There's nothing like former employees to give media criticism with sharp attitude.
Marvin Kitman, for decades one of Newsday's top attractions as TV critic, left several years ago and hasn't been happy about some of the directions taken by his former company. And now the purchase of Newsday by Cablevision doesn't exactly charm him.
Writing in The Huffington Post, Kitman gives it to Cablevision with the sharp wit that his readers were accustomed to. Kitman asks: "What's in Newsday for the Dolan family?"
Then he answers: "In all my 35 years at Newsday as the media critic, I never became a great admirer of Cablevision. Admittedly, on Long Island Cablevision is ubiquitous. With cable, Internet, phone they are kind of everywhere, like crab grass. Their Ch. 12 News is also great on the weather."
Then he gets personal: "Nobody has ever accused father Dolan of being stupid. The same thing cannot be said about his son, James.
"Perhaps the most important reason for buying Newsday is to get the paper to stop all the criticism on the sports pages about the way Jim has been running the Knicks into the ground. Not to mention the Rangers and Madison Square Garden.... Under Co-Emperor James, the Dolan Empire has run numerous assets into the ground, like the embarrassing loss of the Yankee telecasts. The latest debacle is the Dolans' decision to block the redevelopment of Penn Station because they think its bad for the Garden."
He ends with a less than gentle suggestion: "If the Dolan family is serious about the newspaper business they might start with something a little more modest, perhaps buying a paper in Iowa, a weekly."
--Noel Rubinton