TONIGHT, D.C. SPARKLES! “Barack Obama loves our nation’s reporters in D.C. He made jokes about them, but at the end, he proved he cared about America’s Newspapers. This president may be a hero, after all.” [AOL Politics Daily]

DOES OBAMA HATE OUR IMPORTANT NEWSPAPERS? “Last week, this president — a mere child in diapers when my generation was enjoying civil rights and the Beatles — hosted a press conference that was a vulgar deformation of the term. Instead of taking questions from the White House reporters from our most important newspapers, Obama led a rudderless free-for-all in which seemingly any miscreant who wandered in off the street could pose a question to the leader of the free world.” [AOL Political Machine]

• YOUR MONTHLY UPDATE ON THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE: Recently a few half-powerful (or anonymous) Democrats have been overheard expressing their support for Reinstating The Fairness Doctrine. Well, those people are retarded if so. Nevertheless, it’s fueled the Right’s fear campaign that Obama will reinstate this thing and Sean Hannity’s listeners will be forced to turn over their property and the Internet to any Mexican with a driver’s license. A White House spokesman, however, released another brief statement reiterating that Obama does not want to do this. This will only make Republicans more skeptical. [Fox News]

Boy howdy, this March 4th edition (how??) of The New Republic is a real piece of work! Here’s an interesting snippet from an editorial titled “MSM, RIP,” by The Editors: “On The Huffington Post and its ilk, you would find rants about how ‘Beltway media really makes no effort to do anything other than parrot totally out-of-touch conventional wisdom–no matter how inane, stupid and ridiculous it is.’ This rhetoric creates a poisonous atmosphere. By assaulting the credibility of the press, it destroys its authority in the culture, giving cover to politicians who would rather avoid dealing with reporters in the first place.” Man, those liberal bloggers sure had some nerve that time they invented the massive natural forces dictating the evolution of information flow, huh? Well, enough. Don’t adapt, just stop the Internet. And if you think some newspaper isn’t credible, keep it to yourself, because that could destroy the newspaper’s authority! [TNR]

Hey, America: This is what you’ll lose, once the last bloated newspapers close forever: People like this, whining about the Most Important Thing Ever, a soggy newsprint version of yesterday’s wire copy and weeks-old syndicate features about “winter vegetables,” wrapped around a Big Lots! circular and six or seven pages of foreclosure notices in the back, along with a few “I HEREBY REFUSE TO PAY MY DEBT” classifieds, where the jobs/real estate ads used to be. Oh god. MORE »

Good christ, how do you like this Economy — especially all you poor doomed media people? But at least “New Deal” Washington is immune to the national media meltdown, right? Not so much. Join us for what will probably be a not-fun new feature about Washington metro publications and journalists getting the axe. What should we call it? Ah, how about “Blood on the Snow,” as tribute to the Father of Our District’s famous remarks about all the poor dumb shoeless Revolutionary War soldiers who died under his command, in wintertime. MORE »

The whole point of covering a John McCain presidential campaign for a major news outlet is to make (potentially sexy) friendships with McCain and his senior staff, so as to, uh, “know your subject better,” as some have described it. And now they never get to see each other anymore! And Obama is an asshole to the reporters! So this is why the former McCain reporters and aides got together over the weekend for drinks, and karaoke, and perhaps some whining about access. MORE »

• CHUCK TODD TO DO MOST THINGS FOR NBC NEWS: Whoa hey it’s press release day at your Wonkette! “NBC News announced today that Chuck Todd has been named Chief White House correspondent,” NBC News announced in a press release. He will remain NBC News Political Director and will also become a regular contributor to Meet The Press, with David Gregory, who used to be Chief White House correspondent. Chuck Todd, everyone! [Sigh]. We would pay millions of dollars just to watch Chuck Todd describe Lake County, Indiana precinct returns at midnight one more time.

Throughout 2008 we have relied on our beloved Detroit Free Press for exactly two things: transcripts of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s fantastically erotic text messages, and blow-by-blow chronicles of the downfall of our once-proud American auto industry. Now the noble Freep and the other Detroit paper, The Detroit News, must fire some people and scale back their home delivery days because of the DEATH OF PRINT. MORE »

Barry won the election! Now he can talk to the press and finally tell them that he’s not going to change a con sarn thing with our government because he secretly has loved War and poverty and derivatives the whole time. Joke’s on us! Ha ha ha oh well, there’s always 2012 and some Clinton or another. Let’s see what he has to say. MORE »

It is 1945 all over again. A major historical War for the White House has ended forever, and the liberals won. The liberals do not usually win these things because they are scared of fighting, so who knows how this happened. Whatever. They can “govern” till the cows come home. The real story now is the new post-election Cold War that’s rapidly developing between McCain aides, Palin aides, conservative bloggers, conservative teevee hosts, conservative columnists… basically any GOP operative with a half-decent Rolodex and a certain moral flexibility. They are all shitting on each other. This is the greatest Cold War we’ve ever had the pleasure of covering. Let’s try to make some sense of it. MORE »