Westminster doggie on the tarmac. Poor thing. Guess this is the NY version of LA car chase video.

Just to underscore that the showtune references are probably never coming back (not in the voice of this guest editor, anyway) it's time to turn our attention to a game being played in Detroit this weekend. You've probably heard about it. (Unless you're Sophie.)

The game is Sunday, but the sports media-industrial complex began arriving in Detroit last Sunday, which meant that every conceivable human-interest angle on the big game — yes, Super Bowl 40 ("XL," whatever) — will be completely played out in oh, about an hour from now. But we're already long past acknowledging that the week-long run-up to the Super Bowl is cliched; by now our men and women on the ground are deep into self-reflexvity and loathing about just how cliched it all is. They're characters in a Jay McInerney book -- they know they're living in a bubble, but they can't find their way out.

ESPN.com's Dan Shanoff kicked off this year's festival of meta-cliches in his Daily Quickie column on Tuesday with his dissection of Media Day rituals and an update on the "Most Overplayed Superbowl Story Line." Meanwhile, Cracked — you know, the Spin to MAD's Rolling Stone — parodied not the game, but ESPN.com's pre-coverage of the game. (We especially loved Bill Simmons' mock-mea culpa, "An ape could have picked the playoffs with more accuracy than me.") And Sports Illustrated even went so far as to provide in-depth coverage of last night's media-only party.

What does all of this mean? Well, from a media perspective, it means that football is officially bigger than the political process, at least from the media's standpoint. (If you don't believe me, compare the volume of words written about the Super Bowl to the analysis of Tuesday's State of the Union address) It also means that young writers on the make are more apt to make a pilgrimage to Detroit in February than follow the next presidential candidates around the country. Witness Chuck Klosterman, in Detroit blogging for ESPN.com this week, apparently working on his Ph.D in metaphysics.

If Hunter S. Thompson were alive and at the peak of his powers today, he wouldn't hit the campaign trail for Rolling Stone; he'd follow a full NFL season for ESPN The Magazine, culminating with his own mescaline-enhanced blog. In fact, he'd look a bit like Deadspin's A.J. Daulerio, who's wandering Detroit without credentials, tickets, or a clue. (He is apparently taking time off tomorrow, though, to see Brokeback Mountain with Gawker's Jessica Coen and her parents.

And Deadspin itself has made waves this week by refocusing once again on its core competency: running photos of drunk quarterbacks.

Lucky you -- you're reading this from work because the NY Transit Union decided at 6:30 am to extend the deadline for deciding whether to strike.

Unlucky them -- that is, the journalists who had nothing to do but cool their heels and twiddle their thumbs while they waited, and waited, and waited for some sort of resolution so they could write the damn thing up and go home, or get some sort of photo that would pass for an action shot. Subway strike is big news, man!

Fishbowl's intrepid reporter Bucky Turco was the man on the scene - again - and caught the hot action of...waiting. And waiting. And then sleeping. Honestly, when you're that tired grungy conference room carpet seriously seems comfortable. Bucky filed these EXCLUSIVE PICS to the Fishbowl newsroom at 5:18 am this morning with a promise to send more deets once he had a chance to nap in an actual bed. Perhaps then we'll find out who these poor saps are (apparently not print journos from the dailies -- "they were the first to be sent home" reported Bucky, after they missed their deadlines (2am for the Daily News, 1am for the NYPost, 2am for Newsday).

Well, enjoy these pics and look forward to more info later. They don't call Fishbowl "New York's Picture Blog" for nothing!

Thank goodness all the passengers on JetBlue flight 292 are all safe and sound after yesterday's close call. But while Airbus is looking into its dodgy front wheels, our favorite vigilante media watcher Bucky Turco thinks the networks should be taking a good look at their own coverage.

As he watched the drama unfold (not unlike actual passengers on the flight!), Bucky found himself confused by conflicting reports on the air:

Paul Zahn [was] describing how the plane was dumping fuel to prepare for a crash landing. Bored with her I shot over to MSNBC where they had an expert on mentioning how this airbus cannot dump fuel. Instead they had to create drag with the wings in order to burn more fuel. For about a half hour I was changing channels and networks were literally jumping from the dumping fuel theory to the create-drag-theory to burn fuel. Here I am watching and I don't know who to believe.

Speaking of which, Bucky is confused about exactly how long the passengers watched their own drama unfold on the plane: "FOX originally reported the pilot shut off the screens around 5:30pm. And then Tucker Carlson even mentioned it on his program, asking an airline expert if it was smart to shut off the TV's."

For sober second thought and the first draft of history, Bucky went to the morning papers: "For something so simple as how long did these passengers watch their own drama unfold, I can't get a straight answer! Was it an hour before, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, what is it?"

The New York Daily News:

"Passengers even watched TV coverage aboard the plane until televisions and air conditioning were turned off about four minutes before the landing."

CNN:

"Varma, 23, and other passengers said the plane's monitors carried live DirectTV broadcasts on the plane's problems until just a few minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport."

TVNewser:
Moments after the plane landed, passenger Todd Schwartz called his wife, MSNBC media relations director Leslie Zeller-Schwartz, and she patched him through to anchor Allison Stewart.

As the situation unfolded, "we actually were watching MSNBC," he said. "We have the Direct TV's on the flight." A few minutes before landing, they turned off the TV's.

The New York Post:

"...screens went blank 10 minutes before they landed."

LA Times:

"We couldn't believe the irony, that we were watching our own demise on TV -- it was all too post-post-modern," passenger Alexandra Jacobs, a journalist at the New York Observer, told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

After about an hour, she said, the TVs were shut off.

New York Times:

"We had live coverage up until about 10 minutes before we landed," Mr. Reinitz, 39, said. "That was the scary part, when they cut it off."

Ten minutes, four minutes, who's counting? Bucky, for one: "It may not be a big deal but to me accuracy in the press even for something so small is still very important and a good barometer of their accuracy."

Here's our guess: the "few minutes" and "four minutes" figure is probably correct; the longer figures are likely estimates in a situation where that time probably seemed like an eternity. In any case, we're obviously just glad everyone's okay. But if anyone has the definitive number, by all means pass it on.

p.s. Thanks to Bucky for being our eyes and ears; Fishbowl was "covering an event" which entailed having too many glasses of champagne on a too-empty stomach. Suffice it to say that we did not come home and turn on CNN. That'll teach us!

Kenneth Tomlinson, give yourself a pat on the back: if the words "balance and fairness" mean the same thing at PBS as they do at Fox, then you just scored yourself a victory. According to the Washington Post, PBS has announced new "editorial standards" that will ensure "balance and fairness" in its programming (example: offering "additional transparency" re: how journalistic conclusions are arrived at). It's also getting its first ombudsman (or woman, or bot, as the case may be). NB there are two ombuds-ervatives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting plus an ombuds-Dvorkin at NPR. As our ombuds-brother at FishbowlDC points out, "that's totally not a recipe for trouble, right?"

Things that are ostensibly a coincidence: CPB chair Ken Tomlinson criticizes PBS for excessive liberalism/woefully underexpressed conservatism; last week, public broadcasting funding is slashed by 25 percent overall. Less of a coincidence:

Yet the new standards could still prove to be a source of contention. The CPB must review and accept them before it will release $23 million in funds for PBS's National Program Service (NPS), which includes online content and the shows "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," "Nova" and "American Experience." If CPB rejects the guidelines, NPS funding that is supposed to begin in October would be jeopardized.

We were noticing that Drudge was starting to sound a little Sploidy, or maybe that hot Florida sun is getting to him. Meanwhile, is it us or has Sploid cut down on its use of exclamation points? (Bring 'em back, we say. Exclamation points are fun!!!). In any case, we bring you a few recent headlines from Sploid and Drudge - see if you can figure out which one came from where! Answers after the jump, because we're thorough and meticulous like that.

1. Gunshots No One Heard: Deaf/mute man kills deaf/mute sister and deaf/mute brother-in-law for trying to move deaf/mute parents

5. This Time It's True: Man Finds Finger In Food

continued...

Sploid editors Choire Sicha and Ken Layne appear to be communicating with each other through some kind of bizarre secret code - how else to explain their arcane and cryptic Shift Memos? First Layne waxes semi-deranged on plucky piglets and all things Angus. Then Choire responds with a diatribe against Lindsay Lohan, scourge of the East Village, and a helpful tour of his orifices. Now Layne is back, taunting us with his latest memo, once again watching Fox, still screaming at the screen, contemplating future interactions with black bears ("Ursus Americanus is never far away"), staving off encroaching bitterness ("everything always seems fun from a distance") with another day drink.

What can it mean? What nefarious schemes can they be hatching? When is it too early to put vodka in your day drink, anyway? Who cares as long as they keep coming up with headlines like this:

911 Dispatch Offers To Shoot Unruly Child
Why Not? Geeks Install Wi-Fi Near North Pole
'Do You Sodomize Your Wife?' (sometimes you just can't improve on reality)

Sploid admits cheerfully that it "just can't stop smoking that breaking-news crack." But after reading West Coast editor Ken Layne's "Shift Memo" to no one in particular, we can't help but wonder if that's not a euphemism for smoking a Whitney Houston-sized hunk o' sweet crackity-cracklin' goodness.

Layne's Faulknerian memo takes us from his fond recollections of a Fox newscast about real estate deals:

And then the perky real-estate gal explained how you find these places before they get too expensive. I quote from memory:

"First the gays move in, then the students, then there's nightlife and then people realize, My God, something's happening here."

...to ruminations on Quizno subs:

The "black angus steak sandwich" is mighty good. Get the jumbo size and you can eat the other half for breakfast, like a champion.

...to being instructed to cut back on "oddball stories"

And today I see this fantastic story about the Pig Olympics in China. What to do? This story has everything: action, drama, pigs showing incredible dexterity and determination. I let it go.

...to his delicious recipe for "the special Day Drink":

100% cranberry juice (which is incredibly bitter by itself) and this sparkling water they sell at the store and ice cubes. It's a healthy hydrating treat, and as your day progresses you can start substituting vodka for the water, a little at a time, and it's nighttime before you know it. But I just drink the Day version, until it's night.

Once again, the only thing that's missing is a reference to Stalin.

With the impending shuffle at the top of network news comes the inevitable unsolicited advice from pundits and people who really don't have much expertise in the matter. In contemplating a CBS News Makeover, the New York Times' Jacques Steinberg turns to four "kibitzers," some of whose sugggestions might just be mishugenah enough to work:

60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt is partial to what he came up with back in 1968 - 60 Minutes. He'd even throw in Andy Rooney, plus a few college-aged girls for good measure. Hot.

Co-creator of The Daily Show Lizz Winstead suggests sass and skepticism, with the CBS eye going all surly-teen on distinguished panelists: "It would be cool if, while the person is talking, the eyeball is rolling skeptically." Totally fetch.

From "Survivor" and "Apprentice" creator Mark Burnett, we get nothing short of sheer marketing genius - just ask him: "Of all the people you're likely to speak to, I'm the most likely to get it right - because I have my finger on the pulse of a lot of young people." He suggests earning the trust of young audience members, guided by the fact that the "only" point of the broadcast is "to bring in as much advertising revenue as possible."

Entertainment Weekly convened it's own distinguished panel for the benefit of ABC (because EW's not helping enough with all their "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" covers), quizzing the likes of Dennis Miller, former Late Show exec producer Robert Morton and Jim Belushi, who suggests that reporters should be held accountable for what they inflict on the public (unlike, say, actors).

Now that we're mainlining Sploid ("Pope's Request: Burn My Letters!" "Israelis To Kill Snuggly Puppies?"), we wanted to say hey to the other Drudge imitators out there: Sploid's earnest brethren at The Raw Story and The Drudge Retort (leading with "Poetry Wanted Here" - hey, cool! April's National Poetry Month!). We just wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten you - we just pay more attention when there are exclamation points. Plus, anarcho-capitalists are funny.