In your sad, macho Thursday media column: Boston Globe anger, broke-ass papers resign themselves to advertorial disgrace, media money evaporates, and let's all laugh at Politico:

Boston Globe: Still angry about this whole "Give up all your money or be shut down" thing. Union members are upset, defiant, and vowing to fight. Good luck to them, but in the end they'll have to give in, along with their bosses, along with everyone else at the NYT Co., and everyone else in journalism anywhere.


Media company stocks have been doing slightly better recently, but don't worry: forecasters are sure that things will "turn ugly again" soon.

....Although you can always go the LA Times route and put a fake advertorial on your front page, or do one better, as the UCLA student paper did: wrap their entire paper with a full, mock front page advertorial, which was designed and written by a marketing department. The paper's editors ran a pissy editorial about how much they hated it but ultimately ran it anyhow, because they needed the money. This would have been a great thing for us to get all judgey about, a year ago.


WSJ.com, the only major newspaper website that successfully got people to pay for it, now has a plan to expand its paywall and make even more people pay for it. Those guys are the absolute vanguard of money. No joke.

How dainty is Politico? It's quite dainty indeed! The site wrote a story about Arlen Specter appearing on Howard Stern's show, and pulled info from a site called MarksFriggin.com. This was written up on Politico.com as: "So, here are some of the exchanges, via MarksFr——en.com, a site run by a guy who live-blogs Howard's every on-air utterance." Haha, they can't say "Friggin." Would you like a tea cozy to go with your milquetoast that you eat with your pet chihuahua in a pink sweater on the veranda while wearing a tutu made of lemon drops? Ha. Politico.