Breaking: Twitter Is Crap
In your wheezing Monday media column: Matt Drudge lives, the WaPo union gets cheeky, Robert Lipsyte snipes, CBS cans its Early Show producer, Phillippe Dauman is overpaid, and Ann Curry is happy.
- The big huge new PEJ report on online news confirms what we already know: Facebook drives lots of traffic, Twitter doesn't. Twitter is just where self-important people go to hear their own voice. When it comes to driving traffic to websites via sensationalized links, Matt Drudge is more powerful than either Facebook or Twitter. When it comes to most other things in the world, Matt Drudge is just another asshole.
- The Washington Post's newsroom union says that its members would like "a 16.4 percent across-the-board pay increase — exactly the amount given to the Post's publisher this year." LOL. Come on guys, she has a very dispiriting job. It takes cash to attract someone to such a shitty position.
- Former NYT sportswriter Robert Lipsyte has written a memoir. It features grudge-induced sniping! He calls Bob Costas a "shill" and Howell Raines "ruthless." Well, sure, duh.
We hear thatEh, the word is out: David Friedman, executive producer of the CBS Early Show, has been canned. This will surely change everything for the will-always-be-in-third-place show.- Let's all give a hearty round of applause to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the highest-paid corporate CEO in America for 2010, at $84.3 million. Huzzah to Philippe for bringing that title to the media world! (The CEOs of CBS, Disney, and Time Warner also made the top ten in pay.) Viacom's stock did rise by a full third over the course of the year, so Philippe deserves every god damn penny of that money. Just for keeping Sumner Redstone out of jail!
- So Ann Curry is finally getting the Today Show job that Katie Couric used to have oh so long ago. When Curry was asked in 2009 whether she'd wanted that job, she said yes, but it was okay because "Had I gotten that job, I might never have been able to go to Darfur four times." So in other words, "Yes, a lot."