The End of the Current Incarnation of This Corner of the Internet

It’s the real end of a very long and sturdy era: sly and quiet media blogger Jim Romenesko will be semi-retiring at Poynter and Slate has laid off loud and jollily abrasive media columnist Jack Shafer, who is now drunk. These two have been the opposing end-caps on the rolling barrel that is media reporting online throughout the entire existence of the popular Internet as we know it. Both will continue to do some work for their current publications, but really they were the last two institutions standing: Richard Johnson left Page Six; Peter Kaplan left the Observer; there is nearly nothing remaining from the Old Recent World of New York City, unless you count Graydon Carter’s stewardship of Vanity Fair, which I don’t think I do. In the new arrangement of things, the most long-lived fixtures in the firmament are, surprisingly enough, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton and Times reporter-columnist David Carr — both of whom started their current incarnations in the same year, 2002.