Rove on Fox: It's Fair to Say He's Mellowed

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove has surprised some critics with fair-minded analysis on Fox. (Fox News Channel)

Rove disputed a Politico report that he is an informal adviser to McCain, saying he merely has "chitchat" with friends in the campaign. He says he got a call from the Arizona senator after McCain clinched the GOP nomination, and Rove donated the legal maximum $2,300 to his campaign.

On one subject, of course, Rove can never be objective, and that is George W. Bush and his own service in the administration. He won't discuss his conversations with his longtime friend, but says: "I'm a fierce advocate for the president and his policies." Asked on Fox about Bush's role in the campaign, Rove said McCain doesn't have to distance himself from the president but "needs to run as his own man."

John Moody, Fox News's senior vice president, says Rove was hired because "he's probably the most quoted, talked-about political strategist of his age. I only worried that someone with his work experience might be too good at keeping secrets when he was on the air. . . . Are we getting a Republican spin? Of course. But that's what he's there for. There's no attempt to conceal that."

Online Salvation?

In an age of growing layoffs, plunging revenue, declining circulation and just plain bad karma, it would be nice to find a glimmer of hope for the newspaper business.

Well, here's one: If you count the Web, readership is actually growing. Online newspaper sites drew 59 million monthly visitors during the third quarter of 2007, an increase greater than the 2.5 percent drop in print circulation last year (though there's some overlap between the audiences).

The Web growth, as the Project for Excellence in Journalism notes in its annual report, comes as the number of Americans who went online for news "yesterday" grew to 37 percent of Internet users, up from 30 percent in 2005.

One reason it matters: Newspapers were the only part of the media world that made problems in the health-care system one of their top 10 print stories, the study says, and were five months ahead of other outlets in focusing on cracks in the economy. And on a percentage basis, their front pages carried nearly three times as much foreign news in which Americans were not directly involved as cable news did.

News consumption has been dropping elsewhere. The three nightly network newscasts were down 5 percent last year, to 23 million. Time's circulation fell 600,000, to 3.4 million, and Newsweek by 500,000, to 2.6 million. The picture was brighter for the cable news channels, where the prime-time audience grew 4 percent for Fox News, 2 percent for CNN and a whopping 32 percent for MSNBC.

The cable outlets had notably different priorities. MSNBC last year devoted 28 percent of its time to politics, compared with 15 percent for Fox and 12 percent for CNN. MSNBC and CNN also spent more time on the Iraq war (18 and 16 percent, respectively) than Fox (10 percent). Fox, by contrast, spent roughly twice as much time as the others on crime, celebrity and the media.

The Murdoch Threat

In his debut as Portfolio magazine's media columnist, former New York Times editor Howell Raines takes on the publisher who fired him, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

"Any tendency toward schadenfreude on my part has been offset" by his status as a Times pensioner and because a takeover of the Times -- perhaps by Rupert Murdoch -- "would be a disaster" for "trustworthy reporting," Raines writes. He argues that Sulzberger's response to competition from Murdoch's newly acquired Wall Street Journal "seems way too relaxed," and that Sulzberger has left the Times Co. vulnerable to a takeover bid by dissident investors who have bought 19 percent of its common stock.

Raines recalls a conversation with Murdoch in 2002 after the Times had rushed out a lifestyle section called Escapes to preempt the Journal's debut of the Personal Journal section. In a newspaper war, Murdoch said, "You ought to hit them where they live. Go after hard business news and beat them on their strength."

Now, warns Raines, Murdoch "plans to do to the Times what he was advising me to do to the Journal."

Prostituting the Media

In the wake of the Eliot Spitzer debacle, where have "Today," "Good Morning America," "Nightline," "Larry King," "Tucker," "Anderson Cooper 360" and all these other shows found the call girls (and pimps) who have come on to talk about the world's oldest profession? Is there a hooker-booker agency somewhere that lines up the ladies?

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."