On the News: Crowd counts are notoriously unreliable. Remember the flap over the Million Man and Million Woman Marches? It’s repeated daily, like this:

In today’s edition, the NY Times claims that “Thousands in New York Rally for Palestinians”–in fact, that’s the title of the story. It notes “a few thousand protestors” in the text itself.

The AP, however, reports “more than 500” protestors and notes “hundreds of chanting pro-Palestinian demonstrators” in a second mention.

The Post puts the crowd at “About 1,000”.

The Daily News contains no mention of the protest at all (being fair, it did not run a full article on an earlier pro-Israel protest).

LI Newsday agrees with the Post: “About 1,000”.

USA Today: yeah, right.

So, who’s off by an order of magnitude, the Times or everyone else?

Finally, the Washington Post runs a full story (with versions picked up by several wires, as well) titled “Thousands expected for pro-Israeli rally Monday [in D.C.]” and predicts “tens of thousands” of participants (hedging their bets with a weak ‘are expected’). The Times makes no mention of this that I could find. It was, however, picked up by the Manchester Union-Leader. Go figure.

Truly finally: Cornell West resigns from Harvard. How long will Princeton placate a professor who refuses to publish (do rap albums count?) or teach?