In your brittle Tuesday media column: Angry newspaper editors, starry-eyed newspaper veterans, desperate newspaper companies, and dead newspaper revivals. And, Portfolio's final party:

The outgoing president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is angry! "I am angry at the pundits who would dance on newspapers' graves. Their anti-newspaper vitriol disrespects the work being done by journalists in newsrooms all over America.
These pundits take delight in telling us we are failures. Yet truth be told, the vast majority of local public interest journalism—the watchdog stories, the investigations, the coverage of city hall and the school board, the stories with impact on public policy—is still being done in newspaper newsrooms." As is the majority of writing of angry columns directed at straw men!


Sad party report: last night current and former staffers of the now-dead Portfolio gathered for a wake for the magazine at Botanica. Michael Caruso, Bob Row, and Jeff Chu were among the mourners. "It was mournful but also a relief and anti-climactic," said one attendee, "because everyone knew it was going to come to an end." On a somewhat positive note, the 85 staffers losing their jobs are getting paid through August.


Yet another group of former newspaper guys (this time, 40 bought-out refugees from Newark) are getting together to launch a website covering news in their former coverage area (this time, NewJerseyNewsroom.com). Do any of these projects have any hope of eventually generating enough revenue to pay their employees a living wage, each? We doubt it but at the same time we hope so, because we are not pundits who would dance on newspapers' graves.


The NYT Co. is rumored to be considering selling off the NYC classical music radio station that it owns. They sure will if they can get a dollar for it. They need dollars.

Ha, while nobody was looking (except Kate Klonick of True/Slant), the defunct New York Sun started publishing editorials on its website again! Since its editorials were the most repulsive part of the paper, I wonder if they've changed at all? (Checks). Nope.