It's true! Look at this headline from today's Times: New York Burger Stand on Boston's Seafood Turf?

The Times itself reports the paper is planning a San Francisco edition featuring local news - as is the Wall Street Journal:

In addition to planning a San Francisco edition, The Times is exploring the prospects for regional editions based in other cities.

Via John Carroll, already wondering whether the Times would unload the Globe, then promptly launch a Boston edition (then again, anybody remember when the Times tried a New England section?).

Who knew New York Times columnists were so sensitive? Thanks to Chris Faraone at the Phoenix, we now know that Mo Mo doesn't read what people write about her on the Internet because it would hurt her feelings. So what does she do? She hurts our feelings, by quoting some pointyheaded douche from the New Republic:

The Internet is like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone's drunk and ugly and they're going to pass out in a few minutes.

Dude, of course, went to Harvard, so I'm figuring him to be the model for that blowhard in "Good Will Hunting" who lost the girl to the guy from Southie.

Globe columnist Cullen likens relationship between Globe and NYT Co. to that between debtor and loan shark. Overall, it reads like a resigned realist, laying it out.

This installment of the loansharking metaphor is relatively free of violence, but tune in for the next exciting episode.

The Times stereotypes Boston natives as quivering in fear of giant metal birds that belch smoke losing yet another local institution to sophisticated New Yorkers. The Outraged Liberal shakes an ox bone at the metal beast explains why it's just more proof of how out of touch the Manhattan Overlords are:

... I personally think we're over the "faraway headquarters" angst -- something the faraway owners of the Times should have recognized awhile ago, if they paid attention. BankBoston, John Hancock, Gillette. That's so 20th Century.

In fact, we've adapted quite well to Google and Microsoft entering our midst to provide employment for folks with an affinity to MIT, that other major Cambridge institution whose name does not begin with an H.

No offense to Perez-Pena, but the assignment seemed as if it were described as "find out why those people are so upset." The folks in charge in Manhattan seem to be totally out of touch with the reality of Boston today. ...

Ed. note: Also, the reporter was obviously relying on outdated clips, because he thinks the Filene's building is still standing.

He won't talk to the Globe for its weeklong eulogy, but he will talk to the New York Times:

... He considers unnecessary what his son Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island calls "the premature eulogizing," or what Mr. Biden terms "a bordering on an obituary," that has accompanied his life in recent months.

"Obviously I've been touched and grateful," Mr. Kennedy said in a phone interview Friday from the rented home in Miami where he has spent most of the winter. "Beyond that, I don't really plan to go away soon." ...

Via the Outraged Liberal, who wonders what sort of discussions went on among Globe editors today as they picked up their copies of the Times.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/new-york-times

...It could sell The Boston Globe-or shutter it entirely, given what the company itself has acknowledged is a challenging time for the sale of media properties. It could sell its share in the Boston Red Sox, close or sell various smaller properties, or off-load About.com, the resolutely unglamorous Web purchase that has been virtually the only source of earnings growth in the Times Company's portfolio. With these steps, or after them, would come mass staffing cuts, no matter that the executive editor, Bill Keller, promised otherwise...

What would Boston look like if our daily newspaper option was the Boston Herald? What if the Boston Phoenix was the best source of news in the city? I guess the folks over in Newton would be spared having to share their content with Boston.com as well. Speaking of, Boston.com as a name must be worth quite a bit, how much would it be worth and who would be willing to pay for it?

And based on his four years here, concludes he knows Boston well enough to condemn it for all time - and then bolsters his all-knowing conclusion with a book about stuff that happened when the Red Sox were owned by people who haven't had anything to do with the team for years, because they're dead.

Via Jeff Egnaczyk.

So instead it devotes front-page space to detail how Deval Patrick isn't a Third-World tyrant bending the state legislature to his will, while failing, as the Outraged Liberal notes, to pick up on the possible ethical questions being raised about Sal DiMasi.

Still, as Dan Kennedy writes:

If you're the governor of Massachusetts, this is not how you want to be featured on the front page of the New York Times. ...

Charley on the MTA notes the Gray Story didn't tell us anything new and got some stuff wrong, but wonders why Patrick is so completely invisible away from the State House (and no, Mr. Governor, DevalPatrick.com doesn't count):

... He doesn't get out to town hall meetings; he doesn't hold events with the general public to take the temperature of the body politic; in other words, he has indeed lost his political touch. ...

Jay Fitzgerald continues to make the case that DiMasi's casino victory was of the Pyrrhic variety.

Meanwhile, over at the local broadsheet, Joan Vennochi proves her mastery of Lexis/Nexis: She devotes an entire column to pasting in examples of politicians caught in lies over the past decade, then concludes with two sentences that set a new bar for stating the obvious - that presidential candidates get in trouble when they get caught lying. O RLY?

Harry at Squaring the Boston Globe also wonders whether Clinton was caught in another lie - by a college student.

Michael at the AIDS Action Committee writes:

Hello, New York Times ... HIV isn't making an alarming comeback; it has never gone away. It never stopped infecting and affecting our communities. It never stopped taking our friends and loved ones. What happened is that HIV has moved from the front pages of our newspapers, from the screens of our televisions, and from the forefront of many minds, and ultimately from the pens of funders. ...