Soledad To The Muslin Network! Greta Sniffs Around CNN! Has This New York Times Guy Been Fired Yet? Media!

 
 Here at Wonkette, we are really making a play to be your full-service blog. We've become your go-to source for swears-laden posts about New Pope, haphazard legal analysis about legal decisions, and deeply ambivalent feelings about Edward Snowden. Now we've expanded our world domination plan to include fancypants talking about other media people so we can be insular beltway pundits when we grow up. We're like the new Mediaite. Call us Meditate or Mediate or Mediatitus or something.

First up, let's coffee-klatsch about Soledad O'Brien's new gig. TRIGGER WARNING: we love us some Soledad. National Public Radio-style oddly awesome name! Moderator of the National Geography Bee, which we did not know was a thing but is probably a cooler thing now because Soledad! Mostly, though, we love her delightfully testicle-crushing interviews with Republican flacks:

One contentious interview over health care policy with John Sununu, former chief of staff to president George HW Bush, ended with Sununu accusing O'Brien of loyalty to the campaign of president Barack Obama.

"Put an Obama sticker on your forehead when you do this," Sununu said.

O'Brien hit back: "Name-calling to me, and somehow acting as if by repeating a number ... that you can make that stick, that's not true," she said. "You can't just repeat it and make it true, sir."

Unsurprisingly, O'Brien did not last at CNN because they had to make way for hard-hitting news about the calories in muffins. SPOILER ALERT: muffins have calories! What does one do after CNN? One goes, of course, to the MuslinArabTerrorist network:  

"I look forward to beginning a relationship with Al Jazeera America, which has made a commitment to producing quality programming and pursuing underreported stories," O'Brien said in a statement.

O'Brien is part of a mini-migration from CNN to Al Jazeera. America Tonight will be produced by ex-CNN executive producer Kim Bondy. Former CNN anchor Ali Veshi joined Al Jazeera in April.

Haha CNN is the worst and everyone wants to quit them. Everybody, apparently, except Greta Van Susteren, who wants to get back together because reunited and it feels so good:

Despite her recent criticism of CNN as having taken a “softer” approach to the news, it turns out Fox’s Greta Van Susteren may have sought employment there recently.

According to our high-level sources within CNN, the Fox host initiated several meetings with CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker earlier this spring, inquiring about a potential return to CNN.

Haha FOX is the worst and everyone wants to quit them. You know who no one wants to quit though? The New York Times because holy god you can grift Sarah Palin-levels of money:

A blogger for The New York Times has been requesting thousands of dollars in "expenses" and travel airfare from a public relations firm trying to get its clients covered in the Times, according to emails obtained by Gawker.

"This is a minimum investment and shows the company has some skin in game," wrote the blogger, Cliff Oxford, in an email last week to a PR executive representing tech companies. "My daily rate is 10 grand per day so I am putting my time on line."

Haha NYT is the best and everyone wants to go there. Not only would we get to share the masthead with such luminaries as David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and Ross Douthat (STOP LAUGHING WE ARE SERIOUS WE'RE NOT SERIOUS) but we'd also get to extort money from the people we write about. The Editrix doesn't employ a single high-profile culture scold white guy AND will not let us demand money from the people we write about. To be fair, most of the people we write about would probably pay us NOT to write about them, but that's not the point! Our empty pockets is the point dammit and if we can't have our way, we're leaving for Al Jazeera. So long, suckers.

[ The Guardian / Mediaite / Gawker ]