No Joke, and I'm Not Kitten Either

The whole economic model for modern journalism seems to be collapsing.

The New York Times (ad sales down 4.2 percent in November) is experiencing record losses, and one of its properties, The Boston Globe (ad sales down 11 percent in November), is bleeding millions and is on the sale block.


The Wall Street Journal has been accepting front-page ads for some time now, and in January will "right size" its paper by reducing its width by an entire column length, resulting in 10 percent less space for news.



Hundreds of job losses are coming at the NBC news division and MSNBC and, unfortunately, one of those jobs does not appear to belong to Tucker Carlson.


More job losses have happened this year at the LA Times, which has lost 25 percent of its editorial staff in the last five years. The paper is also on the sale block, and the editor was fired by his Tribune Co. bosses because he made the mistake of caring.

I'm sad to report that we here at The Cup of Joe are not immune to these economic forces.

Effective immediately, The Cup of Joe -- known since May 2006 for its tightly focused coverage of movies, TV, politics and kittens -- will cease all coverage of kittens.

This should come as no surprise: Critics have assailed The Cup of Joe's past coverage of kittens, calling it sloppy, erratic and decidedly unkitten-like.

It's clear that we were never fully accepted by mainstream kitten journalists, and the old guard kitten bloggers never took us seriously. The stodgy old guard treated me like I was the ball of yarn, and each and every time they sunk their claws inside my soft, gentle and rotund exterior with a blistering email or cruel anonymous comment, it was as if I was pierced by a thousand tiny daggars.

Sometimes you buy a $25 kitten toy and all Muffin wants to play with is the milk carton ring.

And so it goes for The Cup of Joe and the modern newspaper.