"I could not have imagined doing this five years ago, as a guy who just plain likes paper."

Howard Kurtz, on leaving The Washington Post to join The Daily Beast.

Reporters [have] asked me what this meant for the death of print or the decline of The Post. I pushed back, as I happen to believe that newspapers are going to be around for a long time. Let's not get carried away here.... Still, there's an awful lot of energy and excitement in the Web world.

Yes, there is.

"Sarah Palin rips non-Muslim Obama over mosque while Lady Gaga remains silent."

Sorry. I'm just trying to rip off Howard Kurtz.

"We have the nirvana that people are looking for."

Says Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time Magazine.

Eh... I think I'll look for the nirvana that you can't look for. That seems more nirvana-y. 

"I don't think you can be a journalist and carry water for a politician, and that's what they were doing: 'Here's the line on Palin.'"

"These are political hacks, and I think they should stop calling themselves journalists. It discredits the rest of us."

So said Tucker Carlson, quoted in a Howard Kurtz analysis of the Journolist leaks on The Daily Caller.

Kurtz concludes: "None of this quite adds up to a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, and there is no reason to believe that some conservative commentators don't have similar discussions. But there is no escaping the fact that some of the list's liberal literati come off sounding like cagey political operatives."

"Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the *fear* that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her."

Notes Howard Kurtz:

As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say "do it, because you're going to be on 'Glenn Beck' tonight." And for all the focus on Fox, much of the mainstream media ran with a fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist....

The administration's concern about Beck stems in part from his campaign last year that prompted the resignation of White House environmental official Van Jones over divisive remarks -- a controversy that some news organizations acknowledged they were too slow to cover. Ironically, Beck defended Sherrod on Tuesday, saying that "context matters" and he would have objected if someone had shown a video of him at an AA meeting saying he used to pass out from drinking but omitting the part where he says he found Jesus and gave up alcohol.

"Jon [Stewart] has always been a crypto-neocon."

"Could he be coming out of the closet? ... A neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality."

Bill Kristol comments to Howard Kurtz who's trying to figure out what it means that Jon Stewart is making fun of Barack Obama.

I'd say it mainly means that Barack Obama is President of the United States. "The Daily Show" isn't going to work unless it makes fun of the powerful.

"It was meant to be funny and insightful and translate the superb journalism Chris and Dana do in print and online into a new format."

"I don't think the series worked as they intended."

LOL. Cringe.

The withering and often personal criticism of Milbank and Cillizza exploded Friday afternoon after the liberal Web site Talking Points Memo posted and criticized the latest video. Both men, who frequently appear on television, became high-profile targets, particularly among left-leaning bloggers but also on such outlets as Twitter.

"It's a brutal world out there in the blogosphere," Milbank said. "I'm often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn't be."

Yeah, and you shouldn't be such a pussy either. You don't have the monopoly on public discourse that you would like, so you whine that it is "brutal" and "feroci[ous]." But you were given a huge mainstream media platform for a comedy routine and you did bad comedy. You wanted to be big professionals and big amateurs at the same time. You deserved a takedown and you got it. Man up. It was you not the bloggers who lacked standards.

The Nico Pitney/Dana Milbank confrontation on "Reliable Sources" — about that seeming planted question.

Pitney comments: "The only thing that surprised me was when Dana turned to me after our initial sparring and called me a 'dick' in a whispered tone (the specific phrase was, I believe, 'You're such a dick')."

What the NYT did completely differently from the Wall Street Journal...

... and the different fates of David Rohde and Daniel Pearl.

Perez Hilton thanks Miss California for giving him the chance to make gay marriage a big news topic all last week.

Oh, and of course, he lets President Barack Obama off the hook for having exactly the same "hateful" opinion that infects the feeble mind of the pathetic Miss U.S.A. contestant. This is all a big media performance. Don't you understand that, Howard Kurtz? Don't you get Perez Hilton? I don't know if you've read his website before....



(Via Newsbusters, via The Rhetorican, via Instapundit.)



And I love that new word "espew," which I take to be a portmanteau of "spew" and "eschew." I'm not going to espew it. I mean, I'm going to espew it everywhere. Use it in a sentence today.

"When the novelty of the first African American president wears off, the sight of Obama talking on television might have less impact..."

"For now, though, the White House is cranking up the volume, staging Obama's first presidential news conference [Monday night] -- in prime time."

How long does it take people to get something through their skulls? The Prez is black. I've been used to it since months before it happened. (And it seemed normal to me back when he was a long shot.) Are people really still going around dumbfounded, marveling that this — this! — happened in America? What is wrong with you? Get up to speed, people.

And yes, I'm very interested in the first big press conference. But that's because the country seems to be going to hell, and I want to see some competence and accountability. If Obama's people think they are "staging" some feel-good diversity show — it's "the first African American president ... talking on television"! — they must be crazy.