Raise Your Hand if You Think Media People Have a Future

Media people are deeply nostalgic for the media -- for when it paid big money and was an exclusive sort of place. This nostalgia is behind Rupert Murdoch's new pay-for-content scheme -- and his belief that he has a monopoly on what people want to read -- which he will apparently debut in November at the Sunday Times in London.

But I have found an even better example of gross wistfulness. I missed it on Monday, when I was in deepest north England playing with sheep: A tearful lament by New York Times media reporter David Carr about Tina Brown's long-dead magazine, Talk, and the party she threw to launch it 10 years ago.

Truly, it's astounding that anyone would even bring it up. Brown's magazine was a clunker from the start, and her party an odd, ungainly, and soulless event that everybody snickered about at the time.