Ball of Con-Fusion

Nothing like losing your hard-on in the middle of a screw. James Hibberd's The Live Feed on The Hollywood Reporter website is as limp and embarrassing as Michael Jackson's virtiglio-spotted dead dick.

To wit: CNN tops Fusion data; Fox News loses it. Networks can get pretty intense when it comes to how their ratings data gets reported. But no organization can go from zero to batshit faster than Fox News. I've just spent about 24 hours struggling to get a story finished that's just about the dullest thing you've ever read.

Twenty-four hours? It should've taken five minutes to crank out this defensive poor me I'm getting fucked piece. Get me rewrite.

And hey, batshit is MY word. Executive summary: Nielsen's Fusion meshes news ratings with website popularity. CNN is #1, MSNBC #2, FOX #3. BFD.

Hibberd's ego won't let it go: Network publicists were outraged a reporter would dare write about such a measurement, one that CNN is touting in press releases, and responded to a simple request for comment with a flurry of passive-aggressive lines such as “Do you know how many reporters have turned this story down?” ... [Your predecessor] would never have reported this. ... Don’t you worry you’re hurting your credibility by reporting this?”

And after a couple conversations, I hung up on a network publicist for the first time in years.

Flushed with triumph, he jerked off under his desk.

This is NOT what Sun Tzu would consider "Artful Strategy."  Hibberd HIMSELF created the above scenario - if it even happened like he claims.

Hibberd whines: Then Fox News called my editor. Then my editor's editor... You start to realize their goal is to wear reporters down, saying anything and calling anybody to stop a story. Once a network takes it to that level, well, it starts to seem all the more crucial to write the damn thing ... even if the item is as lame as this one.
Instead of a day materializing "lame" stories, spend 24 hours absorbing R.L. Wing's "The Art of Strategy: A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic The Art of War." I'm thumbing through my 20-year-old copy now.

You're only as good as your last piece.

And at the moment Hibberd is the scorned Jenny Sanford of Reporters Paid To Cover TV News.