Let the hand-wringing begin: CNN—the cable news network oft cited, rightly or wrongly, for playing news pretty much ‘straight down the middle’—has dropped to last place among the four nets in prime time. (The insult-to-injury factor: one of the channels that has bested CNN is its own sister network, HLN (née CNN Headline News). Yep: Just when it seemed Nancy Grace couldn’t get any more reminiscent of Greek tragedy…)

We’ll have more to say on this shortly. In the meantime—speaking of epic tragedy—the Times, judging from its ironic-or-maybe-kinda-apt Media Decoder image layout, seems to have selected a scapegoat in the tale of “Lo! The New Low”: