Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Political Wire, via Instapundit:

Brian Williams, who will succeed Tom Brokaw as the anchor of NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, has not made a good first impression among political bloggers. According to CBS Marketwatch, at a post-election wrap-up session, when a fellow panelist "mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are 'on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem.'"

Ah, the comment that launched a thousand off-color comebacks.

Look, Human Chin, you work in a medium where you would still be doing the traffic report back in Elmira, N.Y. if you looked like Dennis Kucinich. In other words, you've got your job because you're pretty. I'm not sure you should be shooting your mouth off about other people's qualifications to do the news.

Oh, and bloggers aren't influential? Let's take a look at today's Los Angeles Times:

Even as he moves to larger quarters, there's no guarantee he'll be a huge audience draw, if his cable show is any indication. The program, which aired first on MSNBC, drew a paltry 400,000 viewers a night when it moved to CNBC.

Lone bloggers get daily audiences about half that (right now, post-Election Day, during a slow news period), without all the huge resources of a television network.

Oh, and no blogger I know makes a salary between $5 million and $8 million.

If I were a GE shareholder, I would be wondering, just what is NBC getting for all that money they're paying Williams?

[Posted 12/01 10:58 AM]