Jewelry and Journalism
TomPaine.com reprints a Phoenix New Times article today about the pressures that media mergers bring to bear. Among them, writes Robert Nelson, is an ever-increasing interest in featuring only the most beautiful and handsome newscasters, an encroaching "convergence" in which consumer reporters refer to the advertising circulars tucked into their sister newspapers, and a decline in the health of the market for ideas as the oddballs, eccentrics, and rebels who used to work as journalists are pushed out of the newsroom.

Robert doesn't say much that's new in this piece, but he says it with wit, energy, and solid reportage. And, he says he's got blackheads and a receding hairline, so I don't think we'll see him on TV any time soon.