On Monday, we reported on a new, false narrative that current Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain wrote an op-ed piece in November that was at odds with his currently hot (and hotly debated) “9-9-9 plan.” On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough and friends took up the story with gusto, saying that Cain might be “the biggest opponent of the 9-9-9 plan,” even while quoting sections of Cain’s Daily Caller piece that cut against the flip-flop idea.

With Herman Cain‘s new role as GOP frontrunner comes the inevitable Cain Scrutiny (apologies to Dave Weigel), and while there are many legitimate grounds upon which to criticize the upstart pizza magnate, the idea that he was arguing against himself with his months-ago opposition to a national sales tax is baseless. Business Insider cites a Cain-penned November, 2010 op-ed in The Daily Caller to suggest that the candidate is at odds with his own 9-9-9 plan, but even a casual reading of Cain’s piece belies that.

Today, Business Insider released it’s Silicon Alley Insider 100, which lists “the people that did the coolest stuff In New York tech this year.” The “SAI 100″ — as the kids call it — has become an annual rite of Fall for the dozens of Internet users who pay attention to the New York tech scene, and is being fêted with a party this evening on the floor of the New York stock exchange. One particularly astute observer of the list, though, pointed out that ordinal ranking of NY tech people seems to line up very similar to their alphabetic listings as well. Update: the intro of the BI post states that the slides are listed at random, and not ranked in order of power and influence. Nevermind!

Herman Cain won an interesting straw poll this weekend: that of The National Federation for Republican Women, the self-touted “most extensive poll in the history of Conservative woman.” Cain earned an astonishing 48.9 percent of the votes, trouncing nearest followers Rick Perry (14.1 percent), Mitt Romney (13.3 percent), and Newt Gingrich (12.5 percent). More notedly, however, might be the fact that more of the women polled (1.8 percent) filed as undecided than ready to vote for Michele Bacchman. You would think that, voting in an all female-poll like this, gender might weigh more heavily in their considerations. But apparently that is not the case.

Yesterday news spread that Amazon was selling a guide to pedophilia an e-book for its Kindle product, which sparked understandable outrage and a call for a boycott of the online retailer. Last night, Anderson Cooper joined the chorus of those calling out Amazon in a frank and candid segment called “Keeping Them Honest,” pointing out that Amazon’s defense of “supporting the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions,” is not consistent with the fact that they censor books all the time, namely pornography.

There is a well accepted axiom to any Top 100 list that the most important spots are not numbers 1 through 10, but rather numbers 74 and 94 truly hold the most power, charm and dashing good looks. And nowhere is this more obvious than this year’s version of Silicon Alley Insider 100, a monthly list of the top movers and shakers from the New York city tech scene. Clocking in at number 74 is Mediaite founder Dan Abrams, followed closely at 94 by Mediaite Editor-at-Large Rachel Sklar. That’s right, 2% of the 100 most important tech people in the city are on Team Mediaite!

TV Newser is reporting that Dennis Kneale has been snatched up by Fox Business News. This won’t be the first time the anchor has appeared in front of Fox cameras. Before his time at CNBC, Kneale regularly appeared on Fox News’ Forbes on Fox.

So! Ping launched earlier this week, and more than a million people have signed up. I’m not one of them. I use iTunes for downloading music but I always decline when prompted to update this or that new version. As described by the AFP, Ping “allows users to view photos and videos of their favorite [...]

Business Insider is reporting that Forbes.com will be completely overhauling their blog section. The new section of the site is supposed to go live later this afternoon. The most interesting part of the report, however, was the fact that each one of their reporters will be required to maintain a blog.

CNBC anchor Dennis Kneale‘s contract is up soon with the business network, and he’s found an odd way to make a pitch to stay around Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

He’s gone public about the contract status, taking a shot at execs in the process, in a Business Insider profile sure to ruffle what are likely the last feathers of his stay at the network.

Former Business Insider managing editor John Carney is going corporate – he joins NBCU today as senior editor at CNBC.com, to appear regularly on-air.

Guest Of A Guest broke the news, and the full release is after the jump. Mediaite talked to Carney today about his new job, leaving Business Insider and more.

Business Insider’s Nick Carlson has just published a number of long posts, which are the result of a “long investigation into the origins of Facebook” and don’t appear to reflect too well on founder Mark Zuckerberg: the word ‘hacked’ comes up more than once.

Wow. Well welcome to the new, new journalism where even the New York Times editorial board is forced to go meta. Seriously meta. Apparently, the rumors about a Paterson, fueled in equal parts by the blogosphere and the venerable New York City tabloids, got so out of hand the Times felt they had to push back in a editorial blog post. They went straight to the source.

On Friday gossip was flying around New York media (and one imagines political) circles that the New York Times was working on some sort of bombshell story that was going to be so shocking that Paterson would be forced to resign! Apparently nothing that shocking exists.

Nothing aids the launch of a new website like a little bit of controversy! After being interviewed by Business Insider about the launch of his new site, Andrew Breitbart took to the webs with complaints of being misquoted and proceeded to accuse Business Insider of merely being a front for Gawker. We untangle it all after the jump.

As if we needed more evidence of the death of newspapers (at least in print form,) Business Insider posted this chart mapping the growth and decline of total workers employed by news papers over the 62 years. And while it seems like it could be a banal point, the graphic depiction of the contraction of the print industry is somehow still shocking.

Last week, Mediaite asked you who was the top online editor of 2009. This time around, we’re recognizing sites which are too vast and ambitious in scope to describe in terms of the work of just one editor. You know the drill, loyal, smart, and attractive readers: below is a list of our nominees for the top site of 2009, including The Business Insider, Ars Technica, and Talking Points Memo. Vote for your favorite, or leave any deserving candidates you think we left out in the comments:

The 100 buyouts at the New York Times, announced earlier last month, have begun. Keith Kelly reported the other day that 50 unionized newsroom employees would be taking buyouts and the names have been trickling out since yesterday. Here’s a look at the list thus far.

Black Friday may take on a whole new and scarier meaning today. Depending how closely you were paying attention to the news (or Twitter) between yesterday’s turkey courses you may have heard whispers about Dubai — and its debt crisis which shook global markets over Thanksgiving and sent the Dow tumbling 193 points. The news is not good, and we’ll probably be hearing a lot more about it. Here’s a short overview.

For the last three weeks or so pretty much the only topic of conversation in media circles has been the White House’s ‘war’ on Fox News. But also enter a much larger problem. From the beginning, the ultimate danger of allowing the White House to take on a news organization the way it has with Fox, is that it has now set a precedent. One that they apparently have no qualms about extending.

With the benefit of hindsight, the AOL-Time Warner merger is widely derided as a very, very bad idea. Now, on the eve of AOL’s split with Time Warner, rumors are emerging that AOL and Time Inc. are considering a “co spin-off.” Despite having both “AOL” and “Time” in the name, here’s why that merger could actually be a great idea:

Happy Anniversary Great Recession. A year ago today Lehman Bros. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sent the economy into a tailspin the country is still struggling to cope with. Here’s a look back at the top five media moments from the last twelve months.

Seven years after its founding, Gawker Media is getting more online traffic than the LA Times and nearly as much as the New York Times — and with a staff a fraction of their sizes. Need evidence of their influence? They are now effectively running the state department. A look at their growth and impact after the jump.

Turns out when President Obama sends out his spokesperson to inform the Air Force One press pool that he wants them to relax and furthermore assures them that “nobody’s looking to make any news” what he actually means is that one day into his Martha’s Vineyard vacation he is going to hold a press conference to announce that he will be reappointing Republican Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman.

Brilliant idea from Business Insider: Embeddable posts. Henry Blodget posted Thursday about the new feature, which permits bloggers to embed entire posts on their sites, rather than ye olde copy-and-paste.

It’s a genius idea, since it incorporates Business Insider branding and makes it easier to include the whole thing than just paste in an excerpt. In fact, it’s such a genius idea that it’s a wonder it took so long. It makes you wonder: Could it have helped save newspapers?