You may or may not have heard yet, but Mediaite is losing Colby Hall, the only Managing Editor it has ever known. While Hall and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams have already had their say, the well-oiled cogs in the Mediaite machine still haven’t had their turn. As the last of the Mediaite O.G.s, it falls to me to guide this exercise, and to send Mr. Hall into the after-Mediaite-life with a full understanding of what he has meant to us.

When we launched Mediaite in July of 2009, there were a lot of naysayers out there expressing confidence that we would quickly and embarrassingly fail. After all, they proclaimed nearly in unison, who needs “another media site?” If Mediaite had been just another “media site,” like some other struggling New York based publications and web properties, they might have been right. But they never got what Colby Hall understood from the beginning, the chance to cover the intersection of media and politics in a way that has never been done before.

It’s with mixed emotions that I bid farewell to the thrilling role of Managing Editor at Mediaite. While I am very excited about my new opportunity on the digital side of corporate media behemoth Clear Channel (the details of which will be forthcoming in the next week or so), I am sad to walk away from this labor of love, overseeing an influential and successful site and playing the part of post-modern disc jockey to the daily political news narratives that makes up the media zeitgeist.

For the past three years, I have completely dedicated my life to developing, launching, and managing Mediaite.com. Please forgive the cliche, but it has truly been a labor of love — nearly every single minute has been challenging and rewarding. It is with truly mixed emotions, then, that I announce my plans to step down as Managing Editor, to embark on a very exciting new career chapter at the beginning of next year.

After the holidays, I will begin work in a senior-level position at the NY offices of Clear Channel. The details of my new role will be revealed in a few weeks, but I hope to bring some of the success we’ve enjoyed at Mediaite in terms of relevance, buzz, and creative content to a completely different, significantly broader, and more corporate platform.

Mediaite managing editor Colby Hall paid a visit to America Live this afternoon to discuss new poll results indicating that Americans may be losing confidence in our national culture.

According to the Pew Research poll, 50 percent of survey-takers agreed that “our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.” Four years ago, 54 percent of Americans expressed agreement with that statement, and nine years ago, 60 percent of survey-takers agreed that American culture is superior to others.

As part of our one-part series Project: In Vino, Mediaite set out to capture media elites, gathered to fête Hardball host Chris Matthews‘ Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, in their alcohol-lubricated natural habitat, and maybe to drink some of it ourselves. With the aid of a hidden camera, I ventured to MSNBC’s book party Tuesday night to tear the lid off of this den of open bars and Wagyu beef hors d’oeuvres.

In a sign of the lightning-fast times, President Obama‘s chop-busting exchange with Fox News’ Ed Henry at Thursday’s joint press conference is the star of a new Mitt Romney ad that was released later that same day, and was “exclusively previewed” on Chuck Todd‘s The Daily Rundown this morning. The ad cobbles together bytes of the President and his advisers saying Romney’s name, and as the ad’s title suggests, poses them as a sign that the President is “Nervous” about Romney’s candidacy.

Earlier today, Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall gleefully reported that ESPN had pulled Hank Williams Jr.’s iconic “Are You Ready For Some Football” song from last night’s Monday Night Football broadcast, in response to remarks that Hank made, on Fox and Friends, in which he compared President Obama’s golf outing with Speaker John Boehner to an outing [...]

In an appearance on Fox’s American Newsroom, Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall discussed the suggestion that last night’s terror alert was part of some media manipulation by The White House. Hall dismissed the premise as “unfair,” and also wondered why the Obama administration has turned the War on Terror into a “real political strength,” but shows no sign of running on it.

Barely an hour after a (now-downgraded 5.8) earthquake hit the East Coast, the internet began congratulating its own sparkling wit by publishing Top Earthquake Tweets lists. While this is a decidedly narcissistic exercise, some of them are actually pretty funny. As a public service, we’ve culled through the lists to present some of our favorites, plus a few tweets that didn’t make the lists. We’ll let you decide which group had the funniest tweets.

Mediaite has exclusively obtained this note sent from Dan Abrams to the staff of his sites about their traffic numbers. Well actually, it ended up in our inbox and we just thought it was pretty cool.

The month of June was a banner month for Mediaite.com. With our two year anniversary approaching, Mediaite enjoyed nearly 3 Million unique visitors to the site; throw in syndicated content, and that number jumps to just shy of 6.5 Million unique visitors who viewed branded Mediaite content in the last thirty days. This, in just our 24th month in the marketplace.

A week into the great Twitter scandal known as “Weinergate,” the media have not gotten any closer to figuring out exactly how a lewd photo found its way onto Rep. Anthony Weiner‘s yFrog account, but certainly theories have been eliminated. Mediaite managing editor Colby Hall joined MSNBC’s Alex Witt this morning for a recap of how this story became the top headline this week, how it broke down and where Rep. Weiner and the Democrats may find themselves once the story blows over.

As the controversy surrounding Rep. Anthony Weiner‘s photographic Twitter scandal continues to swell, Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall appeared on WPIX New York’s News at Ten, with Jodi Applegate, to lend his own talking head to the proceedings. While most of the spot was devoted to placing the rampant speculation into context, Hall did make a few novel points, such as the possibility that the photograph in question was from a “prior relationship,” which would explain the Congressman’s current caginess, without the presumption of guilt that accompanies much of the current speculation.

As a spate of tornadoes continues to threaten to pummel much of the Midwest, cable news outlets have begun to closely monitor the unfolding disasters of the past few days with alarming alacrity. Broadcast technology now allows live feeds to cover potential funnel clouds forming as though we were watching a car chase, and dayside cable shows are all too eager to cut in with the developing stories. But as is so often the case, East Coast based media outlets fail to understand the larger context; the threat of tornadoes for those who live in the Midwest are not just a breaking stories, but more of a way of life.

Editor’s note – Greta Van Susteren recently published a post that was critical of a Mediaite ratings post that pointed out that her recent (and historic) live broadcast from North Korea did not garner great ratings in demo. She called the post “so un-Dan Abrams” and appeared to be frustrated by Mediaite’s lack of coverage of her historic trip (which we had actually covered earlier.) Following is a response from Mediaite founder Dan Abrams to Van Susteren’s critique.

Earlier this week, CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria made the strange admission that he met with President Obama to discuss international issues. Our own Colby Hall called it a “stunning revelation”, which Howard Kurtz quoted on Reliable Sources today as he made the point that in his opinion, such meetings should have been disclosed.

In a videotaped “First Guess” segment for his Fok News Channel, future Current TV tentpole Keith Olbermann taunted departing Fox News tentpole Glenn Beck with a dramatic reading from A Face in the Crowd, from which Beck’s “Lonesome Rhodes” nickname derives. Along the way, though, Olbermann offered his own insight into Beck’s coming departure from FOX, revealed some information about his upcoming show, and displayed the kind of hubris that is the hallmark of either the truly gifted, or the truly narcissistic (or both!)

On Monday night, I watched my first, and hopefully last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell. While O’Donnell laudably tried to focus the audience’s attention on the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen under for good, I was overtaken, not by the spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but of the blithe interviewer pulling on the thread, and the voracious audience he serves. It didn’t make me sad, it made me angry.

The speculation over Keith Olbermann‘s future after MSNBC continued tonight on Anderson Cooper 360º, where our own Managing Editor Colby Hall joined host Anderson Cooper and the New York Times’ Bill Carter to discuss Olbermann’s latest tweets, what went on behind the scenes at MSNBC, and what the former Countdown host has in store for the upcoming months.

There was huge excitement in the news world this week as reports started coming through that massive amounts of animals were suddenly dying off in Arkansas. Not only would this story help end the slow news rut of the holidays, it also implied a coming end of the world in which we would all die horribly. However, this excitement soon turned to disappointment as the week went on and everyone was still alive.

The recent decision to return the controversial classic Huckleberry Finn to classrooms in a censored editor that removes the 219 instances of the n-word has garnered some outcry from both those who considering the editing detrimental to education and those who prefer the book not be taught at all. Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall visited WPIX to discuss what he calls a “dangerous precedent” for troublesome history.

Earlier today, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin caused a stir with a retweet that many read as a cryptic indicator that the Mama Grizzly was poised to come out in favor of some gay rights. Prominent Palin fansite Conservatives4Palin.com, however, has swooped in to defend her honor, noting that Palin’s retweet of Tammy Bruce‘s sentiment, “But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already–the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bed,” doesn’t indicate support for gay rights. I’m inclined to agree.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but ’tis also the season to fill dead news space. Luckily, you’re also probably looking for something to do after you sleep off the eggnog, glance nervously at your now-bone-dry tree, and try to remember if you really just paid twelve bucks to see Little Fockers. Whether you celebrate [...]

Earlier today, Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall appeared on Fox News’ Studio B with Shepard Smith to discuss Mediaite’s Ten Worst Media Disasters of 2010, and after running down the titular list, Smith gave a boost to the site’s street cred. Not only did Smith correctly pronounce the name of our site (unlike Rush Limbaugh), but went on to observe “It’s not like you guys are always wonderful to us, but I always enjoy reading it.”

Reality isn’t always wonderful to them, either, but it is to Fox News’ credit that they aren’t afraid to acknowledge criticism, and still engage with the source of it.