The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: March 28

2. Cablevision's Vision of the Press

The latest evidence that the newspaper saviors are beginning to cry for mercy? Sam Zell, last seen cursing randomly at newsroom employees during a morale-building visit, might now be unloading Newsday, the reeling Long Island daily.

Such is life in the fast lane of newspaper turnaround. So who's the next angel of mercy for the dead-tree press? Cablevision(CVC Quote).

That's right: The company that owns cable television properties, plus the Knicks and Rangers and believes the media has all the charm and utility of a fire in a cockloft might just be running toward the front of the newspaper parade.

Unfortunately, of course, that parade is marching in lockstep off the lip of a cliff ... but, again, that's about newspaper finances, which is an old story. This is about the future of news and how a company that all but rolls down steel gates to keep reporters from the teams they actually serve to keep in front of the public's eyes will function as ... the public eye. Perhaps failed family scion Jimmy Dolan, who is currently working diligently to drive Madison Square Garden into a ditch, will be reassigned to Newsday and earn his way back into good public graces as the cub reporter Jimmy Dolan Olsen?

Seeing this latter-day Olsen with a pen and sliver-thin pad might give rabbit punches to the guts of others in the press corps. But maybe he would have an idea of where to stake out the next fired Knick coach along the roadside, as certain reporters had to do when Larry Brown was bound and gagged while awaiting his firing in enforced silence.

Dumb-o-meter score: 85. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.(NWS Quote) and Mortimer B. Zuckerman, who owns the New York Daily News, also are reportedly interested. But seeing a company that requires a Freedom of Information Act to interview a backup point guard transforming its employees into ink-stained wretches might be worth the price of admission. Spare change and pocket lint on the newsstand.