Our intrepid video fella Richard Blakeley was on a plane full of journalists headed to a Thrillist press event in Las Vegas over the weekend when disaster struck. Due to the crazypants thunderstorms barreling through the region, the plane had to make an unscheduled stop in Rochester, NY. Naturally Blakeley whipped out his camera and filmed the madness, capturing a veritable who's who of journalist types, from the Post's Justin Rocket Silverman, to Julia Allison from Star magazine (hiding coyly from the camera), to The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, as they coped with the ordeal. The most important thing we can learn from this video? I'mInLikeWithYou.com's Charles Forman pees sitting down. Clip is above.

Martin Bashir, the current Nightline broadcaster, just announced that he has a "potentially life-threatening" brain tumor. Bashir, who made his name with big, probing, salacious TV interviews of Princess Diana and Michael Jackson, said that he plans to "get on with his life" and continue working. In that, he is hardly unique; among many cancer victims, the urge to continue with one's career is a powerful one. And that goes double for those in entertainment and the media, where many personalities are so intimately tied to a very public line of work.

Midtown Lunch, a food blog devoted to finding Midtown cuisine, tips us that New York Times writers were lining up with Port Authority staffers for free food at Sophie's Cuban on 40th Street between seventh and eighth. They're starving! And they probably even had to walk there! I'm still banned from Whole Foods for taking too many samples. Nice to know that part of me will never change. [via Midtown Lunch]

Writing in The Nation, Chris Hayes explains "why campaign coverage so often sucks": because reporters are terrified and confused and either keep entirely to themselves or else run in confused packs of other journalists to ensure that no one "misses" anything. Related: a poor Obama volunteer doesn't recognize and attempts to canvas the journalistic dream team of Ben Smith, Ana Marie Cox, and Maureen Dowd outside one Des Moines "media hangout." [The Nation via Crooks and Liars, Politico]

MSNBC rakes a little muck today and reveals that reporters have given campaign contributions to political candidates! Just like other American citizens! Even more shocking is the fact that most reporters tend to give to Democrats! Most shocking of all is the revelation that reporters have money to give away! Whether you see this practice as indicative of the media's bias towards the left or as an indication that those at the front lines of the political process have seen enough to know who needs help depends on what side of the ideological line you fall on. One thing's for sure: We kind of love the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg.

Attention bloggers: George Bush wants you to squeal on your sources. [CNET]

Today brings wild fake-person news from the land of big hair and Neiman-Marcus: A woman named Elizabeth Albanese became head of the Dallas Press Club (ooh, a press club! How quaint) and used it for her own nefarious ends, such as awarding herself several coveted (in those parts, apparently) "Katie Awards" for outstanding journalism over the course of several years. This, even though she worked for the Bond Buyer and wrote "dull and forgettable stories on municipal finance," according to the Dallas Observer, which has the great blow-by-blow account of how she handed out the Katie Awards at random and used the Press Club's credit card to pay for her personal vacations. Also, she'd been arrested a couple times before and told everyone she went to Harvard Law School, even though she hadn't graduated from high school. Which of course raises the question: What took the Dallas journalists so long to catch on?

NICK DOUGLAS — After Valleywag canned me as editor in November, I talked to a half-dozen editors and writers from as many respected newspapers and magazines. Several discussed writing positions that I would have killed for the year before. Why did I turn them all down and go back to blogging? Well, first because the SF Chronicle won't let me come to the office in a necktie and boxers. But also because print journalism about the Internet is as pathetic as a two-legged leprous puppy, and half as healthy.

The once-murky implications of the Tribune deal are becoming visible, and Tribune employees are starting to make sense of the brave new world to come. Take the Orlando Sentinel's Mike Thomas. While the potential for layoffs under the Zell regime causes Mike some concern, there's a terrible specter looming on the horizon that frightens him even more. Guess what? It involves the Internet!

Hidden amidst the details of the bizarre and tragic Village shootout story is the fact that the gunman, David Garvin, was a failed screenwriter and journalist—he even had a journalism degree! Anyway, it seems that he so freaked out his former co-workers in the Wall Street Journal production department that they beefed up security after he got fired in 2005. Not that they did anything else about it! Like have him committed. Crazy fucking journalists.

• Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal. For free! [WSJ]
  

So, JoeJournalist: We figured this scintillating story had run its course but, unfortunately, no. In a segment on the consistently incendiary BloggingHeads.tv, suspected self-aggrandizer Mickey Kaus claims that he knows who the solipsist is, and that it isn't Andrew Sullivan (or Kaus). Mickey won't give up the name, but he does volunteer that the journalist in question is "an important figure in the New America Foundation."

Okay, so that Kinsley piece: We'll start you off with the "blind item" in question:

As much as journalists hate hearing "This could be a big story for you!" from people begging for news coverage, it's still nicer than getting the same mass message as potential business partners, which only reminds journalists how low they are on the Valley hierarchy. A writer sends in this example:

• In yet another installment of a series of just unbelievable coincidences, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist critical of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down this weekend. Politkovskaya becomes the thirteenth reporter to so perish during Putin's tenure. But we're sure it was an accidental, brutal execution-style contract killing. [Guardian]
• Just what we need: A hip-hop Cookie! [WWD]
• How sick, depraved, and out-of-control was Mark Foley? He tried to fuck a Post reporter. [NYP]

• Warner Music has signed a licensing agreement with YouTube; Sumner Redstone immediately rehires Tom Freston to fire him again. [NYT]
• Has Katie Couric settled on a sign-off? Apart from an under-her-breath "Fuck you, Friedman?" [TV Newser]
• There are fewer full-time journalists now than there were a decade ago, mostly because Sewell Chan is doing all of their work. [IU, via JR]
• Dicks at Gawker mock 26-year-old orphan who's just trying to make a difference, damn it. [ETP]

• Hewlett-Packard hired private investigators to obtain journalists' phone records. Because there's nothing more interesting than a list of sex-talk lines called on the company dime. [NYT]
• The statistics in that Slate teen hummer piece suck. [Stats.org]
• Maureen Dowd is too worth more than "Always Crashing in the Same Car." [Newyorkette]
• Is the lonelygirl15 story over finally? Please? [Screens]

• Ross Gelbspan thinks journalists have been "duped" by the fossil-fuel industry's P.R. people; we prefer to think that they're just lazy. [Grist]
• Or maybe they've got more important stories to cover. [CNN]
• Either way, great journalism is being practiced on both sides of the pond. [Independent]

The Washington Post directs your attention to the startlingly comprehensive Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture project at USC Annenberg. Cataloging over 46,000 references to fictional journalists in books, print, films, and TV, the IJPC concludes that print journalists appearing in movies are generally depicted as beacons of integrity, while TV journalists come across as sleazebags. Project director Joe Saltzman theorizes this is because print journalists are mostly abstract figures that readers only encounter on the page, while TV folk appear in living color, flaws and all. Hence Scarlett Johannson in Woody Allen's new movie Scoop, adopting the glasses-make-me-look-smart school of journalist acting. It's a two-part denial process, though — we only believe a nubile young starlet as a hard-working reporter because there are few enough popularly envisioned print journalists to counteract the fantasy with pale, doughy, stubbly reality. Then again, there's no reason one can't envision Scarlett rolling around on a Lebanese beach with CNN mancake Karl Penhaul. Even NYC-local newsgal Jodie Applegate would have to call that cool.

The Wall Street Journal ran a profile this weekend of everyone's favorite classifieds site, Craigslist, focusing on CEO Jim Buckmaster (pictured).