NPR reports that someone edited Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page Friday just before the word got out that she was John McCain's pick for a running mate. The edits were obviously made to make Palin look good. There were about 30 of them, made by one person. I'll spell out what NPR is dying to say: That one person was Sarah Palin.Had this happened to Joe Biden's entry, it wouldn't be deemed a story for National Public Radio. Still, I like this All Things Considered writeup, because it pretty much admits in the first sentence that NPR's army of anti-GOP reporters missed the scoop that Palin was McCain's pick. None of them thought to set a watch on her Wikipedia page.

Yo check it out, a map with all the NPR stations! "If you know where you are, this map can tell you where to tune," says the description. Yes, NPR affiliates are usually relatively simple to detect by employing the two-pronged strategy of "pressing seek" and "listening for telltale overeducated barbituate user voice" but this is for people who need to make absolutely sure they are listening to the right station. (NPR listeners, yes!) It probably wasn't necessary to give those people an extra map to consult while cruising down the nation's interstates, but what do we care we barely leave the house anyway. [Uncommon Goods]

We vowed not to feel bad about drinking for 72 hours straight over the holiday, but seeing today how constructively Panopticist's Andrew Hearst spent his weekend, it's hard not to flog ourselves. After all, shouldn't our own curiosity have gotten the better of us years ago when we first heard those rumors about the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's most underrated '80s film, After Hours, being plagiarized from NPR host Joe Frank's 1982 monologue Lies? At any rate, Hearst now has audio that all but closes the book on this semi-scandal:

NPR newscaster Jean Cochhran recently described President Bush's trip to Africa as a visit to the "dark continent." Some NPR listeners took the retro phrase the wrong (read: racist) way, and, as they are predisposed to do, wrote in."I had no idea the term would be found offensive," Cochhran said. Yeah, there's a no reason a term that casts and entire continent of people as the Other should bother anyone. [NPR]

Carrie Brownstein, member of defunct, earnest grrl-rock band Sleater-Kinney, is bloggin' for NPR. Everybody's blogging! Nerd-a-rific. (Although we often found the femband a bit cloying and shrill?) In response to the Maxim magazine/Black Crowes outrage in which Maxim reviewed their record without listening to it, Brownstein reviews albums by the White Stripes and the Shins that haven't been recorded yet. Um, everyone knows that feminists aren't really that funny, but judge for yourselves!

"Bob Butler was just on NPR's Day to Day, discussing the email he wrote to his graduate students regarding his divorce and that email's subsequent appearance on Gawker. He was pompous and self-important to a degree that nearly did damage to the speakers in my car. The only quotes I can remember accurately was his referring to the comments on Gawker as 'vicious' and 'cruel' and 'a circle-jerk of self-righteousness.'" Ooh, it's online, you can go get berated in stereo!

Blood is in the water over at public radio, where top brass has apparently decided that Jesse Camp didn't teach big broadcasters enough lessons back in 1998. Officially, it's the "Public Radio Talent Quest," but Ira "I Am Shattering" Glass is calling it "This American Idol." The game is that people submit a short radio piece, and after a couple weeks of voting, the field starts to narrow and a panel of radio experts/personalities choose the best. If you win—and three people will—you get 10 grand and a mentor, who will help you produce a pilot of your show and shop it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

David Broder—known as "the dean of the Washington press corps" because he taught a young H.L. Mencken how to read—offers his thoughts on the Imus affair and the Duke lacrosse incident today. Broder's columns usually read like a parody of, well, Broder columns, but this morning's missive is almost a parody of a parody of a Broder column.

• Read all about Hassan Elmasry, the Morgan Stanley portfolio manager who's trying to take the Times out of Sulzberger family hands, and the man responsible for tearing Pinch Sulzberger a new one at the late February board meeting. (In PowerPoint, no less!) [WSJ]
  

From this week's New York Times article concerning the NYC filming of Jodie Foster revenge flick The Brave One, and in particular, the vocational choices of Foster's character, Erica Bain:

We just want to wish NPR commentator and former Murrow man, Daniel Schorr, a belated happy birthday. May your stentorian delivery of the week's news with just the tiniest sheen of analysis that always seems to result in "it will be interesting to see" continue for another billion years.

NYU sociology prof Eric Klinenberg wrote a 2002 book about the 1995 heat wave in Chicago. As a result, he now returns with the inexorability of fire hydrant photography every summer, repeating the same statistics and advice for each round of reporters looking for a heat-specific talking head. NPR's On the Media asks the "media darling" how he deals with the repetitive notoriety of answering the same questions every year, then vanishing into obscurity for another nine months:

It's just you and a little machine and you can make history. I find that scary. Nobody should get into print or on the air without some kind of editor. I have an institutional belief that nobody can be above having a good editor.

• WP shuts off comments on a blog, because snooty MSM can't handle real reader's opinions. Or something like that; we haven't yet read the how-bloggers-should-be-dismissive memo. [NYT]
• TV news stars go to NPR to do reporting, get tote bags. [WSJ]
• This week fickle Jon Friedman crushes on Salon's Rebecca Traister. Because nothing's hotter than a chick who writes about chicks. [MW]
• MSLO had a good year, and only very partially because the boss got out of jail. [Folio:]
• Bonnie Fuller to speak to Columbia j-school; j-schoolers to throw themselves into Broadway traffic upon realizing they spent all that money to train for this? [WWD]

We missed Judith Miller on Morning Edition this morning, because, well, we never listen to NPR. (Every now and again, we like to play against demographic type.) Thankfully, though, several of you have filled us in on what we missed:

CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson, who recently stepped down to run the Aspen Institute speaks with NPR's "On the Media."
Transcript [WNYC.org]