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This Just In: Cyberbitching

Web site cuts off media gossip

By Dan Kennedy

The News Mait Intelligence site -- a seething miasma of bitter complaints about cheapskate publishers, gutless editors, and boneheaded fellow employees -- has risen to Web heaven. A gossipy gripe board of sometimes dubious accuracy about working conditions at several hundred newspapers across the country ("This Just In," News, May 15), the site was dismantled recently after its founder concluded that it was taking over his life.

"I couldn't continue to spend hours and hours going through this with a fine-toothed comb," says Maurice "Mo" Tamman, a 33-year-old expatriate Brit who's a reporter for Florida Today. The beginning of the end, he says, came in October, when the trade magazine Editor & Publisher did a cover story on his site. Suddenly, the number of messages he received doubled, to about 150 a week. Already unhappy with the over-the-top quality of many of the messages, Tamman tried revamping the entire intelligence section, only to have two weeks' worth of work wiped out when his computer crashed. "I must say, I was devastated," he understates.

It was then that Tamman decided to give up on the gossip and refocus his efforts on the rest of his site, formally known as the News Mait Writers' Cooperative (http://www.newsmait.com). Although the intelligence section was what drew the most users, Tamman says he realized it was detracting from the rest of the site, which includes a variety of reference materials and an extensive job bank. Soon, he adds, he'll be putting up the results of a survey of newspaper salaries, and he is thinking about ways to offer online mentoring as well.

"Mait," by the way, stands for "My Aim Is True," the title of Tamman's favorite Elvis Costello song and a personal motto of sorts. So what does Tamman think of Painted from Memory, the new CD by Costello and pop smoothie Burt Bacharach? "You know what?" he responds. "I have not listened to it because I'm afraid to listen to it. When my kids go to visit their mother this Christmas, I'll probably break down and buy it, and disappear and listen to it for a few days."

Something he'll presumably have time to do now that he's no longer hip-deep in media hearsay.