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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial Draws Long Lines and Limited Seating

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    Without any livestreaming of the often graphic testimony, securing space inside the federal courtroom has meant long lines and long waits.Hours before sunset, the line begins to form outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. By the time the sun has risen again, some 13 hours later, the sidewalk is quite full.Queue psychologists, who study things like how to keep the hordes happy in lines at Disney World, would have a field day at the trial of Sean Combs.Since the trial started two weeks ago, folks have been showing up at ungodly hours to wait for a seat in the room where the music mogul is facing racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.News reporters assigned to cover the trial are joined in equal numbers by vloggers who have made the case their subject of the moment and members of the public who are simply interested in hearing the courtroom testimony.During the first two days of the trial, when the crowds were bigger, one YouTuber, Mel Smith, said he would leave his house in Beacon, N.Y., at about 3:30 p.m. to get a seat for the next morning’s testimony. When he arrived at about 5 p.m., he said, there were already a half-dozen people waiting in front of him.“Everybody knows P. Diddy — he’s a household brand — and everybody’s clicking all day to see what’s the latest updates,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      If You Want a Seat at the Trial of Sean Combs, Leave Yesterday

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      Without any livestreaming of the often graphic testimony, securing space inside the federal courtroom has meant long lines and long waits.Hours before sunset, the line begins to form outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. By the time the sun has risen again, some 13 hours later, the sidewalk is quite full.Queue psychologists, who study things like how to keep the hordes happy in lines at Disney World, would have a field day at the trial of Sean Combs.Since the trial started two weeks ago, folks have been showing up at ungodly hours to wait for a seat in the room where the music mogul is facing racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.News reporters assigned to cover the trial are joined in equal numbers by vloggers who have made the case their subject of the moment and members of the public who are simply interested in hearing the courtroom testimony.During the first two days of the trial, when the crowds were bigger, one YouTuber, Mel Smith, said he would leave his house in Beacon, N.Y., at about 3:30 p.m. to get a seat for the next morning’s testimony. When he arrived at about 5 p.m., he said, there were already a half-dozen people waiting in front of him.“Everybody knows P. Diddy — he’s a household brand — and everybody’s clicking all day to see what’s the latest updates,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      What Is … an Editing Game Show?

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      The newsroom recently hosted an internal game show to quiz editors on grammar rules and Times style. It was educational, exciting and all-around geeky.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The clue appeared on a large blue screen: “In news writing, this punctuation mark is rarely needed except in quotations of shouted or deeply emotional phrases.”A buzzer went off and an editor answered: What is an exclamation point?“Yes!” Peter Blair responded. (The exclamation point is appropriate here. Mr. Blair did indeed shout.)“Reporters in the room,” he added, “take notice.”Perhaps Mr. Blair was excited because he was fulfilling something of a childhood dream by hosting a game show in the newsroom, to test contestants on their knowledge of The Times’s Manual of Style and Usage.The manual, known in the newsroom as the stylebook, helps journalists keep track of grammar rules and Times style. Entries cover guidance on punctuation and semantics, but also offer instruction around The Times’s specific practices, such as the paper’s stance on courtesy titles and how numbers should be rendered in headlines.The game was in the style of “Jeopardy!,” with categories such as “Quirks of The Times” and “Punctuation!” The contestants, the editors Danial Adkison, Christine Chun and Danielle Dowling, sat near the front of the room, buzzers in hand, and three other editors sat across from them, serving as the judges.No real money was wagered; on the line were Starbucks gift cards.Nonetheless, the pressure was on. The room was packed with a live audience, and about 170 Times staff members were watching the show via livestream.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bill Belichick’s Girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, Shuts Down Question About Their Relationship

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      The legendary football coach has never shared much with the news media, but on Sunday it was Jordon Hudson who shut down a line of questioning.When Bill Belichick, one of the country’s most famous football coaches, appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” over the weekend to promote his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons From My Life in Football,” he touched on a number of topics, including his apparent disdain for inspirational halftime speeches.Football, Mr. Belichick said in his interview with Tony Dokoupil of CBS, is really about strategy: What is his opponent doing? How does his team need to adjust?“Identifying a problem,” he went on, “figuring a solution and then executing that plan to make it work.”Jordon Hudson, Mr. Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, tried to do exactly that at one point in the interview, when Mr. Dokoupil asked Mr. Belichick, 73, how they had met.“We’re not talking about this,” Ms. Hudson interjected off camera from the producer’s table.“No?” Mr. Dokoupil asked her.“No,” Ms. Hudson said.A spokesman for Mr. Belichick and the University of North Carolina’s football team declined to comment on the interview, but Mr. Belichick’s relationship with Ms. Hudson — and, of course, their nearly 49-year age difference — has been a source of intrigue since the couple went public last year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Karen Durbin, 80, Dies; ‘Fearless’ Feminist Who Edited The Village Voice

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      A fierce advocate of sexual liberation, she pushed the alternative weekly to cover women’s issues, as well as gay rights and avant-garde culture.Karen Durbin, a fierce feminist who championed sexual liberation and fulfillment as a journalist, served as the second female editor in chief of The Village Voice and then went on to become a virtuoso film critic for The New York Times and other publications, died on April 15 in Brooklyn. She was 80.Her death, in a health care facility, was caused by complications of dementia, her friend and former colleague Cynthia Carr said.Appointed in 1994 as The Voice’s editor in chief — she was only the second woman in that job in the paper’s history, and the first in nearly two decades — Ms. Durbin waged a fervent campaign to attract young readers. Part of that effort involved tilting toward often incendiary coverage of feminism, gay rights and avant-garde culture, and away from muckraking about corrupt and incompetent landlords, judges and politicians.Not that she abandoned covering corruption and crime: In 1996, she overruled the paper’s lawyers and published an article that all but accused the nightclub promoter Michael Alig of “A Murder in Clubhand,” as the headline proclaimed, after the reporter, Frank Owen, produced an on-the-record source. (Mr. Alig later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)An assortment of Ms. Durbin’s press credentials. After her stint as editor in chief at The Village Voice, she wrote about film for The New York Times and other publications.Karen Durbin Papers, Barnard Archives and Special CollectionsBut even before she was editor in chief, she had set a tone that outraged traditionalists, mostly the older, white male staffers — or “the boys club,” as she put it. When she was the senior arts editor, they took issue with some of her editorial choices, including an assignment she made in 1986: Ms. Carr’s profile of the performance artist Karen Finley, whose act included the sexually explicit use of canned yams as part of a sendup of female objectification.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Francis Davis, Sharp-Eared Jazz Critic and Husband of Terry Gross, Dies at 78

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      He wrote prolifically about various aspects of the arts and popular culture. But he kept his focus on jazz, celebrating its past while worrying about its future.Francis Davis, a prolific jazz critic with a sharp eye and ear for music’s cultural context, died on Monday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 78.His wife, Terry Gross, the host of the NPR program “Fresh Air,” said the cause was emphysema and complications of Parkinson’s disease.As a contributing editor at The Atlantic for more than a quarter-century and a columnist at The Village Voice for even longer, Mr. Davis wrote hundreds of articles on music, film, television and popular culture, focusing on jazz — an art form he both celebrated and bemoaned, worried that its future would not live up to its past. (He also wrote for The New York Times and other publications.)His specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America’s history, culture and society. That approach, and the fluency of his writing, made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond, drawing a wide readership and praise from other critics. The cultural figures and artifacts he took on — Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, “Seinfeld,” Billie Holiday, the director William Wyler — amount to a group portrait of America in the postwar years, largely in the pages of The Atlantic.One reviewer wrote of “Jazz and Its Discontents” (2004), one of seven books Mr. Davis published, that his “insights, investigations and opinions” were “funny, fierce and fair.”Da Capo Press“He is a sensitive, knowledgeable, perceptive, imaginative critic, and even when he’s moping he’s a pleasure to read,” The Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley wrote of Mr. Davis’s 1990 collection, “Outcats: Jazz Composers, Instrumentalists, and Singers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Paramount’s Shari Redstone Wants a Resolution on President Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Skydance Merger

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      Redstone, who controls Paramount, has been trying to close a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance. President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News is complicating matters.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the entertainment giant Paramount, delivered a crucial message to her board a few weeks ago.For months, Paramount’s lawyers had been jousting with representatives for President Trump, who had sued the company’s CBS News network over its segment on former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump accused the network of deceptively editing the interview; CBS said Trump’s lawsuit was without merit.But when the board gathered this month, Ms. Redstone was clear: She was in favor of resolving the issue, two people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The New York Times’s Ben Mullin.As Paramount executives weighed the best course of action, Ms. Redstone said she was in favor of moving forward in a way that would lead to some form of conclusion, including mediation.It was the first time that Ms. Redstone made her wishes known to the full board. Many at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” where Ms. Harris’s interview aired, strongly opposed a settlement.Further complicating the matter: The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance. Some executives said that a settlement would smooth the way to closing the merger, even as others worried that a settlement could be interpreted as bribery for the F.C.C. to clear the Skydance deal. Mr. Trump, for his part, told reporters on Wednesday that the two were not linked.National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, declined to comment, and Paramount has said that its legal battle with Mr. Trump is unrelated to its deal with Skydance.Ms. Redstone’s carefully written statement did not mention Paramount’s deal with Skydance — but it did underscore the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business. She also said that she was removing herself from day-to-day discussions about the lawsuit.This week, The Times reported that Paramount had agreed to bring in a mediator.Any settlement could be perceived as the latest corporate concession to the White House, including Disney’s $15 million settlement in December and Meta’s $25 million settlement last month. The possibility of a settlement, which is likely to further embolden Mr. Trump’s crusade against the media, has been met with a strong backlash within the CBS ranks and outside the company.Though Ms. Redstone didn’t mention the Skydance deal in her remarks, people familiar with her thinking believe she’s focused on closing the deal.Paramount is also navigating the consequences of doing business under a retributive president. Beyond the Skydance deal, Mr. Trump has made clear his willingness to exact revenge when it comes to companies.“Corporations — particularly these days are often in the cross hairs of policymakers — and they have to navigate that,” Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told DealBook. “And that’s not easy.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Becoming Katharine Graham’ Review: A Newspaper Leader, in Her Voice

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      The sibling filmmakers George and Teddy Kunhardt use a straightforward approach in this documentary about the Washington Post publisher, letting a pioneer shine.To tell the story of Katharine Graham, who led The Washington Post during a pivotal period for the paper and the nation, the sibling filmmakers George and Teddy Kunhardt use a standard approach, interweaving archival material with talking-head interviews. The result is a conventional documentary, and by all means an admiring one. But her story is so compelling — wrenching, inspiring, precedent-setting — that the straightforward account, with its fluidly constructed chronology and Graham’s voice front and center, hits the mark.Graham took the helm of the Post in 1963, after the suicide of her husband, Phil Graham, the dynamic publisher who had been tapped for the role by her father. At the time, Katharine Graham was stepping out of the shadows and confronting the cultural taboo against female bosses. Still, it took her a year to summon the courage to ask a question at an editorial meeting.Soon she’d be presiding over the newspaper’s transition from a local publication to one of national impact as it went head-to-head with the Nixon administration — first when it joined The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers, and then when it led the pack in reporting on the Watergate scandal. Excerpts from Richard Nixon’s secret White House tapes — the gift to historians that keeps on giving — reveal, in conversations spewing misogynistic venom, how intent the president was on destroying Graham and her company.The directors also highlight The Washington Post’s 1975 labor dispute with its printing press operators, hewing closely to the management perspective; a more robust and balanced look would have deepened the documentary, or at least injected a welcome bit of friction into its celebratory mood.This is a strong portrait despite such lapses, in large part because it’s fueled by Graham’s voice, via the audiobook of her autobiography and an ample selection of interviews. (She died in 2001, at 84.) With her distinctive upper-crust inflection and striking candor, she quietly explores her unlikely reinvention from self-doubting wife and daughter to groundbreaking businesswoman. Through her eyes, “Becoming Katharine Graham” illuminates a charged moment in American history.Becoming Katharine GrahamNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More