CNN

Felix Gillette looks at CNN, which might want to rename itself The Corpulent News Network.

How did the story of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State appointee begin? John Koblin traces the story as it made its way from NBC's Andrea Mitchell to every other media outlet imaginable. "It has unspooled in a confusing way," Politico reporter Ben Smith says.

Leon Neyfakh meets Carrie Kania, the publisher at Harper Perennial, "the small but proud paperback unit of HarperCollins that she has lovingly presided over since the fall of 2005."

Plus: Candy Pratts Price... Big Shake-Up at New York Tech Meetup... Malcolm Gladwell.

Cindy Adams woke up on Election Day knowing exactly where to spend her evening. There were parties all over town. Lefty celebrities would be out in force. But the longtime gossip columnist for the New York Post wanted to be at the place she felt would be “the heartbeat of the world”—namely, the CNN Grill.

Like many of her pals in the media, Ms. Adams had first frequented the CNN Grill during its original iteration at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. There, the cable news network had sequestered a centrally located sports bar, plastered the walls with flat-screen televisions tuned to CNN, concocted some thematic drinks (the caucus cooler!) and threw open the doors.  read more »

Andrea Mitchell started it.

It was she who told viewers of NBC’s The Nightly News With Brian Williams on Thursday, Nov. 13, that Hillary Clinton “is under consideration to be secretary of state.”

Since then, nobody seems to have known what to think. But that hasn’t ground the Madame Secretary boomlet to a halt—on the contrary, it only accelerated it! Over the past few days, we’ve heard: Hillary is under consideration for the job. She’s been offered the job! She hasn’t been offered the job (which was only news because someone else had said she had).

Last night, we read that she had been offered the job, and not only that, she was going to accept it! More recently, it’s been “unclear,” but her husband is being vetted—that’s the news of the day for Nov.  read more »

ALBANY—David Paterson appeared on CNN this afternoon to talk about—well, it wasn't clear.  read more »

Not to be a party pooper but those CNN holograms weren't actually holograms, according to the geeks.

You see (adjusts glasses), real holograms are composited from a pattern of light reflection and interference. Laser beams are involved. CNN's technology was simply a matter of shooting political reporter Jessica Yellin with a bunch of different cameras and mashing them all together on a TV screen.

CNN used 35 HD video cameras set up around a circular room. The video cameras were spaced six inches apart, 220 degrees around their subject (including will.i.am) and shooting him/her simultaneously. In CNN's own gleeful story about their "holograms," Chuck Hurley, the Washington bureau's senior producer of video, called it simple chroma-key technology that's been taken "to the Nth degree.  read more »

On Tuesday night, some 71.5 million viewers tuned in across 14 television networks to watch Senator Barack Obama's victory over Senator John McCain, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Overall it was the highest rated election night since 1980.

On broadcast television, ABC News was big winner. On cable, CNN dominated.

The Nielsen numbers for total viewers via THR:

ABC: 13,135,000

NBC: 12,018,000

CBS: 7,829,000

Fox: 5,137,000

 

CNN: 12,304,000

Fox News: 9,044,000

MSNBC: 5,889,000

Like many of you, we reveled in the history we witnessed last night. It was something we never thought we'd see in our lifetimes; something that a few years ago seemed not only impossible, but also laughable. And yet there it was, spread out across our television screens in living color. This was not only a great moment to be American, but also a citizen of the world. Yes, that's right...

CNN turned their correspondents into holograms. Can we just say: bananas? Also: are you kidding?

Shortly after 7 p.m., Wolf Blitzer went live to CNN reporter Jessica Yellin from Grant Park in Chicago to check in with her about the mood of the crowd.  read more »

The Web is revving its engine for tomorrow's big night. Here's where you can tune in on your computer and your iPhone:

ABC News is offering live streams of its own TV broadcast and they'll have Web cams at the McCain and Obama campaign headquarters. CBS News will be offering county-by-county, up-to-the-minute results with live blogging, and a simulcast of its TV coverage, starting at 6:30 p.m. Around 2 a.m, Katie Couric will live chat with viewers on CBSNews.com and CNET.com. MSNBC has a neat results widget, which posts real-time results to your blog or Facebook profile. CNN YourRaces allows you to customize your own tracking tool (with local races too), and then watch the results in real time through CNN's site or on your  read more »

Are you ready for this? Next Tuesday, at CNN's Election Center in New York, an Obama campaign strategist will be in the studio to comment on the incoming voting results. Only he'll be … (wait for it) in 3-D! As a hologram!

Instead of the normal flat-screen version of talking heads, the Obama spokesperson's image will be projected from Chicago and into the New York studio -- in a 360 view. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer will essentially be talking to the strategist just like when Princess Leia sent Obi-Wan Kenobi a hologram message that he was her only hope. Only there will be talk about Ohio, rather than Alderaan.  read more »

Today, Julia Ioffe of The New Republic writes about the personal pitfalls facing political reporters and bloggers limping to the finish line after two years on the trail.

Here's a bit from the article about CNN's Candy Crowley:

At campaign rallies, Crowley, a self-described loner, is mobbed by 'CNN junkies,' all of them clamoring for a picture or an autograph. ('That's why I love my iPod,' she says.) Crowley was with Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in February 2007, and has been going nearly non-stop ever since. She has heard all the speeches, covered all the campaign ads. She can't remember her last furlough and her "strategic nice reserve" ran out two months ago. Now in the final lap, Crowley just wants to go home.

Curious to see how CNN's Soledad O'Brien lives? New York magazine's S. Jhoanna Robledo took of tour of the newswoman's $4.6 million, three-bedroom, three-bathroom loft in Chelsea and brought along videographer, Jonah Green, so you can see it for yourself. (Before you make the joke, the apartment contains no Situation Room.)

At one point, the brokers show Ms. Robledo Ms. O'Brien's bathtub, teeing up the quip, "That tub can fit an entire news team." Even Lou Dobbs?

On Thursday, during the first taping of CNN's new comedy show (which is set to debut this coming weekend), former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told host D.L. Hughley he will be voting for Barack Obama in November.

No word yet from the McCain campaign about how many former White House press secretaries are supporting him.

CNN is reporting that a protestor attempted to handcuff Karl Rove during a panel discussion in California. The woman tried to arrest the former Bush White House Deputy Chief of Staff-turned-Wall Street Journal and Newsweek columnist for treason. In the accompanying video, Mr. Rove does not look the least bit amused.

The cable network's report comes from ABC affiliate KGO of San Francisco. Naturally, they also have a T-shirt.

Today, Drew Griffin landed CNN's first interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The fifteen minute interview, which took place in Reno, Nevada, is currently being replayed on each hour of CNN's Situation Room.

Not long ago, we interviewed Mr. Griffin about his trip to Wasilla, Alaska, where he had travelled to work on the CNN documentary Sarah Palin Revealed.

“There was no shortage of color,” Mr. Griffin told us at the time.

CNN is getting into the comedy business.

Executives at the cable news channel announced today that starting Oct. 25, CNN will air a Saturday night comedy show hosted by D.L. Hughley, in which the comedian mocks the news events of the previous week and interviews the real-life reporters who covered the stories.

The show is tentatively named D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.

"D.L. is a news junkie who is bursting with things to say about what is going on in the world—most of them funny, all of them thoughtful, none of them predictable," said Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. in a release today.  read more »

Just in time for Halloween, CNN's Anderson Cooper and his sidekick, Erica Hill, offered a playful little segment last night on Anderson Cooper 360 in which they noted Nancy Grace interviewing her possible "dangerous doppelgänger." (Actually just attorney Renee Rockwell, who does look a lot like her host.)

Watch till the end for the cross-dressing payoff, as well as a nice plug for Blackberry.

And, of course, if you like the segment, you'll love the commemorative T-shirt.

Get psyched for hero-palooza 2008!

Today, CNN executives announced the lineup for their second annual populist awards show, which will be hosted by Anderson Cooper from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and air on the cable news network's multiple platforms the night of Thanksgiving.

The event celebrates the achievements of "ordinary citizens accomplishing extraordinary deeds." The winners are determined in part by ordinary citizens with Internet access. The whole hero-fest jives with CNN's populist drift in recent years (see Dobbs, Lou; audience reaction meters on debate nights; CNN's iReport; etc).

More from the release after the jump:  read more »

The third quarter numbers for the cable news networks are officially out today. Overall, the stretch from June 30 to Sept. 28 proved to be yet another strong period for the cable news networks, especially compared to the gloomy news coming from newspapers and broadcast television networks.

Today, each of the major cable news networks fired off press releases touting their achievements.

Releases after the jump.  read more »

Today's award for vaguest news story goes to CNN, which presents this report from California's KFSN about a list of "offensive" words taught to students at Tioga Middle School that included "vulgar descriptions for sex acts and slang derogatory names" in a lesson about "inappropriate profanity at school."

During the course of the 1:35 minute report, we hear from parents who are outraged and can't believe it, even to the point of being dumbfounded. (Seriously. One parent interviewed said, "I was outraged. I couldn't believe it. I was just dumbfounded.") The school's principal offered an apology but asserted that "the intent of the lesson was to be proactive and to make sure that our students aren't making inappropriate choices when they're on campus.  read more »

Looks like CNN got taken by two of Howard Stern's employees this morning. Rather than the usual call-in taunt of "Baba-booey!" two Stern Show regulars, Richard Christy and Sal "The Stockbroker" Governale, went down to Lehman Brothers headquarters and pretended to make out with each other behind a CNN standup report by Allan Chernoff.

So far, the clip has made its way around the blogosphere: VH1's Best Week Ever started it; then Videogum picked it up, as did Dealbreaker and New York magazine's Daily Intel.

Only Towleroad seemed to know it was a Howard Stern-related prank.

Who needs delegates and vice presidential nominees, sex on skates and funny hats to hold a convention? Not Lou Dobbs.

CNN announced today that next week Mr. Dobbs will be hosting a "convention" targetting independent-minded voters during his regular 7 to 8 p.m. hour on CNN.

More from the release:

 

In the wake of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, CNN's Lou Dobbs will host the first-ever televised independent convention. "Lou Dobbs Tonight Independent Convention" airs throughout the week of Sept. 8 to focus on election-oriented topics from an independent perspective not traditionally the focus of the Democrats or Republicans.

"Independent Convention," which airs during the regularly scheduled Lou Dobbs Tonight timeslot from 7 p.

 read more »

CNN executives announced today that the cable news network is expanding its news-gathering operations in 10 U.S. cities.

From the release:

The new operations will be based in Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Houston; Las Vegas; Minneapolis, Minn.; Orlando, Fla.; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Seattle. This expansion will also allow CNN to build stronger partnerships with affiliates in new and existing locations across the country. CNN already has bureaus in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. 

The newly expanded newsgathering operation will be staffed with a mix of traditional general assignment reporters with CNN's current roster of "show-based correspondents," who are attached to many of CNN's daytime and prime-time programs, and newly designated "all-platform journalists.

 read more »

Not since a California woman called 911 to complain that Burger King messed up the Western BBQ Burger she ordered her hungry, post-Tae Kwon Do class kids, has such an amusing fast food-related police action hit the Web.

CNN (with the help of WTLV) is reporting that a Jacksonville, Fla. man named Reginald Peterson was arrested after calling the police to complain that a Subway Sandwich maker failed to put mayonnaise and mustard on his Spicy Italian sub.

Sure, it's a sign of a slow news day that CNN is featuring this story prominently on its homepage, but the fact that the network is selling an Onion-esque T-shirt with the headline Man calls 911 to report bad sandwich is a pretty good idea.

Update, 5:30PM: The Smoking Gun (of course) has the mugshot and the 911 audio.

On Wednesday night, CNN premiered its new documentary Black in America: The Black Woman and Family in which correspondent Soledad O'Brien takes a look at "the varied experiences of black women and families and investigates the disturbing statistics of single parenthood, racial disparities between students and the devastating toll of H.I.V./AIDS."

On its first night, the doc put up big numbers for the cable news channel. According to a release from CNN, over 2.1 million viewers tuned in, including 966,000 in the 25-54 demographic.

More from the release:

According to Nielsen Media Research data, CNN’s two-hour premiere of Black in America: The Black Woman & Family was a resounding success, topping Fox News and MSNBC during the 9-11pm time period.  read more »

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“The good TV and the bad TV were often in conflict,” said Aaron Brown.

It was a recent Wednesday afternoon and the longtime television anchor and correspondent was sitting at a table in Harry’s of Hartsdale, a nearly deserted steakhouse, a few short blocks from his home in Westchester County. He was reflecting on his career.

Mr. Brown was dressed casually, in a short-sleeved black cotton polo, a bit of white stubble standing out on his well tanned chin. He leaned back in his chair and, by way of demonstration, tapped his right shoulder and then tapped his left. The angel speaking into one earpiece, the devil whispering into the other.  read more »

Jamie Tarabay, the former Baghdad Bureau Chief for NPR, was stationed in Iraq in the early months of 2007 when General David Petraeus arrived to take over command of the U.S. forces there.

In the weeks and months to come, like many of her professional colleagues in the war zone, she eventually accompanied Mr. Petraeus on a number of walk-along interviews as he strolled through the streets of the occupied city.  read more »

“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.  read more »

On Tuesday night, the last night of contests during this marathon primary season, CNN scored a big win over its cable news rivals, according to a story in today's Washington Post.

From the Post:

CNN clocked more than 3.5 million viewers in prime time. That's a 34 percent lead over MSNBC's more than 2.5 million viewers. It's also a 47 percent advantage over Fox News Channel's prime-time crowd of 2.4 million viewers.  read more »

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Jacques Steinberg at The Times poses a question: Did Howie Kurtz do anything wrong when he brought a client of his wife's onto his show? Kurtz's wife, Sheri Annis, did PR work for Kimberly Dozier's memoir, Breathing the Fire, which was the centerpiece of an interview Dozier had with Kurtz on his CNN show, Reliable Sources. Kurtz made a brief disclosure at the end of the show, but even so, is it kosher?  read more »

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria. W. W. Norton, 292 pages, $25.95.

 

 

Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World is one of those peculiar volumes public thinkers of a certain disposition, upon reaching a certain popular standing, seem compelled to write: an omnibus summation of the recent trajectory of their thinking—and, by extension, the state of the world.  read more »

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Jimmy Carter is still on his book tour, and still hinting at support for Barack Obama without saying it directly.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer taped for The Situation Room, Carter said that if superdelegates overturn what is nearly certain to be a majority of pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver (the only way Hillary Clinton can win at this point), it would be "uncomfortable." Carter, while admitting to having a favorite, still refuses to say who he voted for in the primary, or who he plans to support at the convention.

Carter is one of the Democratic Party elders, along with Al Gore, who could conceivably play a role in tipping the nominating process towards one candidate by weighing in at some point. In Carter's case, at least, that candidate would probably be Obama. (Carter previously told a Nigerian newspaper, "My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama.")

Here's the transcript of the exchange, sent over by the CNN:  read more »

On Tuesday April, 22, Steve Krakauer of TV Newser was the first to report that CNN's suspender-wearing newsman Larry King had re-upped with the cable news network through June 2011.

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Tony Snow, the former White House press secretary, is joining CNN as a conservative political commentator, starting today.

From the Press Release:

A well-known and respected observer of politics with a longstanding news background, Snow will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.  read more »

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Amid reports of a possible news-sharing partnership between CBS News and CNN and stories about layoffs at CBS stations around the country, today Matea Gold and Meg James of the L.A. Times write about the state of the local news gathering business.

They begin by noting the layoffs last week of more than 160 employees at CBS-owned stations in 13 cities, including a number of top anchors and seasoned correspondents.  read more »

So now we know what Matt Drudge was talking about: Tim Arango at the Times is reporting that CBS "has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its newsgathering operations to CNN," a report sourced to "two executives briefed on the matter."

This is something CNN has talked about with other networks in the past, Mr. Arango points out in the article, but the talks with CBS have been "revived and lately intensified."  read more »

On Tuesday, April 8th, Chez Pazienza will be self publishing his memoir, “Dead Star Twilight,” via his Web site, www.deusexmalcontent.com.

NYTV first wrote about Mr. Pazienza back in late February, following Mr. Pazienza's public dustup with his former employers at CNN.  read more »

The numbers are in for the cable news networks for the first quarter of 2008. The verdict? Thanks in large part to the nation's ravenous interest in the political season, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all enjoyed a strong first quarter, particularly compared with the seemingly dismal news coming from much of the rest of the industry. Today, employees of the cable news networks were falling all over themselves, trying to out-tout each other's accomplishments. Herein, some of the highlights:  read more »

 

So last night I was cast as "Angry White Male #3" on The Daily Show.

It was during one of the montage segments they do all the time: Jon Stewart introduces the major news story of the day and then shows several clips of hysterical talking heads from various cable news channels all saying the same hysterical things. Then they cut back to a horrified and smugly amused Stewart.  read more »

In the spring of 2001, Chez Pazienza was sitting in his apartment in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, smoking heroin and watching The Filth and the Fury, a documentary about punk legends the Sex Pistols, when he realized he had a problem.

At the time, Mr. Pazienza was an ambitious young producer running the 11 o’clock news for Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate KNBC. Ratings were up. His anchor drove a Ferrari. The job was good—great.

But Mr. Pazienza’s marriage was falling apart. And as he listened to Sid Vicious describing the sensations of heroin withdrawal, Mr. Pazienza finally acknowledged his own raging addiction. “I was like, okay, I’m screwed,” Mr. Pazienza said. Shortly thereafter, he checked into rehab.  read more »

Politico has made it a habit for the last year to pluck away talented writers and editors, but now one of its own is jumping ship. Richard Greene, the web site's main editor, is leaving for CNN. In a memo, Politico editor John Harris described Mr. Greene's departure as a "surprise" and described him as one of the "pivotal figures in the success" of the news outfit's debut year.  read more »

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got thei