The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.New York Times editor Bill Keller's back from his weeklong reporting stint in Iran, and he's a little miffed about the haters out there! In an email to E&P, he writes: "I've had a few bizarre vibes from people outside the NYT who are puzzled by my presence in Tehran. Do people in the media crit game really think editors are supposed to be desk jockeys who never go get a sense of the story?...Or is the idea that when a big, exhausting news breaks visiting editors should hole up in the hotel and let the reporters do all the work? Weird." Bill Keller, you are a decorated foreign correspondent and an honorable editor and really people just didn't think it was fair your stories were all over the NYT front page, cause you're the boss, and also you have lots of reporters who can do that stuff already, anyhow. Friends? Okay, we're friends.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Jon Stewart made fun of CNN for all its Twitter-mongering and whatnot, which makes it look like Rocketboom or something. Big mistake, Jon. You've earned the wrath of CJR: "Stewart's broad-brush treatment of CNN amounted to not only a rare misstep for The Daily Show's normally trenchant media criticism, but also a missed opportunity." BURN.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The Weather Channel is determined "to draw an audience in primetime, one of its lowest-rated time periods." Maybe it would be easier for the Weather Channel to just have three total employees, each covering an eight-hour on-air shift that consists of them standing in front of a big weather mad, while local weather forecasts crawl on the bottom of the screen, so people could watch for five minutes to find out what the weather's like, which is really their "core competency"? Also TV network ad sales are getting even worse, so there's not much to aspire to. NBC Nightly News' solution: having Brian Williams walk around.

In a new poll, a majority of Americans say that if they could have just one news source, it would be the internet. TV, newspapers, and radio were all well behind. Sure, it all sounds great until the electricity goes out. Then it's back to town criers.

[YouTube]

You could bring Saturday Night Live characters onto the Weather Channel, in the mold of former SNL cast member Chris Farley when he personified El Niño (clip below).

There will surely be plenty of real-life dramatic material to draw on. Here's the latest depressing summary of the coming hellscape from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker (attached to what was supposed to be an uplifting story about Danish windmills):

The consequences of this warming are difficult to predict in detail, but even broad, conservative estimates are terrifying: at least fifteen and possibly as many as thirty per cent of the planet’s plant and animal species will be threatened; sea levels will rise by several feet; yields of crops like wheat and corn will decline significantly in a number of areas where they are now grown as staples; regions that depend on glacial runoff or seasonal snowmelt—currently home to more than a billion people—will face severe water shortages; and what now counts as a hundred-year drought will occur in some parts of the world as frequently as once a decade.

Sounds like a ratings bonanza!

[The Smoking Gun]