Remember how CNN and AP were running around trying to figure out where Barack Obama was having his secret Islamic Vacation Of Change/Terror? And then a six year old found him in the Virgin Islands while looking for Easter eggs and sent a picture to Fox News? Well it turns out the whole experience wasn't just a cute story but also a lifeline for mostly false idea of "Citizen Journalism," in which furries leave their basement to cover the war in Iraq or city council meetings or whatever, for no pay. Because, see, the little girl's family submitted their Barack scoop to Fox through a website called uReport. Also, they approached Obama in a pretty straightforward manner, instead of melodramatically spying on him from a distance and probably giggling like a bunch of teenaged girls, like CNN did. Maybe this really does change everything. After the jump, video of the girl's mom recounting the family's heart-pounding investigative Obama interview.

You know the Colbert Report, and how it's really successful? And how other forms of news are less popular and some are dying? CNN noticed that too! So their Headline News channel will soon be airing Not Just Another Cable News Show, a weekly program with a light take on hard news using memorable gaffes from the past week. Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox, of Wonkette fame, and noted Canadian/Huffington Post contributor Rachel Sklar will be commenters. The show, whose concept is stolen from the first segment of the Daily Show and whose title is stolen from the Wayans brothers, begins April 5. [AP]

CNN's Showbiz Tonight turned to Julia Allison to explain the phenomenon of tabloid regulars with little or no talent in this clip. She calls it the "de-evolution of celebrity." I can hear the producer on the phone now: "Hello, pot, we need someone to call the kettle black this afternoon. Are you available?" Of course, Allison doesn't just know how to put on makeup, wear a dress and pose like the rest of these creatures — she's an umtrepreneur!

Fantastic news! CNN Anchor Don Lemon was finally given permission by his new boss to wear a vest! Everyone at CNN is so excited about this that they spent like 20 minutes talking about how great vests are, and Lemon also showed off his reading glasses. Then he said an amazing aphorism that we are having embroidered on the dress shirt we've just torn the sleeves off of.

Mallory Simon works for "the most trusted name in news." But she's working hard to make CNN also the most trusted name in news feeds. Simon gives CNN.com readers every detail of when and how Eliot Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, changed her MySpace and Facebook profiles last week. But at 1,000-plus words, Simon overstays her welcome. Instead of paying writers by the word, why don't we pay them to leave? The 100-word version, below.

I meant "men need to be allowed to have feelings!" I wasn't going to say "fuck," I swear! Eliot Spitzer was looking for hot, kinky emotional freedom, you see.

When CNN interviewed former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey about the Eliot Spitzer mess this morning, they kinda left out the bit where Coffey resigned in disgrace back in 1996 after he bit a stripper. Quoth Coffey: "This is not survivable." [TVNewser]

TV journalists have been squabbling on camera and hilariously for years, and CNN reporter Candy Crowley reminds us that the practice continues to this day. Though she doesn't actually trade words with fellow CNN correspondent Chris Welch, she follows his report by telling the camera, "Don't you believe a word of that," followed by a brief description (slightly truncated in the clip) of how fun it is to be a political reporter. What sorts of lies was Welch spreading? He was showing reporters bitching on the presidential campaign trail about having to wait in line for hotel room keys, about not getting frequent guest points in hotels, about the lack of power outlets, about the food — about everything, really. In other words, the journalists are whiny and self-absorbed. Crowley spots this for the obvious slander that it is:

The Democratic primaries and debates have lifted CNN's ratings to new heights, but the numbers may fall back below cable news competitor Fox after the election, when everyone realizes CNN's leading personalities are 74-year-old Larry King and vein-popping demagogue Lou Dobbs. CNN president Jim Walton: "Journalism is key to what we do... Fox is doing something different." [NYT]

Mustachioed embarrassment to the profession of journalism Geraldo Rivera appeared on The View today, where he castigated fellow blowhard Lou Dobbs for the sorts of things we have regularly attacked him for, but it was Geraldo saying it so we all felt a bit silly. Of course, Geraldo works for noted reasoned advocates of humane, sensible immigration reform Fox News, so this is really just another salvo in the tiresome Fox News vs. CNN (and sometimes NBC) battle. The clip is attached below.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is so outraged that people keep talking about the picture of Barack Hussein Obama in Somali dress, wearing a turban-ish hat and some kind of terrorist bomb-making apron type thing, that it has issued at least four different statements on the matter over the past 12 hours, mostly about how Obama should be "ashamed." Not about the clothing, of course, but for allowing a Clinton staffer to leak it, or something. Here's a fun clip of the gang in CNN's Situation Room slowly coming to the collective realization that Hillary knows exactly what she is doing with the Obama Turban thing — keeping the story alive:

The US government would maybe like to spruce up the network of existing interstates that runs from Texas to our Canadian border. The state of Texas, meanwhile, is looking into constructing a multi-lane freeway that would stretch from Laredo, on the Mexican border, to Arkansas. Naturally, this means that the American government has sold us out to foreign interests, dissolved our sovereignty, and allowed the shadowy "North American Union" to begin work on a vast "NAFTA Superhighway"—several football fields wide!—that would destroy our borders, and our rights, for good. This conspiracy theory, quite popular among the more extreme cranks of the far-right and libertarian movements, was brought to our attention by the tireless work promoting it done by respected economic commentator Lou Dobbs, of CNN.

Kind of the most astounding lede we've read this week: "So I was having lunch at the Four Seasons with Lou Dobbs the other day, locked in disagreement over who cared more about working people, him or me." (The answer? Lou Dobbs is not swayed by reasoned arguments or civil discussion, demonstrates no interest in workable solutions to problems he identifies for the purposes of <a href="https://www.gawkerarchives.com/342376/lou-dobbs-scumbag".employing trumped-up rage to appeal to the angry white people who've made him an unlikely TV star.) [NYT]

Old Media is dead! Today CNN officially launched iReport, the first citizen media site other than Current, NowPublic, Newsvine, and other ones that don't matter. But CNN's making a good run for not mattering either. See, some reports on the site, which has the tagline "Unedited. Unfiltered. News," get edited and filtered and put on TV. What made the cut? Teenage book reports and disaster porn. I'd put an example below, but CNN failed to learn from the one thing YouTube does right and let people embed videos on other sites. A real shame, because they'll miss out on all this news:

CNN fired American Morning producer Chez Pazienza yesterday for blogging on the side. The network says Pazienza was canned for not having his blog posts vetted by higher ups. He disagrees. "It's not that I've been writing," Pazienza told thePoMoblog. "It's WHAT I've been writing." On his blog, Pazienza writes that he "fell into TV news 16 years ago and been stuck there ever since (proving that the business really is a bottomless pit)." Thump!

Ridiculously error-prone New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has been making reliably glaring mistakes in every single piece she has published in the newspaper of record for years now. Here's today's, in her story about how MSNBC is trying very hard not to upset the Clintons anymore: "MSNBC calls its stars 'the best political team' on television, but at the moment some players are in disgrace." A free cookie to Slate's Jack Shafer, who wrote an entire column about how annoying it is that CNN uses that "best political team" slogan incessantly. Does Ms. Stanley own a TV? Or have an editor? [NYT]

John Fitzgerald Page, the Atlanta-bred Worst Person in the World, blew a golden opportunity for self-effacing humor that an inexplicably sympathetic CNN correspondent laid in his lap in a one-on-one interview. Sipping on an iced beverage in his finest suspenders, JFP boldly rejected the softball questions that CNN's Eric Lanford set on a tee in front of him, instead opting to tell all you heartless Gawker-reading bastards exactly how it is: "I'm not arrogant, I'm accomplished. You walk into a bar and say, 'I just bought a Ford truck.' I go in and say 'Look at my Beemer convertible.'" Yes you do, JFP. Yes you do. That's why this video will only add to your legend.

Nighmare online douchey dater John Fitzgerald Page was just on CNN Headline News. You know, the service that brings you a digest version of the most important news stories on the planet.

Former Senator and man who wishes he could own slaves Trent Lott "may go to work as a network political consultant. Lott says he's being courted by CNN and FOX to do political analysis." [TP]

Harris Poll asked TV viewers, both Democrat and Republican, to name their favorite and least liked news personalities. The results of the survey, crunched and displayed on our chart, are fascinating.