Blogger David M noticed today on his blog that Victor Navasky, the far-left publisher of the far-left magazine The Nation is now in charge of Columbia Journalism Review, a fact that CJR does not reveal on its masthead.

Editor & Publisher reported that Navasky is wearing several hats, but his label on the masthead of the next issue will be “chairman.” Powerline is half-jokingly calling it “CJR-Gate.”

Maybe it’s because the day is done and I have an ice-cold Warsteiner in my hand, but why is this news? I mean, what do you expect from the Columbia Journalism Review?

Well, sure, it’s hypocritical that a far lefty is pulling the strings for a trade magazine that has a stroke anytime a conservative thinker earns any sway over a news operation. Just look at this issue alone.

If you peruse CJR’s top stories in the current issue, take a gander at “After Rupert”, which looks at News Corporation’s fate once Murdoch and the “brazenness of his right-wing journalism” kicks the bucket. Then skip over to Sinclair’s Shadow, a braying that Sinclair’s “canned news and conservative commentary” spell death for the Republic.

If you’re one of the 10 or so people outside the news biz who actually subscribe to the print magazine, you can check out the centerpiece “Stations of the Cross: The Rise of Faith-Based News.” In the teaser alone it mentions the “infus[ion] of a conservative worldview” and “a potent mix of God, news, and right-wing politics.”

And if I recall correctly, didn’t ace CJR reporter Corey Pein attempt to discredit Rathergate.com because it was at one time registered to Richard Viguerie, the “legendary conservative fund-raiser”? I mean, the idea that I’m bought and paid for by the GOP while the MSM Marxists with Microsoft can check their politics at the door when they come to work is even more laughable.

I don’t need Navasky in the masthead to prove to me that the left wing bought and paid for CJR a long time ago. I knew that when it ignored Memogate for months, and tried to paint the bloggers as the bad guys in Pein’s awful “Blog-Gate” piece. And wasn’t it CJR strongman Steve Lovelady who called the blogosphere “salivating morons who make up the lynch mob” after Eason Jordan stepped down for slandering soldiers without proof?

For a more in-depth look at the rot that has set into CJR’s bones, read the previously-linked Washington Examiner story, “Hammered: How blogs are shattering the arrogance of the Columbia Journalism Review … and why that’s good for journalism“:

Blogs these days are holding the MSM’s feet to the fire, forcing newspapers and TV news shows to reflect the country’s politics more accurately. CJR, “America’s Premier Media Monitor,” on the other hand, has been nudging the media leftward for four decades. Now it has to compete — and it’s not happy about it at all.

To this journalist, CJR has been a liberally-biased joke for years, and forever sealed that reputation with its handling, or lack thereof, of Memogate. Who cares which lefty is in charge of it? And what is more of a joke — CJR’s unabashed liberal bias or the idea that yet another lefty at the helm will help make it viable again?