Joel Stein: “Don’t e-mail me….Here’s what my Internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have more than enough people to converse with. And I don’t listen to them either. That sound on the phone, Mom, is me typing.”

Editor & Publisher: “More than 100 newsroom employees at Newsday signed a protest letter sent Monday to Tribune Company Chairmen Dennis FitzSimons, which claims the company has ‘damaged Newsday as an instrument of public information and accountability’ and ‘attempts to increase its profits are dulling Newsday’s brand.'”

Kimberly Maul, whose publication I am not obsessed with (contrary to her assertion), reports that the OJ deal has gone through. And this time she has a more credible than the National Enquirer. (Perhaps it was Maul after all who wrote the unsigned article and she is now proudly coming out of the closet as relying upon gossip rags for sources!)

By this journalistic measure, I wish to report the following news stories as true:

1. Infant Accidentally Packaged as Doll
2. Hillary Clinton Forced Into Sex Therapy
3. The “Eat What You Like” Diet Will Work for Everyone!

I remain absolutely positive that these three stories will be confirmed by someone credible. And I will, in the puerile spirit of this exchange, then shout “Neeiner! Neeiner! Neeiner!” back to the Book Standard.

You see, kids. You too can be a Web journalist!

Ed Park, formerly of the Village Voice, reports terrible news. The Voice has canned book and film critic Dennis Lim. Apparently, meaningful arts criticism isn’t part of the new Voice. How long will it be before Beyonce profiles are the norm there?

Wired: “The average number of monthly visitors to U.S. newspaper websites rose by nearly a third in the first half of 2006, a study released on Wednesday said, though print readership at some larger papers fell….Print readership fell, according to a comparison of figures from the two periods conducted by Reuters.”

Christopher Hitchens on Izzy Stone: “Even the slightest piece written by Izzy was composed with a decent respect for the King’s English and usually contained at least one apt allusion to the literature and poetry and history that undergirded it: an allusion that he would expect his readers to recognize. Who now dares to do that? Who would now dare to say, as he did as an excited eyewitness, that there was still something ‘saccharine’ about Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ oration? The rule of saccharine rhetoric and bland prose is now near absolute, and one could almost envy Izzy the sad deafness and myopia that allowed him to tune out the constant bawling from electronic media.”

Wolf’s appeal denied.

Dallas Blog: “Will Books go away? Books editor Charles Ealy and critic Jerome Weeks appear to be takers. Lifestyles writers Bryan Wooley, Bill Marvel, Michael Precker and Beatriz Terrazas are listed, among several others. Also investigative reporter Doug Swanson. From the business section, columnist Scott Burns apparently will now have more time to spend in his antique motor home. Artist Randy Bishop is on the goodbye list. Metro is losing some veteran reporters, including Bill Lodge and Tim Wyatt, among others.”

Wired has removed three news items from its site, claiming that a freelance writer named Philip Chien contacted a “space historian” named Robert Ash (Ash says he isn’t). Further, it appears that Chien fabricated sources named Ted Collins and Robert Stevens. Interesting. I wonder if “psloss” is another Chien fabrication. If that forum thread can be believed, it looks like Chien killed his contact base. If so, perhaps this is why he resorted to making up sources.

This week’s East Bay Express includes a lengthy piece by Anneli Rufus about Cody’s. The literary blog Dibs, of course, all over this last month (and Flares Into Darkness’s post is quoted as “one blogger” in Rufus’s article). But Rufus’s article doesn’t add much to the conversation that hasn’t been said already. There are some insinuations as to Andy Ross’s motivations about opening the San Francisco store (along with some quotes from Ross himself), with some memories of what Cody’s used to be (or what people believed it to be). But for a purportedly investigative article, there’s little here beyond conjecture. No efforts to obtain documents, no tough questions directed at Ross about his net worth and why he expanded when the banks continually turned down his loan. It’s almost as if Rufus stole Dibs’s angle, spent an afternoon wandering around Berkeley interviewing people and then banged out this piece for an easy payday. And they call blogs the leeches.

New York Times: “A federal prosecutor may inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to identify their confidential sources, a federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday. The 2-to-1 decision, from a court historically sympathetic to claims that journalists should be entitled to protect their sources, reversed a lower court and dealt a further setback to news organizations, which have lately been on a losing streak in the federal courts.”

Editor and Publisher: “‘The online editions of newspapers are providing a bit of a life raft for newspapers,’ Kohut said. ‘But it’s a pretty small life raft.'”

Editor & Publisher: “The Wall Street Journal plans to start printing an ad on its front page starting in September, parent company Dow Jones & Co. announced Tuesday. The advertisement will appear as either a ‘jewel box’ in the lower right-hand corner or a banner running along the bottom of the page.”

LA Observed: “Things began coming to a head last month when McCaw ordered editor Jerry Roberts to quash coverage of opinion editor Travis Armstrong’s DUI arrest — then named Armstrong interim publisher and authorized him to start editing news stories…..Roberts, a former top editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, was led from the building by Armstong as reporters and editors protested and reportedly shouted ‘Fuck you, Travis.’ McCaw, already estranged from much of the Santa Barbara community over her handling of the paper, now has ravaged what was a high quality, experienced and collegial newsroom.” (via Ghost Word)

More on heiress Wendy McCaw here.

Dave Kehr notes (and there is also this followup post) that Jami Bernard, one of the most underrated film critics working today, has not had her contract renewed at the New York Daily News. Kehr speculates that this represents the Daily News getting “rid of one of those pesky, individual voices that keep gumming up the paper’s stated mission to be as bland and toothless as possible.” Kehr also confesses that he experienced considerable editorial interference from top brass and that this move represents an ongoing trend by newspapers to scoop up young interns who will willfully salivate over Hollywood dreck.

Having had a brief stint as a film critic some years ago, I was fortunate not to experience such treatment first-hand. (We online worker bees were permitted considerable lattitude because, even in the eyes of the money men, we were somehow considered “alternative.”) But I did have conversations with some of my print colleagues who reported variations on these battles. I can’t help but dwell on how this reflects a larger trend that we’ll be seeing from the dailies over the next five years as subscriptions plummet and advertising drops. For the arts criticism that remains, will it all come down to hiring starving students straight out of college to patch together a few reviews for peanuts? If it comes down to a climate of inexperienced writers considered as the cultural arbiters, then what hope does more legitimate criticism have in the future? Will the James Woodses, the Jonathan Rosenbaums and the Cynthia Ozicks of our world have to lower their rates to ensure that criticism, at least as reflected in newspapers, is still relevant?

(via 2 Blowhards)