I once got the following advice from a Globie: Every now and then, when it's warranted, point out something the paper's done well--and leave it at that. No asterisks, disclaimers, snide asides, etc.

Binyamin Appelbaum's* troubling examination of the housing projects in Barack Obama's former Illinois state senate district, and of Obama's relationships with the developers who've renovated and operated those projects, certainly deserved this treatment.

Read this excellent but depressing offering from the Washington Post's Eli Saslow, and then try answering that question.

Three years ago, Post columnist E.J. Dionne noted, quite astutely, that the same conservatives who love to attack postmodernism are co-opting it for their political ends. If McCain beats Obama this fall, it'll be conservative postmodernism's biggest triumph yet.

Maybe you thought Barack Obama's fake presidential seal was just a stupid gaffe, kind of like Mitt Romney's podium screw-up back in 2006. But no! It's much, much more than that. Mickey Kaus, take it away:

[T]he faux seal was a disaster not just for the reason I gave (that it suggested Obama is "stuck up"). It also carried this counterproductive connotation: that there is a separate Obama Nation, grown up in opposition to Bush's nation.

That, according to two Globe employees, was one big question raised at the Monday "town meeting" at the paper's Morrissey Boulevard headquarters.

When a possible sale of the Globe by the NYT Co. came up, one employee says, Arthur Sulzberger replied: "As you can imagine, we can't get into that whole thing.... We can't go down that road.

That's the goal described in the June 18 letter from Globe senior VP Gregory L. Thornton, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, that officially proposed a 10 percent wage cut for most Globe employees.

"As we shared with you and other union leaders [at a June 3 presentation], despite constant and relentless cost cutting, Globe revenues continue to decline and continue to be less than needed to support the expense load of our current organization," Thornton wrote.

According to a story in today's Boston Herald, Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten is determined to fight Globe management's request for a 10 percent reduction in employee wages."The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity," Totten told the Herald. "Globe and New York Times management must now give back."

Earlier today, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Herald will be laying off up to 160 people and outsourcing its printing. But it wasn't clear--at least to me--whether those layoffs would be hit the editorial side or not.

According to Herald editor Kevin Convey, it's the latter. "The answer is, no editorial layoffs--none now and none contemplated," he tells the Phoenix.

As I narcissistically keep tabs on who's saying what about my story this week--i.e., the one on the old media-new media sportswriting feud--I'm noticing a theme: there's a lot of disagreement out there about what, exactly, "blogs" and "bloggers" are. By way of example, here's a comment posted to a column by Salon.

Godspeed to Boston magazine senior writer John Gonzalez, who's leaving that post to write a sports column for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It's a great move for Gonzalez, who'll be joining his hometown paper in an extremely high-profile position. But it's a real loss for the Boston media market. When he was on--and he usually was--Gonzalez may have been the most entertaining writer in the city.

As you've probably noticed, there's some serious blog flux going on over at Phoenix HQ. The good news is that, if you're reading this, you've found the new Web home of Don't Quote Me, nee Media Log. Also, after disappearing for a few days, the last few months of posts have returned.

Now for the bad news. DQM's fancy new logo--which had been visible over the last few days at the old URL, thephoenix.