Internet freedom advocates—a group that includes just about every blogger—are up in arms at the revelation that Boing Boing, the incredibly popular this-and-that blog, has purged its archives of all the works of Violet Blue, a blogger who also contributes to Gawker sex site Fleshbot. The reason for the disappearance is unclear; but whatever it is, it can't fit in well with Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow's free speech crusading. But you can file it under one of the great universal truths: Media People (of all stripes) Are Touchier Than Anybody.

This Craigslist-ad placer and "bestselling" author has been on the Tyra Banks Show, is willing to pay you $12 an hour (after you pay your own taxes), and just in case you didn't know what an assistant to a "well known author" does: "Did you see Sex in the City? Did you remember the role played by Jennifer Hudson where she's Carrie's assistant? Well, that's what I'm looking for." Oh, and don't reply if you are too good for "occasional light housework." (Even Louise from St. Louis organized Carrie Bradshaw's apartment!) Um, what else?

Yesterday, a reader asked us: just how the hell does one get a media job in this town? Good question! Even the recently-graduated Ivy Leaguers have it bad, notes the Observer today. ("You've got 21-year-old girls being hazed by their 25-year-old bosses, and the assistants have college students that they're totally hazing.") And that if you get a job. We rounded up the best comments into a list of servicey advice that's actually useful!

People ask me this all the time, and I'm perhaps the worst person to consult. After being fired from a doll store and a telemarketing company, I started some internships (at age 26), which eventually turned into the incredibly glamorous job of blogging by the pageview. So what's a young, smart person just arrived in New York to do? A jobless and confused reader needs our help! "I moved to NYC in January. Gawker is about media news and that happens to be the field I am getting myself into. But I have one important question, how in the world does that happen in this city?"

"You know how Gawker is always ragging on Bard College, how they're so weird and all?" asks a reader. Why yes, we do! Bard College, the liberal arts school located 120 miles north in Annandale-on-Hudson, "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts,'" according to the Princeton Review. We used to have a delightful column from a Bard student, all about skinny jeans and crying! "Well, I sent [a dark short story] to their literary magazine [Conjunctions]... Bard rejected it because they were too busy preparing their issue on the topic of DEATH. They further suggested I resubmit something else and—for good measure—they stuffed the whole article back into my SASE. It came with 51 cents postage due."

Because the music industry is an even worse place to invest your money than the newspaper industry at the moment, everyone is looking for the next big thing. The closest they've come is "360 deals," where artists get a huge check in return for a big cut of all their different revenue streams. First, Madonna signed a contract like this with Live Nation for $120 million. Then Jay-Z signed a contract with Live Nation for $150 million. Live Nation wants to sign 15 more artists to contracts like this. Then everybody else in music can quietly retire. Hope you like the Jonas Brothers a lot!

Three new internet sensations have gotten the call! Today we got news that a popular website, a YouTube hit, and a humble web series are being developed into TV programming and even a feature film. This sure washes away the stink of the disastrous quarterlife, huh? That series, about brooding twentysomethings, was a modest hit on the the internet then completely tanked when NBC picked it up for national broadcast. Something was lost in the translation from the small, dog-and-pony world of the internet to the shiny public squares of television. And people said the internet was finished! The conversion would never work. Popular internet clips and videos and memes would languish in strange, unpaid obscurity forever. So this news must elate you, internet video makers! Though, um, actually don't get too excited. There's just one hitch.

The media has lots of unwritten rules. Many of them are followed more closely than the written rules. After the Times ripped off a year-old Wall Street Journal story with no credit last week, we realized the need for a complete explanation of the powerful rules governing a time-honored and fundamental practice: Stealing stories. Every media outlet in the world does it—after all, there's much more space to fill every day than there are exclusives. Done the right way, it's perfectly acceptable; done the wrong way, it can be the start of an undercover war. After the jump, we explain everything you need to know to be an honorable, thieving hack. Memorize it:

We told you before how to make your pecs look ripped before getting all up in the club: rub yourself down with Preparation H! (It's the gayest thing we've seen straight men doing in a long time.) Today, a dermatologist and Rob the Bouncer discuss with Mike & Juliet this disturbing trend—and the potential side effects of the hemorrhoid cream's off-label use.

Do you ever feel that your editor is making a mockery out of your work? Sometimes they just don't understand. The Raleigh News & Observer sends up an imagined editing of a recent NYT story. [Which NYT story? Specify!]

"All Internet humor is entirely reliant on you recognizing that thing you know, and nothing more." An article at Something Awful, the astute comedy site devoted to critiquing the Internet, explains why the Internet ruins all humor. Below, what would have happened if Seinfeld aired today. (In short, it would have annoyed you to death.)

Yesterday, the New York Post splashed with a big story about on-air cussing WNBC anchor Sue Simmons being a drunk who liked to down cocktails before doing her show. Today, the tabloid's follow-up mentions how she denies having a drink before showtime in the last 15 years, without even acknowledging that Simmons is talking about the Post itself when she says "I understand now why many people don't trust the media." Apart from the "Journalism" issue here (ha), the odd part is that the paper should have a little more respect for fellow professional drunks. After all, boozing is a Post trademark—and it starts right at the top, with the paper's heroically enthusiastic alcohol-abusing editor Col Allan!

With the Internet, is anybody able to get writing done these days? You open that Word doc titled "my first book" but get distracted by a maddeningly ambiguous email from a friend, which quickly segues into a flurry of Facebook-stalking. Fancy literary magazine Granta asks some "highly effective" literary people how they discipline themselves. Journalist John Kampfner stays away from blogs, for instance, wondering "why people might be interested in the instant rantings or musings of a hack who hasn't left his armchair."

We're all for telling it like it is in book reviews, but this Sunday's review of Harry, Revised by Troy Patterson in the New York Times, seems extraordinarily mean-spirited, even unusually so. Among many things, Patterson mentions that the book "does not seem to have been reread, never mind revised," that its author Mark Sarvas writes "about 'old money' in a fashion indicating that he's never met anyone in possession of it," that it contains "a kind of coarse banality that may have found a new exemplar," and (drumroll, please) "that you are reading a review of this novel in these pages is a testament to the author's success as a blogger." A backhanded compliment, that last one! We had to ask author Sarvas: did he, like, do something to piss off Troy Patterson, who is a TV critic for Slate and a film critic for Spin?

Departing gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe's innuendo-laden items for the Gatecrasher column in the Daily News were always designed for two audiences: the tabloid's middlebrow readers, who weren't intended to get the joke; and the Australian gossip's counterparts, who could be expected to pick up on the camp subtext.

Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester was spotted having dinner with a "hot male companion" at Lunetta on Broadway, according to Page Six. That's true, as far as it goes, but the report in the Post gossip column left out a few key facts: first, the actress' companion, Chris Rovzar, was a New York reporter working on the magazine cover story on the buzzed-about CW show; the delicate Rovzar, who used to date Patrick Healy of the New York Times, is gay, transparently gay; and the item was phoned in by a publicist for the show, as Rovzar revealed in the article.

We always had a feeling that the ruling class had little workshops that they kept from the proles: which forks to use, how to keep your hair shiny and blonde, etc. "Secrets about islands, about horses, about French pronunciation," as Jay McInerney wrote. Well, they do! Harvard Business School's Luxury Goods Club will teach you how to purchase your first diamond.

A tipster, prompted by yesterday's article about the gay mafia at the New York Times, reminds us that we're missing at least a couple of names: Andrew Jacobs and his boyfriend, Dan Levin. Truth be told, the Times gay mafia isn't really much of a mafia. It's not as if the group, which includes political reporters such as Patrick Healy and Adam Nagourney, plots to pink the Gray Lady and introduce America to the homosexual agenda. Nor is it directly responsible for Dan Levin's soaring byline count since the young freelancer started dating Jacobs. But connections definitely help. And Levin's Times commissions have nicely tracked his dating life. Last month the cute couple traveled together in Ohio; on March 4, they both filed pieces on the state's primary campaign. The only giveaway more obvious would have been a double byline. After the jump, a cuddly photograph from Levin's Facebook profile (Jacobs is on the left) and proof of their Times-funded trip to Ohio.

We brought this Washington Post article by Gene Weingarten, about violin virtuoso Joshua Bell busking unsuccessfully in a DC subway, to your attention before. And now we're doing it again, because it won a Pulitzer for feature writing. Excerpt follows.