I was sorry to read over the weekend of the death of Dan Seligman, whose “Keeping Up” column was for years not just the best thing in Fortune magazine, but the best column of its kind in American journalism. Though the tone was unfailingly light and witty, the man swung a mean bat with telling effect, often against his journalistic cohorts. Unlike many of his fellow scribes, he could crunch numbers. And he pioneered the use of the Nexis database as a tool of media criticism. Here is a typical sample from the March 17, 1986, edition of Fortune:

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