Hey does anyone know what the hell is going on with the media? Did all professional journalistic reporters catch idiot cancer overnight? Here we have the Washington Post’s Lois Romano, a fine reporter usually (we guess?), landing an interview with Robert Gibbs. A GOOD JOURNALISTIC OPPORTUNITY. And the two questions she asks immediately… well you know what those are going to be, don’t you? MORE »

Perhaps the best part of last night’s press conference (although there were so many!…??) was that Obama didn’t call on the Washington Post, perhaps because the Post reporter’s question about Alex Rodriguez’s fancy drugs at the last presser was a real toughy. He also didn’t call on the NYT, the WSJ, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or USA Today, which is of course an Outrage — especially since he did call on black- and illegal-Mexican-oriented publications, as well as Al Gore’s military newsletter! To annoying people such as CNN’s John King, this was a “curious” move, calling on the blacks and stuff, proving that Obama is JUST ANOTHER POLITICIAN and, presumably, The Honeymoon Is Over. MORE »

So, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was at the White House today, where he was SNUBBED by elitist American Barack Obama, who did not worship the Special Relationship enough to hold a joint press conference with Brown. Also, who the fuck cares about Gordon Brown, right? Unless you want to talk about a country with an even worse financial/banking situation than the United States, that is! MORE »

Boy howdy, this March 4th edition (how??) of The New Republic is a real piece of work! Here’s an interesting snippet from an editorial titled “MSM, RIP,” by The Editors: “On The Huffington Post and its ilk, you would find rants about how ‘Beltway media really makes no effort to do anything other than parrot totally out-of-touch conventional wisdom–no matter how inane, stupid and ridiculous it is.’ This rhetoric creates a poisonous atmosphere. By assaulting the credibility of the press, it destroys its authority in the culture, giving cover to politicians who would rather avoid dealing with reporters in the first place.” Man, those liberal bloggers sure had some nerve that time they invented the massive natural forces dictating the evolution of information flow, huh? Well, enough. Don’t adapt, just stop the Internet. And if you think some newspaper isn’t credible, keep it to yourself, because that could destroy the newspaper’s authority! [TNR]

Hey, America: This is what you’ll lose, once the last bloated newspapers close forever: People like this, whining about the Most Important Thing Ever, a soggy newsprint version of yesterday’s wire copy and weeks-old syndicate features about “winter vegetables,” wrapped around a Big Lots! circular and six or seven pages of foreclosure notices in the back, along with a few “I HEREBY REFUSE TO PAY MY DEBT” classifieds, where the jobs/real estate ads used to be. Oh god. MORE »

IF ONE WISHES TO BECOME KING in America, there is one thing and one thing only that he must do, and that is to talk to America’s “paper of record,” the New York Times, for an hour or so before inauguration. Otherwise the inauguration is illegitimate and the would-be king little more than a fraud. And while our mutt-king Barack Obama has sat down with the likes of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich this week, he has not talked to the news side of the liberal newspaper’s operations, which he must do. And now the reporters are getting maaaaaad! MORE »

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the musings of Washington Post in-house coot Richard Cohen, who’s hated every single development in American culture since 1958. Earlier this year he spent a whole column ranting about the kids and their tattoos (”I simply do not care for tattoos”), another about Amazon’s Kindle (”I simply do not care for the Kindle”), and, of course, another about Barack Obama’s age (”I simply do not care for the age of Barack Obama”). Basically, all Richard Cohen wants in life is a few twigs to rub together and some of grandma’s licorice stick. All a man really needs. In today’s column he tackles a new devil, that con sarn BlackBerry telephone machine. He simply does not care for Obama’s BlackBerry telephone, especially when there are perfectly good print newspapers out there that perform the exact same functions, and women are also awful. MORE »

• EVERYTHING ABOUT DETROIT IS DEPRESSING: Now it’s the home of both the worst manufacturing economy AND, uh, newspaper economy: “The leading scenario set to be unveiled Tuesday would call for the Free Press and its partner paper, the Detroit News, to end home delivery on all but the most lucrative days—Thursday, Friday and Sunday.” Porn will still be available on Detroit’s Internet, however. [Romanesko]

Do you see that, friends, do you see what the Chicago Sun-Times is writing about Blagodicks’ hair? This is like a bad version of 9/11 — the psychologists (the intelligence community) could tell from his sexy hair (the intelligence) that he would be comically corrupt (fly into two tall buildings). When will clinical psychologist Scott Ambers (George Tenet) apologize for not warning Illinois (America) about Rod Blagojevich’s hair? MORE »

Wow, this gal is a quick healer! Less than a month ago her jaw was wired shut, and here she is talking again. She says it’s good that newspapers are going bankrupt, because this is how competition works in the Free Market, and competition is good, because people want more choices rather than less, and so offering people fewer choices in print media is … awesome? Whatever, nobody ever said Ann Coulter had to make sense. [YouTube]

ALL NEWSPAPERS FAILING: Tribune Co. went ahead and declared bankruptcy, which is surely good news for the battered half-dead Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The New York Times is scheduled to go bust later this week, probably. The prognosis for print newspapers has been pretty grim since the 1980s, but the specific financial collapse of Tribune Co. and the NYT is, like everything, the fault of the real-estate bubble and credit swaps and whatever. [AP/WSJ/Gawker]