Media Power Rankings (cont.)

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6. Mike Missanelli, host of the The Mike Missanelli Show ESPN-950 (Philadelphia): Rarely do we get fireworks between ESPN family members, but this interview between Philly radio host Missanelli and ESPN's Skip Bayless was remarkably combative. Missanelli extended the invite to ESPN's in-house contrarian after Bayless made some generalizations ("Philly style rude, crude, dangerous behavior in the stands") about Philadelphia fans on his First Take show.

"I thought Bayless was really off base when he said the word 'dangerous' in his characterization of Philadelphia fan behavior," Missanelli told SI.com. "I asked him repeatedly to come up with incidents that would substantiate his point."

You can judge the winner yourself. Missanelli conceded he might have been harsh with his use of the phrase "nitwits like you," referring to the national media, but he was happy with the result (and no doubt with the pub that followed from the interview).

"My intent was to battle for the Philadelphia fan base, knowing that a Philadelphia audience was listening," Missanelli said. "And I felt I gave him every opportunity to nail me back to the wall. He didn't. Instead, he diverted the issue by questioning my credentials. I said 'Google me' as a way of suggesting that it wasn't really important who I was, but what was important was the topic."

7. Brent Musburger, septuagenarian: No matter what you think of Musburger -- and you can feel free to chastise him for overhyping events with the verve of Don King -- he is the personification of survival in a business that too often tosses out people once they get their AARP card. It's remarkable that 19 years have passed since he was whacked by CBS (at the time he was the biggest sportscaster in the land). Musburger has had an interesting second act at ESPN, calling everything from major college football to the Indy 500. Wish him a happy birthday: The man turned 70 on May 25.

8. Charles Barkley, TNT: This space has long been a supporter of Barkley's free-wheeling, impromptu, devil-may-care nature on TNT's popular Inside The NBA show. No stranger to controversy, Barkley's coda to the season included muttering the p-word under his breath at a longtime foil, producer Tim Kiely. He needs to be smarter than that. It's poor form (any insult used repeatedly by Don Imus automatically qualifies as stupid) and there are young viewers in TNT's audience.

"While Charles often makes jokes about his producer during our telecasts, he used poor judgment on Saturday during our NBA coverage," a TNT spokesman told SI.com. "His comment was inappropriate and TNT apologizes to our viewers. We have spoken with Charles privately about it and will not have any further comment."

9. The Pulitzer Prize: While attending graduate school at Columbia, I realized that the closest I'd ever come to winning a Pulitzer Prize was when I walked by that year's crop of journalism jurors. A number of years ago, I asked Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, whether his organization would consider establishing sports as its own category. He said it was an interesting suggestion. Well, another year has passed and once again sports has been shut out of journalism's most prestigious prize.

The last sportswriter to win the award was Sports Illustrated's George Dohrmann, whose work with the St. Paul Pioneer Press uncovering academic fraud in the men's basketball program at the University of Minnesota won him the Pulitzer for beat reporting in 2000. Is there a Pulitzer bias against sports? Perhaps not overtly, but the current Pulitzer Board lacks anyone with a background in sports, and some remarkable sports journalism (e.g. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams' work on BALCO in the San Francisco Chronicle) failed to get the honor this decade. Maybe next year.

10. Baltimore Sun: Journalism jobs are dropping with drumbeat regularity. Most of the working world recognizes that our number will come up at some point. But the way the Sun handled its business with sportswriters David Steele and Rick Maese and photographer Elizabeth Malby was particularly cruel.

In a piece he wrote for RealClearSports.com titled "Press Box Layoff: How the Baltimore Sun Fired Me," Steele described the pain of learning about his layoff while covering an Orioles game for the paper. "Not that there is any good way to tell someone he's been laid off," Steele wrote, "just as there is no good way to fire a manager. But there's a way not to fire him -- ask Willie Randolph."

The immediate instinct is to never read the paper again, but that only hurts those survivors left behind in the newsroom. Instead, we move forward and make a suggestion: Follow the talented Steele and Maese on Twitter.

Richard Deitsch spent the previous academic year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. Among his study areas were the intersection of twentysomethings and the sports blogosphere and the relevancy of the Olympics in the 21st century. His Media Circus column will appear Mondays on SI.com.