“We Are the World 25 For Haiti” made its debut at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony, featuring an all-star cast of pop superstars and actors ranging from Pink and Lady Gaga to Lil Wayne and Kanye West, with a special appearance by Michael Jackson. Last night’s premiere was announced by actor Jaime Foxx and simulcasted to millions worldwide. See the full official video inside!

It’s always been my understanding that the Grammys are Hollywood’s Halloween of sorts. For one night, all bets are off. You can stray from safe, bring the hem line up, and add an inch (or 5) on your heel. Alas, this year’s Grammy’s seemed to pull a page from the always safe Oscars: a bunch of yawns, and too many huge misses. Here’s a look at the best (and worst!) of what the red carpet had to offer tonight.

Here’s the central question of tonight’s Grammy awards: Was Kanye right? Is Taylor Swift all well and good, but did Beyoncé have the best video of all time — and the best record, album, song, female pop performance? Or will everyone be gaga for Gaga? And how often do you think “gaga for Gaga” will [...]

It’s the end of the year, the time for handy lists and timelines recapping the touchstones of the past 12 months, freezing them in our ever-shortening collective memory.

Of course, some people just have to be different. Mediaite contributor and White House reporter Tommy Christopher pulls back the curtain on covering politics in 2009, and shares photos and videos that have never been seen before. Find out who the Secret Service did manage to keep out of the White House, what Joe Biden told his young mentorees, and much more.

It’s easy to get caught up in the news craze of the day or the week and lose sight of the larger context. But which stories have really had the largest media impact in 2009? Luckily, there’s a graph for that. The good folks at GOOD have put together an infographic that visually represents the degree to which “print, television, radio, and internet reporting” paid attention to the big stories of the year. Larger graph after the jump:

“Readers keep emailing me to tell me that as far as cable news is concerned, today’s events might as well be happening on Mars. I cannot confirm this because when real news happens, the last place I look is the cable news channels. But I cannot say I am surprised. Since this does not have [...]

Remember when pop icon Michael Jackson died last summer and the media mourned, but also breathed a collective, week-long sigh of relief, because the news cycle was not only decided, but popular? As dark as it sounds, that was sort of like Christmas in June (and into July) for the press, and today, as the FBI releases 333 pages of reports on the late M.J., is like Christmas on December 22nd. Get the salacious details inside before they’re all over the internet!

“Mainstream media have been accused of pathologizing the African-American male, but — let’s face it — three men who happened to be black moved a lot of units this year. Just try to imagine this past year in media without President Obama, Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods.” The NYT’s David Carr reflects on a year in media.

This is pretty neat: the New York Times has put together a visualizer that geographically maps out NYTimes.com’s traffic over the course of a day. To make things even more interesting, the day they picked was June 25, 2009 — the day Michael Jackson died. The flaring map to the left roughly captures the moment that TMZ.com reported his death. Video after the jump:

Time takes its ‘Person of the Year’ very seriously, as evidenced by this year’s pick: United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who I suspect is really just a fill in for the U.S. economy, which yes, is absolutely the overriding issue of the year. Had Time taken the whole thing slightly less seriously they probably would have considered picking someone who might actually sell magazines

Danny.

I just don’t get it.

In your piece “A Retrospective: 28 Media Leaders Who Died This Decade,” you acknowledge the contributions of several well-known media figures who have died since 2000. Nice names. Good people. But they are all WHITE!

You couldn’t think of ANYONE who wasn’t white? Really?

According to a recent Rasmussen survey 80% of Americans think that Americans pay too much attention to sensational news stories. Snap conclusion? At least some cable TV viewers are aware they are supporting something they disapprove of. Apparently ‘sensational TV’ is the new tobacco industry.

Lets say that you are in charge of CNN. Not only are ratings dismal, but the biggest story in cable news focuses on your competitor, and covering the story drives viewers towards them. What do you do? How about go back to the story that served you so well during the summer months — you know, resurrect the Michael Jackson story. Brilliant!

Long before The Daily Show, long before The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live was making fun of the news in a way that no one had ever seen before.
In honor of the premiere of Season 35, we’ve pulled together 35 of SNL‘s choicest news anchor spoofs and Weekend Updates, from Baba Wawa to Fred Armisen‘s Joy Behar to the infamous Couric/Palin interview.

How much is your Facebook page worth to Facebook? Probably a few hundred dollars, according to a Facebook app, Viral Loop, that’s collecting data as it is promoting a book of the same name. How much are celebrities’ pages worth? For many, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

There is a silver-lining to the ominous deathcloud hanging over the magazine industry — if you look hard enough. The publishing advocacy group Magazine Publishers of America has disseminated a four-page document titled “The Full Story on Magazine Circulation Vitality” aimed at spinning the circ numbers released by the ABC’s at the end of August (single-copy sales are down 12 percent from last year). Don’t worry, everything’s fine!

Earlier last month, Mediaite.com broke news that Harper’s Bazaar would be shooting Janet Jackson for their October Cover. An odd choice by Editor in Chief, Glenda Bailey, since it has been three years since her Ms. Jackson’s last fashion magazine cover. What’s the result?

Images of the newsstand and subscribers covers have been released and surprisingly, one of the two covers appears to be stunning: a perfect mix of glamour and class.

Last week, when a video purporting to show Michael Jackson alive and exiting the back of a coroner’s van started picking up viral steam, we were skeptical — not of the video, which was definitely a hoax — but of the mainstream media outlets shamelessly running the clip. Now, CNN is reporting that the hoax was an “experiment” designed by a German television station to “show how easy it is to spread rumors online.” Novel!

Ever find that sometimes when you’re talking with friends or co-workers that a certain word keeps getting repeated over and over again? Maybe it’s a flashy one or just a really useful one, but it just keeps making the rounds in e-mails or chit-chat? Well, you’re not alone – the media also loves to reuse [...]

Well the Summer of Death is officially coming to a close, and it looks like we’ve made it! There is an old saying that celebrity deaths come in groups of three, but this summer they’ve been coming in pairs with one person’s passing being overshadowed by a more famous counterpart.

Who else has famously lost out in celebrity death coverage over the years? We’ve put together a gallery.

I met Dominick Dunne when I was a cub reporter for Court TV on the OJ Simpson case. He was, at that time, just beginning to enjoy his notoriety as a celebrity journalist. Day after day we took our assigned seats in the courtroom and then met in the hall during breaks as we stalked the attorneys.

As a 28-year-old reporter for a small cable channel, I turned to him as a mentor. But he wasn’t looking to be the purveyor of sage advice. He wanted information from me too. What started as a symbiotic professional relationship became a cherished friendship.

Gossip Cop is reporting that both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles station KTLA are prominently featuring a bogus online video that stars an allegedly alive Michael Jackson walking out of an L.A. coroner’s van. The 30-second clip, courtesy of Live Leak, is impossibly shaky and features a literally three-second glimpse of a shadowy waif with dark hair exiting a van from the back.

Remember Michael Jackson coverage? Well it’s back today in a big way.

All the cablers are covering the news Jackson’s mother was granted custody of his children, but on MSNBC’s Live with Carlos Watson this morning, another debate took place – about calling Jackson a “pedophile.”

News reporters like to catch readers’ attention with a few zingy lines at the start of an article. Sometimes, these so-called “ledes” go horribly wrong. In Today’s Worst News Ledes, we highlight some of the biggest offenders:

In Defense of Trophy Wives; Evidence that Iowa is the weirdest state; and delicious sandwiches … Plus! Other fun things we’ve come across during our day reaping the fruits of the Internet.