A legend at 34. One fact really caught my eye in this morning's Boston Herald coverage of former Herald reporter Paul Corsetti, who died yesterday: he was 54, and he left the business 20 years ago.

Corsetti was a minor newspaper legend, going to jail rather than giving up a source and carrying a gun after he was threatened by James "Whitey" Bulger. I'd forgotten the details, and was fascinated to be reminded of them this morning. But to think that he did all of this by the time he was 34. Amazing.

The obit doesn't seem to be online, and columnist Peter Gelzinis's tribute is for subscribers only. Gelzinis, in particular, is in fine form, observing that Corsetti was a hardbitten throwback to the days when reporters reported and handed their notes off to "rewrite men," the guys -- and they were pretty much all guys -- who stayed in the newsroom and did the actual writing.

Gelzinis quotes Corsetti: "What I do is get the story and hand it to you ... writers. Otherwise, what the hell would you do all day?" (BTW, the italics are accurate, but didn't make the transition to the Herald's website.)

Here's an earlier Gelzinis column on Corsetti that you don't have to pay for. Shhh! Don't tell anyone where you found it!

Post-post-modern Dowd. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd today quotes Newsweek quoting the New Yorker. Who does she think she is? A media critic? A blogger?

No marriage, no protection: no justice. Media Log confesses to not having followed the Rosie O'Donnell case in microscopic detail, so maybe I should have known this already.

But I hadn't realized that Gruner & Jahr had been able to introduce into evidence e-mails exchanged between O'Donnell and her partner, Kelli O'Donnell, because -- as the Times' David Carr puts it today -- "she was not entitled to the same protection as a spouse."

Just another small outrage.

Book report. If you'd like to hear me talking about my book, Little People, click here and scroll down a bit. You'll be able to listen to the interview Here & Now's Robin Young did with me yesterday on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM).

This morning at 11:15 a.m. I'll be flogging Little People on the PowerNomics Radio Network with host Tom Pope (click here to listen); and this evening, sometime between 7:30 and 8 p.m., I'll be on Nitebeat with Barry Nolan, on the Comcast Network (CN8).

New in this week's Phoenix. The real stakes over the Republicans' phony outcry re the leaked Democratic memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee.