The New York Times Has A Specialist To Monitor This ‘Internet’

In your wispy Monday media column: the New York Times performs unnecessary duties, Wesleyan spends unnecessary money, a hockey team gets a pet reporter, and people like to read about gangsters.

Yesterday NYT ombud Clark Hoyt revealed that the paper’s top editors “would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies.” Uhh. We’ll do that for you, for free.

All the reporters who gave much of a f–k about the Los Angeles Kings hockey team got laid off, so the team just went and hired its very own reporter! He’s guaranteed editorial independence, allegedly. But is he really independent? Only daily photographs of his butt, posted on the LA Kings’ site, will prove it.

Jerry Capeci is America’s most famous mob reporter, and now he runs his own website, Ganglandnews.com, and he says plenty of people pay five bucks a month to read it. Enough for him to make a living! So maybe this is like, the future of journalism, perhaps? Sure but look: People will pay to read about mobsters but maybe not about, you know, city council meetings. Can The Mafia save journalism? Yes, only The Mafia.