Last week, we told you about Harvard Business School professor and New York Times freelancer Prof. Mary Tripsas, busted in an ethical pickle for accepting a free trip. This Sunday, public editor Clark Hoyt took on the issue: “She will no longer be writing for The Times.” But are these rules right?

Lately, the New York Times has had a small bit of trouble getting its contributing writers to follow the rules. There have been writers plugging friends, helping themselves and going on press junkets, all in direct violation of the ethics rules. Again this weekend, Times watchdog blog NYTPicker caught a writer in an ethical pickle for taking a free trip. What’s the deal?

This year’s edition of the New York Times Holiday Gift Guide featured one of the worst ideas since your vacuum cleaner Christmas present disaster: a section for “Of Color | Stylish Gifts.” Thorn-in-the-Times‘-side blog NYTPicker first reported the offense, calling it pretty unequivocally racist, and late Saturday night published a comment on the matter from the paper’s chief spokeswoman Diane McNulty.

“Our biggest scoop? Probably when we discovered that the anagram for “New York Times” was “Write, Monkeys.”

If you are a follower of the New York Times you are probably familiar with the blog NYTPicker, the website that “devotes itself exclusively to the goings-on inside the New York Times — the newspaper and the institution itself.” In other words, they watch the goings on at the Times better than most including, arguably, the Times. But who are they?

What I would like to know is who thought this was a good idea? In this year’s NYT’s Annual Holiday Gift Guide there is a section devoted to “Of Color | Stylish Gifts.” Really New York Times? REALLY?

The 100 buyouts at the New York Times, announced earlier last month, have begun. Keith Kelly reported the other day that 50 unionized newsroom employees would be taking buyouts and the names have been trickling out since yesterday. Here’s a look at the list thus far.

The New York Times Social Media Editor Jen Preston (@NYT_JenPreston) has come under fire in the past for not using her Twitter account to its greatest effect. But Preston took to twitter like an expert last night to engage in a discussion over the NYT.com’s controversial removal of a Media Decoder post.

The eagle-eyed folks over at NYTPicker have picked up on the fact that Preston, who only activated her Twitter account on the day she was hired to the position, hasn’t tweeted in a month.