Journalism. It is not a lucrative profession. Maybe you could be a freelancer though? Easy gigs. Airline magazines! Travel pieces! The sad reality:

In your scandalous Friday media column: a reporter has an affair with a police chief, another reporter's charged with assaulting an old man, Meredith is the new queen of magazines, and Reader's Digest increases its pap quotient.

Doug Hampton, the cuckolded husband of Sen. John Ensign's mistress, wrote a letter to Fox News five days before the story broke that Ensign had ruined his life and career. Fox never reported it, and called Hampton an extortionist.

National Lampoon parodied a newspaper back in the 70s, and The Onion was founded in 1988, and last year there was that mildly interesting fake New York Times, but the latest spoof paper is indistinguishable from an earnest lefty, arguing.

In your waterlogged Thursday media column: Bill Keller defends his Iran trip, Jon Stewart is cruelly eviscerated, the Weather Channel wants big ratings so it can then fail like other TV networks, and the internet reigns supreme.

In your plastic Wednesday media column: Greta Van Susteren explains why she's a better friend to "poor African Americans" than Barack Obama is, along with newspaper news, TV news, and New York Post blowjob news.

Bloomberg's been bragging it suddenly tripled its number of scoops in the first quarter. How did the financial wire do it? A company mole forwarded along one particularly egregious example.

Trying to report from a country like Iran under state-mandated censorship is hard. The Associated Press is making it harder by caving to the demands of the Iranian regime and refusing to allow its Iranian subscribers to use this photo.

Did media careerism help build the case for the Iraq war? This guy thinks so.

Who was that insane lieutenant colonel telling Fox News we should bomb North Korea? That would be Robert Maginnis, who fought the gay menace for the Family Research Council, then claimed Iraq had many horrible weapons.

Bloomberg retains a reputation as the most brutal and authoritarian of the news wires, so it's no wonder the company's internal memos could pass for North Korean propaganda. Scoop production increased threefold, the glorious regime just reported!

In your variegated Wednesday media column: Television's death foretold, the magazine industry's resurgence predicted, the Boston Globe's hope springs eternal, and something for tattoo enthusiasts to read.

A British court has ruled that the Times of London is free to unmask an anonymous British blogger, just ten days after the National Review caused and uproar by outing a left-wing blogger named Publius. This is a good thing.

If anyone can get the scoop on a fringe Kennedy family member's creepy porny obsession with JFK Jr., and a very specific description of said guy's child porn collection, it's the New York Post. They've done it! Kennedy creepiness ahead.

All of a sudden, thanks to Twitter and Bill Keller, Iran is like the biggest story of the year! What's the latest? Killings in the street, a president on the run, media in peril, and a Florida 2000 recount replay:

Do you have a car? Are you able to "work long hours"? Are you willing to sell yourself into journalistic indentured servitude for less than half a pittance? Here's your chance to edit a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper!

In your intermittently gloomy Monday media column: a new font at the New York Times, a fantastical price for the Boston Globe, black people would like to be invited on television sometimes, and the recession proves Steve Forbes right:

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller has parachuted into Iran to lend his considerable expertise to his paper's coverage of the disputed election. He should have stayed home.

Current TV freelancers Laura Ling and Euna Lee are locked in a North Korean prison. Do you know whose fault this is? That's right, the internet's! It's true.

Malcolm Gladwell's next big New Yorker piece is on news reporting. Notes the Outliers author: "You can't start blogging at 23 and call yourself a journalist." Nah, you do that when you're 40 and creepy. [E & P Pub]