Joining the Boys' Club

"She asked me to come to New York," says Kornblut, now with The Washington Post. "She said, 'I need someone to distract Brokaw so I can flirt with Dan.' "

It must have worked; the two tied the knot a year later, in what was Brown's second marriage. Senor now works at an investment fund and is a Fox News commentator. "These are two very ambitious, high-profile people," Dickerson says.

Last year, Brown was a contender for Couric's job at "Today" but was passed over for Meredith Vieira in what friends describe as a major disappointment.

"It's been written to death: 'Oh my God, she's leaving because she didn't get Katie's job.' Of course I wanted that job," Brown says. "Who wouldn't want that job? It's one of the best jobs in television."

Brown concluded that as a part-time anchor and correspondent -- she covered Hurricane Katrina and the death of Pope John Paul II -- there was no way for her to grow at NBC. "You've got 22 minutes at 'Nightly News,' which is Brian's show. You've got the 'Today' show, which is doing a limited amount of news."

Something else bothered her as well: a sense that the next generation is abandoning network news. "My younger sister, honest to God, has never seen 'Nightly News.' When anything happens in the world, she has on CNN. In cable you can go a little more in depth, be a little more inside baseball. In broadcast, you have to simplify things, and on occasion you're forced to dumb things down."

The tradeoff, of course, is that cable audiences are relatively modest -- 1 million is considered a strong showing -- compared with the 7 million to 8 million viewers who watch the Williams newscast. For the first time in her career, Brown will have to carry a show built around her personality, in an environment where outrage gets the highest ratings. That ultimately was too great a burden for Zahn, who also steered clear of opinion, and Brown freely admits: "It may not work."

Leaving NBC was hard -- Brown says she cried many times before telling her bosses she was leaving -- and the question was whether she wanted to remain in a comfortable environment, surrounded by friends.

Or, she says, "did I want to hold my breath and jump over the cliff?"

All right, let's look at some politics this morning. I wrote a column last Thursday saying that the country was growing more accepting of the idea of a female president--namely Hillary--as the long campaign dragged on. Turns out I was ahead of my time--by a day.

"Not that long ago," writes Time's Jay Carney, "it was a widely held opinion among conservatives in the professional political class that Hillary Clinton would be a dream Democratic presidential nominee -- for the Republicans. Her high negatives, divisive personality, weak political skills, excess baggage and reputation as a big government lefty would all combine to make her the perfect opponent for a Republican nominee trying to change the subject to anything but what the voting public had come to hate about the previous 7-8 years of Republican rule. It didn't matter how unpopular Bush was or the GOP had become, this thinking went, because Hillary simply couldn't win a general election.

"That thinking was always a little foolish and wishful, because it ignored the fact that all Hillary (or any other Dem for that matter) would have to do is win the states Kerry won in 2004, plus one big one or several smaller ones. (Ohio alone, where the GOP was decimated in 2006, would do it. Other states that in the current environment could be Dem pick-ups are New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, West Virginia, even Virginia).