MEDIA WARRIORS. The New York Observer media blog The Transom issues a declaration of war against Salon. Much hilarity sure to ensue. This item explaining the declaration, though, is right on:

WHEREAS, Ms. Walsh cannot perceive what Observer senior editor Tom Scocca has since dubbed The Inverse Dean Scream Effect�the inverse part being that the Dean Scream made total contextual sense to those in attendance at that long-ago post-caucus rally in Iowa but only appeared ludicrous in endless media transmissions, whereas Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner routine was hilarious and sense-making in transcript yet not, according to attendees such as Mr. Lehmann, really at all funny in person, and;

That about sums it up. Sometimes the facts really do look different on the ground. And now, thanks to Scocca, we have a name for that phenomenon.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.