Disclaimer: Sorry, I used to write for Mediaite.
Colby Hall— the managing editor of Dan Abrams’ (Dan Abrams!) media site that is so un-navel-gazey that it put “Media” in its name and created a baffling metric ranking for “powerful” people in New York to judge their own placement in the incestuous workplace strata– is leaving for greener pastures at Clear Channel. But before he goes, he wants you to know one thing about Mediaite’s success. Well, actually there’s several things he wants you to know, and he’s put them all in a post titled “Lessons From Nearly Three Years In the Belly Of the Mediaite Beast.”
Why did Mediaite do so well? Well, partly because of the site’s fast placement of video content. (True!) But also this:
“We have sometimes eschewed long-form analysis in order to get our story up fast, in large part because the world of media criticism in the last few years is often banal or masturbatory.”
Wait…what?
Several paragraphs later, Mr. Hall ends on an anecdote that “illustrate this bizarre and, at times, hilarious world” of his Mediaite experience, about how he once got into a Twitter fight with Andrew Breitbart while watching Pirates of the Caribbean with his children. Masturbation, it may be noted, had nothing to do with it.
