Lots of New York Times news to discuss today! You may recall, way back in the early days of August before Sarah Palin was even a glimmer in John McCain‘s eye, that we told you how the NYT Co. was under increases pressure to cut its dividends (simply put: “it has to stop paying its shareholders so much money and use some of its finite cash to pay off its bonds”). Bloomberg is now reporting the company is considering doing just that, or perhaps even dropping dividends altogether(!) after “reporting a loss on severance costs and a steeper drop in advertising sales.” Keep in mind that the NYT Co. has a $1.1 billion debt and pays the controlling Ochs-Sulzberger family a $25.1 million a year dividend. Time for some belt-tightening we thinks!

But that is not all, by a long shot. Because if you were the national paper of record, as well as (by far), the best example of how a newspaper should go about transitioning to the online world, and you found yourself struggling, what would you do? Hire a celebrity for your op-ed pages, of course!

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Welcome to the future of newspapers. We clicked onto the NYT website earlier today and lo and behold the front page picture was moving. The Times online has long incorporated video but this is the first time we’ve seen it move above the fold, so to speak. We imagine that in the not too distant future, when television and the Internet become one, the Times will be its own station, and MoDo will have her own hour.

So this last week or so there seems to have been a bit of a rude awakening re Barack Obama over at the New York Times op-ed pages. First off, last Friday (July 4, no less) the editorial board wrote a piece titled “New and Not Improved” about how Obama’s recent move to the middle was enormously distressing, especially considering all that change he’s been promising (politicians promising change, crazy!). “We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games…We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.” Snap!

Then on Saturday, Bob Herbert accused Obama of “lurching with abandon,” of “not being the man “we had when we began,” of “taking his base for granted.” Did no one there read David Brooks very sharp “The Two Obamas” (yep, every once in a while he knocks one out of the park)? Better yet perhaps they should glance at MoDo‘s recent relationship advice column where she tells us that “infatuation trumps judgment,” because when it comes to Obama the Times is sounding less like a newspaper contending with the reality and audacity of American politics and more like a disillusioned lover. As per usual, Gail Collins provides the sharpest insight:

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