We learn a couple of fascinating tidbits from the Post’s preview of the Newseum grand opening.

First, it cost $450 million to build this journalists’ tribute to journalists.

That’s right, $450 million.  Imagine how many newsroom layoffs and forced buyouts $450 million could have prevented.

Second is this excerpt from the architectural review:

Journalism is a frenetic profession, caffeinated and hyperactive, and Polshek has responded in kind. The interior has been sliced and diced into multiple small galleries and little theaters, many of them bearing the names of the large corporate donors (Cox Enterprises First Amendment Gallery, Time Warner World News Gallery, News Corporation News History Gallery) that seeded the Newseum. Large open spaces have been set aside for a Journalists Memorial and a section of the Berlin Wall with guard tower (which has something to do with press freedom and democracy).

Hold on.  Rewind.  Galleries and theaters named after corporate donors?   Aren’t corporations supposed to be the evil empire?  Aren’t they the ones prompting media consolidation and lack of diversity in news and opinion?  Now corporation have galleries named after them in a journalism shrine — because they, egads, donated huge sums of money?

That’s so conventional?  Maybe.  That’s so corrupt?  Nope.  That’s so First Amendment — yes, free speech applies to the folks in the boardroom in addition to folks in the newsroom.

Time will tell whether rank and file journalists boycott the Newseum because it’s clearly complicit in the corporate takeover of the media.  I’d prefer to be an optimist, however.  Time will tell whether someone someday spends $450 million on a building that salutes bloggers.  I’d like my own theater.

One of the enjoyable subplots in Christopher Buckley’s book “Boomsday” is what essentially is a Google zapper — a device that eliminates bad, harmful, or embarrassing links on Google.

I was reminded of that all-too-real fictional tool when reading this in Howard Kurtz’s piece today about how the media embarrassed itself in New Hampshire:

“Look at this cycle,” says CBS correspondent Jeff Greenfield. “McCain front-runner, McCain dead, McCain is back. Hillary inevitable, Hillary toast, Hillary is back. There is no defense for this. It is built into our DNA.”

Greenfield fell into the trap with a Slate piece Tuesday on how Clinton and other candidates could recover from early losses, leading to a hastily added postscript: “OK, Hillary won tonight. Oh, waiter, two orders of crow, please. This is what happens when you ignore your own advice to let the people vote first.”

Wait a minute — Greenfield added a postscript?  He edited history?  Um, you can’t do that, can you?

Rather than backdating edits to history — always a dicey endeavor for professional journalists — here’s a different idea.  Why not just dive into Google and Nexis and simply, like Buckley might have them, eliminate the entire body of reporting and analysis about the presidential race for the two years leading up to Iowa and New Hampshire?  I mean, all that impressive expertise is essentially inoperative right now, right?  Heck, more than inoperative — it was all a waste of time.   All that reporting, all those polls, all that pricey punditry didn’t amount to, as Bogart would have said, a hill of beans.  (I know, I know — but this is our hill, and these are our beans.  But still!)

“Dallas” did this effectively a few decades back — eliminating an easier year of the TV show by saying something like it was all a bad dream.  We feel the same way after two years of presidential campaign reporting.  Just erase it all.

Then we can proudly quote Bob Newhart from the series finale of “Newhart” when he awakens next to Suzanne Pleshette and says: “Honey, you won’t believe the dream I just had.”

How great is it that George Will has a reference researcher who knows Led Zeppelin?

From Will’s column today:

Sixteen years ago, the Clintons advertised themselves as generational archetypes. How right they were.

Led Zeppelin’s recent reunion concert in London exemplified a tiresome phenomenon — geezer rock groups catering to baby boomer nostalgia.

Geezer indeed … George Will should give his quote-boy a raise!

How much stock should we put in reporters’ analysis of the outcome of the Iowa presidential caucuses?

America’s most lovable political historian Lee Annis, author of “Howard Baker: Conciliator in an Age of Crisis,” smartly reminds of us what NBC News reporter Tom Pettit said after Ronald Reagan lost Iowa in 1980:

“I would like to suggest that Ronald Reagan is politically dead.”

Of course, that suggestion proved false.  And it should make us eternally wary of what “experts” suggest even today.

Earlier this week a colleague told me the government was planning to subsidize the purchase of television sets. I scoffed, thinking that’s something the government surely would never do, and anyway, why not subsidize books?

Turns out my colleague was right, as evidenced by this government-issue $40 coupon to purchase digital TV.

Think that’s the extent of the government bailing out dinosaur media?  Think again.

Check out Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger’s farewell column on the media in the weekend WSJ (click here, password required).
A fascinating — and stunning — tidbit:

… the vast array of investigative reporting and foreign correspondence assembled at American newspapers over the past several decades is being cut back at all but a few publications, as papers succumb to the pressure to cut costs.

Many journalists and academics see in these cutbacks a threat to the democratic ideal of a well-informed public. Some urge turning to philanthropy or an expansion of public television as a way to fill the gap. Others have begun to argue for a government subsidy for newspapers — an unlikely prospect for now.

“Unlikely” aside, the fact that a government subsidy of newspapers is being considered at all is quite alarming, on two fronts: 1)  Must the government solve everything?  Homer Simpson put it best, in another context: “Donuts, is there anything they can’t do?”  Likewise: government, is there anything it can’t subsidize?  And (2)  If a form of media is dying, let it fail on its own accord.  It’s called the free market.  Heck, one day I’m sure blogging will decline in popularity.  Let’s hope that when that happens, no one calls for a government subsidy of blogging.  Although truth be told, if the feds will be handing out money to blog, you better believe I’ll be first in line.  But really hating it.

National Journal’s Ron Brownstein made a shrewd, revealing, and refreshing observation on Sunday’s “Meet the Press“:

The most dangerous thing for any politician is to play into a pre-existing storyline. When Dan Quayle misspelled potato, I mean, if Bill Clinton had misspelled potato, no—everybody would’ve said he was tired.  Dan Quayle, it was like, “He doesn’t know how to spell potato.” For Hillary Clinton, clearly the answer that you just played, played into what is her biggest vulnerability in this race, the sense that she may be too political, too evasive, not always telling, you know, the, the—fudging answers and so forth.  So, in that sense, her response was very much a clear attempt to shore up that…in the second debate, and was going to shore up that vulnerability.”

It’s rare for a leading member of the political media to pull the curtain up to expose the concept of pre-existing narratives.  It’s a concept that repeatedly plays into press coverage of politics and campaigns. Brownstein’s vintage Dan Quayle potato tale from the 1988 campaign is the classic example; that was a relentless story largely driven by a smarmy press corps.  Hopefully the storyline of exposing the storylines will continue.

Bless the Weekly Standard’s parody page for pointing out this item from the Oct. 14 New York Times Book Review:

Michael Kinsley, who reviews Alan Greenspan’s ‘’Age of Turbulence'’ this week, has a résumé that seems to have been assembled with the express purpose of inspiring awe. At present, he is a columnist for Time, but he has also been the editor of The New Republic and Harper’s, the editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times, the American editor of The Economist and the founding editor of the online magazine Slate. Along with numerous television appearances, he has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Times of London and, of course, the Book Review.

That’s what passes for awe these days?  Sorry, but I didn’t see a Nobel Peace Prize or a Super Bowl ring on the list.  No sale.

The Politico’s sensational gossip columnist Anne Schroeder has this fun item in her marvelous “Shenanigans” column:

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press was going to have its black-tie fundraiser gala at the about-to-be-open Newseum.  Then, disaster: Rumors abounded that the Newseum construction wouldn’t be completed in time — in this case, by Oct. 30. So they moved the $500-a-seat, $10,000-and-$25,000-a-table gala to everyone’s favorite — or not — fallback, the Andrew Mellon Auditorium.

I draw your attention, however, to this quote:

The RCFP’s executive director, Lucy Dalglish, told us: “Tickets are expensive, but we haven’t done a major black-tie fundraiser in D.C. since 1997 and are committed to not throwing another in D.C. for another four years. I know it’s a stretch for individual reporters, but I also know that the reporters in this town get paid pretty darn well when they work for major newspapers.”

How much is pretty darn well?  Lobbying disclosure, candidate contribution dislcosure — perhaps it’s time for journalist salary disclosure?

We learn this from the New York Post:

The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

Like most things in life, the news leads us immediately to cite the exchange early in “Godfather II” between Michael Corleone and Senator Geary:

MICHAEL: We’re all part of the same hypocrisy, Senator.  But never think it applies to my family.
GEARY: All right, then let me say you’ll pay me because it’s in your interests to pay me.  I’ll expect your answer, with payment, by tomorrow morning.  Only don’t contact me…from now on, deal only through Turnbull.
MICHAEL: Senator… you can have my answer now if you’d like.  My offer is this. Nothing…not even the thousand dollars for the Gaming Commission, which I’d appreciate if you would put up personally.

Inspired by Michael Corleone, I now respectfully and quietly say to the New York Times, I’d appreciate if you would personally return my $49.95 to read Frank Rich.

Matthew Dowd may have made news last weekend.  Today, it’s a different Dowd — presumably Maureen Dowd.

Fishbowl DC alerts us to ths vicious Onion item:

“Your reputation is everything here at the Times, and if you want get known, you’ve got to deliver what readers want: differences between men and women, and photos of cats,” national political reporter Adam Nagourney said. “I suppose I could be most e-mailed, too, if I sat in front of my computer all day making up cutesy names for government officials, like some redheaded Wednesday and Saturday columnists I know.”

Someone we know, indeed.  Perhaps  one day reality will reflect parody.