We knew McCain was trying to distance himself from Bush, but this is ridiculous! (Ahem.)

Sites such as Google and Digg already prioritize their news stories according to the number of links or users' votes; and magazines such as Vanity Fair and New York have become endearingly proud of the pageviews they draw when starlets are persuaded to strip. But let's put aside the breathtaking insularity of the Times exec's contention.

What about the newspaper's own journalists? Well, it is true that they don't know the pageviews on each article they byline. But they have one measure: the Times' list of the most emailed items of each day. And some Times reporters set so much store by an appearance on the list that they'll fix the numbers by emailing around an article themselves.

"It's not that everybody does it, but some do," a Times staffer confirms in email. "I know some editors will send stories around when they appear online in the evening, to hopefully boost the rankings before getting into work the next day. It's one of the few measurement sticks we have for online success, unfortunately. We're not supposed to care about the Most Popular lists. But when we get on the lists, we get congratulated."

Of course reporters care who's reading their work. They're egomaniacs—as hungry for attention in their own way as the most spotlight-hogging movie star. The New York Times may pretend that all its journalists are paid according to union scale. Its official standard of journalistic value may indeed be measured by Pulitzer juries and uptown dinner parties rather than server logs. But the internet's algorithmic calculation of worth has influenced at least the tech-savvy younger reporters—and it's absurd for Times executives such as Pilhofer to pretend the newspaper can seal itself off from the crass outside world.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that the Most Emailed list has become more high-minded in its mix over the last few years. In 2004, the most popular article was apparently the hilariously detailed law-firm memo on the ordering of lunchtime sushi for partners. Now the lists are dominated by political commentary and investigations of the brain. Either the Times audience is reverting to type in an election year; or someone has tweaked the results to present to the Gray Lady's readers the image they want to see of themselves.

"I'm here to tell you that we don't need to look at the car crash. We don't need to live off of the pain and humiliation of the unfortunate. We don't need to celebrate our pornographic obsession with celebrity culture. We are better than that...Only with your courage, and your vision, can we begin to imagine a world of broadcasting where the general consensus of those with real power say 'enough is enough.'... Now is the time to admit and recognize that we aren't just businessmen, but the guardians of the human spirit."

Full audio here, via Ad Age.

Here's David Samuels, in an interview with Matt Haber, a fellow gloom-merchant, for the New York Observer. “Nobody wants to publish a collection of magazine pieces. It’s like saying, ‘Here’s a bag of used Kleenex: Would you like to hold it for a while?’… The publishing industry is convinced that this stuff is garbage. Increasingly, it is garbage. If you look at magazines today, how much is there that you’d want to read a year later, let alone 10 years later?”

The sick thing? Samuels is actually successful. His latest feature in The Atlantic, on the cultural significance of Britney Spears, was that august monthly's most talked-about cover in years. The magazine business has so spooked itself that even the star writers mope around as if they were penniless artists on the margin of society.

Samuels is not the only one. An acquaintance, winner of prizes, one of the most sought out writers of her generation, worries that her contract rates are no longer increasing, and that even entertainment titles seem under pressure. She emailed: "I thought that was the one safe niche. I guess I'm going to be a housewife."

Enough already! First of all, this pessimism is to a degree self-fulfilling: nobody wants to be entertained by downers. Second, have these whiners ever experienced the grind of high-frequency web publishing? (Actually, some have written long articles on this fearful future, which just depresses them even more.) Finally, these complaints by $5-a-word megastars must be pretty galling to all those wannabe writers who'll never get a cover; not to mention reporters at newspapers, which make magazine publishing look like the most robust of businesses.

On a visit to Tribune Company's New York operations, gnomic owner Sam Zell discussed the media company's online strategy: ""You can do your internet thing. I'm technologically infuckingcompetent." [Media Mob]