Because Rick Sanchez is NOT FUCKING AROUND NO MORE: The only reason Fux and the teabaggers and their ideological predecessors keep getting away with their media-bashing is that by and large media figures believe in some imaginary high road where they can ride and not be affected by the nonsense. But bullies take your lunch money, as we’ve discussed here many times, until you make them stop. Take the high road all you want, but understand they’re gonna keep taking your lunch money until you reach down and make themeat that goddamn Koho. A. Continue reading Fox News Best Watch Its Hot Little Ass

DougJ: The point Welch is trying to make is simple: the fact that people like Brietbart have no journalistic standards of their own doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them critiquing and influencing actual journalists. And that’s a valid point. But as is usual with glibertarians—even newly minted ones like Welch—there is a vast oversimplification. It isnot problematic (it’s good, in fact) for the media to pick up on legitimate stories uncovered by even the the most unhinged, partisan bloggers. Itis is problematic that the Times and Post feel they have to kow-tow to Beck/Breitbart in order to prove … Continue reading To Further Simplify a Simple Point

The newest bit of nonsense in journalism-world is this idea thatnonprofit organizations offering journalism students unpaid work is somehow unconscionable: Robert Gammon, a longtime Bay Area reporter who works at Oakland’sEast Bay Express, wrote that the students’ work on the project is “slave labor” that will make it possible for the effort to survive and possibly thrive. “They’re giving themselves an unfair advantage by relying on unpaid labor,” he elaborated in a phone interview. Instead of following the model of many news organizations and hiring a few unpaid interns during the academic year and more during the summer, the project … Continue reading Unpaid Labor

Craigslist strikes again: Let’s say that a group of corporate executives uses scads of debt to take over a struggling company, sells off some profitable assets, lays off thousands of employees while achieving miserable results. And then, less than a year after saddling the company with $8 billion in debt, they opt for bankruptcy. You’d expect them to walk the plank, or at the very least, spend a good stretch of time in the naughty corner. But you wouldn’t expect the top 700 managers to collect $66 million in bonuses. But that’s just what might happen at theTribune Company. A … Continue reading Clearly This Is the Internet’s Fault Somehow

No, really. Someone wrote that. In all seriousness. But before we get out the party hats and noise-makers to celebrate the rise of nonprofit journalism, here’s the bad news. In the current arrangement, we’re substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose moneydeliberately. No matter how good the nonprofit operation is, it always ends up sustaining itself with handouts, and handouts come with conditions. There is so much fail in that paragraph I can’t begin to … I mean … Let’s deal with the major fail first: ACCIDENTALLY? A spokeswoman for Sun-Times … Continue reading ‘For-Profit Newspapers Lose Money Accidentally’