide sidewalks, ample retail, greenery and minimal automobile traffic. It’s designed to boost quality of life for citizenry, the till for retailers and property values for landowners. Perhaps you’ve noticed that New York City doesn’t have many woonerfs amid its warren of streets, which make up one-fourth of the city’s land area. But what if it did? Retail sales and property values would jump; pollution ...

A story in the North Brunswick Sentinel has some valuable updates on the job cuts that are going down at The Wall Street Journal. Bob Christie, spokesman for The Journal, tells the Sentinel that The Journal will cut 39 jobs from its South Brunswick office, and relocate 11 people to the paper's office in Manhattan (so the '50' number we were all using is a bit off). The 39 who are getting the ax will ...

The AP reported this morning that Simon & Schuster is suing rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, both of whom were under contract with the publishing house for books that were due several years ago. The deals were done separately: Foxy Brown got $75,000 in 2005 for what was supposed to be a memoir, and Lil' Kim got $40,000 in 2003 for what was supposed to be a novel. According to Simon & Schuster's corporate ...

Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American VoterBy Rick ShenkmanBasic Books, 210 pages, $25 I remember an uproarious night almost seven years ago at Shay’s Pub and Wine Bar in Cambridge, Mass.—my local hangout. I was entertaining a friend, also an historian, who was in town doing research. He told me that earlier in the day, he’d wandered into a nearby radical bookstore, where he spotted a title by Bob Avakian, ...

Newly named Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli's wife, Maggie Farley, the United Nations reporter for the L.A. Times, says she quit right before the paper announced layoffs in order to "save a body." And, not surprisingly, she doesn't care much for what's happening to the paper. She tells L.A. Observed's Kevin Roderick: "I resigned last week in the hopes that it would save a body, and with all the changes in our family and ...

As you may already know, yesterday was a dark day for the newspaper industry: Layoffs at The Los Angeles Times; buyouts at The Wall Street Journal; the departure of The Chicago Times' editor-in-chief; The New York Times' stock price dipped to a decade-low as shares of McClatchy, Gannett, and News, Corporation also took hits. Today, the hits just keep on coming. Some lowlights: Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller resigns after 21-months at the paper. ...

The Times' Craig Whitney has one more thing to say on the subject of reporters/editors flaunting their political preferences: It shouldn't be anywhere in their Facebook pages, either. Here's another memo, just sent out: Fellow newsroom hands: I should have also mentioned avoiding some other potential political entanglements: Web sites, personal blogs, YouTube, Facebook, slogans and so on in e-mails and instant messaging systems. When Facebook asks what your political preferences are, don't answer, and ...

When some future historian writes the book about how newspapers went the way of the steel industry (if there are books in the future, of course), today could be the lede: The Los Angeles Times notified 150 newsroom staffers that they're getting fired today, months after they already cut dozens of jobs; the paper's publisher "stepped down," and will be replaced on an interim basis by Randy Michaels, a man with a career in radio. ...