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Today on mediabistro, Elizabeth Spiers undergoes a self-referential examination of the self-referential nature of media writing which, at the risk of being self-referntial, must be addressed:

In my defense, a week of writing Gawker (much less writing it for nine months) is probably enough to convince anyone that media reporting is the most soul-destroying job in journalism. Also in my defense: It can be.

Having now punched in 9 months as Gawker's primary editor, I feel it'd be a lapse in coverage not to respond to such a brazen assessment of life in the bubble. So: Spiers is dead right. My soul had in fact eaten itself by mid-September 2004, and my essence has since been reduced to little more than 1 part gin, 1 part fluoxetine-drenched nihilism. But wait, there's a light at the end of our tunnel:

But it's not all bad — and in fact, can be very, very good. The downsides of media reporting — the incestuous nature of it, the endless navel-gazing, the near impossibility of avoiding self-referentiality — are small prices to pay for the merits of doing something that can, when executed properly, make an enormous difference in the maintenance of a free press.

Okay, missy, we were totally on your team — but now you lost us. The navel gazing and incest aren't the downsides of the media metafucking, they're the best part. What good is making "an enormous difference" without some sexy back-biting? After all, high school isn't any fun without the hierarchy.

Dilemmas In Media Reporting: Is Navel-Gazing Good For You? [mediabistro]