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I have to admit, I love(d) Molly Ivins, I was sad when she died. Congrats Keith.

"Newscast", "newspaper", "journalism", "newsweeklies"... what does this have to do with Keith Olbermahn?

A few weeks ago I spoke on a panel hosted by the Medill Journalism School on the future of alternative newsweeklies. One of my fellow panelists was the guy who runs this association so I have a sense of what their objectives are with this award. This is all about promoting their organization and this new award (which is, in turn, designed to promote their organization). They figure they can get the most PR mileage in the lefty blogs and elsewhere by connecting this award to Keith. Nothing wrong with that - pretty smart actually. Of course, it is odd to give an award from print publications, named for a print journalist to a "news" anchor but what the heck.

What next? An award from Granma?

I was a Molly Ivins fan, and you, Mr. Olbermann, are no Molly Ivins. Plus, would someone please call a moratorium to the lame phrase "speaking truth to power." You would think someone who is a newspaper publisher could think up something more original instead of falling back on trite language.

And Bob, I buy your public relations theory. Who knows, maybe his publicist had a hand in this award. That person has been awfully busy lately.

Did he bring a bottle of merlot and two glasses?

Bob,

Take a look at this! Proof once and for all that Stelter is a shill for Olbermann.

http://www.mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t32649_1.asp

TVNewser caught fudging numbers for Olbermann again:

http://www.mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t32703_1.asp

TVNewser fudges the ratings every day. He uses the "live plus" data which records the number of live viewrers plus the number of DVR recordings made of a particular show. The research is clear that with many sporting events and news shows that a high percentage of viewers never go back and actually watch the programs and it's a known fact that advertisers don't use them to place advertising buys as they consider the data unreliable. But that doesnt' stop Olbermann and the PR department at MSNBC and little Brian from using them to pimp up Olbermann's ratings, which by the way, weren't good last week (real ratings can be found at Inside Cable News). I expect another "Special Komment" any day now.

More for the Bush/Republican resume :

The massive federally funded program for rebuilding Louisiana homes is short nearly $3 billion, administrators told a state legislative panel here today, leaving uncertain for now how the owners of roughly 100,000 flood-wrecked houses here will be compensated.

The report represented the latest crisis for the aid effort initially created to distribute $6.9 billion in federal money to the owners of homes destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina who lacked enough insurance money to rebuild.

More than 20 months after the Katrina catastrophe, tens of thousands of houses remain vacant, in part because of administrative delays in the aid program, the largest single source of direct federal help for homeowners. To date, only 16,000 of 130,000 applicants have received money.

Who cares about New Orleans?

The Bush Administration is too busy screwing up Baghdad !