Just how irrelevant has the “legitimate media” made itself?

Oh sure, we still read the Times-Picayune’s Saints coverage. Hell it’s Saints coverage… in a manner of speaking. A few of us still actually blacken our fingers each morning to do so, while the rest of us opt to trudge through trying to figure out how to navigate the perpetually-retooling nola.com this week, where, in exchange for clean fingers and 50 cents saved, we gladly subject ourselves to intrusive ads, superfluous, stats-inflating clicks to “page 2″ and seemingly-random, always aesthetically-displeasing “styling.”

We do it because we’re hard core. You’d have to be, being that on any given morning you stand a 20% chance of unwittingly stumbling across a Peter Finney piece. (The white space is the best part! And Pete is kind enough to make the white space 80% of the article. Thanks, Pete!)

But when you think about it, would it make a damn bit of difference if the Times-Picayune just up and stopped covering the Saints completely?

Think hard and try to remember the last time you learned something about the Saints from the Times-Picayune that you didn’t already know.

Exactly.

To wit, this Mike Triplett piece on Jon Stinchcomb from this morning. Now there’s nothing wrong with recapping a bit to set up whatever it is you’re about to write about. But here we have ten “paragraphs” of shit that we already knew. Stinch was drafted in the 2nd round, the first couple years of his career were pretty crappy, and then last year he kicked a little ass. That’s the whole “first page” (to use nola.com stat-hound parlance) of the article. And what was all this leading up to? If you can figure it out, let me know.

It wasn’t a total loss though. Later on in the article, Reggie Bush unwittingly hops the midnight train to Douchetown.

“I was talking to my coach after practice about continuing to look fresh, even though I might not feel fresh,”

Holy shit that’s awesome. I wonder if this conversation happened while walking on the beach, and if the coach hipped Reggie to the fact that the New Comfortip^® Nozzle will allow you to feel fresh, no matter how hectic life gets?

“I want to continue to look fresh, not only for myself, but my teammates.”

I’m sure they appreciate that, Reg. Just don’t let them find out where you’re keeping your products. And try not to blue yourself, you blowhard. You can still shoot an arrow in my buttocks anytime.

Meanwhile, Jeff Duncan refers to Jeff Faine (or, as it appeared on nola.com until about a half hour ago, “Jeff Feine” as the love child of Jerry Fontenot and Kyle Turley. Well aaaaalrighty then.

I mean, I guess there are a few people out there who give a shit that Faine is into art. Or that his mom shit a brick over his ink. I suppose that there are some people out there who need to be reminded that these guys are human beings. Actually, as a daily message board reader, I know that there are plenty of people out there who need constant reminders that these guys are actual people. So I suppose the leather-helmeted beat reporters are doing a service to humanity. Or something.

It would be one thing if this kind of fluffy personality piece were one or two of the day’s six or seven pieces on that day at camp. But I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the daily “Camp Confidential” article is usually the only “hard news” piece on any given day, and that it’s also the Peter-Finney-esque double-spaced, list-filled, “five-pager” containing about five sentences worth of anything anyone really gives a shit about.

Do yourself a favor. Tomorrow morning, skip the Times-Picayune and rest assured that you haven’t missed anything you can’t get in half the time, and with only 97% of the bullshit to trudge through (if you apply yourself,) from Teh Illegitimate New Media. The time you save can be used to take in an episode or two of Yacht Rock.

In the meantime, moosedenied would like to thank the fine folks who have recently stumbled upon this here website after having run Google searches for the following phrases:

“Kenny Wilkerson prick”
“Sean Payton asshole”
“Reggie Bush shirtless”

We have no idea how or why those searches led you here, or why you ran those searches in the first place. Honestly, we think it’s kind of creepy. But it’s also pretty funny, which makes us think we might be doing something right around here. If you happen to know what that might be, specifically, please let us know. Damned if we can figure it out.

Meantime, we’ll be trying to wrap our minds around how unbelievably funny Google’s complete search logs must be.