In your trailblazing Tuesday media column: Byron Pitts overcomes hardships, chuckle as a newspaper editor talks trash, Ebony's bound to sell, and The Daily Beast is publishing books, fast!

Byron Pitts, who could soon become only the second full-time black correspondent on 60 Minutes, reveals that he was "functionally illiterate" until he was 12, and that as a kid he "was labeled 'slow' or even 'stupid'" because he had trouble reading. But whereas most TV news personalities are required to be functionally illiterate and stupid well into adulthood, Byron managed to get hired anyhow. Congrats to him on his unusual success in the TV world as a literate human.


Listen to this comically macho statement from an editor at the dying San Francisco Chronicle, of all places, to her staff: "You are going to smash whomever is naive enough to poke their noses in our market. Bring it on!" The reality is that San Francisco Chronicle editors are now paid in kidney beans.


Johnson Publishing is not confirming or denying a report that Ebony magazine is for sale, which means that yes, it is for sale. The question is, who will buy it? A white-person-controlled media conglomerate? Because that's the only option.


The Daily Beast is launching its very own book publishing imprint. It will be fast, mainly! "At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition." It's a slow blog.

Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.