In your maverick Monday media column: conflict scandal at Reuters, J-school is worthless, media reporter play their roles, E&P cans its editors, and smart stories make the most money online, allegedly.

  • Reuters Breakingviews is investigating whether at least three of its journalists failed to disclose financial stakes in companies they were reporting on. Now they're adding terribly painful disclosure like this to some old stories: "Neil Collins owned shares in BP when he wrote this article; he bought shares shortly before and after." That is not a disclosure that an editor enjoys writing, we bet! Neil Collins is gone now.
  • NPR asks, "What's The Point Of Journalism School, Anyway?" (Spoiler: to make money for universities).
  • David Carr, in the New York Times, and Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, both wrote their media columns today on the Deadspin Brett Favre cock photo story. Carr's was a fairly thoughtful take constrained by strictures of his own paper's style, while Kurtz's was hackneyed and included a "ruled out of bounds" joke in the very first sentence. This is all you need to know about media reporting in America. [And, clearly we are so conflicted on this matter you should ignore our opinion entirely].
  • Three editors at E&P were fired today. Possibly because the new owners of the magazine are dumb.
  • What kind of articles make the most money, on the internet? According to a new study, it's serious articles about "Topics like unemployment, the egg recall and mortgage rates." Not dumb articles about Britney Spears. The Britney Spears readers buy nothing! Also today: unemployment!

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