Media Matters for America blogger Joe Strupp offers a thorough, depressing review of the first year of Doug Manchester’s tempestuous tenure as a San Diego newspaper baron. Among those chiming in are New York Times media columnist David Carr, KPBS director of news and editorial strategy Suzanne Marmion, fired U-T sports reporter Tim Sullivan and an anonymous current employee:

“Saying you are going to be a cheerleader for business… goes against everything we have been taught and trained as journalists,” said one current U-T San Diego staffer who requested anonymity. “A lot of people have rolled their eyes at the front page editorials that have run… The quality of the paper is less because there’s more fluff in the paper, an emphasis on running more society photos and celebrity photos. That space could be better used on actual news and information.”

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LA Weekly music editor Ben Westhoff has been promoted by the paper’s parent company to the position of senior music editor, and will now be in charge of music coverage for all 13 of the Village Voice Media’s alternative newsweeklies. He tells FishbowlLA, “My primary responsibilities are still as LA Weekly music editor.”

Westhoff also responded to David Carr‘s suggestion that he had something to do with the recent departure of Village Voice music editor Maura Johnston:

My responsibilities do not include hiring/firing, so I didn’t fire Maura. I wouldn’t say there was a power struggle, and overall I admired her writing.

Westhoff has a long history with Village Voice Media papers. He got his start in journalism as a freelance writer with the SF Weekly, and later went on to become a staff writer at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. He has also written for numerous other media outlets including for Village Voice, Spin, New York Observer, Pitchfork, and NPR. Last year he published a book about the southern rap phenomenon, entitled Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop.

The Village Voice, sister paper to the LA Weekly, suffered two big losses Friday. First was editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, who announced he was quitting to work on a book proposal about Hollywood’s favorite cult, Scientology. What? No one quits their job to work on a book proposal.  You quit once you get a book deal. More likely that Ortega was fired, as some sources have been telling the New York Observer, and he’s now attempting to save face.

Also out is music editor Maura Johnston, who made no pretense about the circumstances of her departure, telling David Carr of the New York Times, “the decision to leave was not mine.” Carr had high praise for Johnston in the paper’s Media Decoder blog:

She…embodied The Voice’s tradition of thoughtful cultural criticism, and resisted the kinds of light, easily consumable items, like Top 10 lists and photo compilations, that tend to draw the most traffic online.

Giving in to “the Darwinistic page-view coverage of anything,” she said, “is damaging to culture as a whole.”

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United’s in-flight magazine Hemispheres is not your everyday travel mag. Its list of contributors boasts high-profile bylines like David Carr of The New York Times and Tom Chiarella of Esquire. Don’t worry, though — most of its content is written by freelancers, and editor-in-chief Joe Keohane is open to quality pitches.  “If the story’s good and the writing’s good, I don’t care about the name,” he said.

What separates Hemispheres from the rest of the magazines in your front seat pocket is its focus on general interest topics. Twelve million fliers a month get their hands on it, so travel takes a back seat to topics that will appeal to a broad range of readers. They must be “informative, well-reported, well-written and interesting to a general audience,” said Keohane.

For more information on what to pitch and who to contact, read How To Pitch: Hemispheres [sub req'd]

The funniest thing in Sara Morrison’s Columbia Journalism Review interview with the LA prankster responsible for the Twitter parody account @NIKKlFINKE is the revelation that a New York Times reporter was and – to a certain extent, still is – caught in the crossfire.

The anonymous, faux Finke tells Morrison he has been surprised by the caliber of some of the people who have been fooled by his efforts. As an example, he cites the fact that he was straight-retweeted by NYT media reporter David Carr not long after July 21 launch:

The real Finke, when asked for comment, responded by email and then phone. Though most of the 25-minute conversation was off the record at her request, she did permit this: “David Carr, because of his sloppiness, could have damaged my credibility during an especially sensitive time of Hollywood reporting,” she says of his inadvertent retweet of fake Nikki Finke. “He owes me an apology.”

Carr responds: “I’d like to think of myself as a careful retweeter. It was a momentary lapse.”

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In the wake of Brett Ratner‘s resignation as co-producer of the 84th Academy Awards, FishbowlLA wondered how long it would take for a prominent journalist to raise the issue of Eddie Murphy‘s full F-word rant in Delirious. We now have the answer–this morning, New York Times media columnist David Carr touches on the comedian’s Mr.T-Honeymooners opening bit, suggesting that the routine makes Ratner seem “positively refined by contrast.”

Meanwhile, Jewish Journal columnist Danielle Berrin (a.k.a. “Hollywood Jew”), who claims she owes her full-time status at the publication to the controversy caused by a 2008 profile of Ratner, refreshed that infamous angle last night. It seems Ratner has never stopped inappropriately chasing after the reporter:

Every time I see Ratner, he hits on me again. Though only after he insults me: “You’re still at the Jewish Journal? Your piece on me was supposed to advance your career.” (Editor’s note: It did. I got salaried and health insurance.)

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Those of you who haven’t read David Carr‘s most recent column in the New York Times on the intrusion of Wall Street bonus culture into the newspaper business need to take a look now. Carr mainly focuses on former Gannett robber baron…er CEO Craig A. Dubow–who left the company with $37.1 million in retirement benefits after guiding the company’s stock into a ditch and laying off nearly 40% of its employees. But the Tribune Company and its current multi-million dollar executive bonus plan don’t escape Carr’s notice.

The Tribune Company, a chain of newspapers and television stations run into the ground by Sam Zell after he bought it in 2007, is paying out tens of millions of dollars in bonuses as part of a deal in which it would exit bankruptcy.

Over 4,000 people in the company lost their jobs, and the journalistic missions of formerly robust newspapers it operates — including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun — have been curtailed. And even though Randy Michaels and some of his corporate fraternity brothers who operated the company into bankruptcy are gone, more than 600 managers who were there while the company cratered remain.

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Michael Arrington, the founding editor of TechCrunch, has been making plenty of noise since being relieved of his duties by Arianna Huffington last week. Her reason for ousting Arrington was his new $20 million venture capitol fund, brazenly called CrunchFund, which invests in some of the same companies TechCrunch covers. AOL, who bought TechCrunch from Arrington last year, has invested approximately $10 million into the new fund.

Can you say conflict of interest? Huffington could, and promptly canned Arrington.

Arrington is trying to recast himself as a noble journalist, fighting for editorial control of his website. In a melodramatic TechCrunch blog post yesterday, demanding AOL failed to restore his editorial independence or sell the site back to him.

Media critics seem to be collectively rolling their eyes. The Business Insider writes: “This is equivalent to an employee who has been fired demanding that, if the division he just got fired from is not immediately stripped from his former boss’s control and placed back under his control, he’ll quit.” David Carr of the New York Times declares TechCrunch and AOL’s association with CrunchFund as “almost comically over the line.”

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In the wake of Wednesday’s news that Poynter’s Jim Romenesko is semi-retiring and Slate’s Jack Shafer has been laid off, Gawker has declared this the twilight of media critics. They’ve compiled a list of those critics of note still standing, and it’s a short one, with David Carr of the New York Times at the top. The LA Times‘ media writer James Rainey was also named, though without much enthusiasm:

Rainey’s not a particularly memorable writer, but he does a fair job. He also has the West Coast pretty much to himself now.

Rainey, for whom FishbowlLA has considerably more affection, tweets in response:

It’s the little things…

New York Times media reporter and Page One documentary subject David Carr is officially a multi-media star. He cleaned up last night on The Colbert Report, talking about Rupert Murdoch and the News of the World scandal. Rare to see Colbert flustered, but Carr cracked him up at least three times.

Love Carr’s reference to Murdoch’s “hot Chinese wife” saving him from a pie in the face. Here’s that video if you haven’t seen it.