College Official Tells Student Paper to Pay Him For Interviews
In your shocked Monday media column: a new low in college journalist-administration relations, Joe Levy out at Maxim, hard times at Newsbeast, James Rainey returns to reporting, and a CNN morning shuffle.
- We consider ourselves to be both "world weary" and "jaded" (as well as "attractive"), but this shocked even us: Jorge Posadas (pictured), the student life director at San Antonio College, demanded to be paid in order to talk to his own college's student newspaper. Posadas, a big dumb idiot who should be probably taking some sort of remedial "Human Relations" class rather than being able to tell others what to do, first told the paper he wouldn't be interviewed "since by doing so it is in an official capacity with repercussions I am not willing to accept." Then he said that if they wanted to talk, "we can set up a professional consulting contract and we can negotiate an appropriate fee."
What a monumental horse's ass this guy is. Are you dressed as a clown for Halloween, Jorge Posadas? Sorry, that is your normal look! When the actual San Antonio paper asked him about it, Posadas explained thusly: "I was confused. I was coming back off days of being away and it was like, ‘Whoops, that wasn't good.'" Oh, okay then, that makes complete and total sense and we wouldn't dream of further insinuating that Jorge Posadas is a petty little incompetent tyrant, after an explanation like that. This has been a great lesson for student journalists about both the power of the press to effect change, and the fact that holding a position of power is no guarantee that any person will not be jaw-droppingly stupid. - Joe Levy is out as editor of Maxim, according to the word on the street and on the Twitter. Do you know what Levy is doing instead? He is a judge on ABC's "Karaoke Battle USA." Will Joe Levy's star ever stop shining?
- So, how has that whole "have Newsweek merge with The Daily Beast and bring in Tina Brown as editor" thing worked out so far? Bad.
- LA Times media columnist James Rainey is leaving his column in order to do more reporting (still on the media beat). Which is smart, because reporting is somewhat more forgiving (in terms of the potential for being made fun of on blogs).
- CNN is shaking up its morning anchor lineup! Out: whoever was on before. In: Soledad O'Brien and Ashleigh Banfield. Ultimately unimportant: this.