The complicated story of the death of Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner–who famously transitioned to Christine Daniels in 2007 and then apparently detransitioned back to Penner in 2008–raises complicated questions as the media is grappling with telling the story of one of its own, but also the complexity of talking about transgender people.

Confession: I’ve teared from watching TV about three times in my entire life. All of those times I was watching E:60. It’s true – the most consistently moving, compelling and uplifting stories on television are being reported on ESPN.

For much of the media, the summer of 2009 was also the Summer of Texting. Hardly a day goes by without some story about the dangers of cellphone us, from driving to sleep deprivation. The New York Times has an entire topics page dedicated to the “text messaging” beat! But along with auto safety, some of the old and out of touch have wondered: Is texting ruining spelling skills? Not so, according to a new study.

The Los Angeles Times issued a correction today sure to satisfy the MSNBC haters.

In their TV grid yesterday, they put MTV’s Jackass in the MSNBC line-up where Countdown with Keith Olbermann was supposed to go. That’s right – Jackass instead of Olbermann.

Here’s the full correction:

When is a big exclusive not actually so exclusive? How about when the blogosphere gets the story long before a mainstream outlet.

This is what happened when the Los Angeles Times reported a lengthy story about Firas Alkhateeb, who created the now-famous Obama-as-Joker poster earlier this year. The story was picked up by many outlets, and the LAT was given the scoop. But that’s not entirely accurate.

While the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment has never been successfully challenged politically, it is now being challenged economically: as a practical matter, the press is not so free. So, how to pay for the vital probings on behalf of the entire polity, in this time of forced deprivation?

It took what? A hundred years for papers to get their ethical issues worked out? Blogs will do it faster, but they’re nowhere near it yet. For now, we readers should stay wary, and blogs should be aware of the impact of their business model on their ethics. One TMZ scoop does not a revolution make. And in the meantime, forgive us for waiting for theLA Times to confirm your scoop.