Conservative columnist Matt Lewis has announced, via his Twitter feed, that he is leaving Townhall.com. The split is mutual and amicable, and the world will continue to enjoy his wit and wisdom on the pages of Politics Daily, but his departure from Townhall completes a mini-exodus of influential commentators from the site. What’s left isn’t all that pretty.

the traffic game

“A mad reader is an engaged reader!” This we know. Everyone who has ever worked in media time-out-of-mind knows this. The blogosphere is built on this model. Cable News increasingly so. Still, knowing that didn’t stop me from being angry; angrier still that it had worked. And it does work. But why does it always seems to work best when women are shown at their marginalized worst? The answer: Sexism sells.

On Monday night’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann granted the Worst Persons gold to a quartet of conservative figures for jumping the gun when tweeting about White House visitors on Friday. Mediaite has exclusive reactions from three of them: Amanda Carpenter, Mary Katherine Ham, and Ed Morrissey. Why? Mostly because we can.

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Howard Kurtz rehashed the recent exchanges between Fox News and the White House on Reliable Sources this morning. Former Fox News contributor Jane Hall extended the debate to cable news at large, saying “The reason I left [Fox News] is because I think they have less debate than they used to but it is a fair point to say how much debate is there on MSNBC … we have a bifurcation of the media.”