The reach of Romenesko's media-heavy content is intensified because journalists love to read about themselves. Andrew Zipern, CyberTimes producer for the New York Times on the Web, "read[s] the Obscure Store every day, and increasingly, everyone I know in the media biz with a slightly campy or navel-gazing sensibility does as well." ("We do not refer stories to him," he stressed.) Romenesko is also well-loved by radio morning-show producers, who use him as a pro bono service bureau for wacky news briefs ("Woman: Jesus Gave Thumbs-Up on Murder").

An Internet columnist for the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, Romenesko gets up at 5 a.m. and reads every damn thing on the Web, or something like that, collecting curios from newspapers large and tiny, webzines and TV sites. (It used to be 7 a.m., before a plug in Brill's Content upped his readership and he felt obliged to offer more copy: "But that's it. I'm not getting up at 4:30.") He posts his links, with short descriptions, by 8:30 and corrects typos over lunch. He makes little money off the site -- so far -- but his sway over readers and his concentrated audience of opinion shapers make him an unseen and silent power broker. So I called him up to let him hold forth on his site, and the new ecology of online news, in his own words.

If he wants to link to this story, that's, you know, entirely his own business.

Obscure Store is an offshoot of a print zine, which you started in, what, the late '80s, 1990?

I started Obscure the zine in '89 as kind of a trade zine for the fanzine world ... I wrote about legal issues in the publishing underground. I'll be putting out the last print Obscure this week, actually.

Why? Lack of time?

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Yeah, time, and ... I did 45 issues in 10 years. For a zine that's a pretty good record, I think. I feel kind of disconnected from the fanzine world now. The Obscure Store's turned into more quirky mainstream rather than underground.

Why name the new site "MediaGossip.com"? Media writing tends to break down into criticism and gossip/business news, and I suspect in my heart people are more interested in the latter.

Frankly, I thought that "mediagossip" would have been taken, so I first searched InterNIC for "medianews." That was taken. Sometimes [the site is] gossip and sometimes it's serious media issues.

In Milwaukee Magazine I wrote a media column, "Pressroom Confidential," for 13 years, and it was widely read -- the best-read column in the magazine, according to our reader surveys. It even topped restaurant reviews. And that was despite people at the Milwaukee Journal saying that only insiders will read that. People who wanted to disparage the column would call it a gossip column -- not to toot my own horn, but it won national awards three consecutive years -- but people have a very intimate relationship with what they read in the newspaper and what they see on TV. When I was a Milwaukee Journal reporter, I went to get my VCR fixed. The guy says, "No charge, free. I like your stuff in the Journal." I mean, he watched my byline -- the guy in a VCR shop.

Does the Obscure Store or MediaGossip.com have any sort of critical or commentary purpose? Or are you just pointing out stuff you think is fun?

I think it's a combination. After Columbine, I tried to round up a lot of the stories about school kids being harassed by officials. I think it was pretty obvious to people looking at my site for several days that something was going on in this country -- not only the various scares, but the crackdowns on kids wearing trench coats or having blue hair.

Your Pioneer Press column is about the Internet business, and the ".com" in the name "MediaGossip.com" seems very characteristic of the Web circa 1999 -- like Salon, after being online almost four years, is suddenly "Salon.com." What do you think of the prospects of Web publishing as a business?

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