Viva New York (Times)!

The Observer reports that those Maureen Dowd podcasts were less popular than expected:

As The New York Times slowly works its way toward a narrower broadsheet in 2008, the paper has another new format in development: a tabloid for the younger generation.

On Dec. 15, executive editor Bill Keller mentioned a tabloid “prototype” during one of his occasional “Throw Stuff at Bill” sessions for the staff, a combination state-of-the-paper address and Q&A free-for-all.

“It’s way too early to talk about it,” Mr. Keller wrote in an e-mail Dec. 18, when asked about the tabloid. “It’s one of many projects that are still in the noodling stage.”

The subject arose during the middle of one of Mr. Keller’s three sessions on Dec. 15, in the paper’s ninth-floor auditorium, with publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and managing editors Jill Abramson and John Geddes in attendance. A staffer asked about local coverage, and Mr. Keller mentioned new or planned electronic products, plus a “possible print product” that would be “aimed at younger readers.”

The noodling about the tabloid, according to a source familiar with the project, has been taking place in a Times committee that first convened this past April to generate ideas about marketing and boosting circulation. After a string of weekly meetings, the group — which includes members from the paper’s editorial and business side — has settled into a less rigid schedule.

So far, the concepts emerging from the group suggest that Mr. Sulzberger’s “platform-agnostic” approach to packaging content is yielding something more like platform Unitarian Universalism — taking inspiration from whatever tradition is handy. The first of the committee’s ideas to reach the public was Urbanite, a daily e-mail newsletter launched Nov. 3, listing goings-on around the city.

Because a Baltimore-based magazine named Urbanite already existed, on Dec. 15 The Times redubbed the newsletter UrbanEye. A Times spokesperson wrote via e-mail that the company “felt we should create and trademark a name that would be exclusive and distinctive to The Times.”

The tabloid idea hasn’t reached the naming stage, let alone the renaming stage. The source familiar with the project described its condition as more a collection of loose pages than a full prototype. In the question-and-answer session, Mr. Keller said that the new publication could be distributed either inside the paper or on its own.

. . .

But the proposed Times tabloid would not go head to head with amNewYork or Metro on the stairways to the No. 1 train. . . . It would be a weekly, heavy on event listings — like The Village Voice, or the New York Press, or Time Out New York or New York magazine or the front end of The New Yorker, for that matter.

The tabloid will need at least another six months to get off the drawing board, the Times source said. Meanwhile, the committee will stay busy with another outlet for the paper’s newly New York-centered ambitions: a Web site that would gather together city-related stories from various parts of the newspaper, such as the metro and culture desks, and integrate them with service features. Movie reviews, for example, could be accompanied by restaurant reviews of eateries near a particular theater.

Mind The Gap . . . And Old Navy

The city’s tourism board, seemingly just now realizing what the pound is worth, seeks to solidify its position as England’s Tijuana:

This week, NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism arm, placed ads in five of the busiest underground train stations in London promoting the savings to be had in New York with the dollar near a 14-year low against the British pound.

“Pound for pound, New York City is the place to be,” the ads read. “Well, make that pound for dollar.”

Indeed, London was the only city ranked more expensive than New York in a recent report published by UBS, a Swiss financial services company. The strength of the pound has contributed to London’s rise: Yesterday, it was worth about $1.96, up from about $1.60 four years ago.

The subway ads direct viewers to a Web site, nycopenbook.com, that compares the cost of a variety of purchases in each city, from a bagel with cream cheese (£2 there vs. £1 here) to a pair of designer jeans (£72 vs. £50) to a laptop computer (£679 vs. £515).

“The British are pretty savvy travelers and are pretty keenly aware of the exchange rate,” said Fred Dixon, the vice president for tourism development at NYC & Company. “The British and the Irish will come to New York for a long weekend to shop like we would go to Boston.”

Chris Sell, a Briton who owns the Chip Shop restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said he would soon have firsthand evidence of the city’s cut-rate image among his countrymen. He said that his father, Brian, was due to arrive today from his home in Rugby and that tucked in his luggage would be an article from a British newspaper listing the top 10 bargains to scoop up.

“I know a bunch of people who do come over here for two or three days with an empty suitcase and go to Century 21 and just load up on cheap clothes.” Mr. Sell said. “The dollar’s been in the toilet for so long now, it’s worth almost two-to-one.”

The Cool Thing Is We’re Going To Be Using Live Animals . . . Hopefully They Won’t Be Total Animals

The war on Christmas claims another victim:

Yet another Nativity display has met its end, but this time it had nothing to do with political correctness.

The problem: A sheep and a goat in one pen.

Since Dec. 1, the Greenside Up garden center at 5050 Hylan Blvd. in Annadale has featured a hay-filled pen full of llamas, goats, sheep, emus, ponies and more, which has acted as a mini-petting-zoo reminiscent of the time of the birth of Christ.

The animals are mostly passive, mildly poking at their wooden fence in hopes of fresh corn.

That changed on Sunday, when, as best as workers can tell, the young billy goat rammed the 8-year-old sheep.

Though the workers say horseplay occasionally happens in the pen, owner Dennis Hansen of Greenside Up said the sheep also took a few hard knocks from the llama.

. . .

Workers separated the sheep from the rest of the animals, though her friend, an emu, stayed with her and yesterday nuzzled her and fussed over her.

Yesterday morning, a customer noticed that the sheep was lying on its side, and alerted Hansen, as well as the city Center for Animal Care and Control and the ASPCA.

When they arrived, the sheep was on her side taking shallow breaths, apparently suffering internal bleeding.

And with that, the nativity scene was promptly shut down.

The Only Thing Worse Than An Iggles Fan Is An Iggles Fan That Used To Be From New York

Eagles fans can be such huge pains in the ass:

The son of the legendary late Giants owner Wellington Mara tackled and choked a fellow broker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday after the man mocked the team, sources said.

Veteran floor trader Bob Tomasulo, a 57-year-old grandfather, was assaulted and barraged with obscenities in front of stunned co-workers after kidding with Stephen Mara about the Giants’ embarrassing 36-22 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, witnesses and Tomasulo told The Post.

“Mara started screaming, ‘I’m gonna f- – -ing kill you! Don’t f- – – around with my family! Don’t insult my family!’ ” one broker said.

“Bob was like, ‘Hey, what is your problem? It’s just a game!’ And Mara yells, ‘No, it’s not just a game, it’s my f- – -ing family!’ ”

Tomasulo said the bizarre broker brouhaha broke out at around 10:30 a.m., after he walked past Mara and pretended to do a basketball jump shot, mocking the celebratory on-field routine performed by Big Blue players after touchdowns and sacks.

Tomasulo, an Eagle fan, said that he and Mara, 47, had enjoyed a friendly sports rivalry for years and that last week, the son of the former Giants owner kiddingly told him, “We’re gonna kick your guys’ you-know-what.”

“I said, ‘Yeah, probably,’ ” Tomasulo recalled.

“[Yesterday] morning, I just did that stupid little jump shot, and I said, ‘Maybe you have a basketball team instead of a football team.’

“[Mara] just snapped. He charged me like an animal. He charged me like he wanted to sack me.

“At first, he got me in a bear hug and bent me over a trading post. At first, I thought it was a joke. Then he proceeded to choke me. I passed out for a minute.”

. . .

An NYSE official called the trading-floor rumble “nothing major, a slight disagreement between a couple of people.”

But Tomasulo said NYSE lawyers contacted him and “to them, this is a very serious incident.”

“The doctors told me I have a bruised larynx. My blood pressure spiked to 260 over 140,” said Tomasulo, adding that he was treated by NYSE medical staffers.

He said he didn’t take Mara’s apologetic phone call because “I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him.

“I’m 57 years old. I’ve been bullied and pushed around a lot in life. I grew up in Brooklyn. I’m just sick of taking it,” he said.

Tomasulo — who became an Eagles fan when he moved to Bucks County, Pa. — said he’s unsure whether he will hire a lawyer. But “if they told me [Mara] was suspended from work for ‘X’ amount of days, I wouldn’t be upset,” he said.

That Should Help Patch Things Up With The Community

The police find that there’s less chance of getting in trouble if you simply stay away:

In the weeks since Sean Bell was fatally shot by police outside a Queens topless bar, arrests have dropped by about 40% in the area, the latest police statistics show.

Some experts said the drop reflected police officers’ reluctance to face another confrontation in a neighborhood charged with racial tension after the shooting, and some pointed to similar drops following other controversial shootings.

Police arrested 323 people in the Jamaica area of Queens during the November 19–December 17 period, Compstat reports show. In 2005, police arrested 535 people during the same period. The 39.6% drop comes alongside a 5.3% increase in complaints of crime in the neighborhood for the period. The 103rd Precinct is responsible for the neighborhood, but the drop in arrests include those made by other bureaus, including Organized Crime and Narcotics.

Meanwhile, arrests across the city have risen to 27,164 this year from 25,139 for the same period in 2005, an 8% increase.

. . .

The drop is in line with city arrest data after other police shootings, a professor of policing at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eli Silverman, said.

“If an officer feels that the heat is on and the spotlight is on, they are going to opt for the side of caution,” he said. “After major incidents, you generally see a tapering off” of active enforcement.