Posted 3:33 PM by Gene

We don't like devoting half our blog to Romy, but honest he produces more jokes than any site this side of The Onion -- and he's funnier too. We're supposed to grieve that Gail has to "rewire her brain" to adjust to mere mortal metro reporting after 25 years of being a bright shiny star of teevee jernalism. Face it Gail, you're lucky to have a column. And what did your 25 years avail us but lots of sound bytes demonstrating you and Bill Carter were the best connected scribblers in the trade? And why didn't you take the logical route -- starting your own site, hooking up with MediaBistro or another industry haven to continue your winning ways? Or did TV Newser demonstrate that, whatever the value of his overrated blog to his career, media reporters are the proverbial dime a dozen?

Gail's plaint and PINCH's campaigning are from the same airless brainless void.

P. S. at 4:41 p. m. Perhaps we are too harsh: if Gail were a friend we wouldn't sound off. But people lose their jobs everyday, and not being on the ins in the world's most important profession affords us a little detachment. Despite her "demotion" Gail probably still makes more than most of her readers. That she gushes that she's going to write lots on gay matters points to why The Daily Babbitt "demoted" her, and why the Strib similarly demoted Lileks: they were talking to themselves. (That the Strib slightly relented and named Lileks "editor" of his own paid-for blog does not change our view.)

And then we read this and our esteem for the biz hardly grows. Mike Riedel turns on a dime! "You'd have to be insane NOT to invest in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN!" Well, all right, maybe he didn't go that far, but his head's still spinning. However risible and irritating it was, the news biz' communal grief over SLIME's impending rape of the Journals was understandable; too many of His hacks don't have to be told to suck up to The Boss. (The original Young Frankenstein is a T-------h C-----y F-x property.) But the problem isn't how the biz will do bad; it's that it is almost predestined to do bad regardless of owner, or politics, or format, or writer. In one of our first posts we said partisan news is bipartisan, and the intervening time has merely hardened our view. The biz' increasing addiction to advertising and marketing speaks for itself. That we can only seem to expect spinning and selling and posturing from news hacks is why we would rather Gail kept her opinions about being "demoted" to herself.