NBC News just announced that retired Nightly News anchor and eminence grise Tom Brokaw will moderate "Meet the Press" through the 2008 election. NBC News president Steve Capus said, "A lot has been said in recent days about what 'Meet the Press' means to NBC News and to the nation. To have someone of Tom's stature step up and dedicate himself to ensuring its ongoing success is not only a testament to his loyalty to......

The weekend was filled with tributes to the late NBC News journalist, Tim Russert. New York State lawmakers, including Senators Schumer and Clinton, announced yesterday that they are going to introduce a resolution to rename part of U.S. Route 20 after Russert. The section they want to rename runs in front of the Buffalo Bills' stadium--Russert grew up in Buffalo and was an unabashed fan of the Bills, as well as the Sabres. His favorite......

The sudden death of Tim Russert, NBC News Washington bureau chief and Meet the Press moderator, shook the media and political communities as well as the many faithful viewers of Meet the Press yesterday. Last night's NBC Nightly News was completely about Russert's career and legacy, as a journalist, friend and family man. MSNBC spent the evening remembering Russert; Fox News and CNN also spent considerable time remembering him. Tomorrow's edition of Meet the......

Resumes are being accepted to fill a sudden vacuum in the self-proclaimed “drug ring” that is Gawker. On Friday afternoon, at the end of a long Gawker post about palling around with the n + 1 crowd – who happen to be publishing a long think-piece on Gawker in their new issue – editor and cewebrity Emily Gould abruptly announced that managing editor Choire Sicha was to resign. And she would be joining him.......

Fox News Porn Robert Greenwald, the man behind the 2004 documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism which concluded that Fox News Channel is biased to the right based on memos and footage from the network, is at it again. This time around he is using clips from the channel culled from six months of broadcasts featuring women in bikinis and pixilated nudity in a YouTube video and website that mimics a porn site called......

Giving Proper Credit to CBS 2 and Scott Weinberger Scott Weinberger's exclusive reports this week on security guards sleeping like Homer Simpson at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Plant just outside of Philadelphia were an eye opener, since a major catastrophic event there could have its effects felt over a hundred miles away. Plus the same company, Wackenhut, is also under contract to the federal government to provide security. Thanks to Weinberger's three month investigation and......

Senator Larry Craig, whose guilty plea to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor at a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport bathroom effectively tanked his political career, resigned this morning. Craig had been arrested after soliciting an undercover police officer for sex (read a transcript of his arrest interview here and listen to the interview here) earlier this summer. Today he said:"What is best for Idaho has always been the focus of my efforts and it is no different today.......

Switcharoo at CBS 2 This week, veteran anchors Jim Rosenfield and Dana Tyler, who were anchoring at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., switched newscasts with Chris Wragge and Kristine Johnson, who were anchoring the noon and 5 p.m. We think that moving younger talent to the higher profile 11 p.m. newscast is probably an attempt to get some younger viewers. Channel 2 has been the least stable of the local newscasts over the past ten......

WNBC’s investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst is a native of the tri-state area, originally from Teaneck, New Jersey and is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked behind the scenes at Newsday, and got his start in television at WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia where he worked for about half a year. He then had the opportunity to return to the city as NY1 was starting up and eventually moved to......

Breach (directed by Billy Ray) Small, character-driven thrillers are practically tailor made for the home viewing experience, especially the kind made by director Billy Ray. His last movie, the excellent real-life journalism scandal movie Shattered Glass with Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard really ripened the second time around on a smaller screen. TV is good medium for seeing the real gradations of creepy in Ray's complex characters. His second film also tackles understanding a morally-suspect......

Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared in Red Hook yesterday to support the plight of the vendors that serve the people who come to watch and play sports at the Red Hook ballfields. The vendors have been cooking up ethnic food that appeals to their mostly Hispanic clientele for several years under a series of temporary permits from the city. The Parks Dept. wants to put an official vending permit up for bidding, and the current vendors......

Yesterday, the man suspected of raping and torturing a 23-year-old woman in her apartment pleaded not guilty to the attack. However, police say that they have DNA evidence linking ex-con Robert Williams to the scene. The victim, a graduate student at Columbia's Journalism School, remembered that the attacker wore one of her T-shirts, which was thrown into a wastebasket, and the police have DNA from Williams' spit (he spat into a station house wastebasket). Williams......

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Fire Department, saying that FDNY exams in 1999 and 2002 discriminated against black and Hispanic candidates. Black and HIspanic candidates fail the exam at much higher rates, and currently, the blacks and Hispanics make up only 7.5% of the FDNY's 11,000 firefighters. The NY Times notes that the fire departments of LA and Philadelphia are more than 40% black or Hispanic. The lawsuit claims the......

Everyday at 5 PM EST, Peabody award winning journalist Gary Baumgarten sits down with the likes of Arianna Huffington, Dr. Keith Ablow, and Mia Farrow for a one on one discussion. But this isn't for TV or the Radio, it's for Paltalk's News Talk Online , a web based talk show that allows listeners from all over the world to get the answers they want by asking the questions themselves. How did you get involved......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNBC 4) A look back at SNL in the 1990s with clips and interviews with former cast members. The Mormons (Sunday 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) If you missed it last week on WNET, here is your chance to take a watch at this two part look at the Mormons which is a collaboration of two......

The man police believe raped and tortured a Columbia graduate student last week for 19 hours was arrested last night. Police officers saw Robert Williams trying to break into a building in Hollis, Queens and was taken to the 103rd Precinct, where he was recognized from a police sketch released earlier this week. So far, Williams has only been charged with burglary but remains in custody as the Queens police sent him to Manhattan for......

The police have revealed that their suspect in the brutal 19-hour rape and torture of a 23-year-old Columbia journalism student is William Roberts, a 30-year-old man with a criminal history. According to WABC 7, Roberts has been charged with attempted murder twice - once in 1993, once in 1996 for shooting a man in the back. Last year, he was charged with assault as well as fare jumping. There was a false sighting of Roberts......

Yesterday, the NYPD released video of the man who raped and tortured a Columbia graduate student in her Hamilton Heights apartment for hours on Friday and Saturday. The assailant used her ATM card at a bodega on 141st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A worker there told the News, "He's not human." The police also released a sketch of the attacker, who is described as a black man, around 180 pounds and 6'1", bald with......

Police are still looking for a man who raped and tortured a 23-year-old woman in her apartment on Hamilton Terrace off West 141st Street Friday night through Saturday afternoon. The attacker had tied up the woman and set her apartment on fire when he left, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, "It appears she was able to escape as a result of the fire. She was tied, and the flame was used by her to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing at Utica and Atlantic Aves. in Brooklyn, an overturned auto with passenger ejection on the LIE in Queens, and a report of a suspicious device on 43rd St. and Lexington Ave. in Manhattan. NJ police located the driver of the red pickup truck that initiated the chain reaction car crash that's left the state's Governor John Corzine seriously injured. The 20-year-old driver will not be ticketed. Hoping......

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Twenty-five-year old Jared Kushner hasn't owned The Observer for a year yet (he bought it last July), but it seems he's fully immersed and determined to make it his own. He's changed it from broadsheet to tabloid-style, which has gotten mixed reviews, but hey, now it's clear that it's not Arthur Carter's Observer anymore. The NY Times, though, wonders if Mr. Kushner will tire of his trophy newspaper, especially given his only other foray into......

DISCUSSION: What is the future of alternative journalism? Find out tonight as experts Elizabeth Spiers, Jeff Koyen, Bob Cox and Roxanne Cooper tell you all about what they foresee. If you don't know who those people are, then you probably don't care about the future of alt media anyway. 6:30pm // New York City Center Studios [130 W 56th St] // $7 THEATER: In the Heights is a breezy new musical about the Latino experience......

Remember that smart-alecky retort, “It’s a free country”? That's the brazen spirit behind Radical Living Papers: A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965-75. Situated in the Passerby bar, it no doubt will inspire many fervent debates about freedom of the press. The rag-tag collection of zines promotes everything under the sun: politics, revolutions, evolutions of the planets, freak-outs, love-ins, support of green politics, gay liberation, power to the people, the peace......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: The Morning Show With Mike & Juliet (Monday, 10 a.m. WNYW 5) Fox takes another stab at a morning show. Just the thought of a Fox morning show brings back memories of the insipid Fox After Breakfast from the mid 90s that had Tom Bergeron and Viki Lawremce hosting from a faux Manhattan loft. The new entry is fronted by Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy of the......

A 32 year old journalist who suffered a neck injury during this year's Polar Bear Club New Year's swim died last week. It's unclear how Mohan Seneviratne injured himself; some witnesses believe he hit a sandbar when he dove into the water at Coney Island. amNew York spoke to his father Dr. Upali Seneviratne who said that Seneviratne was initially stable after the severe spinal cord injury, but his "condition deteriorated over a few days.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a hazmat condition in L.E.S., a "car vs. house" in Queens, and a suspicious package on 34th and 7th. Rose Mattus, the co-creator of Haagen-Dazs, died this week at age 90: "Around 1960, while sitting on their couch in the Bronx, Mr. and Mrs. Mattus fabricated the foreign-sounding name. It was Mr. Mattus’s idea to include a map of Denmark on the carton and to put an umlaut over......

Dear Gothamist, I'm sure there are other people who want Wiis but are much too cool to wait in line or fight for one. But they're still hard to come by. I need me some citizen journalism action on this issue. Where are people getting Wiis, if anywhere? - Wah Wah Wii Wii It's so true. The Nintendo Wii has been out for almost two weeks, but they are still moving off the shelves......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (WABC 7, Monday, 8:00 p.m.) The annual showing of this timeless classic Peanuts cartoon is always a must see. Despite being from 1973, the show holds up quite well and is a welcome reminder of simpler times. But would you really eat a Thanksgiving dinner catered by a beagle? He's a Bully, Charlie Brown (WABC 7, Monday, 8:30 p.m.) After the classic Thanksgiving......

-- Remember that insane case from back in March with the Cravath, Swaine & Moore lawyer who got busted for seducing two sisters? He's been in lockup since he was captured at the St. Marks Hotel, and the judge just refused to release him on bail. -- A grad student discovered something new about the predatory dinosaur Coelophysis bauri-- while standing at 81st Street Stop on the C! -- A book-keeper at Gramercy Tavern......