In your snowy Tuesday media column: media employees forced to re-apply for their own jobs, failed newspaper execs mumbling, and Ben Stein is unpopular:

Here's a creative spin on laying people off: all employees at Johnson Publishing, home of Ebony and Jet, are being required to re-apply for jobs at the company. Maybe they'll get their same one back! Oddly, this will allegedly result in "a net gain" in "employee head count." Maybe if you count the heads rolling on the floor. [Folio]


The bankrupt Tribune Co. tells a judge "the company anticipates 'a number of layoffs' this year." They also anticipate the earth will rotate around the sun this year.

A former McClatchy exec absolutely unloads on those fools with the "musty smell of the mausoleum all about them" advocating that newspapers adopt a nonprofit model. Because if there's one guy who knows how to build a successful newspaper company, it's a McClatchy exec [2 yr. stock chart shown!].

Poor nasal economic droner Ben Stein had to withdraw as commencement speaker at the University of Vermont because the communist hippie students there don't like him, because he's kind of a wingnut when it comes to evolution. Well Ben Stein has a far better accountant that you hippie, so there!