5) THUS SPAKE THE MEDIA CRITIC ATCELEBRITY WORSHIP MONTHLY Discussing the future of journalism on WBUR-FM's On Point, Vanity Fair columnist and media entrepreneur Michael Wolff grows irate when host Tom Ashbrook suggests that newsroom values could be imperiled by the industry's destabilization. "Newspaper reporters are hacks!" shouts Wolff. "They have always been! They rewrite press releases! They're the lowest of the low!"
6) SHEET-FIGHTIN' MAN More scrappy-tabloid overkill: in June, 33-year-old Herald reporter and boxing enthusiast O'Ryan Johnson allegedly kicks an emphysemic, 74-year-old man in the chest during a dispute at a laundromat in Groveland, Massachusetts.
7) COMING SOON: "ARIANNA DOGGY STYLE," IN WHICH OUR PUBLISHER DISCUSSES CANINE FASHION Taking its shameless affinity for sexy, click-generating content to new heights, the Huffington Post responds to the ever-expanding Tiger Woods adultery scandal by offering a video titled "Tiger Woods Sex." The footage turns out to be a BBC nature-documentary excerpt that features a brief tiger-mating sequence (the cat, not the golfer) — which, as the Columbia Journalism Review notes, occurs in an area that's not even very woodsy. (The title is later changed.)
8) AND THEIR TOTE BAGS SHALL BE MADE BY PRADA According to a tax return filed this year by ProPublica — the new, nonprofit, donation-driven investigative-news organization — president and editor-in-chief Paul E. Steiger, formerly the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, made a whopping $570,000 in 2008. Also noteworthy: Scott Simon, host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday, makes just over $300,000 annually, and Evan Smith, editor of the new, online nonprofit Texas Tribune, reportedly earns $315,000 (with 15 percent deferred for two years). Keep those pledges coming!
9) EXCEPT FOR SLAVERY, JIM CROW, LYNCHINGS, AND SEAN DELONAS, IT'S NOT A BAD COMPARISON In an article titled "Rise of an Epithet," National Review's Jay Nordlinger admits that the term "teabagger" was originally created by conservative activists — but then likens it to the term "nigger." "When I was growing up, in Ann Arbor, Mich.," writes Nordlinger, "there was a little debate: should school officials try to prevent black students from using the N-word? I don't believe the issue was ever settled. And this brings up the question of whether 'teabagger' could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family."
10) PERHAPS YOU CREATED THAT IMPRESSION BY WORKING AT THENEW YORK TIMES? Irate that his boosterish coverage of Apple became a media story in its own right, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue protests: "Since when have I ever billed myself as a journalist? . . . I've never been to journalism school. I don't know what it means to bury the lede. Okay, I do know what it means."
11) OTHER THAN THAT, THEY'VE BEEN THE CANDID, DECISIVE OWNERS ANY NEWSPAPER WOULD WANT After the New York Times Co. threatens to close the Globe if the paper's unions don't provide $20 million in concessions (see item No. 1), a company spokeswoman declines comment to the Times and Globe reporters covering the story, and neither chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. nor CEO Janet Robinson ever visit Boston to make their case directly to concerned employees. Later in the year, after the requested concessions are delivered, the Times Co. puts the Globe up for sale — but then decides to keep it, instead.
