Is there something about hard-bitten NYTimes reporters that makes they go all gooey everytime they stumble across--and then write about--anything Web 2.0-ish?

Gushiness is the only thing I can think of-besides needing to fill column inches--that can justify the latest breathless wet kiss for @themediaisdying, a twitter stream of insider-y, media-= bistro like news about media layoffs and collapses (oh yes, and the fact media reporters are fascinated by their own industry).

My snarkiness here is because while the 3,000 followers themediaisdying has garnered in 3 weeks is commendable (as is their strategy of messaging every new person who signs up and asking them to invite all their friends as well), there are people--marketers--on twitter who have 10 times this traffic--and no Times reporters seem to be writing about them.

Why not write about Chris Brogan, who, with 26,250 followers, seems to be turning into the Jimmy Stewart of the interwebs?

Or the super clever Merlin Mann, with 32,000?

Or the  appealing Veronica Belmont (38,000)?

Of course, none of them are focusing on the crash and burn of the media industry, which @themediaisdying covers extremely well. But the size of their audience ain't the news, honey, not in this world.

Just found a post on this blog from 2006 entitled Paradigm Shift: What Google didn't buy,  It reads:
" started the day reading about how TechCrunch's Mike Arrington felt attacked by the journalists at the Online News Association conference, and ended it hearing that Google had indeed bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in do no evil stock.

That news got me thinking about what Google mighta coulda bought with their money and didn't, and I got to asking myself where the paradigm shift was in that.

For instance, with that kind of dough, Google could have bought the New York Times Company. I remember talking with Timesman Martin Nisenholtz about how the NYTimes was one of the biggest consumers/placements for Google AdWords, right behind the big portals as they were still called then, Yahoo and AOL (this must have been late 2004.) Nisenholz felt that the Times had to find a way to roll up in size, and not soon after, they bought About.com.
Presumably, if Google was looking for a property that they could own to place their own AdWords on, they could have considered buying The New York Times. But no--they didn't, did they--and the decision to spend all this money on YouTube shows that the coffin nails of mainstream media are already strewn across the open grave (Yes, I am feeling poetic tonight, that kind of day).

Here we are in 2009l almost, and DealScape is wondering if Google will now buy the Times. I think it would be a really smart acquisition--but they might end up scrapping most of the print editions (!!!).

"Big news organizations spend hours wondering how do I create the hyperlocal presence, you don't have the infrastructure. NPR can do it. It already has the trust and the infrastructure in every town and campus in America. I want to find a way to create indispensable local media hubs."

--New NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, talking with Paid Content's Staci Kramer about how NPR, which she left the NYTimes to join, cold be the one to crack the hyper-local nut (Susan sez: This is like the Hoy Grail; many brave knights die trying.)

Take a look at my new essay, The End of Innocence and Making It Big: The NYTimes spins yet another lost girl tale of innocence, regret and discreetly hot sex, at BlogHer.
A snippet:
"Is there truly any less foolproof way to sell the Sunday issue that to get huge viral buzz from a damsel in distress story played out in that most modern of locales, the blogsphere?

Call it cynical on my part, but I can just see current NYTMag editor Adam Moss looking back over the upper-middle class waif stories (and media sensations) of Joyce Maynard and later Elizabeth Wurtzel and wondering if Emily Gould's sob story of error and reform would generate the same page views and buzz those two highly manufactured heroines achieved.

While much of the media criticism and the consumer comments have focused on Gould's narcissism and opportunistic use of her beauty, sexuality and position, and the aggressive marketing of her subsequent prettily teared up regret, no one has talked much about the cold-blooded cynicism of the Times in assigning and publishing what is just the latest incarnation in an ongoing series of sensational stories by attractive young women who struggle."