Goodbye, hello

What David Carr's story about a reporter who left the Star-Ledger in New Jersey to become a flak and then returned to the paper to become a political columnist tells us, beyond the fact that Thomas Moran, at 52, found out he still wanted at a newspaper job, I don't know. But its interesting to note that the Star-Ledger laid off 40 percent of its staff a year ago and then, in July, had to respond to a massive corruption scandal. Maybe the paper suddenly realized the value of institutional memory. Maybe the layoffs gave the paper the margin to hire a few more bodies, meaning the bleeding has stopped. Or maybe Moran just didn't want to be a flak anymore and got lucky with an opening.