Nobody Better Get Any Ideas From This!

OK, it’s fun to work for a business with the quirky name of Pajamas Media, after Jonathan Klein of CBS (and eventually, CNN) snarled, at the height of the Ra^therGate scandal:

“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ’60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”

But please, I really don’t want to see a news service called Underpants Media:

Washington Post humor writer and journalist Gene Weingarten, who writes a regular commentary called Below the Beltway, gave a commencement speech to graduating journalism students at the University of Maryland.

In today’s world, he says, it’s getting tougher for journalism majors to find jobs, especially when “the public appears more and more willing to receive its ‘news’ online from nincompoops ranting in their underpants.”

I want to congratulate you all upon your graduation from the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and wish you luck as you prepare to embark on exciting careers in telemarketing or large-appliance repair.

My point is, this is a challenging time for journalists.

And because you are word people, you understand that “challenging time” is a euphemism often used to describe disasters of epic proportions. For example, Richard Pryor was facing a “challenging time” when he ran down the street half-naked and on fire. [And like the legacy media’s problems, Pryor’s “challenge” was entirely self-inflicted–Ed.]

What are your challenges, specifically? Let us begin with, quote unquote, getting a job. Good jobs in journalism have become scarce as newspapers shrink and die, broadcast media fragment to smaller niche audiences and the public appears more and more willing to receive its “news” online from nincompoops ranting in their underpants.

As fellow Pajamahadeen Michelle Malkin writes: