Media cage-match: City Pages’ Kevin Hoffman, offering a play-by-play of a dustup in the comments at MinnPost between MP writer David Brauer and the Star Tribune’s Jill Burcum, calls Brauer, "a parasite whose job is wholly dependent on summarizing the reporting of the very entity he’s attacking." K-Hoff then goes on to make an entire column based entirely on a he-said/she-said in the comments field — although it’s an eminently readable one at that. He, like Burcum, also accuses Brauer of having an aversion to  doing research for stories via telephone, a claim Brauer says isn’t true. At the end, Hoffman reveals that he didn’t himself pick up the phone for the piece, adding, with trademark K-Hoff bravado, that "anybody who has a problem with it can meet me at Cuzzy’s." Like, to fight you?  (It seems everyone wants in on this one: MPR’s Bob Collins gets a jab in about City Pages moralizing about journalism in the first place.)

Spanking the prognosticationationers: The UpTake’s Noah Kunin calls out MnIndy and others for jumping the gun on the Ventura-Senate-run story, making the (in our case, false) claim that many outlets reported Ventura’s entry into the race before listening to NPR’s interview. He’s got a point — that word "vows" in our headline is strong, although Jesse’s first-person use of "I run" is pretty open to interpretation — but we stopped far short of claiming "confirmation" of the news. Curiously, Kunin trumpets The UpTake’s "vigourous" editorial review process, failing to note that said process missed some typos. "Prognosticationation"?

Doctor scrubbed from Bachmann site: "Thank God for people like Michele," said Bob Tatreau at a mid-June press event when Rep. Michele Bachmann called for opening strategic oil reserves in hopes of securing $2/gallon gas. But perhaps the sentiment doesn’t go both ways. Shortly after MnIndy looked into Tatreau, a Bachmann supporter who has had his medical license revoked in two states and restricted in Minnesota, mention of a Woodbury fundraiser he hosted for her has been removed from Bachmann’s campaign site (it’s still archived by the Wayback Machine).

Ridiculous political news: Talking Points Memo points out one of the most ridiculous political stories the Associated Press has produced of late, a survey of pet owners that finds — wait for it! — that pet owners prefer pet-abundant McCain over the "petless Obama." A local contender for most-ridiculous-political reporting honor is The Rake’s Rich Goldsmith who served up some "unbelievably sexy hotdish" in "The 2008 Most Beautiful People at the Capitol Awards." It is Lahammeriffic, but…

When Fox attacks: A few days old by now, but still worth a read: The New York Times’ David Carr on the "scorched earth" relationship between Fox News and reporters who dare cover it.