According to Gawker it is. Here’s an interested snippet on the “rise” of “Celebukid Reporters and News-ertainment”

“Even after the rise of cable news and online news, network “news” broadcasts are still the biggest single unified source of news. Far more Americans get their “news” from a TV network “news” operation than from any other particular outlet. Network “news” is, therefore, still quite important.

There are a very limited number of jobs for network “news” journalists. Logic, then, would dictate that those jobs should go to the very best TV journalists in America. Instead, those jobs go to political celebrity children like Chelsea Clinton and Jenna Bush, media celebrity children like Luke Russert, and—perhaps most egregiously—to open political operatives like George Stephanopolous.

Nothing whatsoever can disqualify someone from being hired as a network “news” journalist, except perhaps ugliness.”
More here…

Courtesy of Gawker’s Jim Newell:

“An August 2009 e-mail from Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, ordered reporters to drop the term “public option” for “government-run plan” during the health care reform debate. Could Fox News have a right-wing bias?

Sammon, a former Washington Times reporter, sent this memo to his newsroom, and got a reply from Fox’s senior vice preisdent for news, Michael Clemente.

From: Sammon, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:23 AM
To: 054 -FNSunday; 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 069 -Politics; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 036 -FOX.WHU; 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers
Subject: friendly reminder: let’s not slip back into calling it the “public option”

1) Please use the term “government-run health insurance” or, when brevity is a concern, “government option,” whenever possible.

2) When it is necessary to use the term “public option” (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon), use the qualifier “so-called,” as in “the so-called public option.”

3) Here’s another way to phrase it: “The public option, which is the government-run plan.”

4) When newsmakers and sources use the term “public option” in our stories, there’s not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct.

Read the rest of the email at Media Matters.

Saturday morning, young Moscow journalist Oleg Kashin was attacked and savagely beaten by two men. Everyone believes it was retaliation for his work. Today, video of the beating emerged. See the video here… Read the Gawker piece here…

Randy Michaels, Tribune Co.’s embattled chief executive, has decided to resign his post at the Chicago-based media company and intends to leave the company before the end of the week, sources close to the situation said.

He will be replaced by a four-member office of the president. Sources said the four would be Eddy Hartenstein, president and publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Tony Hunter, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune Media Group; Nils Larsen, Tribune Co.’s chief investment officer; and Don Liebentritt, chief restructuring officer.

The development comes after weeks of turmoil at the bankrupt company, brought on by assertions that Michaels and his management team displayed boorish behavior and fostered a sexist, hostile work environment. Even as the Tribune Co. board met Tuesday to discuss Michaels’ fate in light of the crisis, new complaints by current and former employees were emerging.

Read more here, and an explosive Gawker piece on Michaels’ upcoming resignation here…

Gawker’s Nick Denton sat down recently for a lengthy interview with Peter Kafka of All Things Digital. Denton gets visibly annoyed when he’s asked “if what he does he considers to be journalism”, and then gets alittle defensive on the subject of Gawker hiding behind “privacy laws” with the Apple-Gizmodo episode.

Gawker Media, the eight-year-old online publishing heavyweight founded by Nick Denton, announced its first acquisition on Monday: the New York boldface name guide CityFile. Mr. Denton would not disclose the sale price. He indicated in a memorandum that he had looked at other acquisition targets in recent months, and said “if online media is consolidating, we’d rather be a consolidator than consolidatee.” But he reiterated the company’s belief that it is “usually more effective to build than buy.” Remy Stern, the editor and publisher of CityFile, will become the editor of Gawker next week, replacing Gabriel Snyder, who said in a separate memorandum: “I’ll put this as plainly as we’d report any other masthead ouster: I am being canned.”
Read more about it here

When the Huffington Post announced a “collaboration” with donors to launch the “Huffington Post Investigative Fund” with an initial budget of $1.75 million back in March of last year, we were giddy with excitement at the thought of people still CARING about quality news. Today, John Cook of Gawker (who we think is usually right-on-the-money with his posts 85% of the time), wrote a piece slamming the fund as being nothing more then a tax write-off and a way for the Huffington Post to have “exclusivity on stories”. Our take on this? Way too early to say in our opinion, and we whole-heartedly admit we love the Huff Post.

The main issue to date, is that very few websites have benefited from the fund except for the HuffingtonPost, and here we are 10+ months after the announcement of the fund. With that being said, let’s give it some more time. It takes TIME to investigate stories….we’ll keep tabs on ‘em and post news as it develops(!)

Gabriel Snyder over at Gawker did a great pie-chart analysis of what the real “stakes” are if the NY Times starts charging for online readership in 2011, and what exactly the “metered” readership is all about.
I.E – if you read more then a certain number of stories, you’ll recieve a prompt (of some sort) to subscribe to the magazine (and/or) the website. (Ouch!) The clinch is, with as much free content being available online (as there currently is), will the NY Times succeed? God only knows, and NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has no idea either. So it’s all up in the air! Read more here