A diverse gaggle of online media outlets (from Drudge and Hot Air to Wonkette and HuffPo) are enamored with the idea that a series of 2007 speeches that Joe Biden gave regarding the possible impeachment of George W. Bush are now applicable to President Obama‘s Libya policy.With varying degrees of shrillness, they’re playing “Gotcha!” with Biden’s promise that a unilateral move to war with Iran would be met with impeachment, and applying that promise to Obama’s Libya policy.

After her very public and somewhat controversial exit from the HuffPo yesterday, Mayhill Fowler has published an article titled “Why I Left The Huffington Post” on her personal blog. The citizen journalist’s post voices her primary complaint: “I want to be paid for my time and effort.” The self-proclaimed clueless journalist started contributing to HuffPo in 2007 without pay, as is the norm at a vast number of new-media sites.

Howard Fineman is the latest big name to depart Newsweek since the Washington Post Company sold it and editor Jon Meacham departed. Brian Stelter at the NYT broke the news this afternoon.

Who: Brian Williams, interviewed by Jeff Greenfield
What: “In the News with Jeff Greenfield – Brian Williams”
Where: 92^nd St. Y
When: April 18, 2010
Thumbs: Up

Last Monday, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, wrote a piece on Andrew Sullivan, staff writer at The Atlantic, maître d’ of The Daily Dish, and all-around nabob of web journalism. It was not a very nice piece. Most of it is assigned to an insidious strain of anti-Semitism to which Sullivan, wittingly or not, is supposed to have fallen prey . . .

Apparently newspapers of the world should be considering seriously adding bikini slide shows to their online offerings. The Huffington Post has recently passed the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal in number of readers.

The Huffington Post has really outdone themselves today with their latest Green feature: “Animals Eat Weird Things.” The slide show depicts tigers, butterflies, squirrels, monkeys and bears eating “weird” things like lollipops, sneakers, corn and–gasp–blocks of ice!

I’m not the only one who has noticed The Huffington Post’s march toward trashy headlines, but usually, these are confined to gossip or entertainment items that scream things like “WATCH: Nazareth Man Gets Totally CRUCIFIED!” Now, it seems even HuffPo’s enviro-conscious “Green” section has succumbed to this condition…all in the name of clicks. You got us again HuffPost!

Ah, this never gets old, does it? It appears that Huffington Post RSS-style feed of links through Twitter — located @HuffPostNews — has been hacked by dirty-talking, self-proclaimed conservatives. The attack began about 1 hour ago with a crude attack on Keith Olbermann. Other targets include Barack Obama, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. In other words, no surprises.

Further evidence Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid sensibility is seeping into the Wall St. Journal? Or merely proof someone over there is reading HuffPo?! The former according to Reuters’ Felix Salmon who picked up on this photo and caption in today’s WSJ column by Patience Wheatcroft. Boobs sell!

So! 2009 is almost over. The health care bill has passed. President Obama has announced his plan for Afghanistan. The midterms are still eleven months away. What will we talk about? If some of the coverage these last few days (from normally stalwart Obama supporters) is any hint, it’s likely the focus between now and the president’s State of the Union address is going to on Obama’s sinking popularity and everything he has done wrong in the last…eleven months.

Verena von Pfetten is Air America’s Senior Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor, and the former Living Editor at the Huffington Post, which makes her my former colleague and great friend. (She is also Canadian, as well as the former Verena van der Woodsen to my Blair Sklardorf). Verena had the good fortune, or misfortune, depending on [...]

the Washington Post has opted to run another Sarah Palin op-ed piece, this one about Climategate. The piece is a re-working of something Palin posted on her Facebook page last week and the Post is apparently drawing the ire of some readers who feel it’s just a clear grab for traffic.

Just this week the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which runs the White House pool has started letting Talking Points Memo, Salon, and the HuffPo in to share the pool duty. A number of establishment people are up in arms about “blurring the line between news and punditry even further.” Should we be worried the inmates are taking over the (clubby) asylum?

“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.

Is it just that between Twitter and YouTube and livestreaming we are able to pay better attention to White House affairs such as last night’s state dinner, or is it just that the Obama’s are more fun to pay attention to? Because I for one can not remember so much attention being paid to a state dinner in the past. Short version: even if you weren’t there, it’s possible not to miss a thing.

David Letterman appears to be reaping the rewards of the National Enquirer‘s new found respect — or perhaps fear factor is a better way to phrase it. No one wants to miss a story as big as John Edwards ever again. Behold: The Letterman Sex Tape.

Based on the coverage David Letterman‘s alleged love life is getting these days you’d be forgiven for concluding that Letterman wasn’t the victim of a $2 million extortion plot but the subject of an undercover investigation or sexual harassment lawsuit. Accuracy seems to be taking a back seat to scandalous headlines.

Over at The Huffington Post, they’ve been treating the news of David Letterman‘s shocking affairs with staffers — and the extortionist who tried to squeeze Letterman for $2 million dollars, suspected to be Robert “Joe” Halderman — with their trademark blanket coverage, leaving no stone unturned. The secret winner? Jay Leno. Ads for his show are popping up all around the news of his rival’s troubles.

According to Newsweek no one in their “right mind” thinks newspapers will or should survive in their current state. Saving print is the equivalent of saving horse drawn carriages or steam engines. It’s time for newspapers to die, says the magazine that just overhauled its print version at great expense.

Over the weekend Arianna Huffington announced that women the world over are suffering from sadness, and introduced a new column to help women with their “sadness.” Maureen Dowd agrees! So much so she practically rewrote Arianna’s column for today’s paper.

A few weeks ago the UK newspaper the Guardian broke the news that Rupert Murdoch‘s newspaper had been quietly settling cases out of court — cases which would have revealed that the journos working for his papers had to be using “criminal methods” such as wire-tapping and hacking into emails, to get stories. Rupert denied any knowledge of any wrongdoing. Now, it looks like the sins of the son may soon be visited upon the father.

Little-Known Details About How JFK, Jr. Lived” happens to be a nice way of saying “A slideshow of JFK Jr.’s abs throughout the years.”

I’ve been seeing a lot of Phoebe Cates‘ breasts lately and it took me some time to figure out why. However, as I was tooling around the Internet this morning looking to what was what in the media world and it suddenly became clear, I was not in fact seeing double, HuffPo and The Daily Beast are both featuring strangely similar bikini slide shows on their home page. And by similar we mean practically identical.

At least when it comes to page views. The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter is reporting on the speculation that the Washington Post fired columnist Dan Froomkin because his column’s page views were low.

Page views have long been the metric of success at online institutions but thus far mainstream papers have been mostly able to avoid pandering to the click-through. No longer, it would seem.