Hipster/sports guy Chuck Klosterman wrote a piece in Esquire this month (Benicio Del Toro’s on the cover) that was titled, “Four Ways to Save Sports Media.” He broke down the rescue effort into four bullet points, and we’ll go through them briefly. (If you don’t feel like it, that’s fine; you’ll just miss the newest bikini shots of Anna Kournikova that we casually slid into this post. A full post might be too much.)

1) Stop Reporting on TV ratings. Odd choice, but we can see how it makes sense. We refuse to be sheep, and thus we never find ourselves going to movies that sell lots of tickets (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings) or watching TV shows that are perched atop the Nielsen Ratings (CSI, American Idol, Grey’s Anatomy). But there’s probably a large segment of the population that does see low NBA ratings and decides to pass on the product.

2) Kill the Argument Model. What, you can’t stomach blogger Sean Salisbury slugging it out with bookish John Clayton? Every single, solitary show on ESPN is based upon this theory. This must stop.

3) De-Emphasize “The Fan’s Perspective.” Not sure we agree here, only because anything user-generated is all the rage on the net (see dominance of You Tube, Myspace and Facebook). Give the fans their chance to rant … before they start their own blogs and rival the popularity of your sports section.

4) Speed Kills (or at Least, Confuses). Couldn’t agree more. ESPN’s cred has been damanged seriously of late (it’s not just Mort – Ed Werder bricked badly on the extent of the Alex Smith injury this week) and the worst thing newspapers could do would be to try and compete with this madness in an effort to be ‘first.’ If they want to do it online, that’s one thing, but in print is probably too risky.

All in all, not a bad piece by Klosterman (whom we weren’t huge on until he rocked the Final Four with a must-read blog).

And if journalism isn’t want you want to talk about on a Friday, then check out Anna Kournikova’s latest bikini shots. She’s back to a non-rexy weight, which is always a good thing.