Anderson Cooper Is Spot-on With Renee Ellmers

In the never-ending attempt by Republicans to be dimmer than Sharon Angle or Christine O'Donnell, Carolina GOP congressional candidate Renee Ellmers is making the so-called Ground Zero Mosque a centerpiece of her campaign. Too bad she has her facts wrong. Thank goodness, Anderson Cooper's a good journalist and calmly calls her on it.

Lou Dobbs Leaves CNN Again, but Wolf Blitzer Lets the Opinions Fly

For the second time in his career (if I'm keeping count correctly), Lou Dobbs is high-tailing it out of CNN-land. The TV host has been under increasing fire for his unending crusade on immigration policy -- bordering on racism, in some people's eyes -- and more recently for apparently pushing the lunatic birther movement.

Whether he's headed to Fox News or some other warren of media wolves (just go with me here) is unknown at this time. But it does mark one more feather in CNN's cap that they let him out of his contract and didn't try to keep him.

Now, what the heck was going through CNN's mind earlier today, when Wolf Blitzer unleashed some incredibly amatuerish bile at the lawyer defending the man who shot those soldiers at Fort Hood? Look, nobody I know of is thinking kind thoughts about that clearly deluded murderer. But when the lawyer said it was his job to see that the defendent got a fair trial, Blitzer tried to end the conversation by saying that that was at least more than the people who were gunned down received. Is Blitzer angling for a Fox News invitation? An MSNBC timeslot?

Try doing the news, sir, and leave the opinion to others. The lawyer -- a retired military lawyer, in fact -- was not making wild or ridiculous statements that deserved rudeness. He said nothing to disrespect the murdered soldiers or their loved ones. He was simply stating the obvious and answering Blitzer's earlier question about whether he had qualms defending this man. If Blitzer has a better idea about how military justice should work, I look forward to reading his learned treatise on the topic. But this was embarrassing, and from CNN, no less.

To Blitzer's minimal credit, he did let the lawyer respond, after it became apparent that the lawyer was taken aback by Blitzer's grandstanding. But I lost quite a bit of respect for a news host today.

Remembering 9/11 in New York

This morning, President Barack Obama is leading observance of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed several thousand people and destroyed the World Trade Towers in New York. I can only imagine what this time of the year is like for the people who lost loved ones in those plane hijackings and the destruction of the office towers and part of the Pentagon.

My connection to it is merely one of my memory starting with walking to work in Manhattan. The offices for Internet World magazine were located just a couple blocks north of Union Square, which means that if one went to a north-south street, one could count on seeing the twin towers. I had a nice four-mile walk from my li'l apartment further north, coming down Second Avenue, eventually cutting in toward Park Avenue South so I could stop at my favorite bakery. This is not just hindsight: I clearly remember thinking that morning as I headed to the office that it was an incredibly beautiful morning, just the perfect New York City weather to me. Warm enough that you didn't need a jacket but probably wore a light one anyway; cool enough that the air was dry and refreshing. Not many clouds, but not bright sunshine hurting the eyes. Just incredibly blue sky over a great city humming away as it got to work in the morning.

I've always tended to get to work 30 to 60 minutes before most of the rest of the staff, and as the office eventually filled up, we got a call from our web architect that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We started following it on the online news sites, which were too slow to do much more than choppy video and intermittent reports, but it was enough for us to realize something awful had happened. And then the second plane hit, and we all knew this wasn't just a terrible plane accident. Rumors of the White House being hit (false, of course) and the Pentagon (true) and a fourth plane crashing (also true, alas) spread quickly.

Again, I knew no one who was hurt in the attack. But I worked with one woman who lived in New Jersey. She and her husband went to the train station together every morning, and got on separate trains -- hers heading to midtown Manhattan and his ... to the World Trade Center station. Her train was already underway when the attack happened, and she got to the office fine. But the cell phones had become unusable after the attack, so she couldn't get through to her husband. She spent a panicked morning trying desperately to get any information about the trains or get through to him. In one of the few fortunate stories about that day, she eventually heard that her husband's train had just gotten started when the attack came, and it was called back; he was safe.

The rest of the day was a strange one. Our editors, publishers, and ad reps who lived outside of Manhattan had to scramble to get hotel or other lodging in the city for the night. A group of us IW editors went to a nearby pub to watch CNN and fret. Eventually, we started streaming home -- to actual homes or to their temporary overnight lodging. I walked up Park Avenue South -- everyone walked, no one drove -- with a colleague who lived near me. People walked in the streets, like a post-industrial city; they also walked on the sidewalks; they said "Excuse me" if they accidentally bumped into each other; and otherwise they didn't talk much.

My colleague's boyfriend (later husband), a city police officer, got through to her cell phone and told her to get off Park Avenue; try to stay away from high-profile landmarks. So we switched over and walked up Second Avenue, I think. As we passed the entrance to the Queens/Midtown Tunnel, we saw a building with a long line wrapped around it. Many residential towers in New York have large grocery stores in the basements, so our first assumption was one of disappointment: People were already hoarding food.

But as we walked further north, we saw the side of the building where the line entered, and it wasn't a grocery store. It was a blood donation center, and people were lined up around the block to give blood at this horrible time in the city's life. That scene choked me up, and it still does, because it shows New Yorkers at their best. Shaken, but not deterred from doing what's right.

September 11 was an awful time, and much of what has happened since has also been awful. But thank god it hasn't been repeated. It might well be; there are people who are willing to hurt any number of other people in their efforts to get what they want. No religion or country has a monopoly on such madness. But I remember one headline in the week that followed 9/11, though I don't remember where it was, so I'll just paraphrase it. It said that people really wanted it to be 9/10 again. Remembering my walk to work in that stunning blue-sky morning of 9/11, I can understand that desire.

This Is Why MSM's Death Might not Be All Bad

This was CNN's idea of the most important breaking news today:

Hugh Hefner on Print Magazines' Uniqueness

In an interview on CNN with John Roberts, Playboy founder/editor Hugh Hefner made some interesting comments (and by "interesting," I mean that I agree with him) about the role of print magazines in this supposedly post-print world. He takes the view that yes, some people don't want to read magazines and – more important – you can't force them to do so. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Roberts: Now in 1953, when you first launched Playboy magazine, you seemed to be the right publication for the right time. I know that you were very heavily influenced by the Kinsey Report, which had come out not too long prior to that. But 55 years later, is Playboy magazine still relevant? And if it is, how do you keep it relevant?

Hefner: Well, I don't think obviously it will ever play the same kind of role that it played back in the 1950s and '60s. But I do think that a magazine of quality always has a place. Increasingly, obviously fewer people are reading magazines and fewer people are reading newspapers and books, but I think that part of that is a change that Playboy is always, is also embracing. We're very much involved with the Internet. We were the first magazine to use [the] Internet and have our own Web site. So I think that we'll continue to ... publish both the magazine and then publish through electronics.

Roberts: The new Steven Watts biography [of Hefner] is a fascinating, very fascinating look at your entire career, from your roots all the way up until the present. And he says, looking back over it, that "the key to his approach was that he edited Playboy for himself. Aiming it at his own tastes and values." Was that also a key to your success as well that you approached this with such a personal passion?

Hefner: I think so, but I think that is one of the things that makes magazines unique. They do speak with a personal voice. And I think it is one of the things that makes magazines special.

You can read the transcript of the entire interview here, where you'll also find a link to the video.

I made some similar comments in response to some recent statements by Esquire's editor, David Granger. The pool of total print readership may drop (might not, though; might shift to different people, though; for example, recent reports about thriving newspapers in Germany and India), but there's a role for quality magazines that it would be foolish to ignore.

Mr. Hefner has always had a clear-eyed view of magazines, unlike many of his competitors and unlike many of his critics. When Playboy was coming down from the highs of its 1970s circulation spike, he did not panic or overreact; his reaction was reportedly (I believe this was in a tale told by his daughter, Christie Hefner; if I've got that attribution wrong, my apologies) that Playboy's circulation will be whatever it naturally is; if one million people want to buy the magazine, it'll be one million; but there's no reason to pretend that it was supposed to be what the circulation was in the 1970s when it was arguably the most important cultural publication in the country.

Ted Turner on Old Media, Plus Economic Troubles

CNN founder Ted Turner spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Bronstein at a Commonwealth Club program today. They covered a wide range of topics; the clip above has him talking about why newspapers "are gone."He also talks about the current financial crisis.