Let the Intellectual Backlash Against The Daily BeginS

In your warming Monday media column: Jacob Weisberg points out that The Daily has no clothes, CBS is still wooing Katie Couric, rumors of Gannett getting rid of USA Today, Arianna Huffington stiffs a high school reporter, Dan Le Batard hammers a word stake in Deadspin's black heart, and alpacas attack.

  • Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wins the "First Journalist of a Certain Breed to Come Right Out and Say The Daily Is Shit" award! Specifically, he said "I mean, first of all the content itself is very low-brow, facile, kind of USA Today, you know...It's just a bad version of a newspaper in electronic form with a very condescending view of the audience." Soon to be pilloried in a News Corp-owned media property: Slate editor Jacob Weisberg!
  • Good god, is it possible that after all these years of mockery and hurt feelings, Katie Couric would actually sign back on with CBS when her contract is up? We've been treating that strictly as joke material. But the WSJ says today that Couric and CBS both "appear open to a new deal." A deal that would just be like short contract, with a pay cut! Sounds great! Run, Katie, run!
  • There's chatter that Gannett may be looking to sell off USA Today. Thanks to the internet, it is a paper without a strong reason to exist, any more. This is true. If you know more about the rumors, email me.
  • This Daniel D'Addario report on Arianna Huffington's speech to the Columbia Club last weekend includes this very fine kicker, after a high school journalist asks Arianna a question: "'Talk to me after!' Huffington exclaimed. The student never got her chance-Huffington strode out of the room, question time concluded, to fly to Washington for an appearance on This Week." Why does Arianna Huffington hate children, in particular, and journalism, in general?
  • Miami Herald sports-columnist-for-life Dan "Le" Batard takes our very own Deadspin to task: "Soul-selling for profit or a sole, selling prophet?" They don't teach hackery like that on the internet, fellas.
  • Here's a video of an alpaca attacking an ESPN reporter. Again.