The New York Times as Urban Planner
            

            Hello Walter,

            The New York Times built a neighborhood again today.

            A "House & Home" section story announced that the previously
indeterminate area between 23rd and 42nd streets on the
East Side should now be referred to as NoMad, for north of Madison Park. (In
this town, one sure mark of a commercial-turned-residential neighborhood is a
syllabic acronym. Soho stands for south of Houston, Tribeca is the triangle
below canal, and Dumbo is down under the Manhattan Bridge). The story does not
reveal how many New Yorkers have rented or bought apartments in NoMad recently.
Instead, it features a few fashion industry execs and designers who moved there
in search of stately prewar buildings, fantastic restaurants, and affordable
housing prices. The fashion director of Elle magazine, for example, pays
a mere $5,000 a month in rent.

            The Times does this at least once a year. Last year it instructed us
to start calling a desolate stretch on the West Side TunJav (the area is
between the Lincoln Tunnel and the Jacob Javitz convention center). The name
never took off, and neither did the neighborhood.

            And when will the Times lay the "Circuits" section to rest? When it
stops bringing in so many ads, I guess. Today the "Technology Journal" section
of the Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is trying to steal
AOL's dial-up business by offering the same service for little or no money. AOL
currently has 17 million customers, and the $21.95 per month they pay for the
service generates two-thirds of AOL's revenue. So AOL could soon join Lotus and
Netscape in the Microsoft price-cutting mausoleum. In contrast, "Circuits"
prints stories on teenagers working in tech-oriented summer jobs and on
password proliferation. OK, so the section isn't devoted to hard tech news. But
it makes digital culture seem so dull that it's probably keeping a couple
thousand Times subscribers offline.

            I see I've turned this message into a harangue against my beloved
Times . I feel guilty, like I've just publicly insulted my mother.

            Until later,
Jodi