Payday at Poynter

Gawker today harkens back to the days when "sweet, earnest, hardworking, nebbishy" Jim Romenesko was "toiling away in his Evanston, Ill., studio apartment. Turns out he makes $150K," says Gawker. "Who's the nebbish now?"

Apparently the answer is, everybody who doesn't work for the Poynter Institute.

Honestly. Maybe I just don't know how these money-losing foundations work, but the politically slanted glorified blogger isn't the only Poynterite who walks away with a decent payday. James Naughton, the ex-Timeser and retired president, pulled down a nifty $181,361 in 2003 for slaving away, doing retired-president stuff. Meanwhile, the actual, non-retired president, Karen Brown Dunlap, was making less than that, $176,824.

Hey, it's right there on the Internet--I'm not making this up. (And by the way, am I the only blogger out there who can locate a 990? Why hasn't any of this stuff come out before?)

I really wish my Daddy had said to me when I was a kid, "Mediacrity, when you grow up, go to work for a money-losing tax-exempt foundation."

Anyway, I see that a couple of Romenesko's pals have spoken up for him in the comments section of the initial item. Look, guys, I'm on his side. I just want our pal Jim to have credibility--which you don't get by being a left-wing partisan. It doesn't do either Jim or his generous employer any good if he displays political bias by ignoring or underplaying controversies and suppressing letters on subjects he wants to go away -- such as the one he received on the UN correspondent scandal he has ignored.

Besides.... maybe one of these days Poynter will wake up to the fact that its well-compensated "nonpartisan media-watcher" isn't so nonpartisan after all. Maybe they'll notice that he doesn't pay much attention to what one commenter describes as "some bogus notion of objectivity." So if I wuz Jim, I'd put my shoulder to that good old-fashioned "objectivity" grindstone, bogus as it surely is.

Of course, if he can always retire and really pull in the dough!