Mediacrity cries crocodile tears over far left—wing blogger Jim Romanesko, probably the highest—salaried blogger anywhere, though we don't know how much David Brock pulls down from George Soros moneybags funding Media Matters.  Romanesko works for the Poynter Institute in Florida, which is a nonprofit that owns stock in the leftist St. Petersburg Times.

You know that things are tough all over when the famously selective media blogger Jim Romenesko has to take a pay cut!

Yep, so says the IRS Form 990, recently put online by the Internet database Guidestar.com, which says that Romenesko's pay in 2004 was $150,600 plus $15,799 in benefits and deferred comp. That's down from the comparable numbers of $152,163 and $17,024 that he got in 2003.

Now, if I were Romenesko I'd be a little teed off. After all, other people mentioned on the 990 got raises —— one senior faculty guy got a $20,000 increase to $147,000. Gee, could it be that the folks at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies realize that Romenesko skews his blog to leave out stuff that doesn't fit in with his ideological bias? Such as, for example, downplaying Victor Navasky's role at Columbia Journalism Review?

Anyway, too bad for the lump of coal in Romenesko's stocking. Hopefully he did better in 2005. Guess we'll have to wait till next year to find out.

My own guess is that tough times in the daily newspaper biz are being felt by the foundations which are invested in their stock. If so, Romanesko may not have such rosy prospects.

Meanwhile, I know of no conservative bloggers on anyone's payroll who does nearly so well. If anyone can point me to conservative foundation—funded bloggers, please write.

Thomas Lifson  12 29 05