…is documented on CBS News’ website…

If you firmly believe reporters never should share their personal views, Keith Olbmermann is definitely not the newsman for you.

“Mr. Bush, the question is no longer, ‘What are you thinking,’ but rather, ‘Are you thinking at all?’” he said in a now famous commentary.

That diatribe against the president and the war in Iraq spiked the ratings of Olbermann’s show, “Countdown.” Its viewership is up 85 percent in the last year.

“Funny things happen sometimes,” he told 48 Hours correspondent Susan Spencer. “The wages of sin are sometimes not what you expect.”

Diane Dimond, Catherine Crier, and David Zurawik joined Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources to discuss…what else?…Anna Nicole. Transcript follows…

KURTZ: I had thought about a week ago that the Anna Nicole Smith frenzy had peaked. Boy, was I wrong.

The media took the court hearing on where to bury her body and turned it into a daytime soap opera. Most people thought cameras in the courtroom were a great idea until the O.J. trial turned into a circus. Many judges have since turned down requests for television coverage in the post-O.J. backlash. But not Larry Seidlin, who presided over the Anna Nicole hearings in Fort Lauderdale.

While CNN just dipped in and out, MSNBC and FOX News breathlessly covered the proceedings wall to wall. And from the center ring, Judge Seidlin made sure to give them a good show.
(more…)

Here is Deborah Solomon’s New York Times Magazine Q&A with Suze Orman that was mentioned in yesterday’s Page Six…

As one of the most widely read financial gurus of our time, why would you write a book like “Women and Money,” which is based on the regressive premise that women are birdbrains when it comes to managing money? I would think women are better at saving than men. No, they save and then they give it to their best friends, who need it. They give it to their children, who need it. They give it all away once they’ve saved it.

Isn’t that admirable? That depends on what it leaves them with. It’s not admirable when it leaves them with nothing. I want to change women from savers to investors. I do think eventually they should all have Roth I.R.A.’s. You don’t want an I.R.A. You want a Roth I.R.A., if you qualify.

The New York Daily News’ David Hinckley writes about the media overkill on Anna Nicole and Britney Spears…

In fact, just as many people bookmarked the Matt Drudge Web site during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, celebrity sites with attitude become go-to destinations when word spreads that they get the good stuff first - regardless of whether it’s always true.

This then forces the Blitzers and Olbermanns to deal with the stories, even if they privately lament the lack of substance.

“It’s tough, man,” says Steve Adubato, a media analyst at MSNBC who also works in public broadcasting. “You talk to your colleagues, and you know they’d rather spend the time discussing ways to get out of Iraq.”

Therein, of course, lies the great unanswered question.

“Does the media feed us Anna Nicole and Britney because we want it?” asks Lionel, a former Court TV host heard nightly on WOR (710 AM) and syndicated around the country. “Or do we seem to want it because that’s what the media is feeding us?”

He further suggests we may not even ‘fess up to the answer.

“You mention a story like Anna Nicole,” he says, “and people will tell you, ‘Oh, I don’t watch any of that.’ But then you’ll tell them something happened and they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, what?’”

The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus’ Buddy Moorehouse writes about a critical dropped letter in the title of a column he wrote. The gaffe got picked up by some journalim outlets and wound up in Countdown’s Newsmaker segment. But there’s a funny twist to the Countdown segment…

So while I thank Mr. Keith Olbermann for being so kind as to mention my dumb little column, is it too much to ask that YOU GET THE STATE RIGHT?!

I mean, Missouri? You moved me to Missouri? Not only did you get the name of the paper wrong — it’s the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, not the “Livingston Daily Press” — but you heap insult upon injury by telling everyone that I was from MISSOURI?!

If you were going to mess up my state, why couldn’t you have made me be from someplace cool, like California or Hawaii? But Missouri? You had to make me be from Missouri? Heck, why didn’t you just move me to North Dakota?