Spin Cycle

Ex-Newsdayer Marvin Kitman weighs in on present and future ownership in a fairly unsparing essay about the Cablevision deal, including a couple of cheap shots, on the Huffington Post. The full essay is here.

A couple of the less withering passages:

"As soon as he took command, Sam Zell put what was left of the paper on a starvation diet. Since all the fat and muscle was gone, Zell cut away the bones. Cablevision can see the value in a Newsday Lite, as opposed to the old kind of newspaper that had a lot of reporters, editors and columnists with lots of stories. It's much cheaper to run than a paper with a lot of editorial people doing nothing but being journalists."

And:

"With the Cablevision purchase of Newsday, it's one less newspaper to harp on all the mistakes Jim Dolan has made in mismanagement, misfeasance and malfeasance in running the New York market's beloved franchises. I can see a Cablevision Newsday dealing with the Knicks' latest failures like the Post will not criticize Bill O'Reilly. The only place where you can get real news about O'Reilly is in the Daily News."