Here, a local politico in Florida rants for 45 seconds about how much the media sucks, until the lone reporter in attendance blows up and storms out in a huff. This is exactly what would happen if my mom was a journalist. [via Romenesko]

Conservative writers are very upset that The New York Times published an op-ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin calling for the U.S. to halt any plans to strike Syria. “It looks like those pro-Assad Syrians didn’t need to hack the New York Times website after all,” National Review columnist Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted. “They could have just asked nicely.” Commentary editor John Podhoretz mused this morning: “So it’s LITERALLY Pravda-on-the-Hudson.”

Polly Mosendz is a 22-year-old recent college graduate. She's also the proud new buyer of a quarter-million dollar Manhattan apartment. "I am a normal 20-something," she writes.

Authenticity, good acting, sharp dialogue and good, fast-moving storytelling are the hallmarks of this hour, created and written by Aaron Sorkin. This week’s seemed to whiz by faster than any other I can remember in the now almost two seasons that the series has been running. A good sign that the show is going to finish strong when the current season ends next week. (It already has been renewed for a 3rd season; by any reasonable analysis, it richly deserves to stay on the schedule.)

USA Today, the newspaper of choice for angel-believers, today notes that "some"—a mythical group that is much discussed, but never quite pinned down—believe that the current situation in Syria could be a fulfillment of Apocalyptic Bible Predictions, Vol. One. Who are these wise, insane prophets?

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad sat down with Charlie Rose for an extended interview on Sunday morning, his first with an American network since Barbara Walters was beyond charmed with the “mild-mannered” dude in December 2011.

The Wall Street Journal was shamed into a disclosure today, one week after it published an influential Syria op-ed without noting that the author has ties to a group that "subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition."

On Labor Day the The New York Times reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an “influential pro-Israel lobby group,” was pushing Congress to bomb Syria. By the time the story appeared in Tuesday’s newsprint edition, however, all references to AIPAC had been quietly excised. The websites NewsDiffs and News Sniffer show that the piece was entirely rewritten, more or less. What happened here?

Associated Press: "NIN closed the night with a slow and smoky cover of Johnny Cash's 'Hurt,' which earned nonstop cheers from the crowd."

Cotton-topped moron Richard Cohen is, of course, an awful newspaper columnist. We're used to his steady stream of ill-concealed bigotry, horny romance diatribes, and routine contempt for the entire idea of "journalism." But now, Richard Cohen is forging bold new frontiers of fucked up sexual obsession.

Fred Mwangaguhunga, the proprietor of gossip website and chamber of all-caps hyperbole MediaTakeOut, has been making the media rounds lately. To honor the occasion, we decided to assemble an exhaustive hierarchy (from least to most exclusive, roughly) of his creation’s daily EXCLUSIVE!!! reports, which often turn out to be completely wrong. Enjoy.

Howard Kurtz is losing it. Today the quote-unquote media watchdog published 527 words on FoxNews.com about the Hamptons photo shoot of Ben Bradlee’s daughter-in-law, Pari Bradlee, who apparently teaches yoga to Washington A-listers like Howard Kurtz. It’s not that Pari Bradlee’s precise arrangement of undergarments has nothing to do with the media (though, in fact, it does not); it’s that it has nothing to do with anything. It has no point; it has no angle; it has no news. There is nothing there. Except some boobies. Which, to be fair, is probably all Howard Kurtz is really interested in right now.

The front page, above-the-fold news in the St. Augustine (FL) Record today: "St. Augustine Shores man discovers likeness of Virgin Mary in tree."

Ousted PR attack dog Brian Lewis has laid low in the month since Fox News president Roger Ailes ejected him from the channel after accusing Lewis of “financial irregularities” and “multiple, material and significant breaches of his employment contract.” He has spoken on the record just once — to rebut Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman’s account of Lewis calling Bill O’Reilly a “chucklehead.” Now he’s lawyering up. According to a source familiar with his legal situation, Lewis has retained Manhattan entertainment lawyer Judd Burstein, whose online list of clients includes past clients Donald Trump and the Backstreet Boys and present ones Oscar de la Hoya and Donny Deutsch.

Why did Fox News president Roger Ailes fire his top lieutenant? The sudden ousting of PR chief Brian Lewis, who had pioneered the channel’s aggressive public relations strategy since its founding in 1996, inspired plenty of speculation and spin — some of it from the network’s on-air talent — about Lewis’s reputation at the channel, Fox’s vague claims of “financial irregularities,” and what the channel called “multiple, material and significant breaches of [Lewis’s] employment contract.”

If you're reading this, your chair might feel crowded, because there's 63 percent more of you than there used to be. Or 56 percent, maybe. Who knows? Last week, Quantcast, the web-traffic-monitoring service whose numbers are the basis for Gawker's editorial decisions, announced in a vaguely worded blog post that it had performed "a major measurement update" for "even greater measurement accuracy."

Climax time for the series thus far. The ACN network and its news operation—despite reservations—went ahead with a report that U.S. troops had used poison gas—lethal sarin— during an operation inside Pakistan. Soon after the investigative exclusive aired, there were revelations that wrecked its credibility.

Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist not worth reading, is one of America's foremost advocates of Racism as Common Sense. "Please," we beg her, "won't you offer your take on the shooting of a white man by some black youths, in order to unwittingly expose your own prejudices?" Yes, she will.

Media watchdog Howard Kurtz’s new Fox News show, MeD1@B#ZZ, is co-branded with media corporation Microsoft.