Jai Singh, the founding editor of News.com and editor-in-chief of CNET's news and reviews websites, is leaving to worry about his health and "ponder what's next," he told colleagues in an email. He was replaced by Dan Farber, a CNET blogger. Farber has much to do. News.com's news judgment has gotten laughably out of sync with its audience. Contrast this array of headlines on February 9 with Techmeme's selection. Techmeme's algorithm, sensibly, focuses on the Microsoft-Yahoo battle. CNET's editors? Religion and digital fantasies. I'd pray, too.

Behold the death of print, happening in slow motion: Visits to magazine websites were up 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. But so far this year, monthly magazine ad pages are down 4 percent. The numbers don't add up to good news: Magazines' Web revenues are considerably smaller than their print business. Even if they grow to match them in audience size, magazines will never support their extensive sales forces and extravagant editorial salaries on the Web's cutthroat cost structure. David Moore, CEO of online-ad network 24/7 Media, put it best:

Malcom Gladwell was on precious radio program This American Life recently, telling some stories of his earliest days of "real" journalism at the Washington Post. He apparently had a bet with a colleague to determine which of them could be the first to insert a couple amusing phrases into the venerable paper. First was "new and troubling questions," which is surely already a journalistic cliche. Following that was the more amusing "perverse and often baffling"—a harder fit, but Gladwell managed it. Of course, Gladwell, easily one of the most charming one-trick ponies in media, has been dining out on this story for a dozen years. Despite that, it upset Jossip very very much, as it raises new and troubling questions about the state of respectable journalism. Audio clip attached.

Alt-weekly crusader and Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple wrote the definitive story on the battle between traditional newsrooms and their web counterparts, where "definitive" means "extraordinarily long and often forgetting to make a larger point in its various attempts to embarrass the Washington Post." It's still entertaining though, as a case study in precisely how, over and over again, one should not roll out and maintain the web side of a major publication.

This just in: A tipster tells us Jai Singh, a senior vice president at CNET and the founding editor-in-chief of News.com, has quit. Dan Farber, currently editor of CNET's ZDNet opinion site, will take over News.com, but there's no word on replacements for Singh's other roles.When Singh launched News.com for CNET in 1996, his reporters had trouble getting their calls returned. PR flacks, unused to the idea of online news, ranted about supposed violations of embargoes. It was, in short, a rule-breaking, trouble-making font of real and valuable information. Singh's achievement: News.com has become part of the mainstream media establishment. His downfall: Young readers now view it as such, as boring and dutiful as the tech trades it made irrelevant.

Time Out has a Chicago edition and that edition has a sex columnist. A letter to that sex columnist this week bears a remarkable resemblance to the blog opera life of Time Out New York contributer Julia Allison! It's a sad letter about two bloggers in love who blogged about being bloggers in love (though their sites were read "mostly [by] just our friends, some of their friends read it, too"!), but the guy-blogger blogged about how the girl-blogger couldn't achieve orgasm. Then things got even worse!

The George Polk awards—described by blogger Will Bunch as the "Golden Globes of American journalism"—were announced early this morning. One of them went to a blogger who blogs! Far out! An army of Davids has stormed the gates! Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo (a blog!!) won the Polk Award for Legal Reporting, for his role in exposing the US Attorneys scandal that eventually brought down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. On a blog! A blog that follows the rather traditional journalistic model of "hiring" and "paying" "reporters." Brave new world! [E&P via Attytood]

HARDBALL with Chris Matthews pulled the ol' Osama/Obama mix-up last night. In an onscreen graphic, no less! Verbal slips are one thing, but how the hell does this make it from the graphics department to the air without anyone noticing? Is poor Chris the only person running the show? Clip below.

LA Times publisher David Hiller, the corporate emissary the Tribune bosses in Chicago sent out to California to handle all the editor-firing, is a bit of a dork. He got all goofy and excited over the fact that the paper got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, which convinced the jaded LAT newsroom that he is a total touristy nerd who will never really grasp the City of Angels. He manages like a pussy, mumbling inaudibly about what his long term plans and mandates are before springing the hatchet on angry editors, according to lots of anonymous interviewees in a New York Times profile today. They also say he has sent notes about individual stories to reporters (a huge no-no for a publisher), and is considering putting the paper's entire Sunday magazine section under the control of the marketing department. On top of all that, he likes to sing corny songs. Whew! A weak manager, muddling around without a strong long-term plan, trying to endear himself to his inferiors in an annoying, kind of nerdy fashion. Who does that remind you of? New York Times publisher Arthur "Pinch Pinch Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., of course! Observe this list of Sulzberger's greatest Hiller-like moments:

(Please forgive the lack of a "YouTube has changed the nature of modern campaigning" think piece here, as we are not Howard Kurtz.)

As has been bemoaned by dozens of bloggers eager to write dirty words, many obituaries for the late former Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz politely elided the reason he was forced to quit. Butz said, in public: "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit." (A portion of that quote is also the name of a quite decent late-period Alex Chilton album, whose title was, of course, altered in its American release. Prudes!) Of course, most obits leave out the nastier sides of their subjects, but when a person is famous only for that nasty side, or one specific incident of nastiness, it's shitty, cunty, cocksucking journalism to not mention it.

New York Magazine's pictures of nekkid Lindsay Lohan are titillating, sure. But more importantly, they are the embodiment of oh-so-many media trends! Like the trend of a glossy magazine grabbing a high-fashion photographer to make shirtlessness upscale (for men and women). Also, the "trend" of serious news outlets exploiting pop culture for massive clicks while still maintaining their "smart" cred. Further, tragic celebrities—living or not— are the best attractions. The Lohan shoot isn't pegged to her funeral, but it's pretty damn grim foreshadowing, considering the Marilyn Monroe theme. Finally, the whole thing provides the same masturbatory value as a hypothetical Lohan Playboy shoot; but with better PR for both sides. Of course, we would never put ourselves above covering the latest sex news. So since NYMag.com is currently crushed under an incoming barrage of clicks from masturbators, we've put the most relevant Lohan pic [by Bert Stern, via New York] after the jump. It's technically NSFW, but hey, it's a holiday!

In re. the Times getting cute about grammar: did you know that while they run one of the very few regular columns in a major publication on language and usage, the New York Times is guilty of ignoring the en dash? It's shocking, but true. In fact, we received a huge and comprehensive letter to the Times about this disgusting display of grammatical ineptitude, in response to a recent William Safire column about the slow death (or evolution!) of the hyphen. It is amazing, it is long, and because the Times would never print it in its entirety, it is after the jump. NB: We have no clue how to use an en dash.

Newsweek put hope-monger's wife Michelle Obama on the cover this week, and they offer a lengthy interview and story that remind us all how Ms. Obama is very smart and outspoken, and also pretty sarcastic. In fact the cover story is basically identical to recent profiles in both the Times and the Wall Street Journal! But obviously there's a lengthy lead time for the newsweeklies, and hey, there are only so many ways to call a woman "sarcastic." This many ways:

For those of you who invested a lot of effort into preparing for a glamorous career in the media: Why not try marketing instead? Seriously. Because all the media jobs are pretty much disappearing. Ad Age finds in a new survey that a quarter of media jobs have evaporated since 2000. Where did they go? To marketing services, of course, which is actually expanding because of the Internet, whereas traditional media outlets (hello, newspapers) are being pummeled with layoffs because of the Internet. Fortunately, all those laid off reporters can get jobs pitching stories to their old colleagues; "Marketing consultancies over the past year added 14,500 jobs (up 10.8%), nearly matching staff cuts at newspapers (down 16,900 or 4.7%)." More depressing graphs of doom [via Ad Age] after the jump.

Who needs journalists, really? That's what Business Wire argues. Warren Buffett, the billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, picked up Business Wire in 2006. He claims not to be tech-savvy, but this investment suggests otherwise. Press releases distributed by Business Wire are picked up directly by services like Google News and Techmeme. As a source, Business Wire ranks 32nd on Techmeme's list — not a bad performance. Buffett also owns a large stake in the Washington Post Co. But if that goes bust thanks to the advent of online media, it seems like Buffett picked himself a nice hedge.

Marketwatch media person (and frequent target of Gawker ridicule) Jon Friedman actually wrote a thought that is sorta original and correct and interesting! According to him, MSNBC's ratings may suck, but they "stand out in one underappreciated category: embarrassing, mealy-mouthed apologies." He refers to David Shuster's suspension for his remarks about Chelsea Clinton (ably dissected down to the very last gruesome detail by Rachel Sklar here), which, along with Chris Matthews' half-hearted and partially reversed apology for being insane about Hillary, has MSNBC holding the early lead in the "apologizing to the Clintons" race. Of course, in the overall apology race, Fox did force anchor John Gibson to apologize for laughing it up at the death of Heath Ledger. But he didn't really mean it so that doesn't count. [Marketwatch]

Say what you want about New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who announced yesterday (left) the newspaper would be cutting 100 newsroom positions this year. But the guy gives a damn good bad-news speech. "We-all of us-have taken a badly wounded, publicly humiliated newsroom and restored it, largely by dint of great journalism, to a position of international esteem," Keller told his audience. "And we have done all of this while avoiding the cutting of muscle that has so badly weakened many of our competitors. Smugness, in our business, is death." Good line! "You pour your talent into this great miracle, and I am proud to be part of it." Aww. Feel inspired? Want to go change the world? Yeah! If you still have a job next month, you should totally go for it! After the jump, some key points from the in-house transcript of Keller's speech, which follows in full.

Gannett, Hearst, the New York Times Co. and Tribune, in the grand tradition of doomed online-newspaper joint ventures, is creating an ad network, QuadrantOne. The new partners said QuardrantOne will reach more than 50 million monthly visitors through more than 120 papers. But not the New York Times or USA Today, which already have national sales operations. Yahoo launched a similar newspaper consortium last year, to no visible effect. [WSJ]

Slate proudly announces that they're launching their most mindbogglingly pointless and stupid regular feature since Kausfiles (zing!): It's called "the unabridged Encyclopedia Baracktannica, a list of words that have been Obamafied by Slate." To "Obamafy" a word is to combine it with either the first or last name of Barack Obama, and then come up with some sort of vaguely joke-resembling definition. Like "Baracktail, an alcoholic beverage quaffed at an Obama campaign rally." Why? Why would anyone do this? Why is it a "widget"? Why does this exist? Did they think that just because they launched this at 7 p.m. last night no one would notice? There is already this and this, two sites with the benefit of being outright weird enough to actually amuse. But now there is Slate's Obama Word Generator, a thing that exists, and it is a widget, so we have embedded it below, Obamafter therack Jumpama.