Journalists love to gossip, too

Media types love to gossip about the business we work in. Rent “His Girl Friday” if you don’t believe me.

And just so you don’t misunderstand: Most of us who sit in front of computer screens all day do our best to act ethically and nobly pursue the truth wherever that takes us; yet we know only too well that journalism, especially as it exists in these first few years of the 21st century, is considered first and foremost a business by those who sign our paychecks.

But, as I said, we do like to gossip. So it’s a juicy story that one of my grad-school buddies is passing around. The item comes out of Santa Barbara, Calif., where it seems the publisher of the daily newspaper – an heiress with an uncanny resemblance to Ann Coulter – wants to make over the world in the image she prefers.

The result: Her intrusions have caused havoc at the newspaper she owns. Seems she inherited a staff of journalists with actual backbone, and her meddling has caused most of the paper’s top editors to quit.

Not that she’ll care. She’ll just replace them with people who will continue to turn the paper, once an award-winning publication, into the feel-good shopping rag that is her idea of what news reporting should be.

Question is: What will the readers do?