Mark Cuban has a few thoughts here. I have a couple of reactions, after the jump …

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If only for last night's "Top 10 Signs Your Newspaper Is In Trouble"":

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A curious comment from David Broder, after the jump …

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The New York Times tries to explain a screwup, after the jump …

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Halle's from Cleveland and maintains ties to the area. So she brought her latest movie, Perfect Stranger, to town for a preview screening on Thursday. And that barely describes the fun …

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I've been a little lax about posting after a weekend that included my wedding anniversary dinner, younger son acting in a production of "Peter Pan," some household activities and a shooting death …

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Over the weekend I caught a little bit of "Teacher's Pet," the 1958 comedy starring Clark Gable as a hard-bitten newspaper editor and Doris Day as a journalism teacher. I've always been kind of fond of it and even as a kid I learned a journalism lesson that can still hold — the one about the virtue of brevity in storytelling.

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During my daily — actually, several times daily — check of Jim Romenesko's media site, I came across a link to a note from Roger Ebert in which he talks about his most recent medical crisis. Sounds pretty harrowing, but ultimately optimistic, with a good sentiment at the end.

Dan Rather has come and gone. There's some debate over whether he followed Shannen Doherty's tears with some of his own, but it was clear that he choked up some when talking about Edward R. Murrow.

I've written a column about his press conference for tomorrow's Beacon Journal and will post a link later. But I didn't get into a couple of things there. One was Rather's reference to having worked for a living — meaning tough manual labor when he was young — and how television is pretty eapressy compared to that. It was interesting to me because I remember him saying much the same thing at a press conference in New York City about 20 years ago. (So many things in my life now come with the phrase "about 20 years ago.") It always stuck with me — as a reminder that, no matter how self-important some TV newsgatherers may get, they're doing it for an audience of people home after a day of genuinely hard work.

The other thing I didn't get into is what a boon Rather is to HDNet. As I said when he left CBS, he was going to end up working somewhere, because network newscasters do. (Ted Koppel will be here tomorrow, wearing his new hat for the Discovery Channel.) And one reason they get work is that they're brand names, and they bring attention to places that might not get so noticed. HDNet is mentioned in a lot of places today, and will be in other places tomorrow, because it had Rather in the house. Even though he has only done a promotional tape for the channel so far, he's already earning his paycheck.

Not long ago we had our farewell to Knight Ridder, which ceases to exist today, with the Beacon Journal and other papers going to new owners.

I've been thinking about this moment and decided there were our a couple of things I didn't want to do. First of all, I'm not going to give you some speech about this moment and John S. Knight. It isn't that Knight was a flawed man who became a powerful symbol (not unlike broadcasting's Edward R. Murrow). It's that Knight had been dead a decade before I began working for the company bearing his name, so my connection is that I know people who knew Knight, and the company I worked for went through some un-Knightly turmoil.

I don't want to compare this to a death, especially a death in the family. It's a sad and painful moment, but lately I have seen people dealing with the death of people they loved, and this is not that. A newspaper, even a newspaper chain, is made up of thousands of living, breathing organisms — I am one of them — and we will be out showing what life and breath can achieve tomorrow.

In fact, thanks to a video and talk by the Beacon Journal's Doug Oplinger, today was inspiring. It reminded me of the noble work people do under often trying circumstances. It made me wish I had done a better job along the way — and it made me hope I will do better tomorrow.

Monday night I recorded the newscasts in the 6 p.m. hour on local stations because I wanted to see how they handed the changes — or, more precisely, the uncertainty — at the Beacon Journal.

As you may know, Knight Ridder, which owns my newspaper, has decided to sell to the McClatchy company. McClatchy, in turn, has said that it will sell 12 of the Knight Ridder newspapers, including this one. So we've been sold, and we're going to be sold again. As Randy Newman once said, "No one likes us, don't know why …"

I was accordingly interested to see how the local TV guys would handle the situation, especially since our straits seemed to give them a free shot. What I saw was, in some cases, worse than a shot. We were hardly newsworthy at all.

Channel 19 ignored the sale in its 6 p.m. news. Channel 8 waited devoted about 18 seconds to the story (and that didn't come until 20 minutes into the newscast);  a piece about a new magazine interview with Jennifer Aniston got more air time. Cable's Akron-Canton news did not lead with us either, waiting seven minutes to get to the story, and then used a quote from the mayor that probably confused people even more about what's going on.

Channel 5 devoted considerable time to our story, and was respectful about how it covered the situation. That said, Channel 5 is also a news partner of the Beacon Journal and has office space in the newspaper building.

So where was I at the end of all this? Part of me was snarling that this was a historic day, that an Akron institution was mired in uncertainty, and people who supposedly cared about the news could not be bothered to cover this story.

And then I thought, welcome to the real world.

Every day, people see things happen near them that they believe are the most important things in the world. They wait for the reporters and the news cameras. Often, they call to ask for the reporters and news cameras. Almost as often, hardly anyone shows up. Important news in your part of the world just isn't that big a deal to people in the next city or neighborhood or house.

While my ox was getting gored, TV news told me that not many others would care about the bloodshed. That stings. But no more than it stings to people ignored by the news every day.

I recently put my 200th post on this blog. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. But I should have. If my blog was a TV show, 200 posts would be a TV event.

If I had paid proper attention to my blog, the 200th post would be a Very Special Beacon TV. I might have offered highlights of previous posts, and sit on my couch with the other members of the Beacon TV cast to talk about it. We would agree that we're like a family — "a dysfunctional family!" someone would quip — but that we really cherish working together, and  that we spend a lot of time hanging out off-blog. The network has always been very supportive, even in the tough times, we would say. The vision of the show is strong. We're doing our best work.

I could also have outtakes from the blog — basically some really bad ideas that I started and never finished. There could even be bloopers, most of which would involve my inept attempts at pasting in network press releases and linking to other sites. For instance, I wasted a bunch of time today because I kept clicking on an "envelope" logo — for e-mail — instead of a "chain link" logo — to link to another site.

Wouldn't that be a great moment for my special? Or I could save it for an extra on the "Beacon TV" DVD.

Some of the clips would have to go with my interview on my network's morning show. The two-hour primetime news-magazine tribute will wait until the night of my very last Beacon TV post, and I'm not ready to leave the network yet.

On the other hand, I might get some prime time on cable. James Lipton could have me on "Inside the Actors Studio." He would have done some amazing research about me. I would look impressed and a tad embarrassed, but would remember that he introduced me as "not merely someone whose place in the blogging pantheon has long been assured, but one who has turned the ether of the Internet in the ambrosia of literature."

Anyway, back on the morning show, the host would giggle at my every joke and urge people to check out my Very Special Beacon TV. Sort of like being on E! just after I won something. The host would sound very sincere, too, and no one would ever, ever think that it was all a big sham set up just because we were on the same network. News is news, right? The show would have me on because my 200th blog is a watershed event, not simply as marketing. Right?

But the buildup to the 200th episode would be worth it. I would have decided not to do the clip show (which will work much better as the hour-long special before my extended-edition Beacon TV finale, which I haven't announced yet). Instead, I would make the 200th post "a Beacon TV unlike any you have ever seen before."

– Someone would die unexpectedly (except to all the people who had found out and posted it on a message board).

–  Or I would announce that I was leaving Beacon TV to join the world tennis tour, only to be brought back at episode's end when I realized that Beacon TV was the best home I had ever had.

– Or another cast member would be desperately ill, and — in an Emmy-nominated moment — I would cry and pray for my co-star's recovery, and the audience would cheer when she came out of her coma.

– Or I'd just bare my soul, and my butt.

All this would be even better because I would have timed my 200th post for sweeps. Great promo opportunity. Not that I would do this just to bring more people to Beacon TV. I would be pushing the envelope, expanding my range, stretching my acting, proving my chops, taking a risk and pursuing my art. It's too bad I missed my chance.

Maybe for the 300th post…

As I mentioned in a previous post, TV stars have had a tough time being declared People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive." So it is again, as the 2005 winner is Matthew McConaughey. You can read more about him here, including a profile that makes McConaughey sound very Playboy Playmate-like. An excerpt: "McConaughey is fluent in Spanish, cites the dictionary as his favorite book ('I love to look up words') and calls his mom, Kay, every Sunday." I didn't read far enough to see if it listed his turn-ons and turn-offs.

As for TV, the magazine does have a list — and photos — of 13 runners-up for SMA: Patrick Dempsey, Terrence Howard, Viggo Mortensen, Vince Vaughn, Nick Lachey, Heath Ledger, Daniel Dae Kim, Keith Urban, Ian McShane, Matt Damon, Denis Leary, Anderson Cooper and Clive Owen.

Fair number of TV folk there — Dempsey, Kim, Cooper, McShane (because of "Deadwood") and Leary (for "Rescue Me"). You could also make an argument for Lachey, thanks to "Newlyweds," and Howard, who besides making movies is a presence on TV ("Lackawanna Blues," "Their Eyes Were Watching God").

Today's mail included the latest issue of Inside TV, the attempt by the company behind TV Guide to make a glossy, celeb-oriented magazine. The cover photos include Jennifer Aniston, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel of "Gilmore Girls" and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie as part of a "Paris Vs Nicole" piece that dominates the cover.

But apparently people are getting their Paris/Nicole fix elsewhere (I'm especially fond of www.hollywoodrag.com ) because Inside TV is about done. Its owner has said it will shut down the magazine to focus on, well, other stuff. If you want details you can find them  in a release at www.gemstartvguide.com.

I think one of the biggest problems for Inside TV was the way that it seemed indistinguishable from many other magazines — including its revamped sister publication. In a Beacon Journal column in October, I said the new TV Guide "reminded me of Inside TV."

I could have gone on to point out nuanced differences, that Inside TV seemed to aim for a younger audience than TV Guide, that it was somewhat gushier about celebs, and that it took even less time to read. (What was that line in "The Big Chill," that each article had to be short enough to be read during a bathroom sit-down? Shows how things have changed in the 20-some years since the movie was made. Now you have celeb magazines that can be finished before you are.) But now there's no point. The magazine is going in less time than a flash-in-the-pan actor's career.

Also headed to the boneyard is "Night Stalker," ABC's attempt to modernize the old Darren McGavin franchise. I wasn't a fan of the show, and thought some of the plotting was painfully obvious. I wonder if it might have done better with another leading man, since Stuart Townsend was a big blank in the middle of the show. But the point's moot now.

It's the day after an election and one that went badly for President Bush and his crowd, and that was a big story today; for awhile it looked even bigger than the hearings with the oil companies. (And am I the only one to find it just the tiniest bit convenient that gas prices were dropping in the days leading up the hearings, and have popped up again now that the exercise is over?) We probably would still be hearing politics were it not for in Jordan, which gave the cable news outlets a fresh reason for big red graphics and split screens.

But there's one thing the anti-Bush celebrators are getting wrong about the current climate. They spend too much time talking about approval ratings.

We hear a lot in the news about that particular barometer of politicians. You know, "40 percent of Americans think that President Bush would kick a dog if he thought no one was looking," versus "20 percent of Americans believe that any dog meeting President Bush would immediately lick his hand." And because President Bush's ratings have been low, there's been a lot of arguing about whether that affects other elections, and how his ratings stack up against other presidents. ("I happen to know," a Fox News pundit would surely declare, "that 55 percent of people thought Bill Clinton would not only kick a dog, he would then steal its bone and dish!")

But approval ratings don't mean anything. And I say that even though that my personal approval rating of President Bush requires negative numbers. The ratings don't mean anything, because they don't tell you what the other choice is.

If I don't like President Bush, but he runs against a guy I dislike even more, I am going to have to hold my nose and vote for Bush.

All right, it's unlikely that there was a Democrat bad enough to make me do that.

But let's say it's 2008 and the Republicans have gotten behind Bill Frist. Joe Undecided is looking at Frist's scandals, and the Terri Schiavo thing, and the fights in the Senate, and he thinks, this guy is bad.  But then he looks across the ballot and there's Sleepy, Doc or Dopey. Or there's someone who's not really terrible, but who has just been the target of so many attack ads that he wishes people thought he was Sleepy, Doc or Dopey. Who's Joe going to vote for?

So-called news experts will try to convince you that low approval ratings do matter. I heard one pundit today saying that the low approval ratings encourage people to run against you. But that's not a good thing, either. If all the hacks smell blood, then all the hacks run and attack each other in the primaries. The Last Hack Standing has then handed the opposition a stack of nasty quotes and ideas — from other Democrats.

Here's what you want if you're planning to be president. A year or two before the election, you want the guy on the other ticket to have huge approval ratings. Enormous. You want him to seem heroic, a winner, a champ. You want him to look so good that no one in his right mind would run against this guy. Because then the guys who are crazy enough to run might also turn out to be smart enough to win.

A wacky scenario? Remember the elder George Bush's approval ratings after the Gulf War? Remember that only nuts no one knew much about were willing to take him on? Remember that one of those nuts was named Clinton?

So come on, people. When those pollsters come around, tell them that W. is doing a terrific job. Say you love him. Get his approval rating up, and that of any other Republican who might want the White House. Then we can enjoy the confounded look on the experts' faces in three years — when they're trying to explain how someone with such high approval ratings got trounced.