The Kicker

Fox News’ s “Live Desk” this afternoon is taking viewers on a “behind-the-scenes tour” of the Fox News operation (“How we do what we do,” per anchor Trace Gallagher ) kicking it off with a look around Fox News’ “nerve center” (“which is the news room,” Gallagher adds). There’s the national desk (we see a […]

Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary Clinton’s onetime campaign manager (who was pushed out a few months ago amid a fund-raising crunch; who got and, for a while, retained her job not because of experience but because Above All Else the Clintons Prize Loyalty; the one who referred to herself as “the queen bee” and was “known […]

Linda Douglass, who for years worked in television journalism, spoke to Howard Kurtz about becoming Barack Obama’s spokeswoman: [Obama] wants me to tell the truth. Coming from a background in journalism as opposed to PR, that was really the thing I wanted to hear. Speaking truth to power being more a priority for journalists than […]

I hope journalists learn to save the thumb-sucking explainer pieces for when they’re really needed. So wishes Eric Deggans, the St. Petersburg Times‘ TV/Media critic, in his column yesterday about the explanatory press coverage sparked by the Obamas’ “playful touching of fists” and how the “Media treat Obama like an artifact of a foreign culture.” […]

According to the “Blogopticon” from Vanity Fair (which really means, of course, according to “high-end Hollywood dinner party gossip”), this blog resides in the most “earnest” (and “news”-iest? “news”-oriented?) reaches of the blogosphere. (Speaking of plotting, don’t miss my colleague Megan’s Gate-rix, “your one-stop guide to the Scandals That Were—and the Scandals That Shouldn’t Have […]

Cropping up now among the remembrances of Tim Russert (including those of Russert’s remarkably poised 22-year-old son Luke, who spoke to Matt Lauer this morning) are some “What now?” stories about NBC News’ next move. Bob Schieffer captures for the New York Times the tough task before NBC of finding someone (some people?) to do […]

Perhaps you’ve not yet heard of Larry Sinclair, the YouTube star who attests that in 1999 he shared coke, crack, and hot man-on-man action with Barack Obama sometime “between November 3 and November 9 in the Chicago, Illinois area.” As Reason’s David Weigel quipped: “Which night? Eh, one of ’em.” Of course there’s absolutely nothing […]

This week, The Wall Street Journal exposed that Obama V.P.-vetter James Johnson had obtained favorable loan rates with the help of Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s now sub-prime-disgraced CEO. Yesterday, Portfolio’s Dan Golden advanced the story, finding a “Friend of Angelo” program that doled out special treatment to prominent Washington hands, including Senator Chris Dodd, whose day […]

Breaking news: The six percent advantage that Senator McCain enjoys among suburban white women has nothing to do with the relative wealth of these voters, but is based instead on the fact that women are “low hanging fruit” in the political process. If Senator Obama actually wants to “win big,” he’s really going to need […]

Today the Washington Post weighs in on a topic that will never make any List of Underreported Stories: The Daily Show (SNL/Colbert/Maher) Effect. I have a quibble with this bit: For those who don’t follow the media closely, satirical shows can hold even greater sway. If Stewart and Colbert and Maher are the ones installing […]

Michelle Obama! Come on down! You ARE the next contestant on “Kill the Witch!” As such, Fox News will attempt to belittle you in this on-screen graphic, using “urban” slang to reduce you to The Now-Disposed Vessel for Barack Obama’s Likely Unplanned Offspring (hat tip, Alex Koppelman at Salon)! “Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s […]

A page from Katie Couric’s CBS News Reporter’s Notebook yesterday, in which she declared that in the “endles” media post-mortems of the Clinton campaign, “Senator Clinton has received her fair share of the blame and so has her political team but:” [Like] her or not one of the great lessons of that campaign is the […]

Last week campaign coverage filled 50% of the overall newshole, “its third-highest level of weekly coverage in 2008,” says the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index from June 2-8. “The biggest week, coming in at 55% of the newshole, was Feb. 4-10, the Super Tuesday primary period.” Cable TV ceded 74% of last […]

Speaking of witches, Rachel Sklar sees one in the illustration accompanying Michael Crowley’s “What Undid Hillary” piece from Sunday’s LA Times. Which witch? Well, not Glinda the Good Witch…

George Packer tells the New York Observer: The press did discredit itself in the lead-up to the war. But I think the press redeemed in Baghdad what it missed in Washington. I’m not sure the public even knows that. Also from the Observer piece (in which a handful of reporters in or once in Iraq […]