Representing the "Mainstream media" were SF Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein, NYT media columnist David Carr, and Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Representing the "New media" were public radio's John Hockenberry, Politico founder Jim Vandehei, and Vanity Fair columnist and author and Newser yakker Michael Wolff.

Notice anything? That's right, all of these people work in the "mainstream media." Politico, which was cast as some new media vanguard, is a print newspaper with a website. So is the New York Times. And the SF Chronicle! Which led to the main problem of the evening: the entire "debate" was semantic. Panelists spent much time declaring what they weren't arguing against: great journalism, democracy, freedom, media jobs, economic success, etc. That's because they were all on the same side, in reality. They are media people who would like to remain employed somehow, like everyone else. If the proposition had been "Good riddance to print as a medium," or "Good riddance to newspapers," it would have at least been intelligible and debatable; as it was, you had the "New media" people declaring that the way they did things was faster and smarter and more democratic, and then the "Mainstream media" people saying they also did things the same way, so what the hey were they even arguing about? I don't know.

Which is not to say it was not an entertaining evening! Mostly because of the sniping between Michael Wolff and David Carr, who have a history of mutual dislike. Carr gently pointed out that Michael Wolff was arguing for the abolition of the NYT while simultaneously running a website full of NYT excerpts; Wolff said all of Carr's stories are too long, anyhow.

Michael Wolff does not have a winning personality. He whines, he gesticulates annoyingly, he takes obviously ridiculous positions for the purpose of drawing attention to himself. He is a hypocrite, and sometimes embraces his own hypocrisy to, yes, draw attention to himself. That said, Michael Wolff is not afraid to be brutally honest. Which is something media reporting needs! He demonstrated that last night when—after a question from a Hearst lawyer in the audience, and while sitting on a stage with Phil Bronstein, editor of a Hearst paper—Wolff said (we're paraphrasing) "People don't like to say this in polite company, but Hearst's newspapers are really bad. So who cares if you go out of business?"

It's true! Props to you for that, Michael Wolff, you generally grating man.

But he got got, in the end. In Carr's closing statement, he whipped out a printout of Newser's front page. It's a cool site, check it out, yada yada yada, he said. Then Carr pulled out his show-and-tell version of Newser after the "Mainstream media" had been abolished. It was the same printout, full of holes, with every story painstakingly cut out.

Mainstream media is just new media that figured out how not to go out of business. Let's spend our time arguing about important things: Where to get a job.

Did we say "kindled"? Amazon's Kindle, the e-book reader, has indeed sparked fever dreams among the ailing lords of print. The New York Times has paused from chronicling its own doom to contemplate its salvation — a large-format Kindle, better suited to displaying newspaper-like pages. Hearst, News Corp., and other print-media concerns are pushing their own devices, loath to grant Amazon so much power over their future — but they are fumbling, while Amazon may introduce its newspaper-friendly device as soon as Wednesday.

What a petty concern to worry about, rather than asking if that future even exists!

The argument for e-readers goes like this: Newspapers and magazines will once again be able to charge for subscriptions to support the cost of production, while shedding the expense of printing presses. Readers will pay for the convenience of getting the news delivered to a device.

That prediction fundamentally misunderstands the lessons of the Kindle, which made books available in a convenient digital format, on an appealing device, for the first time. Downloading five books for the beach is vastly more appealing than packing them.

What are the publishers really proposing? Taking a product available for free on the Web, dumbing it down, and then charging for it. News without links, comments, or video, in black and white, updated once a day? In an age when print media ought to be learning to do more with less, they are instead fixated on getting customers to pay more for less.

There is one prospective market for this: The old, who may be so attached to printed media that they will accept an electronic substitute. Hearst digital chieftain Phil Bronstein, the former San Francisco Chronicle editor, told Maureen Dowd that the industry's best hope was that people would live longer, so those trained to read newspapers will stick to the habit.

The obvious converse of Bronstein's feeble hope: The young will never learn to read newspapers and magazines again, having grown up reading online. Why would they switch to a product like the Kindle?

Like the libertarian wingnuts who would rather flee to science-fiction cities on the sea, escape to outer space, or cosset themselves in an online fantasy world rather than live in reality, the addled lords of print like Bronstein would rather dream of a technological rescue than face the hard work of survival.

What newspapers and magazines need to do is obvious: Build appealing websites, and sell them better. But that would require changing.

Emails, we get emails! Hearst is slashing costs by 20 percent in its supertroubled newspaper division. But the Web future's so bright, its reporters need to wear shades, one Hearsty tells us! "As the newspaper industry experiments with digital-only versions of the traditional newspaper, the piece gives a glimpse that investigative journalism and breaking stories are still indeed possible without the backup of a print product," writes Zoe Stagg, multimedia producer for Hearst digital bigwig Phil Bronstein, the former Mr. Sharon Stone. She's talking about an amazing scoop that the now online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer got about some soccer player named Fredy Montero (left) allegedly stalking some woman. Neato! Except that the scoop apparently consisted of getting a tip from the police. Here's an example of Seattlepi.com's amazing reporting: "Efforts to locate Montero's contact information were unsuccessful, and he could not be reached." Journalism has not been saved yet, dammit.

The Pacifica Foundation has changed the locks on New York radio station WBAI's transmitter, which has got the indy station's management all aflutter.

FishbowlNY reports that layoffs of six at Woman's Day included two pregnant staffers. What about the children?

New York Times editor Bill Keller tried to explain his NYT-is-bigger-cause-than-Darfur gaffe: "I think it's pretty obviously a reflection of my mild astonishment at the earnest fervor with which some people have suddenly embraced the cause of saving newspapers." He was being ironical, people! We think Keller should start his own blog so he can be this funny all the time.

Speaking of blogging, Andrew Sullivan writes 300-plus blog posts a week for The Atlantic. Then again, he has two assistants. Hunky, hairy, muscular assistants, we hope.

And then the court says, "Another example of an overreaction is that Mother suggested that Roan should have Botox injections in his feet to resolve a problem he had with foot odor. As Father appropriately noted, the simple and common sense approach of making sure Roan wore socks with his shoes and used foot deodorant corrected the odor problem without the need for any invasive procedure on this young child."

...The judge goes on: "Unfortunately, the problem caused by Mother's overreactions is painfully real for this child."

Of course, Stone was simply passing on a red carpet trick known by most actresses: a couple shots of Botox under the arms, and you can avoid pulling a humiliating "Meg Ryan" in public. Sure, mere socks may accomplish the same thing, but would those qualify Stone for the family discount with Dr. Lipschitz?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Judge Says Stone Wanted to Botox Her Kid [TMZ]

But we almost wish he had. According to court documents, His Honor simply thought it’d be better for Roan if he were to continue going to school in San Francisco instead of moving to LA with his mom; staying with Bronstein will “provide a more structured continuity, stable, secure and consistent home that...Roan needs.” Stone’s lawyer Martin Singer, of course, was quick to point out that this decision has nothing to do with her fitness as a mother. After all, she is still retaining custody of her two adopted children. And if Stone decides to move to San Francisco, the decision can be reversed.

So while Stone may remain crazy, this scenario appears to be unrelated, maybe even resolvable. For once, a Stone story sounds perfectly reasonable to us.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Sharon Stone Schooled in Custody Deal [E! News]

• Angelina Jolie supposedly threatened to leave Brad Pitt because he was never home at their filthy French chateau with the six kids. God knows why. [Sun]
• Tina Fey got her purse back! Sarah Palin had it. [Showbiz Spy]
• Lindsay Lohan responded to her publicity-seeking father saying Lohan's girlfriend Samantha Ronson was "dark, hideous and... disgusting." Lohan said her dad "obviously needs to be on medication." [P6]
• Sad Hugh Hefner is losing two out of his three "girlfriends." He's still got the married one. [P6]
• Boy George to George Michael: "Get yourself clean." By George, he's right! [Mirror]
• Beverly Hills is too noisy and dense for Britney Spears, and that's just from the Ed McMahon visits. HEY-OH! [E!]
• Sharon Stone lost her adopted son to her ex-husband Phil Bronstein, the newspaper editor. [Sun]

Craig told my wife she was out of my league. I know that! This is the guy who destroyed newspapers? Master of the obvious. But he's come a long way himself from the days when he was his own best browser in the Craigslist "Missed Connections" section.

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.

Bronstein, who recently finished overseeing the staff cuts that ended with the departure of about 90 people from his 400-person newsroom, met on Thursday with those who will remain and directed them to take the new approach into daily news coverage. "It is more about solutions, helping them understand what they can do about things," he said. "Yes, there are murders in Bayview, and Muni is broken down. But what can you do about it?"

Bronstein Launches New 'Journalism of Action' After Big Cuts [E&P]