Michael Wolff: Simon Dumenco's call for the elimination of newspaper ombudsmen was only made stronger when every ombudsman wrote in to Romenesko to complain. [Romenesko]

AdAge pundit Simon Dumenco, argues Dan Okrent, lives too far inside the bubble to understand the needs of a newspaper-reading American public.

When the media beater published a column this week questioning the need for papers to continue keeping an ombudsman on staff, the industry cried foul. And stupid.

Argues Simon: Aren't readers and bloggers sussing out newspapers' errors and bias all by themselves?

Answers former New York Times ombuds Okrent: Um … no.

Writing in to Romenesko, Okrent won't give us a Top Ten list of reasons why Dumenco is wrong – shame! – but does make the fair argument that only "if [sites like] Romenesko were a daily habit of the same millions who earnestly read the New York Times or the Washington Post or any other newspaper that has an ombud" could papers do away with a reader watchdog.

Until then, there's Clark Hoyt, responding to readers' concerns about there being too much sex in the Times, and this rabid ombudsman acting as the Dumenco watchdog.

Simon Dumenco on the need, or lack thereof, of newspaper ombudsmen sounds like the steps of mourning: "I found myself agreeing. [... ] Then, I confess, I found myself reverting to my usual position [...] vague indifference. [...] Then I found myself feeling a little guilty for not particularly caring."

Do cash-strapped news rags need to be paying these fellas to complain about their coverage when everyone else, including this website, will do it for free?

CONTINUED »

Bad news, New York Times! AdAge's Simon Dumenco thinks you're almost as passé as polyester shirts, "ironic" trucker hats and the impossibly un-hip buzzword, "fabulous!"

That said, only time will tell whether the Sulzbergers (particularly Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.) will start taking financial advice from a persnickety/omnipresent media columnist instead of his journalist wife and/or high-priced accountant.

And Simon Dumenco has little faith that WaPo's getting in bed with CBS News will get much further than Heidi Montag's acting career. [Ad Age]

Simon Dumenco, doing serious media criticism? Long ago we thought he'd abandoned that at AdAge and instead settled in for his tenure of media quizzes. (They tickle! They entertain!) And then there was Monday's column, where he took the television networks to task for their Virginia Tech coverage. It wasn't the forced product placement that brings American Idol to mind, but the commoditization of news.

News as a product? It's just awful.

CONTINUED »

Given that nobody is entirely disappointed or wholeheartedly impressed with Time's remake, we've got the perfect platform to nitpick, as there's no one obvious error made by Richard Stengel and his design team. (Well, their attempt at wit was pretty glaring.) Which means AdAge's Nat Ives has ample interview opportunities with print publishing's finest to give everyone a say in the matter. Like In Touch's Richard Spencer.

Well, you've asked someone who created a very photo-heavy magazine to comment, and I realize the responsibility Time has to the news, but I think any magazine's redesign should take into consideration that today's consumer wants something very visual and very immediate. With that said, there are three distinct problems: The cover doesn't tell me the magazine has been redesigned; the pacing still feels a little slow; and the photos don't pull me into the stories.

That is: Why put a fake weeping Ronald Reagan on the cover when real weeping Britney Spears pictures are only, like, $5k a pop?

• Dan Abrams says "great job" to all your MSNBC folk! You're doing a fantastic job maintaining third place.

• Fabian Basabe isn't content with just a DUI charge; he needs a 20/20 special to go into elaborate detail as to all the reasons he's not fit to hold down a real job.

• Stop. Everything. Simon Dumenco found a magazine he likes.

• Dan Peres turns his diary into an editor's letter.

• Former Budget Living doyenne Sarah Gray Miller too cheap for InStyle?

• Nick Lachey shows he's over Jessica and on to guys in cups.

• God help us if it's Details that's chronicling the new class war.

• Celebrities who blog finally receive well-deserved attention.

• Cute! The WSJ gets to the bottom of those annoying underlined text link ads you've seen (and read about) everywhere.

• Lindsay Lohan throws some kerosene on her Paris Hilton feud, claiming the heiress threw a drink at her.

• Sixth grade math puts the cost of canceling the O.J. Simpson book-interview extravaganza at $10 million.

• NBC and MSNBC begin calling Iraq a "civil war." Tony Snow certain to get angry.

• We love a hefty Ken Auletta media piece in The New Yorker (this week: Lou Dobbs!). We don't love having to choose just one punchline from thousands and thousands of words of copy.

• Publicists: Leave David Carr alone for a while, and he just might talk to you.

• Tom Mazzarelli begins staffing up Fox's morning show, with nary a Today show staffer in sight.

• Simon Dumenco read skimmed Reader's Digest, and lived to tell about it.

• Was it even a question what the front page of today's NYDN would look like?

• More O.J. Simpson book and special cancelation fall out, but let's just call it what it is: News Corp. lost its balls.

• The children of murdered NYT reporter David Rosenbaum file a $20 million lawsuit against the hospital that allegedly ignored the gunshot victim until it was too late.

• CBS finally grows a pair and defends Janet Jackson's nip slip in court.

• Sumner Redstone faces mutiny in the family, with a lawsuit from nephew Michael on charges the media titan stole from a trust.

• Simon Dumenco gives thanks to all those who gave him something to gripe about.

• Former Lowdown gossip Lloyd Grove lands at Vanity Fair, marking the second time he's followed Jessica Coen's career path. [Liz Smith]

• Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and Nicholas Kristof are easy lays this week. [NYT]

• Simon Dumenco's solution for keeping newspapers out of the hands of the wealthy: revise the tax law. Ahem. [AdAge]

• Nielsen, which is having a hard time getting its shit together, speaks up loud enough to announce ABC has an early lead in November sweeps. [TVW]

• Turns out bullying the Times is not a smart political scheme. [NY Sun]

• Rocketboom finds a new pair of jugs to sit in front of the camera. As for Amanda Congdon? Yeah, she's signed with Endeavor. [ETP, Micro Persuasion]

• Simon Dumenco knows some things for sure — like how he loves when readers spit up their Diet Coke while reading his column. [AdAge]

• When it comes to gay marriage, Hillary Clinton has a canned response ready for ya. [Queerty]

• You mean Times staffers expect to be paid for their work — weeks and months after their original bylines ran? [E&P]

• Meanwhile, Daily News staffers face another dilemma: to blog or not to blog. [Gawker]

• Hey, lady? Everyone is in Dennis Crowley's Dodgeball network. We get more text messages from him than our real friends. [NYT]

In today's Ad Age, Media Guy Simon Dumenco backs former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman into a wall (sort of) and asks him the tough questions about working for the mafia, er, the Post's most notorious gossip column.

There's a lot of back and forth about Spiegelman's book, his temper tantrum at the Learning Annex, and why Barbra Streisand is a hypocritical basketcase. Then, there's this:

Media Guy: Nicole Kidman's Chinese, you know. Few people know that. I read it in Star.

Spiegelman: Yeah, someone whispered that in [Star editor] Joe Dolce's ear, but it's all wrong. She was grown in a vat for Tom Cruise but her programming got all fried the first time she gazed into his horrible, horrible eyes.

So all of Tom Cruise's wives were grown in vats? How incredibly interesting. See, gossips don't just make things up for their novels. They also make stuff up to try out humor and sell magazines.

Former 'Page Six' Gossip Admits to Making Stuff Up! (For His Novel) [Simon Dumenco, Ad Age]

• The party crew at Reuters really knows how to shake things up with liquor and ivy league humor. Cheney joke: "duck is not just a bird, it's a verb, too." Har, har. [Wonkette]

• It's tough to tell the difference between sound bites from Cookie and Playboy because (most) Playboy models are retarded and new moms have huge boobs. And with all these new hot moms posing for the nudie mag, things only get more complicated. [NYO]

• Nothing says "Happy 10th Anniversary" like shaking down those liberal cable and satellite operators for more money. Right Fox? [WSJ]

• Who knew the Belgians were really at the top of the journalism profession? So shocking that it isn't the Times. [E&P]

• Oh, Simon Dumenco. He sure does love bringing up that masturbating cat. [Ad Age]

• Forbes is bleeding staffers by the gallon. Lloyd Grove, we hope you're keeping your eyes peeled for all these job openings you'd be so perfect for. [Gawker]

• Media Guy Simon Dumenco goes down the dark path we traversed last week: Jared Paul Stern's Skull & Bones clothing line. [AdAge]

• ABC is getting pretty damn good at screwing over its affiliates. [B&C]

• With EIC Gregg Lagambina on the way out, Filter second-in-command Chris Martins has this to say to his staff: "Filter Magazine is hurting right now." It nearly rivals the way Celebrity Living motivated its own troops. [FBNY]

• Reason No. 5421 we heart Details' Dan Peres: He doesn't follow his own magazine's fashion tips. [WWD]

• Learning from the mistakes of Cargo, Giant's editor-in-chief Smokey Fontaine is going on a mad dash to redesign the mag. [WWD]

• When the Boston Globe's Eileen McNamara found out she won the Pulitzer Prize, she was trying to finish cooking her kids spaghetti. [E&P]

• Celeb weeklies aren't the only mags seeing circs disintegrate. Teen titles, as evidenced by Elle Girl's shuttering, are suffering too. Yep, even Seventeen is on that list. [Mediaweek]

• How Spin — the mag's editors are quitting via e-mail now? [Fishbowl]

• We love when Simon Dumenco says "duh." Especially when it refers to the over-exaggerated "death of newspaper." [Ad Age]

• James Wolcott knows a good cat fight when he sees one. And like a good media member, he'll pay a little more money when that brawl involves two conservatives. [VF]

• Even though Audacia Ray, the editor of $pread magazine "is no sleeping beauty," when she's not blogging, reviewing porn, or pole dancing on the subway, she sleeps. Blogging in fuck me boots is pretty exhausting. [Gothamist]

• Just like journalists, not all bloggers are good writers. Wow, these people just discover something new about this crazy sphere every day. [WSJ]

In between opening his porn spam and calling one woman a "manic dirty bus person with a blanket at a bus stop," Simon Dumenco thanks his readers.

Thanks them for reading, for correcting him, for agreeing that the Tom Ford Vanity Fair cover was a disgrace, and for helping him get laid. Each paragraph focuses on a different topic than the one which came before, and he really hits all his bases.

• His column’s ironic obsession with celebrity swag bags
• The Simple Life
• Simple Media Pleasure nominations
• A YouTube video of an undated medley/duet wherein David Bowie and Cher rock out
• Kurt Andersen
• The Saturday Night Live Roseanne Roseannadanna vs. Emily Litella conflict
• Wikipedia

Then he says something about bloggers who natter on endlessly and cluelessly about random stuff, and can't help him (or you) get laid.

So, the real question is: will Simon's column help anyone get laid? We don't think so. If he really appreciated his readers he might offer up advice on getting some, like "steal a pheromone machine from Pink Elephant and drug your date."

IT’S MEDIA GUY RAW! [Simon Dumenco, Ad Age]

Many of us think about getting wasted, grabbing our shot-guns, and going Cheney on a fair amount of people in the media industry. (We are also positive that we've been on the other end of that shooting fantasy at some point.)

But Simon Dumenco throws down today, going on an all-out proverbial spree, and shooting down a select few medialites, who he would like to hear apologize for their "horrific mishaps."

Dumenco's hit-list ranges from Graydon Carter to Atoosa Rubenstein, with a select few in between. Drunken journalists really do make the Mondays brighter!

The list of people who owe SD a "my bad," or two, after the jump. Yes, it's long, and yes, it's freakin' hilarious, but please note these views are in no way the views and opinions of Jossip. (Except for the speculation regarding Scarlett Johansson's "please help me" plea.)

CONTINUED »

Simon Dumenco, angry? Sure, he may lampoon Bonnie Fuller for speaking about "journalism" and spend his daysridiculing the entire glossy publishing industry, but angry?

His readers think so, which is why he's put together a very Valentine's Day appropriate (even if he doesn't mention the timing) listicle of some of this favorite things: YouTube (better than Google Video), Filter Mini (because no matter how thin magazines are these days without ad pages, every book deserves a bite-size version), and Bla-Bla List (a free Web-based to-do list to remember all those things you have to do that actually involve spending money).

Not on the list: Carl Icahn (who leaves an acidic taste in any mouth that mentions him), QueerClick (which makes it tantalizingly hard not to sign up for gay porn), and David Lat (because any self-hating homophobe of ours is a self-hating homophobe of his).

AHHH …THE SIMPLE LIFE POST-MICROSOFT AND PARIS HILTON [Simon Dumenco, AdAge]

• Village Voice editor Don Forst is resigning from his post, effective Dec. 31. Nice ouster, New Times. [Gawker]

• Speaking of indie mergers, we seem to have missed the New York Blade getting together with HX. Gay marriage, at last. [NY Blade]

• To save Bryant Park from miscreants, the city formed the nonprofit Bryant Park Resotration Corporation. Funny, then, that the place is now being run like a business. [NYT]

• In-flight magazines are not, as it turns out, merely glorified sky malls. But they are in danger of going down without landing gear. [Mediabistro]

• Somehow, Simon Dumenco continues getting paid for screaming at his TV. [AdAge]

• Thanks to designers willing to let socialites borrow party dresses, the B-list never has to wear the same thing twice. [NYT]

• With the creation of "verified" circulation, magazine publishers receive the affirmation they've been looking for: to grotesquely inflate their readership numbers. [Folio]

• With ex-WWD scribe and alleged Halloween rapist Peter Braunstein being spotted throughout Ohio, all those sightings in NYC (like that Brooklyn cafe) are being labeled wishful thinking. [NYDN]