On his Wednesday show, CNN host Lou Dobbs announced he was leaving the network. On Thursday, CNN announced John King would take over the time slot early next year. Swapping King for Dobbs does little to change the demographics of the prime-time hosts of the three largest cable news networks, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Dobbs, [...]

(All times central. For another look at what happened, try the Google news timeline view.) 1:30 p.m. A gunman opens fire on soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. 2:10 p.m. MSNBC posts a story and sends a breaking news alert about the shooting. CNN did the same at 2:30 p.m. Original reports said seven people were [...]

MSNBC has a new widget. My favorite part: You can adjust if you want more national news or less weird news, etc. Some of the colors are a little weird, but it continues MSNBC’s “fuller spectrum” theme. Clicking on the headlines in the widget brings up a the lead of the story and a button [...]

During the (very strange) budget meeting Monday, someone questioned why a story on MySpace was big news — more important, why it warranted a position on A1. I tried to explain that MySpace was the largest social networking site. Proof from Hitwise: • MySpace has 5.86 percent of the total market share. Google is No. [...]

Fox News: The “Hustler” of news networks. Love it. MSNBC keeps referring to Democrat/Republican marriages as cross-pollination. Wouldn’t it be cross-politicalization? I had a very strange dream last night about a school (run out of a house), tornadoes and melting the silver silverware down for … something. Maybe we were going werewolf hunting, I’m not [...]