Hmmmm

This Slate piece about a la carte cable, by Daniel Gross (who's really good, especially on the auto industry) recounts pretty much every argument I made in my Washington Monthly story on the same subject.

There's a reason for this, which is that there's pretty much a finite number of important points to cover here, and you can figure them out by talking to the right people. But still. Even the tagline on the Slate homepage -- "You Shouldn't Have to Pay for Oxygen to get ESPN" -- sounds weirdly like the subhed to my piece: "Parents Should be Able to Pay for Nickelodeon Without Having to Pony up for MTV." I am left feeling half annoyed and half proud.

Gabe adds: There's a convention for how to rip off someone's story like this: somewhere in your ripoff piece, you mention the original piece, even tangientially ("as Zack Roth wrote in the Washington Monthly..."), and link to it. Gross should have done this.