The New York Times‘ City Room blog has a fascinating post about an obituary that the paper corrected 112 years after publication. When the Times received a letter from the great-nephew of Lt. M.K. Schwenk informing the paper that his great-uncle’s name had been Milton, not Melton, as the Times wrote in an obituary published in 1899.

The paper hastened to correct the error, and in looking into Schwenk’s life, discovered several other errors in the obituary: For instance, his hometown and graduation date from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis were both incorrect not just in the Times‘ article, but in other New York-area publications from the same era. This raised, for the contemporary Times writer looking into these issues, the question of how accurate we can presume primary sources to be, even supposedly reputable ones:

It is never too late to set the record straight. If journalism is indeed the first rough draft of history, there is always time to revise, polish and perfect, even if pinning down the details about Lieutenant Schwenk after so many years turned out to be less than straightforward.

(NYT via Romenesko)

Following an article on a baseball bat humorously named for Orcrist the Goblin-Cleaver, a sword from The Hobbit that was owned by Thorin Oakenshield — and not Bilbo Baggins, duh– the New York Times learned the #1 lesson about writing articles that mention swords in Tolkien books: Be sure that you get every detail about the Tolkienian sword right, or you will hear very quickly from Tolkien fans that you did not get every detail about the Tolkienian sword right, dangit. (Related: Baseball fans are probably geekier than most other sports fans.)

(via Reddit)

Remember when the New York Times announced its paywall? That thing that caused outrage by making most of their digital offerings hidden behind a subscription service, but then people figured out a multitude of ways to avoid having to actually subscribe and the paywall went from being totally obnoxious, to somewhat silly?

Well, turns out the paywall actually worked, and the New York Times has already managed to snag 100,000 subscribers in less than a month of the paywall’s implementation. Though the number seems fairly large for something people were so opposed to–as well as figured out how to bypass in a variety of ways–that pretty 100,000 number actually includes a $0.99 four week trial, so maybe all isn’t wrong with the digital world.

(Business Insider via Gizmodo)

Google has announced a new daily puzzle, dubbed A Google a Day, in which they pose a question with an answer that is supposed to be a tad difficult to search for using the wondrous powers of search engines. Questions will be posted every day on agoogleaday.com, as well as above the New York Times crossword puzzle on weekdays, with the answers being posted in both venues the following day, along with search tips and whatever features were used to find the answer.

The difficulty of the questions will increase over the course of the week, and Google has made a special version of their search engine that puzzlers can use over on A Google a Day that excludes features that may contain spoilers, such as Google’s real-time updates. Players can follow @agoogleaday on Twitter, or email the team at agoogleaday@google.com.

(via Official Google Blog)

New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. provided some information about the media giant’s new subscription service that will place much of the newspaper’s digital content behind a paywall. The new rules go into effect today in Canada, in order to test the system, and on March 28 globally.

The new subscription plan is being offered in a tiered system, with limitations being placed on the paper’s popular smartphone and tablet apps. The highest level, $35 per month,  grants users full site access on all devices and on all apps. The cheapest plan will cost $15, giving users full access to the site, and full access through smartphone apps.

E-reader subscriptions, like those offered for the Kindle, are not currently included in the plan and must be purchased separately. The Apple iPad will also be the only tablet supported at launch.

But mooching, nonpaying users will not be left out in the cold.

The USA may still lead the world in GDP and rank highly in such stats as population and human development index, but its lag in other key categories is alarming. You’ve heard about the education gap, but did you know that U.S. students’ math scores are among the lowest in the developed world? Charles M. Blow and the New York Times put together this infographic comparing the U.S. to other countries by 9 key metrics: The U.S. comes in at “worst of the worst” in four categories and “worst” in two more, with zero “best” rankings

The “most e-mailed list” seems like an increasingly weird metric of popularity in this age of Facebook likes and Tweets and Stumbles and reblogs and what have you, but it’s still a staple on newspaper websites with older readerships.

As an experiment cleverly orchestrated by The Daily Beast illustrates, e-mail is just as subject to gaming as other measurements of popularity: It took writer Thomas E. Weber and a set of compatriots just 1,270 e-mails from different accounts to push a three-week-old story on a museum exhibition featuring Sumerian mathematical tablets to the #3 spot on the New York Times‘ “Most E-Mailed” list.

If you like math puzzles, here’s one for you: The New York Times has put together an interactive puzzle wherein you can attempt to balance the national budget and keep the deficit from ballooning even further.

Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.

If you want to play on Expert mode, consider that 1) As a politician, a lot of people and lobbies would be very, very angry if you tried to implement many of these changes (just try implementing a national sales tax) and 2) this is just the budget shortfall over the next five to twenty years; the total national debt is $13.723 trillion dollars.

>>>You fix the budget.

(NYT via FlowingData)

File under ‘scary if true’: Today’s New York Times has it that Google and Verizon are close to reaching an agreement that would strike a major blow to net neutrality. They’re reportedly working towards an arrangement that would allow some large companies — or at least Google — to pay more money in exchange for faster delivery of their online content.

If the Times‘ “people close to the negotiations” are right, an agreement could be reached as soon as next week.

There is a corner of the Internet where actors, comedians, musicians, artists, writers, bloggers, directors, people from all walks of life are creating over 2 million posts per day, and are often meeting each other in person in over 50 different places around the world, from New York to London to Berlin to Tokyo. The place is Tumblr and it is quickly becoming the third member of the holy trinity of social media, along with Twitter and Facebook. Today, the New York Times makes it official with this headline: “Facebook and Twitter’s New Rival.”

Here’s the gist of Tumblr: a dead-simple way to get out your ideas or inspirations, what you’re doing, what you like or hate, whatever snip of culture or sub-culture is engaging you at the moment, across any form of media – photo, text, quip, video, audio clip, chat transcript. The sum total contributes to a unique online identity through sharing what you gather on the web with  your followers, usually with your own two cents (even if it’s as simple as “LOL”).

>>>Read the whole essay at Mediaite.