Dan Rather, Ready For His HD Close-Up

"I don't think the mix of our stories is all that much different," he says. "For years there's been this cry that someone should try to do something different in the evening news time period, and we're trying to do that. You can't have it both ways."

Pushing a Publisher

Carl Hiaasen, the Miami Herald's best-known writer, was stunned last month when an editor told him that his latest column was being spiked -- so stunned that he said he would quit.

The popular novelist was particularly incensed when told that 1,100 people had already canceled their subscriptions over the subject of his column -- the firing of two journalists at the Spanish-language edition, El Nuevo Herald. "After 30 years you're going to yank one of my columns, not for journalistic reasons but because you're afraid of losing subscribers?" Hiaasen recalls saying. "You can't muzzle a column based on what might happen with a very vocal minority group. That's crazy."

Hiaasen believed that Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. was behind the move -- and it turned out he was right.

Diaz had dismissed the El Nuevo Herald journalists for accepting payments for appearances on the government-run channels beamed into Cuba, Radio Martí and TV Martí. Hiaasen's satirical column addressed Diaz: " Lighten up, bro ! You're right: Once a reporter starts cashing a government paycheck, his or her credibility as a public watchdog is shot. But how about a teeny exception for TV Martí? Lots of folks in the newsroom could use the extra dough, and nobody will ever see them on the air because Castro jams the signals."

After Hiaasen complained to a friend at McClatchy Co., which recently bought the Herald, the parent company interceded and the column was published. The fired staffers were reinstated on the grounds that their editors had acquiesced in the moonlighting. And Diaz resigned last week, saying the controversy had "created an environment that no longer allows me to lead our newspapers."

Dreaming of TomKat

What a scoop! Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, moving to the Washington area!

The Washington Examiner, last Wednesday: "Sources tell us that the pair is putting the final ink on a contract for a $22 million behemoth of a home in Upperville, Va."

The Washington Examiner, last Thursday: "The buzz looks to be a bust."