however this is not likely to occur anytime soon

I don't think Couric grilled Sarah Palin, the questions she asked were softballs, and easy to anticipate. She was rightly astonished that Palin couldn't answer such easy questions, but what made that interview so cringe inducing was realizing that McCain had truly picked someone so obviously not qualified for high office.

with the interview of Palin. I know many people that watch her now, rather than NBC or ABC.

With all due respect, I don't think you established a very good case for these women.

First, their *greatest hits* are all double leg take-downs on Republicans. That makes them different from Dan Rather's generation, how?

Second, isn't Katie Couric scheduled to be booted out the door in '09? You mention her ratings boost, and maybe I missed something in the article, but is she or is she not permitted to stay past the election?

Third, moments like the Campbell Brown throwdown at the RNC are not terribly illuminating, in terms of journalism. They may spotlight some insufferable spin by a campaign flack, but do they do more than that?

Fourth, if you live long enough, you see some double standards. For example, Campbell is credited with *spotlighting* Palin's lack of executive military decisions. Just like in 1988, when journalists *spotlighted* Dan Quayle had just one legislative achievement -- the Jobs Training Partnership Act he co-authored with Ted Kennedy (I rememeber it because Quayle mentioned it so often, in his defense). Of course, if similar *spotlighting* had been applied to Obama, one would find zero executive decisions, and nothing even an impressive legislatively as the JTPA. Obviously, no one made a fuss about those resume gaps during the DNC.

Fifth, I like Rachel Maddow, but think she is underserved by being Part II of the Olbermann hour. I gave her show a chance, briefly, to see if she could bring the same fire she had as a panelist to some freewheeling discussions of her own. Answer: no. What I saw was a boilerplate, anti-Republican echo chamber.

Finally, Campbell Brown has the most potential of the three, but she needs to remember she seemed like a nice person as well as a journalist when she came on the scene (I think it was on NBC or MSNBC). Her persona, both on camera and in her web column, now seems somewhat off-putting, at least to me. If I were her, I would not be afraid to dial it down a notch and go for more of a blended image of warmth and smarts (I think she has potential for both), and keep focused on *real* journalism (i.e., questions which illicit new information) instead of grandstanding. If she did that, I might start watching CNN again, after the election.

How can you put Mitchell and Crowley in the same class as Brazile and Maddow? Mitchell and Crowley have been laughable ciphers for decades.

And CGI Anchors.

Philadelphia Phillies.

Sorry it's been awhile.

Obama has made many excellent executive decisions.. As the head of a campaign that is taking in and spending record amounts of donations from a record number of individual donors.

$150 million in September and still doing $7 million a day, the average donation being $86 if I recall correctly.

I don't even particularly care for Obama and yet I can easily see that his campaign has been run brilliantly, he beat the presumptive Dem nominee, Hillary Clinton, going away and is pounding McCain both in the polls and in fund raising even as I write this.

I have not been impressed with Couric's interviews in total. She goes after people unfairly, blatantly characterizing them, their campaigns, etc. Not that I particularly care now, but when Couric interviewed all the candidates early on in the primaries, she singled out Edwards to give us something negative about himself whereas she had not done that to any of the other candidates on that particular evening. Obviously, Katie didn't like him and it showed. That is not unbiased news behavior, not that Edwards didn't deserve her dislike as we all later found out. Her interview of Elizabeth Dole and her Democratic opponent is another prime example. Katie had nothing but praise for Dole and practically insinuated that the Democrat was being mean and unfair in her campaign tactics. This is meddling, pure and simple.

Because I am completely partisan, I'm glad she exposed Palin's ignorance for everyone to see, but she has been chipping away at Obama this week with less than subtle insinuations that he is taking illegal contributions. All this without one specific incidence of illegal activity being cited...just vague suggestions even though McCain is doing the same thing. However, Obama’s haul is so much bigger than McCain’s, she couldn’t resist trying to level the playing field in my opinion. There was little doubt that Couric felt that Obama campaign contributor, "Doodad," was more suspect than the "anonymous" designation given by the McCain’s campaign to these same kinds of contributions.

At any rate, I don’t believe for one minute that Couric writes her own interviews or has any great input into news content. She is a mouthpiece for CBS and its editors who have their sights set on getting Fox’s viewers. They obviously court the right wing from time to time and I don’t believe it is going to work. Fox viewers will not accept anything but pure bias and CBS has not fallen so low, yet, to outright pander all the time.

Ms. Traister, another really good article! I hope you count yourself as another great female voice in this election cycle. I've enjoyed reading your work. You're a damn fine writer.

They kept at McCain in a way that surprised everyone, during a week when we were all outraged, but at a time when most of the MSM was still being polite. (They looked too easy on him to me, but I do think that McCain show was a watershed.)

Go gals!

I will not argue your point re: executive decisions, and I hate to even whine about media bias, because my opinion of the media is so low generally - they are only worth examining to the extent they make an impact on voters who even dumber than they are.

That said, during the '88 convention, there were many *questions* posed to Dan Quayle and his supporters that were really in the form of *statements.* To paraphrase, "Given that one must surely have more than a single authorship of a bill to come anywhere close to being qualified to be president, and Senator Quayle fails that test, how can you feel comfortable with yourself defending him?" That type of question could have been posed, at any number of junctures along the way, to Obama and his supporters. It was not.