In your hopeful Tuesday media column: Portfolio.com hires(!) people, NYT op-ed-speak translated, Philly papers make an offer you can refuse, and journalists in peril:

Portfolio.com is getting some new bloggers. Good sign! Ryan Avent from The Economist is replacing the departing Felix Salmon, and investigative biz reporterman extraordinaire Gary Weiss is also coming over. He's good!


Ha, jolly-looking NYT editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal is answering letters from readers this week. Paul Bilsky asks: Why can't you guys get a "serious" female columnist? Oh and he loves Verlyn Klinkenborg, btw! Rosenthal responds: "I'm answering this because it's a slow, hanging ball. First, I love Verlyn, too. And second, I would be the last person alive to suggest that Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins are not serious columnists. They are indeed, very serious." Allow us to answer as well, Paul: Verlyn Klinkenborg is the single most annoying op-ed writer at the NYT and takes up valuable space that could be dedicated to anything else, anything at all. Dowd is not serious, Collins is. And Andy Rosenthal just wanted an excuse to say "hanging ball."


The Philly papers are $300 million in debt, and bankrupt. They just offered their creditors $50 million to call it even. Newspaper investing, hey! Jack Shafer points out that people have seen newspapers as a dying business since at least 1918. They were prescient.


Disney's strategy to lure in more boys as viewers: "more science." This is contrary to the normal strategy, "more tits."

Roxana Saberi is an American-Iranian journalist who's going on trial in Iran soon, charged with spying for the US. She's worked for the BBC and for NPR. US diplomats are reportedly trying to help her get set free, but Iran doesn't sound very receptive. Good luck, Roxana.