Think you have what it takes to be an abused reality contestant on a show no one really watches? Well, D.C. chefs who are older than 21 and missed the tryout for The Next Food Network Star, you are in luck.

Hell’s Kitchen is having a casting call Monday, Oct. 20, at the Hard Rock Cafe (home of great chefs in at least 45 cities in North America), from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. We’d wish you luck but, really, why would you want it?

For a few years now, the big talk among newspaper biz types boiled down to a speculative question: When will your lines cross?

That, of course, is industry jargon, so let me explain. One of those lines represents the revenue that your paper gets from its print activities–that is, display ads, classified ads, and so on. The other line represents revenue that you get from online activities–that is, ads on your Web site.

Both of those lines, in previous years, have been headed in opposite directions, with the print line headed downward at a steady and troubling rate, and the online line headed upward.

All the talk about the lines crossing was hopeful talk about that magical moment when online revenues would essentially replace all the losses from the print model.

And then the second quarter of 2008 happened. That’s when newspapers around the country recorded their first drop in online revenues. As reporting in the New York Times, this basket of cash was down 2.4 percent compared with the same period last year, to $777 million.

Meaning that if the trend continues, these lines may never cross.

If this happens for another quarter or two, look for people in the industry to stop talking about the Internet as the future of the industry. Maybe some other platform will be invented in the next couple of years. May be a job for Al Gore.

Jean Folkerts, dean of the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, bemoans The Philadelphia Inquirer’s decision to dissolve its paid internship program and its request that J-schools fund them instead:

Ideally, all student interns should be paid by news organizations.  Students have valuable skills, they work hard, and news organizations get the benefit of their labor.  But the reality is that news organizations increasingly ask them to work for free.  Even so, students want to compete for good internships and they receive college credit.

UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication won’t be participating in the Inquirer’s program.  I hope the Inquirer’s approach is not adopted by other news organizations.

I felt this was as good a place as any to respond to Folkerts’ complaint (wait–isn’t that the name of a Roth novel?), as Washington City Paper is currently benefiting from the unpaid labors of at least one very bright, damn-near overqualified student journalist (currently out interviewing unsuspecting DCers for a new podcast program).

Folkerts neglects to mention anywhere in her criticism that J-schools are partially responsible for this mess. Print knew it was in trouble years ago (and one suspects j-school admins knew it too) yet every journalism program in the country still offers a print component, and most of them still offer print concentrations.

I doubt UNC, Columbia, UF, Medill, NYU, U. Maryland, Syracuse or any other big j-school will heed the Inquirer’s call, but tsking from a distance while vamping their online media programs (some of which, as Mediashift has reported, are taught by people who know less about where the industry’s headed than their students), is hardly an adequate reform.

Here’s an idea: Since most graduate journalism programs charge out the ass anyway (when Columbia accepted me to the one-year New Media program, the forecasted cost of attendance was over $60,000–I declined to attend), why not offer scholarships to finance semester internships? Or better yet, build the cost of an internship into the tuition package so that students can use their student loans for summer housing. Though it may increase the cost of tuition–putting not just internships, but also education beyond some students’ financial reach–j-schools owe more to the industry and their students than an over-priced, under-valued piece of paper.

One of the problems faced by journalists contemplating the dismal future of our occupation is our general lack of qualification. Despite our skill at assessing the job performance of politicians, architects and socialites, we tend to find ourselves lacking in demonstrable job skills. We don’t know supply chain from matrix management. Not that I’ve been perusing the options, but I tend to stumble across openings for careers more frightening than the dark side, aka, PR.  Like this one, from First Class Referrals.

Update: Ok! I guess I’ve been coddled by the alt industry. Potentially NSFW. I guess. But come on. It’s craigslist.

Northern Virginia cartoonist Richard Thompson, whose strip Cul de Sac now runs daily in the Post (we’re patting ourselves on the back), has a must-read blog where he comments on some of his illustrations that get published. Today he has an interesting post on an illustration that didn’t get published. A little while back, Thompson writes, he was approached by the New Yorker to work something up for a Malcolm Gladwell review of an unnamed book about Goldman Sachs (this one maybe?)(Update: Thompson says that’s the book):

The book dealt with a long-time head of Goldman Sachs who’d grown up poor in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood and started at the firm as an assistant janitor while in his mid-teens. He’d gone on to be a titan of finance, deal-maker & adviser to presidents, and Gladwell’s take was that outsiders can often do things within the system that others can’t, and hence do well. One of his counter-intuitive pieces, and it was interesting.

Well, Wall Street looks different now, and the piece may now be too out-dated to run without a lot of revisions, which is too bad.

You can check out Thompson’s blog to see his now-unlikely-to-run illustration.

In the coming weeks, many publications across this country will be endorsing the Republican presidential ticket. And there are some solid reasons for doing so–John McCain is indeed a great American, serving the country admirably in times of war and peace. Nearly three decades in Congress have given him a good grasp on the issues, as his performance in the first prez debate conveyed. Not falling in the plus column is his choice of running mate.

Even so, there are plenty of good things to say about McCain. Which raises a question: Why does the Examiner, in its McCain endorsement, feel compelled to regurgitate a Republican campaign slogan? I am talking about this passage:

America is at war overseas and in an economic crisis here at home. Many of her citizens believe the country is on the wrong track. It is for times such as these that men like John McCain are made, to put country first so that it can be put right in its time of need. For this reason, The Examiner endorses McCain for president and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for vice president.

And at just the moment when it has become a staple of American comedy, the Examiner invokes that “M” word: “Ever the maverick, McCain selected Palin because her record mirrors his own in courageously standing up to corrupt special interests regardless of party and cutting government waste.”

Hey Examiner, can’t you do some original thinking here?

On last night’s 10 O’Clock News on Fox affiliate WTTG, news reader Maureen Umeh told the audience, “Barack Obama could get a boost from a new voting block: felons!”

Then Umeh read a few sentences merely asserting that groups in a few states were currently pushing legislatures to grant prisoners the right to vote.

Umeh’s report, which was teased earlier in the broadcast with insinuations that good news for Obama was forthcoming, included no details about Obama’s involvement in any of these voting-rights movements, or any evidence that prisoners would vote as a bloc, or any explanation whatsoever into why we should believe prisoners would favor the Democratic Party candidate if allowed to cast ballots.

So, what was your point, Ms. Umeh?

The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5 FM talks to our leader today. The segment with Wemple starts at 12:30, but why wait? Tune in at the top of the hour for a discussion about the future of UDC. It’s D.C. hell-in-a-handbasket Monday! Let’s all tune in!

Leonard Downie Jr. said he’d still be a busy fellow once he stepped down as Washington Post executive editor in early September. And here he is, just weeks later, in the prime spot in the Sunday Outlook section. Not reminiscing about his years atop the Post; not talking journo-ethics. Nope, he’s defending this fine city against all the attacks from the campaign trail. You know, the ones that ascribe all the great problems of America to Washington, D.C.

The signature line from Downie: “Large numbers of Washingtonians have dedicated much of their lives to real public service that does not involve the ego trips, trappings and hypocrisies of elective office.”

It’s a fine argument, and one that all locals need to read every four years, if only to leave something of a counterpoint in this otherwise counterpoint-less offensive. Funny thing, if there’s one notion that’s genuinely bipartisan these days it’s that Washington is a terrible place because of its partisanship.

Downie’s piece, however, does suffer from one colossal omission, having to do with the following sentence: “Never mind that the biggest mess in America today, the crisis in the financial markets, is largely the creation of the private sector, which has left it to Washington to clean up.”

“Largely,” here, is the key word, enabling the author to say, OK, maybe government shares some blame, but not the preponderance. The truth, as we’ve learned the hard way, is that this is the private sector teaming up with its toadies in the public sector to devise a financial sector virtually free of regulation. Government is way too culpable for this crisis to get anything approaching a bye.

And I must say that Downie had my civic pride in full blossom there at the end of the piece. But then he sneaked in a plug for his upcoming book, The Rules of the Game, and I kinda lost my municipal buzz.

*Just how desperate is James Gilmore in his battle for a Virginia senate seat?

*Do you believe that Obama is on the verge of a blowout victory?

*Blogger writes Pedestrian Plea, tells D.C. drivers to calm the f*** down.

*New Haven, looking great great in a photo illustration.

Radar Online has news of cuts at Gawker, which include the talented Moe Tkacik. Time to start drinking.

Last night while the rest of you were foaming about the governor’s mispronunciation of “nuclear,” I was on Duke Ellington Bridge walking home. And for the third time in a year, I watched an owl fly over the bridge. The owl, a barred owl as it turns out (pictured above) is one of three species that inhabit Rock Creek Park (the great horned and the screech owl are the other two). By far, the barred owl is the cutest of our city’s owl critters. It does not have pointy bat-like ears and has soft brown eyes, rather than the piercing pee-yellow ones of other owl varieties.

When I saw my brown-eyed owl friend land in a tree just on the other side of Walter Pierce Park, I stopped rushing home to turn on The Sexist’s live blog (sorry, Sexist) and instead watched the owl. The owl twisted its small head around to look, I presume, for dinner: mice or chipmunks or, apparently, tasty grouse and doves. It sat there on a limb for a good two minutes (long enough for either veep candidate to say “Main Street” and “kitchen table” approximately 82 times) and then it flew off toward the zoo grounds with an audible flap of its wings.

Look, I know I’m supposed to be writing in this space about Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. But you know what, Jason Cherkis, I really don’t care. I am so sick to death of you and your ilk imploding all over yourself because you hate Sarah Palin. The way you all twitch with fear and loathing is exactly the way conservatives twitched with fear and loathing regarding Hillary Clinton, circa 1992-2008. She’s just a politician, people.

Personally, I prefer owls.

Michael Agger at Slate writes about the financial return on blogging, and his findings validate every blogger’s secret fear: In the grand scheme of things, we ain’t worth shit. Unless, says Technorati, we’re raking in a 100,000 or more unique visitors a month. In which case median annual revenue is roughly (wtf?) $75K+. All I need is for 100,000 of my closest friends to check out my blog once a month, click on a few penile enhancement ads, and I’ll be set. So long Creative Loafing!

But wait–I could continue to blog here @ City Desk with Gawker’s pay model, which pays $6.50 for every thousand page views. I’d have a reason to get dressed in the morning, brush my teeth, shave my uni-brow, etc., etc. I’d feel compelled to offer City Desk readers my best writing, my wittiest quips, my most intimate anecdotes. And based on the page views I’ve earned thus far, I’d make about…$12 every seven days or so. Fuck yea! That’s enough for one pack of cigarettes a week and a dollar-menu item per day!

Disclaimer: Bloggers who are susceptible to reality checks and/or own firearms should avoid reading Agger’s piece at all costs. Mostly to keep from learning how much Perez Hilton makes in a year. (I think Agger may have a typo in his story, but if the number he puts forward–$111,000 per month–is accurate, then Perez Hilton makes over a million dollars a year. A Million Fucking Dollars For Drawing Semen On AP Photos. [Dear god, I haven't asked you for anything since my sophomore year of college when I came down with food poisoning and shit my pants/vomited into my lap in front of all my friends, and I asked you to kill them for laughing at me, but I'm asking you now: Let that stat be a typo.])

Regardless of how much PH makes, I know this: I should have gone to law school.

Last minute addendum: The following arrived in an email from boss-man Erik Wemple (new title: King of the Downers), which he excerpted from a Paul Farhi piece. “Newspapers that were hoping to be rescued by their online ad businesses woke up to a sobering reality in mid-2007. By then, it was becoming clear that online advertising wasn’t growing fast enough to make up for the rapid disappearance of print ads (see “Online Salvation?” December 2007/January 2008). In fact, at the moment, online ads aren’t growing at all. Sales at newspaper Web sites fell 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2008. This may be as ominous a development as the meltdown of print. Online newspaper revenues had grown smartly in every quarter since the Newspaper Association of America began tracking them in 2003. No longer.”

The always-provocative Web-news pioneer Mark Potts throws in some fine commentary on the event of the week in City Paperworld. That is, bankruptcy.

While many like to draw distinctions between alt-weeklies, like City Paper, and big dailies, like the Washington Post, Potts enumerates the similarities:

Facing all sorts of new competition? Check. Classifieds decimated by craigslist, et al? Check. Declining display advertisers without finding replacements? Check. Aging readership? Check. Rising printing and production costs? Check. Failure to move quickly to the Web (despite a younger audience that’s naturally Web-savvy)? Check–in fact, when it comes to the Web, a lot of alternative papers make large papers look like denizens of Silicon Valley.

Blogger Hamilton Nolan, meanwhile, comes up with a rad idea of his own–turn alt-weeklies into alt-monthlies. He says there’s no need for a publication like this to do exactly what it’s doing right now (blogging, that is). There are already enough bloggers in this city, says Nolan, so use your reporters to feed an awesome monthly publication. The solution, in his words:

Fuck an alt-weekly. Become and Alt-monthly. Keep the features. Take your time. Consolidate. Save on printing costs. Save journalismism. And try not to go broke. Your cities will thank you.

I can think of only eight reasons why this approach might not work:

1) Less revenue.

2) Smithsonian.

3) Less income.

4) Posting content once a month on a Web site isn’t a very good recipe for traffic.

5) Less jack.

6) On Tap.

7) Less cash.

8) Washington Life.

Um, seriously, Fox News?

So today, from the conservative blogosphere, comes news that—well, not news exactly since it’s been public for months—but publicity about the fact that PBS journalist Gwen Ifill is penning a book called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

This is ostensibly an issue because Ifill is slated to moderate tomorrow’s debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and conservative folks are making the case that because Ifill is writing about Barack Obama, she has a vested interest in an Obama victory.

I will demur on the merits or demerits of that point of view.

That’s because I just flipped past Fox News, which was doing a segment on the issue minutes ago, and I still can’t get my jaw off the floor.

Who did Fox book to push the conservative POV on this issue, that Ifill is hopelessly conflicted?

None other than pundit Armstrong Williams, who indeed knows a thing or two about being a financially conflicted journalist—having accepted more than $200,000 from the federal government in 2003 to produce ads promoting Bush education initiatives in his various syndicated media outlets. He spoke highly of No Child Left Behind in his syndicated media column without mentioning the link.

Yikes. Uh, is this old rule of “takes one to know one”?

I’m well aware that I’m hitchin’ up the Andy Rooney pants in asking this, but: Is it just me, or has journalism renewed its love affair with the “drop dead” headline? There’s a ton of ‘em at the moment, mainly attached to the ongoing bailout negotiations:

Washington to Wall Street: Drop Dead

However, it also encompasses Nobel Prize judges:

Nobel Chief to U.S. Novelists: Drop Dead

The Schwarzenegger administration:

Schwarzenegger to Seniors and Tenants: Drop Dead!

Hipster asshole pissing matches:

Hipsters to Real World Cast: Drop Dead!

And Sarah Palin:

The old girls’ club to Palin: Drop dead

I admit that I’ve been contributing to the problem; our eagle-eyed managing editor, Andrew Beaujon, caught me employing the headline device twice in the past few days. Clearly something is going on with journalists subconsciously. Maybe we miss the good old days of tabloid journalism, when you could put a shocker headline in print and people got excited about it, as the New York Daily News did when it first used the phrase in a headline. Maybe it’s just appropriate; that old headline referenced a bailout story, after all. Or maybe we’re just actively wishing each other ill in tough times.