[news] Wimblehack

Here's something I found about half cool and half horrible; your assessment may vary.

The New York Press has announced Wimblehack!, a Wimbledon-style elimination tournament meant to pick the absolute suckiest from the 32 worst campaign reporters working today. Each round will be decided on the basis of one week's published stories, with the last match decided based on the two finalists' post-election coverage. The competitors have been pressed into service involuntarily and will only be allowed to drop out if they bribe the judges or submit a videotaped confession of their journalistic sins.

Mainstream election coverage desperately needs gadflies, and Wimblehack author Matt Taibbi, unrestrained by the need to seem fair, stabs at many of the the most pathological things about contemporary campaign reportage. However-- here's the horrible part-- he's also apparently obsessed with slamming female reporters that look too masculine, which makes three or four of the 16 segments unreadably awful.

If you want to get a feel for the piece without the sexist bullshit, read the intro and then skip down to "George Will (7)", the beginning of the Greedy Conference (other sub-brackets: Mendacious Conference, Vapid Conference, Pompous Conference). The James Bennet quotes are delightfully meaningless.

[Edited to add the link I forgot. Oops!]