While we stopped reading the New York Press after the paper's "Death of the Pope" fiasco, we still happened to stumble across the paper's list of its "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" via a del.icio.us tag. The New York Press list, composed about five months ago, includes a handful of writers and bloggers who were singled out for their, well, loathsomeness.

There's Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker, who came in at #38:

"Though far from a pioneer, Franken-headed Gawker Media emperor Nick Denton takes partial blame for the dubious distinction of introducing the word "blog" to grandmothers in Dubuque. Denton single-handedly sandbagged and snarked his way to a post-crash brand of media-mogul-dom through his ubiquitous cultural blogs—Gawker.com, Fleshbot.com, Wonkette.com—while letting his lowly writer drones peck away all day for Birkenau pay rates... Denton has been secretive about the income he made off of his blogger slaves; writers and editors looking for stories about his alleged riches are, he says, "obsessed, and disoriented: nostalgic, cynical and now, with the revival of independent web media, daring to dream again."

And, there's Weblogs Inc. impresario Jason Calacanis, who came in at #23:

"During the dotcom boom, Jason Calacanis was one of those floppy-haired internet hucksters who beat the drum so loudly for tech companies that he became one of the era's major figures. The New Yorker even commissioned a fawning profile when he was editor of the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter. Now Calacanis is back and shamelessly beating the drum for (guess what?) blogs. Calacanis is chairman of Weblogs Inc., which now hosts more than 70 blogs about, well, who the fuck knows? His is a blog company that will make money from advertising while allegedly paying his army of typers a pittance in a "partnership" that promises a payday from future earnings."

We just hope that The New York Press, under the tutelage of new editor Harry Siegel, is more readable and less mean-spirited than it has been for the past two years.