Dan Abrams's Power Grid: Ranking the media elite, sans common sense

Power lists are, by their nature, kind of stupid. The idea that something as subjective as influence can be empirically measured and rank-ordered is inherently contentious: Lists are meant to provoke arguments, not agreement.

But some power lists are stupider than others. And perhaps the stupidest one yet comes to us courtesy of Mediaite, a new media news and analysis website founded by former MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams. I won't bother rehashing what Mediaite's all about, since it's already been amply covered in the Washington Post and Forbes. Nor will I bother making fun of its eyestrain-inducing name, which "sounds vaguely medicinal, like something you'd give to a toddler suffering diarrhea," as Slate's Jack Shafer puts it, or unpacking its cloudy and potentially conflicted relationship with Abrams's media consultancy.