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It's fun for everyone when talented, angry writers fight!

The first blow, a sneak attack on Slate, came from Michael Wolff in the new Vanity Fair* (not online, of course):

Slate is in size and reach, insignificant. ...

[I] never actually met anyone who has read Slate who hasn't at one time worked at Slate or considered hiring someone who might have worked at Slate. ...

The real problem with Slate is that nobody who works at Slate actually wants to be working at Slate. ... [T]he kind of people who work at Slate want to be working at the Times."

*With VF not available online, our local Barnes & Noble still stocking its May issue, and Wolff's new column not showing up in Nexis, we're forced here to rely on Jack Shafer's quotations.

Naturally, Jack Shafer, Slate's media watch/attack dog, wasn't going to let that slideeveryone knows not to rile an attack dog. The barking continues after the jump. JO

Shafer fired back late yesterday:

Gifted with a hyperactive and malicious mind, Wolff's forte is not reporting and analysis. It's the oh-aren't-I-naughty clever slur, a talent worth admiring if not applauding, especially when you're the target. Which I, and the Web site I call home, am. ...

Like many Wolff pieces, this one bends in on itself to give a better gander of the writer than the subject he's ostensibly writing about. (A brief check of his archives proves that "I" is easily his favorite word.) ... This isn't media criticism. It's public masturbation.

Then Wolff retorted in a taunting letter to Romenseko this morning:

Wow. I seem to have gotten that school monitor, Jack Shafer, mighty riled up. My piece in Vanity Fair came out about ten minutes ago, and Shafer's already written a thousand words about it. I won't try to unravel or rebut his hysteria except to say that Shafer's critical formula is consistent: Shafer is always right, everybody else is wrong.

As the kids say: Oh, snap. We're expecting several more rounds yet on Romenesko, maybe a referee's call from CJR Daily, and a mediabistro.com essay on what it all means for struggling freelancers. If it keeps going in print, our money's on Wolff; he's meaner. But when this thing comes to blows, we'll take Shafer. Wolff's little.
(Disclosure: While we're speaking of public masturbation, let's make it a circle jerk. Shafer's counterattack quotes an interview we once did with Wolff.)