How did an 18-year-old college student in Maryland gain the trust of and get access to TV executives and anchors in New York? “By posting 10 or 15 posts a day meant that the industry knew it was a reliable consistent source,” says Brian Stelter, creator of our sister site TVNewser and now a media reporter for the New York Times and author of the just released book “Top of the Morning.”

As he neared graduation, Stelter had to make a choice: work in TV news, or cover it.

• Part I: Stelter on Being Matt Lauer’s “nemesis”

Like watching The New York Times’ videos? Well good news for all you cheapskates out there: It’s now free to do so. Videos viewed on NYTimes.com, NYTimes.com/video, the paper’s mobile site and apps, will no longer count toward the 10 article per month limit enforced on non-subscribers.

The move is part of a bigger plan to push video, said Denise Warren, executive vice president of the Times’ digital products and services group. “As we continue to tell stories through video and increase our offerings, we want to ensure NYTimes.com users can watch and explore our video content with ease,” explained Warren in a statement.

The Times’ live and on-demand videos are separated into several categories, Latest News, Style, Arts, Business, Opinion, Sports, Science, News/Times Cast, World, U.S. and Editor’s Choice.

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter just had his first book — Top of The Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV — absolutely destroyed by The New York Times. In a review of the morning show centric book, Stelter’s subject matter was blasted and his writing style was ridiculed. It was bad.

The first sentence of the review by Ed Bark likens Top of The Morning to “a breakfast made not quite to order,” because it was “Edible? Yes. Fulfilling? Not quite.” Bark also said Stelter filled the book with “overblown prose” which made it “just plain silly.” One sentence was described by Bark as “veritable life imprisonment.” In the end, the best compliment Bark could give Stelter’s book was proclaiming it “fairly engaging.”

You have to wonder if some at the Times were caught off guard by Bark’s eviceration of Top of The Morning. After all, the cover story of the latest New York Times Magazine was a giant excerpt from the book.

It’s a good thing Bark isn’t with the Times, because it would be awkward if he ran into Stelter and a group of Times staffers in the cafeteria. Especially if any of them asked Bark if he had read anything good lately.

The tide against the use of “illegal immigrant” has been swelling for weeks. Now, a giant wave of protest is about to come crashing down on the New York Times. Tomorrow at 12:00 pm, a group of activists led by Fernando Chavez and Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, will protest in front of the Times building, demanding that the paper stop using “illegal immigrant.”

The group will have with it a petition from the Applied Research Center’s “Drop the I-Word” campaign featuring over 70,000 signatures that support the mission.

After the Associated Press announced it would no longer use “illegal immigrant,” the Times’ public editor wrote that the paper was considering dropping the phrase. Maybe this protest will make them act a little faster.

The New York Times has posted an excellent interactive feature about the Boston Marathon.

The paper interviewed 19 people who were near the finish line when the bomb went off for the graphic. As you scroll through the photos of the individuals, a circle pops up on a photo of the finish line, noting exactly where the person was when the first explosion happened.

Each person’s slot also features a stirring quote from their interview, such as “I said out loud, ‘this is how my life is going to end.’” You can click a button next to the person to hear their complete story.

The feature is riveting, and a fine example of the Times making the most out of the web.

The New York Times is attempting a lengthy task: ID’ing every person at the Boston Marathon finish line.

If you or someone you know was there, you might be able to help. Just head here and fill in the blank forms, and a Times editor will be in contact with you:

Over the past several days, Times reporters and editors have been working on identifying and telling the stories of the people in the image above, a frame from video recorded at the moment of the first explosion at the Boston Marathon. We have found many of the people seen here, but would like your help in identifying more.

The execs at The New York Times are apparently high on one day providing a cheaper subscription. The latest big name to tout the idea was Paul Smurl, vice president of NYTimes.com paid products.

Journalism.UK reports that Smurl told those gathered at the Digital Media Europe conference that the cheaper version could be priced as little as $10 or less. ”One of the things we are interested in is an entry-level product, as we’ve only penetrated a portion of users,” explained Smurl.

This is the second time we’ve heard about this low-priced version of the Times. In February, Denise Warren, the Times’ chief advertising officer and general manager of nytimes.com, broached the subject by claiming that the company is testing a cheaper version.

The only catch to this Low! Low! Low! discount price? It wouldn’t be the full Times. It’d be scaled down to several sections, like Theater and Home & Garden. You know, the sections no one reads. Kidding! There is no word on what sections the less expensive Times would include.

The New York Times said Monday’s op-ed by a Guantanamo Bay inmate “was an easy call to publish,” stemming early criticism by those on the conservative right.

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“The value of today’s piece by the Guantanamo detainee is obvious and it was an easy call to publish it,” Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, told us in an email. “Guantanamo is run by the United States and these hunger strikes are happening.  Readers have a right to know, in fact we would argue, they need to know about them.”

The Times published on Monday an op-ed by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, an 11-year inmate at Guantanamo Bay. The Yemeni national dictated the details of his harsh treatment and ongoing hunger strike through a translator.

On Fox Nation, the aggregation site renowned for its hard-nosed reporting and indelible racial sensitivity, a link to the op-ed bore the headline, “NYT Publishes Op-Ed From Gitmo Terrorist.” Had they read the piece, they’d see in the third paragraph — as HuffPost Media astutely pointed out — the so-called “terrorist” says “I have never been charged with any crime.” Including, among those zero crimes charged, terrorism.

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In a New Republic piece titled “Get Rich or Deny Trying,” a former advisor to President Obama is quoted saying “There’s only one paper the president reads, that’s The New York Times.” Now before all you haters (Mitt, you’re turning red man, try breathing) blast Big O, let’s think this through.

Is it possible that the president only reads the Times? In an interview with Rolling Stone last year, Obama said he reads the Times, but also The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. As The Huffington Post notes, this was the second time Obama mentioned perusing those three papers. Obama has also admitted that he enjoyed magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He even mentioned FishbowlNY as a “Great blog run by ruggedly handsome dudes who can throw fantastic spirals.”* 

It certainly doesn’t seem like Obama limits his paper intake to the Times. He has mentioned WaPo and WSJ and the quote in the New Republic is from an anonymous ex-advisor. However, that probably doesn’t matter. Haters, as they say, are going to hate. The media will cry that the White House has a Times bias and Republicans are going to fire up the rage machine. But give the president some credit: At least we know he can read. That’s more than we could say about George W. 

* - This is not true.
[Image: Business Insider]