In your bloviating Wednesday media column: Lou Dobbs gets a new show, Tribune Co prepares for bonus season, Business Insider backtracks on a listicle, and Slate is—or is it?

  • Economic hero to immigrants Lou Dobbs, long gone from CNN, has signed on with Fox Business Network, hosting a show starting early next year. Fortunately, no one watches Fox Business Network.
  • A bankruptcy judge has approved a request by Tribune Co. to pay 640 employees up to $43 million in bonuses. Where did Tribune get $43 million?
  • Business Insider's lust for listicles (a malady we all suffer, alas!) can sometimes get it into trouble. For example: yesterday, BI republished "The Top 20 Blog Buyouts That Earned Their Founders Millions," written by one Michael Dunlop of Incomediary.com. Its main source was—we're just speculating, here—a crack pipe. For example, it said that Wonkette sold for $12 million. We contacted BI editor Henry Blodget yesterday, who appended the following editor's note to the story: "Some of the sales figures cited in this article are inaccurate, sometimes by an order of magnitude. Some of properties cited are also not 'blogs.'" This is understandable. Michael Dunlop's a busy man, considering the fact that IncomeDiary.com is worth over $4 billion.
  • The NYO today argues that Slate is trending downwards, with its general lack of tech-savviness allowing lower-quality online competitors like this site to post much stronger gains recently. Jacob Weisberg responds to the story here, and Nick Summers responds to Weisberg here. Counterintuitivism is over. That's what you think.

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