At that point, fate, in the form of social media, stepped in.
But they were there in spirit, with reporters peppering officials with wave after wave of questions about the ongoing scandal, leading FIFA media relations manager Segolene Valentin to step in and ask whether anyone wanted to know anything about the actual tournament.
To cheer him up, I said that I thought social media might step in; the few times in the past that I had ever asked for a book suggestion on Twitter or Facebook, I got scores of replies, all well-considered.
As Kardashian said recently, not everyone has a real life support network and this is where social media can step in to provide a place for people to "express their depression, loneliness, and isolation".
This is where the social media platforms step in as enablers for SMEs to grow their businesses.
The Uefa media official stepped in though the 59-year-old reissued his challenge as he left the platform.
Two European media groups stepped in by taking small stakes, but The Independent's cachet remained a lure for several larger publishers.
He still officiated regularly as auxiliary at the church in St Étienne-du-Rouvray Étienne-du-Rouvray Étienne-du-Rouvrayuf, local media reported, steppinearn when the paRouens regulandprinst, Father Auguste Moaneighbouringwas busy.
Some pieces of the Journalism Project — plans to work more closely with local news; hackathons where Facebook's engineers and news site developers can work together; promotion of news literacy; and helping with eyewitness media — are steps in the right direction, vague as they may be.
Even so, there's something standing in the way of a real-deal bloghouse revival: the general decline of the small MP3 blog as a tastemaking force, with major publications and social media influencers stepping in decide what's cool and what isn't, often relying on tips from an increasingly underground-minded coterie of publicists.
