Coruscation

I finally quit reading Gawker's flagship site altogether after a post about the heated jockeying among New York Times reporters over which stories landed on the "Most E-mailed" list. I didn't know why anyone in the nation's most-respected newsroom would compete for the pro-bono, viral marketing services of a group of readers who demonstrably only care about a story if it concerns food, weight loss, or admittance into an Ivy League college--and I didn't want to know. I had a sort of not-in-my-backyard unease about the nothing-based economy.

While journalism had not exactly rewarded me in any quantifiable way, it had exposed me to a large number of people who had taken this vow of poverty for a lot of reasons other than the opportunity to endlessly debate the relative merits of carbohydrates and get their photos taken at parties.

-- from the serial failings and firings of Maureen 'Moe' Tkacik