For awhile, I had seen the volume of "hit pieces" and negative press that so-called "new media" tools were getting in major publications as a totally bad thing, and that some of the writers didn't get it. That might still be the case (the latter, that is), but now I'm beginning to feel like at the end of the day, these are all good stories for new media. This morning, I read an item in Fortune where Adam Lashinsky describes the effect that online classifieds site Craigslist has been doing its darndest in taking away classified advertising revenues from print newspapers. At first I was like "duh, who didn't realize this?" but quickly reversed, realizing that there are tons of people who a) probably haven't heard of Craiglist before and b) don't get the low down on every single Web or new media function on a regular basis. So even though Craiglist has been around for a long, long time now (at least in 'net time), the audience reading this in Fortune might not be quite as savvy as to realize that this was one of the factors in the recent revenue losses at major media outlets.

The New York Observer's Rebecca Dana details the moves of some well-known Western television personalities who are joining Al-Jazeera, lured with promises of foreign bureaus and new opportunities. Specifically, she tells of how ex-CNNer Riz Khan described his move to former President Bush and Colin Powell, who apparently were concerned at first but appear to feel a bit better about the situation - once it was clear that this would ultimately allow more coverage of American politics to the Arab people.

Over at Newsbusters, Brad Wilmouth writes about last night's Countdown on MSNBC, where Keith Olbermann had Janeane Garofalo on, and ended up in a discussion against conservatives and FOX News. Apparently, the two had fun trashing FOX's Fox & Friends show, which Olbermann called "punishment" to watch.

Dave Winer mentioned on Friday that he'd be unsubscribing from BusinessWeek's RSS feeds soon, because of the volume of ads that are showing up. This isn't the only example of complaints I'm hearing about this right now, hence this site's using of them every third entry - but it's going to be a big concern, because if the "early adopters" of RSS and those who have followed already have a problem with it, what do you think those who eventually hop on the RSS bandwagon are going to think?

The PiPress' Gordon Wittenmyer writes about this week's "Monday Night Football" as being the sixth-to-last of the decades-long series of football games that ABC has broadcast to Americans from coast to coast. When the MNF shift is completed, we'll have ESPN covering that night's games, and ESPN giving up its Sunday Night Football programming to NBC - allowing that network to get a piece of the football action - meaning that all four networks (although ABC's will be via its ESPN network(s) and periodic Super Bowls) will have a piece of the NFL's games. There was once a day when it was CBS and NBC carrying the Sunday games, with ABC having the Monday contests, then FOX jumped into the fray, with NBC eventually left with nada. Now, everyone should be happy. And with what it costs to broadcast the League's games, it's probably better that way.

The next battle I'm expecting to see is whether DirecTV will continue to fork over the billions of dollars it costs to keep the Sunday Ticket package exclusive, a factor that keeps DirecTV from potentially losing subscribers, or at the very least attracting those who might otherwise choose a cable service due to comfort level.

Dan Gillmor writes about a change he noticed when shopping in an airport shop for books - a size and price change. It looks like the books have slightly gotten bigger from certain publishers, and said books are coming with approximately a $2 price increase. Ouch. Anyone else seen this?

Jason Calacanis, whose Weblogs, Inc. Network I do some writing for at AdJab, TV Squad and a few other sites, is looking for a couple good PHP/AJAX developers in the Santa Monica area for the next few months. If you're interested, head on over to his blog and ping him with any questions you might have.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has landed in the slower world of print media, but offers a different angle into her style and sense. She'll be penning a bi-weekly column for BusinessWeek, which will run both in print and online, entitled "Face Time with Maria Bartiromo." The first of (hopefully) many a column ran a few days ago, and is a sitdown with former AIG boss Hank Greenberg.

And yes, you can leave comments as a reader - online, at least.

Just was reading through some posts on AdJab, and was looking through an item Chris Thilk wrote about Google supposedly testing print advertisements in Chicago-area newspapers. After doing a little digging, we came up with much more details on Google's efforts in the area, currently called Google Publication Ads, running off the AdWords platform - by invitation only.

Keep it tuned over at AdJab for more on this, as it comes out.

The Boston Globe's Jenn Abelson writes Wednesday about Reebok's participation - as a producer - in the on-demand station that Comcast will be offering later on this week.

So it's totally unrelated to the world of media, but I'm happy to announce that tonight (or last night, as it were), my mom was announced as the winner of the mayoral race of my hometown of Matawan, New Jersey. In a town where I think there has been a Republican mayor for about 46 years, and has never elected a woman (though the currently serving mayor, Bea Duffy, is a woman) to hold the position, that's a pretty big deal. Congrats, mom!

In case you were wondering, Ed Cone has moved You can now find him here, on TypePad.

Sorry for the lack of regular posting here at TMD, folks. Between the new job in the last few months, combined with a disastrous number of times that my trusty horse of a laptop has been into Best Buy for everything under the sun going wrong with it, I've been a bit behind and slow on the trigger. Expect better things to come shortly, as my back-to-normal hardware is expected back at TMD headquarters later this week, new hard drive and all.

Just caught the news that the Baltimore Sun is now offering podcasts from a few columnists. Slowly but surely...

AP's David Bauder reports this afternoon that CNN's Aaron Brown is leaving the network just as Anderson Cooper's program was extended to a second hour - leaving Brown with nowhere to go, at least at the moment.

Check out the live-blogging of "Geraldo at Large" that was done over at the BCBeat blog. It's pretty high level, without the usual snarkavision that happens with this sort of thing, but pretty much gives the gist of what went on during the new program. Did anyone else watch?