Outside Cable News

Via JS Online
By Joanne Weintraub
Little is new 40 years after King

In 1958, a deranged woman stabbed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the chest, narrowly missing his aorta. The ensuing surgery left King with a cross-shaped scar that he confronted each morning for the next 10 years, reminding him of the fragility of his life and the urgency of his mission.

It’s a good story, well-told by longtime King associate Andrew Young in a two-hour CNN special that premieres tonight. But when you hear it a second time, repeated by Young in another two-hour special - this one airing Sunday on the History channel - it loses some of its power.

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination, an event that both cable channels have chosen to mark in similar ways. Both specials are well-done and frequently moving, but neither has much of importance to add to what has already been exhaustively reported on King’s life and death.

The CNN offering is especially disappointing, introducing as it does a four-month series reported by Soledad O’Brien called “Black in America.” The news channel promises the series will be “landmark programming” with “fresh analysis from new voices,” but there’s little new or fresh in this first outing.

Read the rest at JS Online.

Update: Variety has a couple thoughts about it as well.

Via Huffington Post
By Rachel Sklar
Party For Olbermann Doubles As Taunt To CNN

Tonight, NBC is throwing a party to celebrate Keith Olbermann’s 5th anniversary at “Countdown” — and it just happens to be in CNN’s backyard. Jeff Zucker, Steve Capus and Phil Griffin are hosting the party at none other than Landmarc in the Time Warner Center — a stone’s throw from where former NBC-er and current Olbermann challenger Campbell Brown will be broadcasting live.

A little uptown for this particular gang, given how publicly they all came together in midtown earlier this year in their collective home at 30 Rock, no? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to find a spot in midtown within walking distance, so that maybe even former MSNBC GM and now 9 p.m. host Dan Abrams could attend? Well sure — unless you’re a perennial third-place network trying to send a message to your nearest competitor, on whom you just happen to have been gaining steadily in recent months. Surely the mass exodus up to Landmarc can’t just be the spaghetti carbonara (which is apparently delicious, according to a CNN staffer who’s actually eaten there)?

Indeed it is not. “We thought it would be fun to hold Keith’s party in the building where the third place 8 p.m. cable news show is produced,” said MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines.

Read the rest at Huffington Post.

Via CNN.com/ac360

WATCH: OUR NEW STUDIO WEBCAM 9:45P-11P ET - Link

Via Statesman
By Eunice Moscoso
American Legion honors Lou Dobbs with award

The nation’s largest veterans organization honored CNN anchor Lou Dobbs Wednesday for “his coverage of illegal immigration and his support for the U.S. military.”

The American Legion awarded Dobbs the “National Commander Public Relations Award.” Previous recipients include Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton, and former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.

“Lou Dobbs is a true American patriot,” said Marty Conatser who heads the American Legion. “His compassion for America’s veterans and support for the U.S. military is clear to the viewers of Lou Dobbs Tonight. Lou has been a tireless and true leader in the fight against illegal immigration. America would be better off if lawmakers would heed his common sense solutions to serious problems that this nation faces.”

Dobbs has upset Latino groups with his coverage of illegal immigration which some have labeled “hate speech.”

Last month, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said “Lou Dobbs of CNN has been shameful in his hate-mongering.”

Via Zen Personal Finance
By Justin McHenry
Book Review: Home Rich by Gerri Willis

Almost everyone has a notion of their dream home, their personal showplace. Unfortunately, reality dictates that most of us will buy and sell a number of homes before getting there. And both the buying and selling of homes can be sheer torture. Play your cards wrong and even living in a house can be torture, as the roof starts to leak and the basement starts to flood and your lousy neighbors never mow their lawn.

To make the buying, selling, and living easy (or easier), Gerri Willis has written the new book Home Rich, which gives you all you need to know to be happy and not sad when it comes to your home choices and transactions. Willis, CNN’s personal finance expert and host of the network’s Open House show, preaches education and preparation as the keys to buying smart, maintaining and improving intelligently, and getting the best price in the shortest amount of time when you’re ready to move on.

Read the rest at Zen Personal Finance.

Via Irish Voice
By Cahir O’Doherty
McShane Makes His Mark at Fox

ON October 15, 2007 the Fox Business Network was launched to 30 million homes with Irish American anchorman Connell McShane, 30, at the helm. A professional broadcaster since the day he graduated college, for McShane it was a high water mark in an already successful career and the thought of it still inspires him.

But the high profile world of Fox is a world away from the little town of Kilcar, Co. Donegal where his father grew up, although McShane junior, a born and bred Long Islander, is glad to say he feels just as at home in the high pressure world of network news as he does walking the highlands of Ulster.

A graduate of Fordham University with a bachelor degree in communication and media studies, before turning 30 McShane had already been named a finalist in both the New York Metro Achievement in Radio Awards and the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters’ Association.

“I got my start reporting sports at college, focusing on baseball and that kind of thing, and then eventually I switched over to news and one thing led to another and eventually I ended up in financial news,” McShane said during a recent interview with the Irish Voice.

“At first it was not something I knew a lot about — there was a definite learning curve — but I learned a lot about it day by day. Now I think its something I’ll spend my career doing.”
(more…)

Via Observer
By Felix Gillette
Who Should Replace Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation?

The Experienced Veteran: Chris Matthews

>Cable news relevant excerpt.

If CBS News wants someone who can step into the Face the Nation job with little hand-holding and a sizable built-in audience, they might choose Chris Matthews—the host of MSNBC’s Hardball and NBC’s Sunday morning The Chris Matthews Show.

Mr. Matthews is the ultimate Beltway blue-chipper (albeit one with enough controversy to scare off some potential F.C.C.-wary broadcasters). Reading deeply into the network tea leaves, he may soon be available. In 2003, during his commencement address at the College of the Holy Cross, Mr. Matthews thanked Bob Wright, then NBC’s chairman (and a fellow Holy Cross alum!), for helping Mr. Matthews hold onto his high-profile job at the network. In 2007, Mr. Wright retired. That would seem to leave Mr. Matthews, whose current contract is said to expire in June 2009, without one of his guardian angels at NBC. Jumping to CBS’s Face the Nation might be a highly appealing prospect to both parties. Best of all, Mr. Matthews would finally go head-to-head with his current in-house rival Tim Russert—a potential Washington blood sport that would be sure to attract tons of buzz and eyeballs.

>Read the rest here.

Via Observer
by Spencer Morgan
Bad News Bear Bumped by Bev Hills Ump: CNN’s Larry King Pitches Fit at Son’s Little League Game

>Hey, that title might be a little misleading.. Seeing this write up has two versions of the story..

CNN fixture Larry King’s 9-year-old son Chance Armstrong King plays Beverly Hills Little League. King père is the coach of Chance’s team.

On Monday, March 10, during a heated game, the suspendered talk show host apparently got into a confrontation with one of the league’s umpires. “[Mr. King] was making a fool out of himself as a manager on the field, talking in the middle of the field in the middle of plays,” reported a source close to the action.

According to this source, Mr. King was told by the umpire in question to “regroup” and calm himself, and he did not respond well to this. Rather, the informant said, he continued arguing and was then relegated to the bleachers, where he continued to make noise, and was finally forced to watch the game from the outfield’s periphery.
(more…)

Via Village Voice
by Wayne Barrett
Bruise Brother
Supposedly Democrat-Friendly MSNBC Has Let a Clinton-Hating Joe Maul New York’s Senator

It already seems like an age ago, but on March 5—the morning after Hillary Clinton sailed over the bar the media had set for her, winning the popular vote in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island—the New York senator was joking with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. In that heady moment, Clinton was asked if she would consider Barack Obama as a running mate, and she instead offered the vice presidency to the former four-term Republican congressman himself. Scarborough flirted and demurred, but the moment was precious—after all, the politician-turned-TV-pundit had spent the first month and a half of primary season beating Clinton up as badly as any of his more liberal sidekicks at MSNBC or his competing conservative commentators elsewhere.

Though Scarborough’s ratings can’t compare with network behemoths like Today, Clinton’s visit to Morning Joe appeared to bolster MSNBC’s claim that it has become “the place for politics”—at least for the slice of Democrats captivated by this presidential contest. She made the pilgrimage even though Scarborough had pummeled Clinton while boosting Obama throughout the early primary season, mirroring the strategy of GOP partisans like Rush Limbaugh (who gave Scarborough’s 2004 memoir a blurb quote) and Bob Novak, a much-praised Scarborough favorite. (See “Hillary and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” March 11.)

>Check out the rest of this 5 pager at the Village Voice.