In your awful Wednesday media column: a war journalist is killed, another social media news thing exists, a new culture editor at the NYO, Mets writing is unbearable, and a blog anniversary.

  • Photojournalist Tim Hetherington has reportedly been killed in a mortar attack while working in Libya. Hetherington had worked for Nightline and produced the award-winning war documentary Restrepo. He was 41, and lived in Brooklyn. Veteran Getty war photographer Chris Hondros was also initially reported to be dead in the attack; but the NYT says that he's "suffered a severe brain injury and was in extremely critical condition" and "clinging to life." Several other reporters were injured in the attack as well. The outpouring of grief was swift and overwhelming. Both Hetherington and Hondros were extremely well respected in their fields.
  • The Washington Post has launched Trove, a "personalized social news site." So what?
  • Sarah Douglas, formerly a staff writer at Art + Auction magazine, is the new culture editor at the New York Observer. If you wanna be good at that job you better be cultured as fuck.
  • The baseball season's just started, and New York Mets beat writers are already on the verge of suicide. So, normal year.
  • The Awl, once just a much-whispered-about "secret" experiment in Blog 2.0, is two years old today. Damn. We're all so very, very old.

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