FREAK FACTOR. On MSNBC, Juliette Kayyem was yakking with Keith Olbermann about the terrorist threat involving Boston. Dirty bombs, radiation, blah, blah, blah. You know what? If we're going to die, we're going to die.

So I switched to CNN, where Anderson Cooper, doing party duty, was interviewing Don King. Much better. If TV coverage of inauguration day has been lacking anything, it's the freak factor. I had hoped E! would have Joan Rivers yowling outside the parties, but no such luck. Right now, the E!'s showing some horrible program on Jerry Lewis. So Don King's as good as it gets.

King, whose hair isn't nearly the conversation piece that it used to be, was wearing a tux and more chains than a prisoner at Abu Ghraib. He praised Bush - or, as he referred to him about 15 times, "George Walker Bush." He compared him to Abraham Lincoln. He praised "No Child Left Behind, which is so vitally important." Hmmm ... is King getting any of that Department of Education money?

"You're the man, Anderson Cooper," King said, certainly the first time anyone has said that.

King also called himself a "Republicrat," a word that had Paula Zahn puzzled. "I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before," she said. Obviously she's never listened to Ralph Nader. Lucky woman!

DIAL "Z" FOR REALITY. Zbigniew Brzezinski absolutely ate Walter Russell Mead's lunch on The NewsHour tonight. Of course, Mead was at quite a disadvantage: it's not easy being an idealist when you're the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead's biggest problem, though, was that he really didn't have a coherent answer for Brzezinski's critique of Bush's "I Am the World" speech.

"If it was to be taken literally," Brzezinski said, "it would mean an American crusade throughout the entire world." Mead responded by saying that Bush may very well mean what he says (a view that Media Log shares, with considerably less happiness about that prospect than Mead evinced). Mead pointed to remarks by Cheney today that suggest the White House is already gearing up for its next foreign military adventure - this time in Iran, possibly using Israel as a proxy. Brzezinski replied that such an action would be "destabilizing." To say the least.

Brzezinski characterized Bush's speech as a repackaging of his old ideas in new containers. Instead of "fear," Bush is now talking about "freedom." Instead of "terrorism," it's now "tyranny." But when he pronounced Bush's goals as "vacuous," Mead differed.

That led to an exchange over China. What, Brzezinski wanted to know, could Bush possibly do about China and its horrendous human-rights record?

Mead started to say something about how the Bush administration could encourage China's dissidents. Brzezinski, obviously disdainful, cut him off. "We need to deal with the North Korean bomb. We need China for that," he said. End of discussion.

So thoroughly defeated was Mead that, as Margaret Warner tried to close the segment, he got in a shot about Brzezinski's days as Jimmy Carter's national-security adviser, and the criticism that Carter's concern for human rights was sometimes said to be more intense in places like, say, Argentina than in the Soviet Union. Brzezinski responded that the Carter administration managed to do both. And there it ended.

BUSH BY THE NUMBERS. Brian Williams tried out his best perturbed look tonight in noting that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi today vowed to continue fighting Bush's "extremist" agenda. The wingnuts don't flood you with as many e-mails if you signal them that you think the Dems are looney-tunes.

But then Williams had to contend with a tough Bush critique from an unexpected source - NBC Washington-bureau chief Tim Russert, who wondered how Bush would apply his aggressive doctrine to Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. How indeed?

Russert, though, was just warming up. It turned out he had some new poll numbers with some very bad news for our only president. For instance:

- Bush's approval/disapproval rating is 50 percent/44 percent, the worst of any just-re-elected president since Richard Nixon.

- Only 40 percent of respondents say that removing Saddam Hussein was worth it; 52 percent say it wasn't worth it. Among independents, Russert reported, 56 percent say it wasn't worth it.

- Was Bush's victory a mandate to change Society Security? Thirty-three percent say yes; 56 percent say no.

- Just 33 percent say that congressional Democrats should act in a "bipartisan" manner; 57 percent say they should "provide balance" - as in, fight like Nancy Pelosi.

Russert: "The president has to be very, very careful not to overplay his mandate."

So how did Bush ever get re-elected, anyway?

SLATE CHECKS IN. Fred Kaplan and Chris Suellentrop both have good analyses of Bush's speech, even though I don't think either one quite gets it. Kaplan focuses on the liberty part, Suellentrop on the religion; neither thinks the rhetoric amounts to much more than - well, rhetoric. But that's not the experience of the past four years, is it?

INDECENT DISRESPECT. There's a lovely phrase in the opening to the Declaration of Independence that I think gets at much of what is wrong with Bush's presidency. Jefferson writes that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" compels him and his fellow revolutionaries to explain why they are separating themselves from the British monarchy.

During the presidential debates in October, John Kerry made this very point, saying that when a president takes military action, "you've got to do it in a way that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, in other words. But Bush and his allies on the right sneered and smirked, accusing Kerry of sucking up to the French. Bush twisted Kerry's quote around into a cheap applause line: "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people." That's not what Kerry said, but never mind.

Today the Guardian reports on the results of a BBC poll of people in 21 countries that reveals deep distrust of the United States under Bush, and that suggests negative opinions of the White House are beginning to harden into negative opinions about the American people as well. The nut:

Fifty-eight per cent of the 22,000 who took part in the poll, commissioned by the BBC World Service, said they expected Mr Bush to have a negative impact on peace and security, compared with only 26% who considered him a positive force.

The countries are a disparate bunch, ranging from Turkey and Brazil to Germany and France.

In the United States, the political conversation, aided by a fearful and compliant media, has become so dishonest and corrupt that it's impossible even to discuss such things as the BBC poll and be taken seriously. Try talking about this on Fox or MSNBC and you would be accused of appeasement, and our international critics would be portrayed as the "Axis of Weasels." Let's have another round of freedom fries, baby!

But that kind of superficial pap can't paper over the fact that Bush has destroyed our standing in the world, which is the single worst thing he's done during his four years in office.

I think the fact that Bush didn't actually win in 2000 gave us a lot of slack, making it easy for the world to despise Bush, but not the American people. Now, though, we've actually elected him, and we have to face the consequences of our decision.

The Guardian quotes one of the pollsters, Doug Miller, thusly:

Our research makes very clear that the re-election of President Bush has further isolated America from the world. It also supports the view of some Americans that unless his administration changes its approach to world affairs in its second term, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs.

This is what Bush has done to us. This is what we have done to ourselves. We had the world behind us after 9/11. And we've pissed it all away. Jefferson would be apoplectic. Something for the fat cats to think about as they make the party-going rounds tonight.

SPIFFED-UP DISSECTOR. Danny Schechter has unrolled a redesigned weblog - complete with audio.

MISGIVINGS ON THE RIGHT. Maybe we can hope that conservatives will slow Bush down. Peter Robinson, writing for National Review Online, was less than thrilled with Bush's speech. Robinson explains:

Bush has just announced that we must remake the entire third world in order to feel safe in our own homes, and he has done so without sounding a single note of reluctance or hesitation. This overturns the nation's fundamental stance toward foreign policy since its inception. Washington warned of "foreign entanglements." The second President Adams asserted that "we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." During the Cold War, even Republican presidents made it clear that we played our large role upon the world stage only to defend ourselves and our allies, seeking to changed the world by our example rather than by force. Maybe I'm misreading Bush - I'm writing this based on my notes, and without having had time to study the text - but sheesh.

In today's Boston Globe, conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby calls Bush a "radical conservative." More radical than conservative, wouldn't you say, Jeff?

WHAT'S A FEW MILLION? (PART II). Eric Boehlert writes in Salon that the true cost of Bush's inauguration party may be closer to $70 million than to the widely reported figure of $40 million. Boehlert explains:

For the media, simply reporting on the cost of the inauguration proved to be a challenge. Most major outlets stuck to the lower, albeit still unprecedented [er, not really], figure of $40 million, which the Presidential Inaugural Committee said it hopes to raise from private donors. But a more accurate figure may be $50 million. That's the amount cited by the Washington Times (which is plugged in to GOP circles). But even that number doesn't take into account the nearly $20 million that's being spent for security, putting the real cost at closer to $70 million, instead of the media's preferred $40 million.

I don't begrudge Bush his party, but $70 million would be more than double what Clinton ever spent. It does look like the feds have backed down on plans to stick the District of Columbia with the bill for security. But still.

JIBJAB IS BACK. Sequels are never as good as the originals, except maybe with The Godfather. But Second Term is worth a watch, even if the anti-Bush humor is so mild that it seems designed to appeal to Republicans as much as Democrats.

LIBERTY BULL. Bush did two things in his 21-minute inaugural address that were noteworthy. First, he linked the war in Iraq - and possibly wars to come, since he never actually used the word "Iraq" - to an American mission of spreading liberty across the world. Second, he wrapped up his domestic agenda in that quest for liberty, casting proposals such as the privatization of Social Security in the gauzy haze of freedom.

It was a skillful performance, but that was to be expected. Anyone who still thinks that Bush is going to fumble his way through the prepared text of a major speech just hasn't been paying attention for the past four years.

To the extent that one speech can help shape the national conversation, it was also incredibly dangerous. The projection of American values is not just a neoconservative idea - it was a central tenet of the muscular liberalism of the pre-Vietnam Democratic Party as well. But the Bush administration's planning and execution to date has been so arrogant and inept that it is terrifying to contemplate what he's got in mind next. Iran, perhaps?

The key to Bush's address came early:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world....

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

Is that all? The problem with a goal this sweeping, as we've all seen, is that this president does not mean it as glittering rhetoric - he means it as something he actually intends to try to do. And though he said his march for freedom is "not primarily the task of arms," that has not exactly been the experience to date.

Here's how he tied it to his domestic agenda:

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance - preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Except that we already know what it means. It's the "retirement savings" part of this that seems closest to his heart. And what he intends to do is dismantle Social Security - a system whose finances will be solvent for decades to come if he just tweaks it a bit - in order to give us all a chance to gamble our retirement away on the stock market.

Despite Bush's narrow re-election victory and low approval ratings, he is treating his second term as a ratification of everything he's done to date, and as a mandate now to do more of the same. Even Tim Russert, usually more sycophant than cynic, criticized Bush for his already-notorious Washington Post interview of last weekend, in which Bush said that last November's election was all the accountability he needed for his preposterous Iraq policies.

What we can hope for, I suppose, is that Bush's hubris, already bursting at the seams, will trip him up as his second term gets under way, forcing him to be a very different sort of president than he might like. Second-term-itis ruined Richard Nixon, and it nearly destroyed Ronald Reagan's presidency as well. (I would invoke Bill Clinton, but I'm not sure that hitting on the interns comes under the category of second-term-itis.)

Unfortunately, unlike the situation with Nixon and Reagan, Congress isn't going to stop Bush. He can only stop himself.

PROPS TO GEORGE STEPH. Once a decade, I say something nice about ABC News analyst George Stephanopoulos. Today's the day. While over on CBS Bob Schieffer was puzzling over Bush's failure to mention Iraq by name, Stephanopoulos was holding up a copy of Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy, which Bush has reportedly found so inspirational that he invited the former Soviet dissident to the White House last fall.

Sharansky's book argues - as Bush did today - that the spread of democracy and liberty throughout the world will make us all safer.

It's hard to disagree. What I worry about is Bush's notion that he, personally, can make it happen - and that unilaterally invading a country is one of the ways of accomplishing it.

WHOLE LOTT OF LOVE. Two years ago, the Bushies got some well-deserved praise for pushing then-Senate Republican leader Trent Lott out of the way after he made his segregationist sympathies clear at a birthday party for Strom Thurmond.

So what was up with Lott's full-scale rehabilitation? It's not like he had been sent into exile. He's still a US senator from Mississippi. He has occasionally made himself useful, as in his opposition to the FCC's rush to deregulate media ownership even more than it already has been. But what has he done to deserve center stage at the inauguration?

Lott truly got to bask in the glow. He was just a few feet away when Bush denounced racism. He got to introduce and shake hands with Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-American minister who gave the benediction. I mean, Bush let old Trent get himself cleaned up real nice. But why? I don't get it.

PROTESTS ON CABLE. C-SPAN 2 is carrying the ANSWER Coalition's CounterInaugural live.

LIBERTY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. I'll have more to say about the president's just-finished inaugural speech in a bit. It was important because there were so few euphemisms: he told us exactly where he's going. Duck!

Interesting, though, that in a speech in which he invoked the word "liberty" repeatedly, there was damn little of it in front of the Capitol. In just the last few moments, I saw a police officer lead away a woman who was flashing the peace sign with both hands, and a group of officers forcing other demonstrators to take down their banner. I could only make out the word "war."

I thought the authorities were on hand to provide security - not to protect the star attraction at this choreographed spectacle from the inconveniences of the First Amendment.

ENTER REHNQUIST. A truly moving moment: the elderly chief justice, suffering from thyroid cancer, just made his way to the stand, walking with some difficulty and assistance, although he managed the last stretch by himself. The tracheotomy tube is clearly visible, but other than that he looks like himself, right down to the robe with the Gilbert & Sullivan stripes.

RATHER PECULIAR. Within 30 seconds of my scanning around the tube, I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin (on NBC) and Jeff Greenfield (on CNN) voice lame bromides about bipartisanship. The hell with that. I know where I want to be: CBS, where Dan Rather is anchoring his first big event since we learned he'd taken back his apology over the National Guard documents.

He's got as his sidekick the ancient and obscure Republican operative Ed Rollins, which may be a sign of just how low the Dan's stock has fallen. Bob Schieffer's in the booth, too.

Bush and Cheney are both outside now, waiting for the proceedings to begin. The sunlight doesn't seem to be bothering Cheney. But he does appear to be looking furtively about - perhaps for a man with a hammer and a wooden stake?

Trent Lott is speaking. Why? Is Bush going to come out for segregation?

BLOGGING BUSH'S BASH. There's been a change of plan. I've returned to Media Log Central, and will be blogging the inauguration through most of the day. Only Hunter Thompson could do this hideous spectacle justice, but I'll do what I can.

A little while ago, during my drive back to the compound, I heard right-wing talk-show host Mike Gallagher interview Tod Brilliant, of Not One Damn Dime Day, which is urging a consumer boycott today to protest the war in Iraq.

Gallagher was amazingly polite - he's never going to be able to play with Rush and O'Reilly if he keeps this up - but his manners were exceeded only by his cluelessness. He asked Brilliant whether Not One Damn Dime's real goal was to find a way to make money on the Internet. After Brilliant assured him that was not the case, Gallagher followed up by asking whether Not One Damn Dime was "against capitalism." Really.

All this was interspersed with the clumsiest on-air sponsor announcements I've heard in quite a while - three times in 10 minutes, Gallagher had to interrupt Brilliant to read ads.

Gallagher also let Brilliant pull a fast one. Brilliant claimed that because John Kerry favored the war, Not One Damn Dime would have called for a day of protest even if Kerry had been elected president. I, uh, think not. (Maybe Brilliant, a Nader supporter, would have staged his own one-person boycott.) But Gallagher said nothing. Probably thinking about the next sponsor.

By the way, Gallagher, Ramblin' Gamblin' Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, and an assortment of other right-wingers can be heard locally on WTTT Radio (AM 1150), which is apparently devoted to the proposition that Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the like just aren't right-wing enough, damn it!

WHAT'S A FEW MILLION? There's the Bush-whacking that he deserves, and there's the Bush-whacking that takes place because liberals can be just as stupid as conservatives. In the latter category: prolonged moaning over the $40 million cost of Bush's inauguration, as though he ought to take it all and donate it to tsunami relief. (Where money doesn't seem to be a problem, by the way.)

So where's the context? Here's the context. Cost of Bush's 2001 inauguration: $40 million; cost of Clinton's 1997 inauguration: just a shade under $30 million - down from the $33 million he spent in 1993. (By the way, the CNBC.com story I cite refers to Bush's spending this year as a "record," even though it appears to be basically the same as four years ago.)

Yes, Clinton spent a bit less, but not that much less. And of course you've got to adjust for the fact that Republicans drink better-quality booze.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. Google, the company everyone loves, knows more about you than you might realize. Also, how the Internet drove coverage of Metro International's bad behavior.

I'm on an assignment that keeps me away from my computer most of the time, so blogging is likely to be light for at least the next day or so.

METRO MARKET WATCH. There appears to be a lull in the Metro wars today, so I thought I'd take a closer look at what is likely to be the most enduring issue: the matter of whether the New York Times Company's acquisition of a 49 percent share of Boston's Metro constitutes a violation of antitrust laws.

Let me hasten to add that you won't find out the answer to that question here. Rather, I want to show that the Greater Boston newspaper market is a lot more complicated than either the Globe or the Herald has portrayed it so far.

According to reports, Herald publisher Pat Purcell, who has taken his antitrust complaint to the Justice Department, is defining the market as comprising three daily papers: the Globe, the Herald, and the Metro. Let's look at the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Because the Metro publishes only on weekdays, I'm only going to look at Monday-through-Friday numbers

• Globe: 451,471
• Herald: 240,759
• Metro: 180,000 (est.)

Under this formulation, the Globe controls 52 percent of the market; the Herald, 28 percent; and the Metro, 20 percent. Purcell notes that allowing the deal to move forward will give the Times Company 72 percent, which, he argues, violate guidelines governing anti-competitive behavior.

In fact, though, Purcell could paint the picture in broader strokes. If you consider the entire Eastern Massachusetts market, the Times Company also owns the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, whose weekday circulation is 103,113. Purcell's Community Newspaper subsidiary owns four daily papers with a total weekday circulation of 50,608: the MetroWest Daily News (Framingham), the Daily News Tribune (Waltham); the Daily News Transcript (Dedham); and the Milford Daily News. That gives Purcell's Herald Media a total daily circulation of 291,367.

(Note: the ABC report for the MetroWest Daily News appears to combine the other three dailies, but that's not entirely clear. Nevertheless, the 291,367 figure matches up closely with a total daily circulation figure that appears on page 12 of Herald Media's online media kit. PDF file here. So if I'm off, it's not by much.)

Let's run the numbers again. Under this formulation, the Times Company's weekday circulation (the Globe, the T&G, and the Metro) would be 734,584, or 72 percent of the total daily newspaper market. Herald Media would control 28 percent (the Herald plus the four suburban dailies). With that exercise, the numbers look exactly the same.

But wait. In statements filed with ABC, Purcell says that the paid circulation of his weekly papers is 233,679. On the Herald Media website, he claims a weekly circulation of 517,242. The lower figure would appear to be for his paid, community-based weeklies (there are 89, though some are free); the higher number apparently includes all of his weekly holdings, which also comprise 21 shoppers and specialty publications.

How do Purcell's weekly papers affect his antitrust argument? It's hard to say. To be sure, it's an apples-and-oranges comparison, but when you factor in the weeklies as part of Purcell's holdings, there's no question that the Times Company - though still dominant - doesn't look quite as fearsome. The weeklies are a big business for Purcell, with considerable economies of scale in terms of shared expenses and the cross-selling of advertising.

Now let's go a little deeper. In their public statements about the Metro deal, Times Company spokeswoman Catherine Mathis and Globe publisher Richard Gilman have referred to Greater Boston as the most competitive newspaper market in the country. Whether that's technically accurate or not, it is certainly true that there are more options here than in many parts of the country. Here, for instance, are a few ABC figures for other daily newspaper groups in Eastern Massachusetts:

• Ottaway Newspapers: the Standard-Times (New Bedford) and the Cape Cod Times; total weekday circulation, 85,313.
• South of Boston Media Group: the Patriot Ledger (Quincy) and the Enterprise (Brockton); total weekday circulation, 92,228.
• Eagle-Tribune Publishing: the Eagle-Tribune (Lawrence), the Salem News, the Daily News (Newburyport), and the Gloucester Daily Times; total weekday circulation, 105,524.
• MediaNews Group: the Sun (Lowell) and the Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg); total weekday circulation, 67,151.

There are small, independently owned dailies sprinkled across Eastern Massachusetts as well. One, the Daily Evening Item (Lynn), whose circulation is 14,764, is a content partner with Herald Media through the paper's affiliation with Purcell's TownOnline.com. And some of the aforementioned newspaper owners are formidable. Ottaway, for instance, is part of the Dow Jones empire, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, in some ways the New York Times' archnemesis. MediaNews is a national chain headed by the colorful, notorious Dean Singleton. His flagship paper, the Denver Post, is edited by former Globe managing editor Greg Moore.

There's no question that the Times Company is the dominant media organization in New England, never mind Eastern Massachusetts. In addition to the Globe and the T&G, it owns a piece of New England Sports Network through its part-ownership of the Red Sox. The Globe is also a content partner with New England Cable News. Adding the local Metro to its portfolio will make the strong stronger.

Nevertheless, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is far more complex than the tale of Boston's two dailies.

MONEY SHOT. There's pseudo-news and real news in John Strahinich's Metro update in today's Boston Herald, which is accompanied by the characteristically restrained front-page headline "GLOBE PARTNER PEDDLES PORN."

The pseudo-news is that a Swedish company that televises nudie films owns a 28 percent share of Metro International - which, in turn, is the parent company of Boston's Metro newspaper. The New York Times Company, which owns the Boston Globe, plans to buy a 49 percent share of the local Metro.

Europeans tend to have a more enlightened view about all things sexual than Americans do, although I suppose it's noteworthy that the Swedish company's fare is racy enough to have raised the hackles of the Norwegians some 10 years ago. Come on, folks, just change the channel.

Still, there's big news farther down in Strahinich's story: Partners HealthCare and Brandeis University are reportedly rethinking whether to advertise in the Metro following reports of vicious racist jokes in the upper reaches of Metro International management. Partners is the parent company of Mass General Hospital and Brigham and Women's. Strahinich writes:

"We'd have to evaluate the situation, obviously, if we decide to do additional advertising in the Metro," said Partners spokeswoman Petra Langer. "It's obviously disturbing."

Added Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon: "Brandeis would not want to advertise in a venue that would be connected to this kind of behavior."

This is obviously a potential deal-breaker, and is the sort of thing that could persuade the Times Company to walk away from the $16.5 million deal - or to move ahead and buy the remaining 51 percent so that they don't have to do business with Metro International. Strahinich quotes an internal e-mail from Globe publisher Richard Gilman to the effect that things could change between now and the closing date.

BARRING A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS, TODAY'S FINAL POST ON METRO. Rory O'Connor has posted his latest.

JOHN WILPERS WRITES. The former editor of Boston's Metro, who was Rory O'Connor's principal source, sends this to Media Log. This is unedited - if you've been following the story, you'll get it. If not, you'll need to catch up.

As you can imagine, I've been following the dust-up over the Metro racism business since it finally came out. I noticed a comment or two on your blog suggesting that I did nothing when the event happened, that I should have walked out, and that I waited two years to "break" the story after I'd been "fired." ...

The morning after the event, I approached a Metro corporate exec suggesting that Steve apologize, much as I had approached an exec at AOL when I worked there when a speaker had made similarly offensive remarks about women. My appeal and others caused the AOL exec to force the speaker to apologize to the same corporate gathering the next morning. Now THERE was a corporate culture that "got it."

My similar suggestion (and I cited the AOL example) to the Metro exec, obviously, was not taken. I was not about to walk out of the dinner (as one blogger suggested) and jeopardize my job in what would have been a futile attempt to change a company whose culture was so sick as to not even realize the impact of the joke.

As to one blogger's suggestion that I waited two years and for the NYT-Metro deal to come out about this, I was interviewed by both Rory O'Connor and Alex Beam at least a year ago and haven't spoken to them since other than to get a call last week from O'Connor warning me that he was finally writing the story.

And, finally, I was not fired by Metro. They changed both Philly and Boston to bureaus with all or most editorial decision-making transferred to the NYC office. There is no more editor-in-chief of either the Philly or Boston Metro, just a news editor.

Now I'm the editor-in-chief of the Washington Examiner, a new attempt to redefine metro newspaper publishing by distributing a substantive (64 pages) daily newspaper free to homes in and around metropolitican areas, starting with Washington D.C. and San Francisco. We made our announcement Wednesday.

Wilpers and I actually competed with each other in the early 1980s. He was the editor of a few Boston-area weeklies, among them the Winchester Star. I was the editor of the Woburn Daily Times Chronicle's Winchester edition. You never know.