'Death by a thousand comments' at the NYT

Tim Rutten says the Internet was crucial in the takedown of New York Times editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd. It was, he writes in today's Regarding Media column in the L.A. Times, "the first institutional crisis of its kind to unwind in real time.... Every significant turn in the entire sequence and every memo issued by [publisher Arthur] Sulzberger, Raines and Boyd was immediately posted on the Internet."

"Questions about the Times' revival now will be posed and answered at speeds and in ways that defy the sober standards of conventional crisis management." And this: It was the new world of Web sites, blogs, online editions and e-mails — not Raines — that set the pace of his exit."

Tim gets some good internal details including that Sulzberger had dinner with the new interim editor, Joseph Lelyveld, on Wednesday night to finalize arrangements.

Meanwhile, Josh Getlin reports in the LAT that Dean Baquet had breakfast with Lelyveld last week in New York but denies that he's had any official discussions about returning to the NYT. "I really love being the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times," Baquet says low in the story.