• PRNewser: The publicist for Charlie Sheen quit today, which is sort of like leaving a house after a fire has already burned it to the ground, but still, good for him.
• SportsNewser: An English cricket player has announced that he’s gay. It’d be nice to see a male player from a major league come out here, but sadly, there are no male gay pro athletes. None at all. Not one single gay man among all those players.
• FishbowlLA: OWN, the Oprah-fueled network, has absolutely terrible ratings. Somehow, this is all Dr. Phil’s fault, we just know it.

Everyone – okay, almost everyone – likes Mad Men, because there’s a lot of things to like about it. One of the more interesting aspects is its portrayal of the rampant drinking during work. It happens so much it almost seems unbelievable.

But according to Gay Talese, who wrote for the New York Times around the same time as Mad Men is set, everyone drank during work, especially at the Times. In fact, he says the drinking at the paper was way worse than anything shown in Mad Men.

In the short video above he discusses this, including an incident when a colleague passed out on his typewriter (that’s a machine used to type words). Talese says the drinking was so bad “It was a wonder the paper could ever get out.”

The New York Times in the 1960s > College frat houses everywhere.

Fotoulla Euripidou, who has been with Rodale for eight years – most recently as Vice President of Consumer Insights – will join Hearst as Vice President, Director of Consumer Research, on March 21st.

Euripidou will report directly to Ellen Levine, Editorial Director at the company’s magazines division. Levine said Euripidou will help expand Hearst’s brands, explaining, “As the media landscape evolves, her insights will be key in helping us navigate and evaluate opportunities, from launches to content extensions for our existing brands.”

We have one thing to say to Euripidou: Growing brands is great, just please don’t make us cover the launch of Popular Mechanics Restaurant.

Yesterday morning FishbowlNY picked up on a rumor that Roger Ailes was going to be indicted this week, possibly even today. The rumor was sparked by a blog post by Barry Ritholtz, in which he cited a source telling him that Ailes was in serious, imminent trouble. Naturally, we tweeted about it and waited to hear anything more. Well, Justin Elliott at Salon, has more; or at least more about the specifics behind the rumor.

Apparently the source Ritholtz cited in his post was some random guy he met at an airport. Perfect! Elliot explains:

Here’s what happened, according to Ritholtz, who just got back from a vacation on the tropical island: He was sitting in the Barbados airport waiting for a plane to arrive and he struck up a conversation with an older man sitting next to him.

‘We started chatting and next thing I know, we’re waiting to leave the gate, his phone rings and he tells his wife, ‘yeah Ailes just canceled the event,’ Ritholtz says, describing the man as “obviously annoyed and frustrated.’

The man runs an annual event in March at which Ailes was scheduled to speak, according to Ritholtz, who declined to specify the event. When he asked the man why Ailes canceled, the man said Ailes was about to be indicted. He describes the man, who he would not name, as an ‘Upper East Side Democrat.’

Well, thank god he’s an Upper East Side Democrat and not a Hell’s Kitchen Independent, because then this story would really lack credibiltiy.

Perhaps the guy will end up being right, but maybe, just maybe, Ritholtz should have waited and got another source before starting up the rumor mill.

The New York Times is getting set to put up that infamous paywall, so what better way to prepare than hiring one of the best web design minds in the city? Zeke Turner is reporting that Ian Adelman, the wiz from New York magazine’s web brands, is joining the NYTimes.com team as Digital Design Director at the end of the month.

In an internal memo at New York, Adelman said that the move was exciting because he’s a believer in the Times:

Just as New York was a place that attracted me because it was a fantastic product that I was drawn to and read cover to cover, The New York Times is my source of news. It’s always fantastic to contribute something that you feel part of or some attachment to.

This is obviously a good move for the Times. It’s not hard to see how far Adelman took New York magazine’s online presence since he joined the company in 2006, so getting him to oversee nytimes.com during a period of great transition is very smart.

Of course Adelman will eventually have to deal with all his friends asking how to bypass the paywall, but that’s probably a good problem to have.

Andrew Sullivan is leaving his post – or actually just moving it – from The Atlantic to The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He posted on The Daily Dish last night that the column will be moving in April to The Daily Beast, and that he’d be contributing columns for Newsweek as well. Sullivan says in his post that he’s going to dearly miss The Atlantic, but the allure of The Daily Beast and Newsweek was just too strong:

The chance to be part of a whole new experiment in online and print journalism, in the Daily Beast and Newsweek adventure, is just too fascinating and exciting a challenge to pass up. And to work with media legends, Barry Diller and Tina Brown, and with the extraordinary businessmen Sidney Harman and Stephen Colvin, is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Brown recently implemented some cosmetic changes with Newsweek, and the talent she continues to add is impressive. FishbowlNY is excited about the direction she’s taking the venture, because the more time goes by, the more it’s looking to be the right path.

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• FishbowlLA: Nikki Finke got her hands on the script for the upcoming Oscars, and shocker, she says it’s going to be boring. What would we do without that kind of insight?
• TVNewser: Kathleen Parker is out at Parker Spitzer, and the show itself is getting completely remade.
• UnBeige: A young fox was found living on top of what will soon be Europe’s tallest building. A baby fox is called a kit. There, now you’ve learned something new.

The New York Times takes a hard look at Wayne Barrett, and the result is mostly what you’d expect: Barrett is a fantastic investigative reporter, but also a grumpy old man.

In the piece, the pleasingly gruff Barrett offers up some gems. He notes that he never got an explanation for being forced out at The Village Voice, says he’s never had much use for editors, and on that subject, says, “Tony Ortega is the hardest working editor and the most skillful editor of copy that I’ve ever had. But I’ve never liked him very much.”

Barrett also shows some sympathy to the mayors of the city’s past – who were often skewered in his columns – by telling the Times that his biggest regret is not writing more about the positive things Ed Koch did.

But before you think he’s mellowed out, there’s this:

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Look, we have to be honest: we tried and tried to come up with a way to work a line from Tupac’s “Changes” into this post about more shifting at the New York Times Magazine, but we just couldn’t figure one out.

So instead, we’ll just tell you that Ben Zimmer announced the On Language column is disappearing, and Edith Zimmerman, editor behind The Hairpin, is being added as a columnist.

Zimmerman’s first column will appear in the March 6th issue. We’re hoping the first line is something like, “I see no changes, all I see is racist faces, misplaced hate makes disgrace to races.”