In case you didn't watch the CNN.com interview Carlson posted with Famesource, the social network buying signups in Bangalore, all you really need to see is the title of the online-only show. And I never thought I'd say it, but: Button up, lady. This is CNN.

What, did you think laid-off newspaper vets would become bloggers? The Bay Guardian lists a half-dozen senior editors, bureau chiefs and reporters who've escaped the crumbling newspaper economy by becoming publicists for Governor Schwarzenegger and various high-powered firms. The Guardian worries these pros will use their inside knowledge of the news biz to deflect bad coverage from their clients. I disagree: Public relations plays an important role in telling stories accurately and providing journalists with timely, helpful and correct information. (How's that for spin control? Send any mid-six-figure job offers to paul@valleywag.com.)

Christmas is slow for journalists. There are a few more end-of-year lists to run, most of which were written weeks ago, and some holiday shopping numbers to report. Which is why the Sydney Morning Herald's Conrad Walters must have been thrilled to see security software firm McAfee's latest study on the growing threat of cyberwar between nations. It's not every day a hack gets to paint a picture of gloom and doom this lurid.

According to a New York Times report, Google has been seeking out and posting comments from people mentioned in stories found on Google News since spring. The company blogged an announcement in August. I know: This changes everything. Except there are currently only 140 comments posted among the 4.3 million stories in Google News — a participation rate lower than one-third of one percent. As the Times reports, even with Googlers emailing the subjects of news stories, people just aren't coming out in force to get their comments in. Are you an aspiring pundit? Here's an easy one for you: Predict that this will explode in 2008. Next year, do the same for 2009.

How do hacks get two whole issues off from doing any work?

"Don't slam the bridge on your way out," chortled this morning's San Francisco Chronicle above a photo of the departing Cosco Busan, which hit the Bay Bridge on its way out from Oakland in November and spilled 58,000 gallons of oily fuel into San Francisco Bay. But as a wannabe engineer, I'm fascinated by the cargo ships that come and go through the Golden Gate.

How else to explain the Linden Lab CEO's waxy complexion? He's the unending leader of an unholy company which laughs at death, and sustains itself through artificial means — PR, that is. To maintain that unhealthy glow, he's preying on unsuspecting technology journalists, sucking out all common sense and journalistic curiosity and turning them into willing propaganda puppets. His silver tongue already scored a succulent piece in the BBC, and now David Kirkpatrick of Fortune has fallen under Rosedale's sway.

I don't really like to stoop to making fun of stories. You know why? Because I've written so many bad ones myself! Hi-o! Hell, everyone does! And also, who cares? That aside, it's safe to say I may never get over this opening paragraph in the Times metro section: "Across the city, delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread." INDEED. Whatever, the story is somewhat redeemed because it is about deli cats, which are the most awesome cats in the world and anyone who is against them is EVIL. What would you rather have, the occasional scratch and cat hair on your bagel or RAT-NIBBLED TRISCUITS?

The SEC's website is the new location of the New York Times' corrections page. NetSuite stock is up 12 percent today after its $26-a-share IPO debut, a long-awaited victory for the Larry Ellison-backed software company, as the Times noted earlier this week. But it appears that the paper got several things wrong.

Before Fortune magazine's little dustup about Facebook's controversial new advertising products, Andy Serwer's court jester, David Kirkpatrick, produced a hardly hard-hitting video on the subject. Just how much of a puff piece was this? Fortune managed to dig up some intercutting shots of a very enthusiastic Facebook user. Recognize her?

Why should AdWeek's Brian Morrissey work to write a story when Google PR will just give him one? Smart thinking, Morrissey. His latest scoop: "Purchase consideration" for Honda cars rose from 57 to 61 percent when Honda's website appeared on the top of the page in Google ads displayed when users searched for "fuel-efficient cars." All this according to what? A study funded by Google and carried out by analytics firm Enquiro, of course.

When I could roust her from a drunken stupor, Megan McCarthy would usually start complaining about our last five posts, my management style, or, for lack of anything else, my hairdo. But in between, she occasionally turned in brilliant work. After the jump, my favorite bits of McCarthyism.

A breakdown of my inbox after having my first major tech piece in the NYT:

The wonderful thing about Digg? Critical thinking is not required. You can vote for stories based on your personal belief system, not whether they're, say, true. Take, for example, a brief New York Times story about UPS's cost-saving route software. Digg users translated this into a tall tale about UPS saving 3 million gallons of gas by elminating left-hand turns. Computers save the environment! It's a tale that comforts geeks who believe software will fix everything.

Despite a plug from Jim Romenesko's widely-read blog for overly serious journalists, not a single reporter has stepped up to collect Valleywag's $100 prize for anyone willing to back eWeek editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' claim that "all reporters" cut and paste whole paragraphs from press releases into their articles without noting it to readers. We don't care that he's lazier than us, but we do find it creepy that Novell publicists are writing parts of eWeek. No biggie, though: Valley workers already claim they knew it all along.

When a reporter gets called out for doing something questionable, such as eWeek senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols running Novell press releases as his articles, there's usually at least the appearance of concern at the publication. You know: Whoops, sorry for the misunderstanding. But eWeek has let Vaughan-Nichols dismiss complaints as some sort of grudge by another writer who posted a dozen or so examples of directly cut-and-pasted paragraphs. Grudge or no, what I see is eWeek — whose 400,000-plus readers include a lot of senior tech people I hang out with — publishing statements written by Novell publicists in a way that makes them look like eWeek's independent findings and analysis to me. Vaughan-Nichols claims it's OK: "Like all reporters, I write stories based on press releases." Like all reporters? I'll send a $100 iTunes gift certificate to the first reporter besides Vaughan-Nichols who posts 3 links in the comments to his or her own work, each of which contains at least one paragraph provably lifted without attribution from a press release, to which you must also point. Or heck, just email 3 links to paul@valleywag.com and I'll post 'em for you.

San Francisco Examiner blogger Sharon Gray was caught by San Francisco Weekly gumshoe Matt Smith cutting and pasting entire paragraphs from other websites without attribution. "They're blogs. They don't get edited," Examiner executive editor Jim Pimentel responded. "We don't give any direction to people on what to write in their blogs. And that's standard operating procedure." Gray's blog, which she told Smith she'd hoped to use to promote books she planned to write, has since disappeared. Smith says Gray wasn't so much a plagiarist as she was unclear on the concept. If only she'd learned to reuse press releases instead.

Ziff-Davis senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a publicist's dream. As documented a dozen times here and here and just now here by Fake Steve Jobs blogger (and sharp-minded Forbes editor) Dan Lyons, Vaughan-Nichols copies large swatches of press releases from Novell and other tech vendors into his articles on eWeek's Linux-Watch site. You might think this amounts to blatant plagiarism and copyright infringement, but you'd be wrong.

An extraordinary public slap, rarely seen in the genteel world of magazine publisher Time Inc.: Fortune appears to have momentarily taken executive editor Josh Quittner's Techland blog away from him and handed it to rival tech writer David Kirkpatrick. Quittner's recent blog rant about Facebook's Beacon was wrongheaded enough, but entirely undeserving of this humiliation — republishing, duplicatively, a Fortune.com column by Kirkpatrick in Quittner's blog. Kirkpatrick, left, declared that Quittner, right, had been "silenced" on the Facebook issue. He went on to tear apart, at length, Quittner's argument. All the more shaming, because Kirkpatrick is — how to put this gently? — a laughingstock among his colleagues.

I remember, distinctly, when former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner's love affair with Facebook began this spring. He couldn't stop talking about it, and I could hardly avoid hearing about it, since my office was next door to his. With all the zeal of a late convert, Quittner evangelized Facebook for most of this year — and now, feeling betrayed by Facebook's Beacon ads, he has attacked them with all the betrayed fury of a new apostate. Facebook is dead — to him, at any rate. Quittner's fickle rage perfectly captures the Silicon Valley hype cycle, and the press's complicity in it. Having built up Facebook, Quittner and his fellow reporters must, inevitably tear it down. But in this latest episode, it's Facebook's critics, not Facebook, who have jumped the shark.