BEST NEW MEDIA WAR FRONT

The fact that Google News has been compiling and presenting the information of hundreds of websites without paying them for years, is one of the biggest yet least talked about hustles on the Web. In the interim, Google has been allowed to continue the tactic while racking up more billions as local publications continue to feed the machine. That’s why it raised the ire of many when Google recently cut a deal with Associated Press to compensate them for their content being used on Google News. Meanwhile, French news site AFP has sued Google for $17.5 million for the unpaid use of their content, and a group of Belgium publishers are also suing Google for linking to their content. Either the golden days of Google using Google News as a value-added feature—without having to pay the content providers they link to—are over, or there are about to be a lot of happy news providers who stand to make a nice chunk of change from the resulting pay-outs.

BEST SCARY MEDIA EVENT

Discovering that a company as seemingly conservative and staid as Hewlett-Packard actually spied on employees and journalists, and allegedly considered planting actual corporate spies in the newsroom of News.com to monitor information flow, woke a lot of media pros up to the reality of reporting in the 21st century. If a printer company is this Machiavellian about the media, who knows what other companies (with far more sensitive profiles) are up to? Do you think the HP board dug deeply into the private lives of Jay Z and Pharrell before letting them appear in those snazzy new commercials? On the up side, imagine what it feels like to be Carly Fiorina (ex-HP CEO) right now—pretty sweet. She’ll be releasing her tell-all book, Tough Choices, which slams the board of directors currently under the microscope, on October 9th. 

Best Mantan Moreland Tribute

When Spike Lee filmed Bamboozled, the over-the-top story of two black street performers who are recruited by a television network to perform in blackface, he probably never imagined that his fiction would turn into real life at the hands of one of his former collaborators, Flavor Flav (“The Flavor Of Love” VH1). Between takes of date contestants literally crapping themselves, hiding cold sores, nauseatingly long open-mouth kissing sessions with their host and trying to beat the hell out of each other, we get to see Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav giggle and laugh at the contestants’ antics as he—clad in alternating colorful pimp outfits—holds buckets of fried chicken and adjusts one of his many clown hats before delivering more pearls of wisdom. Perhaps PE frontman Chuck D said it best in a recent blog post addressing the embarrassing show, “Perhaps Flavor is an introduction to black folks killing off the n---er in ourselves.” If the show itself wasn’t absurd enough, VH1 has enlisted several “Queer Eye” rejects to titter and speculate about the course of the show during commercial breaks. We’d poke our own eyes out, but we’re sure to go blind first. 

BEST NY-BASED TV SHOW

The story of reality TV is starting to get old as television producers endeavor to document every single facet of human life imaginable. At some point we are sure to see everything from live executions (Dial star-80 if you think we should fry him, star-81 if you vote for lethal injection, etc.) to live bowel movements with multiple camera angles. But amid all the Donald Trump hair flopping and Tyra Banks drag queen shimmies, one show manages to take its subject seriously and actually provide a bit of real insight into a normally cloistered world. “Project Runway,” hosted by Mrs. Seal (aka Heidi Klum), is set at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, drawing contestants from around the country to compete in the cutthroat world of New York fashion. The surprise breakout star of the show is Chair of the Department of Fashion Design at Parsons Tim Gunn who acts as mentor to the upstart designers as they construct their designs and compete for a slot at New York’s fashion week. If your straight boyfriend suddenly starts cheerily tossing lines around like “Carry on …” and “Make it work!” (Gunn’s trademark catch phrases), chances are he’s not part of the “down low” movement, it’s more likely you have a closet “Project Runway” fan on your hands.

BEST ENDING OF A SYNDICATED COLUMN/STRIP

The Washington Post recently reported that Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” comic strip is most likely not coming back and will miss being seen in over 300 newspapers across the country. That McGruder finally ran out of pseudo intellectual mishmash to spew is no shock, but it is an odd turn of events considering that his lowbrow Cartoon Network show was just renewed for a second season. Perhaps this will leave readers with more time to bear witness to the I’m-more-outraged-than-you pissing matches between the Daily News’ Stanley Crouch and Errol Louis. As for the reason the newspaper strip has been cancelled, the Washington Post’s Laura Sessions Stepp indicates that McGruder may have “gone Hollywood,” once again proving that the man-child who once foolishly called Condi Rice a “murderer” is still his is own worst enemy. As good ole grandma used to say: good riddance to bad rubbish.

BEST BITCH SMACK AFTER LONG SILENCE

AOL/TimeWarner CEO Richard Parsons telling the Financial Times that YouTube isn’t worth the billion-dollar price the creators want for it.

BEST NEW TV SHOW TO AVOID

“Pants Off Dance Off,” the creation of Viacom’s Fuse TV (gobbled up by MTV after the upstart network generated some competition by actually showing music videos) is quite possibly the least offensive, yet most vapid reality show on television. Hundreds of attention whores converge on Fuse’s midtown Manhattan studio and audition for the show by stripping down to their skivvies while amused producers sit back, snicker, cringe, leer and finally learn what it must feel like to be a guy named Rocko from the Bronx charged with finding new dancers for the mob’s newest strip club. It comes as no big surprise that the show’s creator Tad Low (perfect name!) is also responsible for the annoying “Pop-Up Video” show that once aired on VH1. The most nonsensical part about the show is that you never actually get to see anyone nude. On television, dancers (usually people you’d never ever want to see naked) strip down to their underwear and are cut off just before removing their last pieces of coverage. The show then instructs viewers to visit the Fuse website to see “the full show.” Call us pervs but going to the site and being met with blurred out naughty bits is pretty lame. That said, we have to tip our hats to the producer’s genius, because it’s a relative “certainty” that a DVD is in the works in which the dancers really are shown nude. Right now, dozens of “Pants-Off Dance-Off” alumni just felt their blood run cold—even the blood down around their naughty bits.