MSNBC's Wonder Boy Dan Abrams Knows When To Quit

"MSNBC said today that [general manager] Dan Abrams, who has been the host of a 9 p.m. news hour called 'Live with Dan Abrams' temporarily since July, will stay in the job permanently, leaving behind the managerial position he had occupied for a little over a year." With MSNBC's ratings nipping at CNN's heels, this can only be good for Abrams: If ratings stay high, he can take all the credit, and if they start to go down, hey, he can just blame the new guy. Also notable: Dan Abrams, though he unfortunately refers to his program as "snarky," has "no interest in doing Keith Olbermann." Boy, is he not alone in that. More »

"Enough Already" With The Snarky, Says 'Times'

Once a week, Ahead of the Times, everyone's favorite in-house New York Times newsletter, runs a regular column called After Deadline, in which errors are kindly mocked, word usage is criticized, display copy praised and the like. This week's is the choicest ever, most notably because Standards Editor Craig Whitney felt compelled to pitch in to decry repeated uses of "snarky"—six in the last month! Yuck. And the offending sections are exactly the ones you'd suspect. More »