So what happened on last night's piping-hot edition of Topic A With Tina Brown? Nothing special, naturally, except that Henry the Intern celebrated his one-year anniversary of eye-burning and brain-melting with Tina! What follows is his fiftieth recap of CNBC's crown jewel of Sunday nights, which will undoubtedly have you weeping tears of joy all over your keyboard.

Last night's "Topic A" is noteworthy for one reason: it's the one-year anniversary of my so-called dutiful stenography." I don't know if it's harder to believe that I subjected myself to 50 Sunday nights with Tina or that CNBC did.

So, what happened on this exciting installment of the "news/views" magazine? I can tell you're dying to know. First, Tina showed her concern for the future of newspapers. "So now, Mort, you publish a newspaper," she began. Zuckerman said The Daily News will live on, even with rising costs. He said blogs can help the paper gather high school sports scores. [Ed: Or write your damn stories for you, smartass. -JC] Bill Grueskin, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online bragged "our growth rates are higher than the paper's" but cautioned "the longer [they] wait, the harder it is" for other news organizations to charge online readers. "No one else has really tried very hard," he said. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter agreed: "Paying is some sort of moral offense" for a generation of news consumers. The "really scary question looking forward," he said, "is who will do the reporting?"

Sir Ridley Scott stopped by to tout his latest film, "Kingdom of Heaven." His point? "I can barely start a computer but I can really draw like a son-of-a-bitch."

Tina promoted "En Route to Baghdad," a new film about Sergio de Mello, the United Nations official who died in a bombing in Iraq two years ago. The film's director, Simone Duarte, said "he connected to people in a way that was unique"; he "was super intelligent" and charming. Ahmad Fawzi, a UN spokesman close to de Mello, said "it was impossible to say no to Sergio." All agreed he would have been a great Secretary General.

Tina talked to Rosanna Arquette, director of "All We Are Saying," a documentary about the decline of creativity in the music industry. It's not about the music anymore because "the visual part has taken over," said Tina. Editing was the biggest challenge for Arquette: "How do you cut Joni Mitchell?"

The editor's desk roundtable discussed the premise of Lewis Lapham's new documentary, "The American Ruling Class." Lapham explained, "We like to pretend as Americans that we are an entirely egalitarian society," but "these are people who write the laws, run the media, [and] set the values." Tina and the other panelists think the social hierarchy is more fluid. Zuckerman believes "it is a leadership class that emerges in every generation... and we have that more than any other country in the world." Jeannette Walls said, "I wouldn't consider myself a member of the ruling class but I certainly was rubbing elbows with them."

Hot picks:
Zuckerman: Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare by Bertram Fields
Novelist Jay McInerney: "Dear Frankie" DVD
Walls: Misfortune by Wesley Stace
Lapham: Medici Money by Tim Parks
Tina: "The Great New Wonderful"

Closing quote by Kurt Vonnegut: "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

Tina teased next week's roundtable: "When we'll have more knights at the table to continue the crusade for smart conversation."

That will be installment #51, the start of another year with Tina. Good times, Tina. Good times.