Newspapers

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With the mockumentary genre basically dominating television comedies in the last five years ("The Office," "Parks and Recreation," and "Summer Heights High") it's easy to forget the original source of these were British television shows that followed people around their jobs for a year and let you experience life through their eyes. Now Andrew Rossi, a filmmaker who has directed such New York-centric titles as Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven, is hoping to cash in on this earlier phenomenon with a look inside The New York Times' media desk, The New York Observer reports.

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The New York Times reports that police raided the paper's printing plant in Queens this morning as part of a corruption investigation. The offices of The New York Daily News, The New York Post and Spanish-language newspaper El Diario were also searched today.

The raids are part of the Manhattan district attorney's office's investigation into possible corruption within the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union, which is involved in the delivery of newspapers for the Post, Daily News and El Diario, the Times said.

Police Raid Newspaper Printing Plants --New York Times

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Here's another way to put up a digital pay wall without having to deal with all the negative connotations associated with that name: The Boston Globe, which has offered a free online edition since this summer, is now making their digital copy available only for download to your computer. And, unless you already subscribe to The Globe, you'll have to pay for it.

Ostensibly, this makes the paper more...well, paper-like, as if that was what was missing from our online content. "GlobeReader delivers the Globe's award-winning journalism straight to your computer in a familiar newspaper-style layout," boasts the front page of The New York Times Co.-owned Web site for the GlobeReader, which promotes access to seven days worth of news in its bundled package for $4.98, including comics and crosswords in PDF format (although however you're supposed to work on a crossword in PDF is beyond us).

We have to admit, this is one of the sillier ways we've seen a company try to monetize its digital readers. Old PDFs can potentially gather dust and take up space on your hard drive just like a real newspaper, although they are impossible to copy onto blogs, so they are also a real newspaper in that respect. In addition, it looks like most of The Globe (minus the comics and crosswords, of course) is still available online, so why pay for the GlobeReader at all? Unless you really miss your daily Marmeduke fix, of course.

Full release after the jump

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There was more bad news for New York Times staffers this week. The paper, which is already planning to cut 100 newsroom jobs by the end of the year, told nonunion staffers this week that it would stop paying into their pension plans at the end of the year, instead choosing to contribute 3 percent of their salaries to 401(k) plans.

What's more, the Times' News Service, which edits Times stories for the wire, announced that it plans to lay off at least 25 employees next year as it moves the service to the Florida paper owned by The New York Times Co., The Gainesville Sun. The staff at the Sun are unionized and their salaries are cheaper, the Times reported, making it cheaper to run the service out of the Florida paper's offices.

The News Service layoffs were not included in the 100 staffers to be cut by year's end, who will be made up in part by voluntary buyouts. The Times management offered buyouts to its staff last month and said that if they did not get enough they would turn to layoffs. The buyout deadline is fast approaching, so we'll keep you posted as the story develops in the next few weeks.

New York Times News Service to Cut Jobs and Relocate --New York Times

Earlier: Memo: Times To Layoff 100 Newsroom Staffers

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