Serious pundit opines (because that is what serious pundits do, they “opine”) on sad state of affairs when shoddy reporting is used to generate intertubes traffic and then …????….profit!:

But the Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin is so emblematic of much that’s wrong about the way she’s covered that it’s worth returning to, and I’ve learned that the its long wind-up is based on fundamental confusion about which of Palin’s children was at an event in Kansas City.

Palin almost never talks to neutral media outlets, leaving her — as critics accurately note — subject to none of the questions, challenges  and reality checks that the political press puts regularly to almost every other national political figure. She takes a lot of heat for this, deservedly.

But with the hunger for information about her, and the traffic she drives, the press sometimes compensates by printing such thinly sourced, badly reported nonsense about her that it’s hard to imagine it making it into a serious magazine like Vanity Fair if it concerned any other figure. Of course, this might not happen if she spoke to reporters, but that’s no excuse.

Thank you Jay Rosen for…oh— that wasn’t Jay Rosen? Oh. Okay. Then thank you Jim Romenesko for illuminating— oh fuck… now what? I’m working here. Oh. Not Romenesko?

It was Ben Smith?  From fucking Politico?

Jesus. What? Did Harris and VandeHei have the mirrors taken out of the men’s room again so that the “reporters” would forget who they were and who they worked for since that job writing Scouts In Action updates at Boys Life fell through? Must be.

But, yes Ben, it was wrong for Vanity Fair to flog a maybe mostly made up story but only because that is Politico’s job, so back off elitist Condé Nast limp-pencil-dicked writer fags and leave it to the professionals. Like that time when Ben Smith wrote that John Edwards would be announcing that he would be dropping out of the Presidential race and then he totally didn’t. Awesome.

One might call that “thinly sourced, badly reported nonsense” or one might call it “win the morning, win the afternoon“, but none dare call it responsible journalism. But whatever.  Forget it, Jake. It’s Politico…