In your finally Friday media column: The NYT looks ethically inconsistent and its management is mush-mouthed, Bruce Wasserstein contemplates buying BusinessWeek, and Fleet Street dies, unnoticed.

The New York Times successfully got the entire news media establishment to agree not to report that NYT reporter David Rohde had been kidnapped by the Taliban for seven months. But now the paper is reporting on Taliban kidnapping of US army private Bowe Bergdahl, by traveling to his hometown, despite his family's request for privacy [see detailed discussion at NYTpicker]. Which would be perfectly normal, except for the Rohde precedent. The paper will probably come to realize the way it handled Rohde was philosophically inconsistent, then do the same thing when it happens again, because, safe/ sorry.


Wealthy New York mag owner Bruce Wasserstein is reportedly looking into buying BusinessWeek, though it's not clear how interested he really is. We think he should. Jon Fine says BW's losing around $40 mil per year, and Bruce Wasserstein is rich. So he would be a better buyer than a poor man would be, in terms of how quickly each would go broke were they losing $40 mil per year. Business is all about logic, okay.


The New York Times Co. says it will sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox by January, but CEO Janet Robinson refused to comment on, ha, "speculation" that the company wants to sell the Boston Globe. Ha. Can they afford not to sell it? It would be like not selling a pickpocket, that lives in your pocket. In other Boston-related media news, "Boston Herald to stop distributing gun catalog."


Hibbity hoo, Brits are crying into their handkerchiefs over the death of Fleet Street: "Agence France-Presse, the last major news organization operating in the legendary media thoroughfare, packed up its office and relocated to less romantic, if somewhat cheaper, premises elsewhere in the city." Actually, we're kidding. Nobody's taking any notice whatsoever.