When I sent out e-mails to about a dozen of the country’s top media columnists requesting their thoughts about Jim Romenesko, I expected a paltry number of responses (they have their own writing to worry about and really shouldn’t be chatting with ‘lil student journos anyways).
Remarkably, about an hour later my inbox was full.
Howard Kurtz, Steve Rhodes, Michael Wolff, Russ Smith and Paul Colford canted praise after praise for the man The San Francisco Chronicles’ media watchman Dan Fost claims, “has become a household name in [his] newsroom, and in newsrooms across the country.” Simply, Jim’s site is the center of the “who’s next to be fired/what publication’s going bankrupt/what college paper is about to be picketed” media rumor mill.
Mediagossip.com started in May 1999 when Florida’s Poynter Institute hired Romenesko full time as the school’s purveyor for the media’s daily grilling of itself. The glorified webmaster wasn’t always in the compiling business (the website is simply a collection of links from the day’s media stories organized with catchy thumbnails and stylish synopses). Before calling Evanston, Illinois home, where Romenesko works mostly out of his home but sometimes ventures to a hip coffee shop to post via Palm, the Illinois native edited for a variety of publications.
“I was a magazine editor and newspaper reporter prior to joining the Poynter Institute. I left the St. Paul Pioneer Press to join Poynter. Prior to the St. Paul job, I was a senior editor at Milwaukee Magazine,” Romenesko tells me via e-mail.
So why is the guy so good? He claims to start posting around 5:45 a.m. CST every weekday, a promise that is rarely broken. But it’s not just the speed and consistency — any old hack who seeks fame in the literary world can throw up a website of links. It’s the fact that Jim knows people — lots of people — that ultimately tip him off well before even the most cosmo-soaked scenester can get on the horn.
“I can get dozens of tips on a busy day, although many — if not most — aren’t items that I’m interested in. Some are too trivial or simply off-topic. I have a good network of regular tipsters who know what I’m looking for, and make sure I don’t miss too much,” Romenesko said in the e-mail.
It was frankly quite shocking to realize how many of the “pros” openly admit to relying on the website. ” Jim is the center of my day,” New York Magazine polemicist Michael Wolff says from his Manhattan office, “This is a remarkable service because Romenesko manages to pull everything together so quickly and with a stylish touch. This is the industry standard.” Other noted critics agree. “I have had stories considered ‘old,’ because the first account of the story popped up all but immediately on the site,” Paul Colford of the New York Daily News says.
Russ Smith often takes a conservative stance on the lefty press (Romernsko subtly leans to the liberal side — there were religious updates during the Andrew Sullivan vs. the NYT mess). This doesn’t change the New York Press columnist’s opinion an inch in regard to the value of mediagossip.com. “Although the liberal slant of Jim’s selections isn’t my taste, the sheer breadth of information is pretty amazing and certainly puts sites like Salon and Slate to shame. A key to his success is that he started on a shoestring budget [like the real Internet pioneer Matt Drudge], and even though he’s hooked up with a larger organization now, it’s clear that Jim loves what he’s doing, and has no self-aggrandizing notions of IPOs, a waterfront house in Malibu or any of the other excesses that have compromised other websites,” according to Smith.
I was introduced to the site during my sophomore year. Before my daily addiction began, I had little clue what an ombudsman was, why cartoonists cause the most controversy out of all the scribes and the transient nature of the “media job.”
Through the site, I saw titles fold, executives hired, fired and then re-hired by three rival publications and I learned about a little advertisement controversy well before I had the chance to open the daily paper.
It is a crime that people asserting ANY notions of a job in media don’t read this site. Listen well, Vilas. Get your students hooked on Jim — it might just inject a little reality into the fairytale curriculum you peddle. A pro agrees. “Romenesko’s site is important to me as a journalist because it’s a great way to keep up with the industry — what people are talking about, what media critics are writing and what the corporations that own news organizations are up to,” Steve Rhodes of Chicago Magazine says.
The material Romenesko gathers is far more relevant, timely and significant than what you read in the trades. It’s www.mediagossip.com. You will soon fiend for it like java or gin.
