We were going to do a list of our top five favorite vids from this year except honestly we are list-exhausted. So instead we’re just posting our very favorite, which never fails, no matter how often we watch it, to make us laugh. Other than that we’d like to remind you for the last time this year that we have job boards (what better way to start the new year than with a job!) but also to wish you all a happy and safe and better New Year. See you in 2009.

More lists! Maybe itemizing things makes the terrible year media we just suffered easier to bear. Also it’s a fun way to fill the time between now and opening the champagne. Anyway, here’s the final installment:

• Rex Sorgatz has put together a very smart list of this year’s most notable blogs. Parts of which made us wonder if we spend enough time on the Internet! The list includes the notable likes of, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nate Silver, NYT.com, Kanye West, Ana Marie Cox, and something called Single Serving Blogs — Rex explains it all here!

• Twitter! And lots of it, in the form of the top twenty Twitter posts of 2008.
• Over at TVNewser you can take your pick of any number of lists and polls. In fact you might call it a list and poll bonanza! We’re not kidding, go see for yourself.
• Meanwhile over at Galley Cat, you can find a round-up of 2008 stories divided into months. Seriously industrious.
• Andrew Sullivan is posting the winners of the 2008 Daily Dish Awards.
• Of course if none of this will suffice, there is always George Bush’s reading list.
• And speaking of reading lists, here’s a sort of list of memoirs that didn’t make it past the ever vigilant guardians of the publishing world.
  

What’s the New Year without a little time spent trumpeting one’s own excellence? Without further ado, the 5 most popular posts on FishbowlNY during the past year.

5. Black Sunday on Wall St.? Someone Who Knows What They’re Talking About Explains it to Us
4. How To Get On Cash Cab
3. Playgirl Going All-Web
2. Covering Barack: The New Yorker Vets the President-Elect
1. Imus: If I Had Made The Jesse Jackson Comparison, I’d Be Talking To Sharpton

No one is safe! Former Voiceer Tricia Romano reports over at Pop & Politics that the Village Voice has laid-off long-time columnist Nat Hentoff who’s been at the paper since 1958 writing mainly about Jazz but more recently about civil liberties.

Also on the way out is fashion writer, Lynn Yaeger, a 30 year veteran of the paper, and staff writer Chloe Hilliard.

Hentoff spoke to the Times about his dismissal saying: “I’m 83 and a half. You’d think they’d have let me go silently…Fortunately, I’ve never been more productive. With all due immodesty, I think it doesn’t help to lose me because people have told me they read the Voice not only for me, but certainly for me.” Fortunately for those people Hentoff will still be writing a weekly column for the United Media syndicate and contributing pieces to The Wall Street Journal.

Wow. This was quite a year, no? Twelve months ago the media world was trying to figure out the best place to celebrate New Years in Iowa. Twelve months ago! One wonders whether this year would be best measured in dog years of some sort. But wait there’s still 12 more hours to go! And if we’ve learned anything this year it’s that a lot of headlines can happen in 12 hours. Anyway, there are plenty end-of-year lists floating around at the moment — be they best media moments, worst, blunders, predictions, etc. But after watching Blago make a reappearance yesterday amidst an otherwise distressing news day (and really in terms of entertaining headlines this guy is the best thing to come along since Sarah Palin except arguably better since there is absolutely no chance of his ever reaching the White House) it occurred to us there were a lot news stories this year that made us an expert on something we never thought we’d need to know about. A lot!

Like, for example, the difference between a caucus and primary, and which one happens in what state when, or, say, Superdelegates! Or Alaskan politics (not to mention wolf-hunting), or the difference between a investment bank and a bank holding company. Or the fact that no one was actually in charge on Wall St. Also, Presidential puppies! And then there’s all those names! Ashley Dupree (and her singing career!), the Palin family von Track (and Tripp!), and more recently Made-off, and Bluh-GOY-uh-vich. Phew, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Favorites? Weigh in on your choice below.

What Was Your Favorite Unlikely News Story of 2008
( surveys)

Today on Morning Media Menu — our newly-launched audio podcast based around the mediabistro.com Morning Newsfeed and mediabistro.com blog network — Happy almost New Year! Though, not so much for the NYT, which is currently being sued. Also, on the table, today’s NYT story about the sale of Consumerist, which fails to mention that FBNY broke news of the impending deal two(!) weeks ago. And what Steve and I learned this year. There was a whole lot to choose from.

CONSUMER REPORTS’ PUBLISHER ACQUIRES GAWKER MEDIA’S CONSUMERIST.COM

America’s most trusted consumer advocate bolsters new media offerings; Purchase comes during period of organization’s continued growth

Yonkers, NY — Consumers Union (CU), the highly trusted, independent publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, has purchased Consumerist.com from Gawker Media. The popular consumer watchdog blog will operate independently of Consumer Reports publications and be the first property housed under a new non-profit entity called Consumer Media LLC. The change in ownership will be in effect as of January 1, 2009.

“We’re delighted to add this vibrant site to our portfolio of information products,” said Jim Guest, President and CEO of Consumers Union. “The Consumerist community is passionate about fair retail practices, truth in advertising, product safety, and other topics that Consumer Reports has championed for more than 70 years. The site is a perfect fit for advancing our mission of creating a fair, safe, and just marketplace.”

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This has not been the best year ever for The New York Times. They’ve had to (finally) slash dividends, mortgage their pretty new building, and are currently attempting to sell their stake in the Boston Red Sox. Now, to cap it all off they are being sued! Remember that big 5000 word piece they did back in February on John McCain and lobbyists which insinuated that John McCain had had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman — a story which, incidentally, made more than one media blunder list in the last few weeks — well Iseman has just filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against the paper for giving a false impression about her and McCain’s relationship.

That The New York Times would make such aggressive and sensational allegations and insinuations in the face of on-the-record denials by Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain only reinforced the message to readers that The New York Times in fact believed that Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain had indeed engaged in an ‘inappropriate relationship,’ a relationship that was romantic, unethical, and a conflict of interest…Otherwise, reasonable readers would conclude, The New York Times would never have printed the story at all.

The Times has issued a statement saying that they “fully stand behind the article.”

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Gawker Media is capping off 2008 by selling two of its blogs — Consumerist and the Hollywood gossip site Defamer. Yesterday, two weeks after FishbowlNY broke the story of talks between the two companies, The New York Times reported that Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, is buying the customer watchdog blog Consumerist from Gawker Media. In the article, the paper quotes Gawker publisher Nick Denton saying that he’s also “in talks” to sell the Hollywood gossip site Defamer. FishbowlNY has exclusively learned that, later in the afternoon, Denton sent out an email to his site leads revealing that Defamer has actually already been sold. Denton told his top editors that public announcement of the sale will come later today.

Denton put the Consumerist up for sale in mid-November at the same time that he folded his tech-industry gossip blog Valleywag into Gawker.com. Defamer was never put on sale, but in his email, Denton says the company was approached about the site a few months ago and has been in talks with the buyer ever since. Denton’s missive did not reveal who will be purchasing Defamer, but that news should come out when the sale is officially announced later today.

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