Monday, December 02, 2013

USAT | Looks like Wolff got his columns mixed up

Michael Wolff writes a weekly media column for USA Today on Mondays and another of more general interest for The Guardian in London, also for Monday publication.

But today, it sure looks like the subject of his USAT column wound up in the Guardian, while the subject of the Guardian column appeared in USAT.

15 comments:

  1. That is too funny....

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  2. Next week he can swap them and take the week off

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  3. the only surprise is that anyone read either of the worthless columns written by this soul-dead homunculus.

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  4. He's a major major star according to Uncle Larry. People quake in their boots at his mere name, according to Usa Today's hokey ad campaign. I just wonder what Wolffie is smoking to get his columns mixed up.

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  5. Good catch, Jim. It sure looks that way. I was thinking Wolff was even odder than usual when I read the USA Today column. An error, no doubt.

    By the way, does anybody ever edit this guy's stuff? I've never seen so many clauses, comas and digressions in an alleged newspaper column.

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    1. Does anyone edit anything in Money?

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  6. I was the business news editor at a newspaper when word came down that the publisher had hired a prominent local advertising executive to write a weekly column that appeared on the front of the Sunday business section.

    The column was nominally about business. But it quickly devolved into one about "good news" -- an antidote to the "negative news" that the business community perceived in the paper.

    I was lucky. The ad executive never turned in anything so awful that I might have been forced to actually suggest he do a rewrite. Given the personalities involved, I knew that my job was to basically hit the spell-check key, clean up any typos and move it to the copy desk and then to the paper.

    The publisher had put me in an impossible, no-win position.

    I mention all this because I'm sympathetic to any USAT editor who is responsible for dealing with Wolff's columns. Would the editor be empowered to say, no, this column has nothing to do with the column's topic: media -- and then insist he produce one that did?

    And if the editor did that, would Wolff accept the criticism graciously and turn in a new piece? Or would he instead call the publisher to complain that some guy in Virginia was giving him a hard time back in New York?

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    2. In a world of Ginormous Egos...

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  7. His column is awful. Please fire him.

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  8. So I guess we are getting close to the point when both publications get the SAME column. This would save Wolff some time and effort.

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  9. And this is the knucklehead we've featured in another meaningless ad campaign?

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  10. The last lousy Money columnist, Maria Bartiromo, got $1000 a pop. If we are paying Wolff as much, were getting ripped off.

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  11. I'm surprised this wasn't picked up by other media watchers, especially Romenesko. Has USAT or the Guardian been asked if this was a mistake?

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    1. This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen a columnist do. Made worse by the stooges at Usa Today.

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