Posted by Hurricane Irene on August 29, 2011 at 22:40:05:
From his apartment in Evanston, Jim Romenesko singlehandedly changed the way the journalism business is covered in America. The blog he started in 1999 — providing links
to newsroom gossip, confidential memos and official announcements — became an influential, indispensable online briefing for media-obsessed readers everywhere.
So the announcement last week that Romenesko, 57, planned to “semi-retire” at the end of the year to work on other projects elicited an outpouring of appreciation for the
site and the man. “Wow on the Romenesko news,” one fan tweeted. “I can’t imagine a world without him guiding me through the day’s big media news.”
One reason Romenesko cited for the move was a desire to return to his roots as a reporter by starting a new web site. He began as a police reporter for the Milwaukee
Journal and later held jobs with Milwaukee magazine and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. After launching his media gossip blog and selling it to the nonprofit Poynter
Institute, he became known less as a reporter and more as an impartial gatekeeper — an aggregator of others’ stories. With rare exception over the last dozen years, he
avoided injecting his own point of view whenever he linked to the work of reporters, columnists and critics.
I was one of those exceptions.