The biggest damage to CNN has been self-inflicted — never more so than in June, when in a rush to be first, it came running out of the Supreme Court saying that President Obama’s health care law had been overturned. It was a hugely embarrassing error.

On Wednesday at 1:45 p.m., the correspondent John King reported that a suspect had been arrested. It was a big scoop that turned out to be false.

Mr. King, a native of the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, was deeply sourced with local law enforcement officials, but people covering the story suggested those sources were out of the loop by Wednesday.

Throughout the week, I saw anchors and reporters staring at their phones, hoping a new nugget might arrive to give them something to say.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the ‘six degrees of separation’ world that is the dining room at 55th and Fifth, Judith and I grew up in the same hometown of Bay Shore on Long Island. Her mother was often my substitute teacher in high school, and we’ve always had interesting chats whenever our paths have crossed. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the famously fiery ex-book publisher and she told me she’s adapted a new approach of “staying well below the radar” while working on her Sirius XM show. “No one even knows where I live,” she said. I knew better than to question the strategy of staying out of the limelight by sitting at Table One on a Wednesday at Michael’s, so we talked about mutual friends and exchanged pleasantries about our families. When Meg showed up, she couldn’t have been nicer as we chatted about our daughters who we adopted from China the same year, are the same age and both wear glasses. (Sorry, but it’s all OTR.) Later, on the way out, we talked a bit more and I suspected she had plenty more to say on the subject but didn’t want to get caught it the crush of folks lining up for their coats. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I was joined today by Stu Zakim, public relations vet and “transformational executive” (How’s that for a title?) Mike Berman. Stu, a veteran marketing guru who has helped shaped the image of Showtime, Universal Pictures and Wenner Media, struck out on his own in 2010 with his own firm, Bridge Strategic Communications. His current clients include the Montclair Film Festival, now in its second year, and Mike, a turnaround specialist and business blogger who dispenses straightforward strategies on his blog, Berman Means Business. Stu has been working with Mike since last fall to extend the reach of his no-nonsense messaging espousing a holistic approach to building businesses. With recent headlines on media mash-ups and corporate meltdowns, we had plenty to talk about. Since Mike penned his first piece for CNBC’s website entitled “Five Turnaround Tips for Ron Johnson, JC Penney and Others” earlier this week, I thought a discussion about JCP’s embattled CEO was a good place to start. In a nutshell, says Mike, Johnson “was set up to fail — he can’t fix Penney’s.”

Mike Berman, Diane Clehane and Stu Zakim

He explains, “What’s happening with Ron Johnson is a metaphor for what’s wrong with business today. You can’t hire a rock star as if he’s just come down from the mountain top with the solution to every problem. No one person is able to do what he’s saying he can do.” According to Mike, Johnson’s first mistake was expecting an already beaten down team to buy into widespread change without first stabilizing the organization and clearly articulating a long term vision for the future. Letting 10,000 people go among a shell-shocked workforce didn’t help matters, either. “In the classic turnaround, you can be a hero by coming in and reducing staff, closing under performing stores or factories for the short-term, but in the long-term that doesn’t create value and kills the economy. Executives have to ask themselves, ‘How can I make sacrifices for the benefit of the entity?” Because so many companies rely on the slash-and-burn strategy as an immediate solution to stem the bleeding of their bottom line, Mike tells me he no longer works on “classic turnarounds” because he finds them “totally souless.” Now there’s something you don’t hear every day.

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TVNewser:

TVSpy: There was another example of gun violence drawing attention, as television stations went wall-to-wall with a Phoenix office shooting. Police said five people were injured.

FishbowlLA: Diablo Cody (left), the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno, opens up to FBLA exclusively about returning from her motherhood hiatus.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

AllTwitter:

AllFacebook: Wes Welker, star receiver for the New England Patriots, has a very opinionated wife.

FishbowlDC: Jeff Zucker tells CNN staffers to “Not be bound by what has come before us.” We think he’s referring to the countless mistakes the network has made, but we could be wrong.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

AppNewser:

UnBeige: Betsey Johnson crafted an apron when she was just four years old. If you think that makes her better than you, you’re right.

TVNewser: Jeff Zucker is already making his mark on CNN. Everyone freak out!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TVNewser:

FishbowlDC: Colby Hall enjoys tweeting about Lindsay Lohan’s breasts. When asked for a reaction, the actress’ breasts had no comment.

LostRemote: Jimmy Fallon is trying to make Lincoln car commercial’s less terrible.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TVNewser:

FishbowlDC: A Politico reporter spars with a HuffPost reporter on Twitter in an effort to prove that grown men are still fully capable of acting like babies.

FishbowlLA: Nikki Finke takes a stroll down Newsweek memory lane.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jeff Zucker

According to the New York Times, Zucker has been the lead candidate throughout the four month search for Walton’s successor. If given the job, Zucker would be tasked with turning around a much-maligned network. Though CNN continually rakes in lots of cash, the brand itself is ridiculed as directionless at best and amateurish at worst.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner and the man who will eventually name the new head of CNN, is speaking today at a conference. TVNewser will be there, so be sure to check them out for updates later today.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Julianne Moore and Tom Hanks (Credit: StarPix)

Game Change, HBO’s much buzzed-about film based on the 2008 presidential election and the 2010 book of the same name, held its premiere party at Ziegfeld Theatre last night.

Just a few of the celebs FishbowlNY spotted in attendance and on the red carpet: Julianne Moore, who does a spot-on, yet subtle portrayal of Sarah Palin; Sarah Paulson, who plays senior McCain campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace; the film’s executive producer, Tom Hanks, and his wife Rita Wilson; Jeff Zucker; Arianna Huffington; Monster’s Ball producer Lee Daniels; and just about every political pundit in town.

Unlike the book, which focused on all the candidates in the election, the movie zeroes in on John McCain‘s choice (or should we say, his advisers’ decision) to pick Palin as his running mate. And, while many are praising Moore for the way she humanized the Alaskan governor, Ed Harris brought his A-game too. Everything from his mannerisms to his posture were so McCain-like, it was eerie.

Game Change premieres this Saturday, March 10 on HBO. If you don’t mind a spoiler, head over to our sister blog TVNewser for a full review and peep more photos from the event after the jump.

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I was joined today by Forbes‘ new editor, Randall Lane. In his new position, Randall is presiding over familiar territory to him: the lives of the ridiculously rich and ambitious. In a previous life, he was the editor of Trader Monthly which chronicled the age of excess of the Wall Streeter of days gone by.  That experience later provided plenty of fodder for his book, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade When Wall Street Went Insane. In the interim, he’s been an editor at large for Newsweek and written for The Daily Beast. Having worked with him years ago when he was the editor in chief on the startup Justice, which covered the hot trials and legal issues of the day, I was thrilled when I heard he’d gotten the top job at Forbes back in September.

Randall first worked at Forbes fresh out of college in the nineties and spent six years “chasing rich people” and working on the franchise’s venerated power lists which required (and still do) hundreds of hours of research and manpower. “In some ways, it feels like I never left,” he tells me.

Since taking the helm, Randall has been on a mission to make the book more visually exciting with interesting photography (the arresting cover image of Bill Gates in the “World’s 70 Most Powerful People” issue is a winner), fresh design elements courtesy of the Brooklyn-based shop Athletics, a livelier front of book section and more in-depth profiles on people the Forbes reader wants to know about.  Exhibit A: The cover story in the November 7 issue on Dropbox’s Drew Houston, the 28 year-old mogul who turned down Steve Jobs and is now worth $600 million which drew one million hits on Forbes.com.

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Check out what he does say after the jump.

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— DIANE CLEHANE

They were lined up into the street to get into Michael’s today for that last gasp of revelry before heading out of town for the holidays. (We were impressed by how patient Eliot Spitzer seemed on the coat check line.) The red wine was flowing as VIPs cooled their heels in the lounge waiting for their dates to arrive. “Can’t anyone get anywhere on time in this city?” groused one well-heeled gent as he sipped his pinot noir while compulsively checking his iPhone. Apparently not. By the time Jonathan Wald, Becca Thrash and Harold Ford, Jr. strolled in, the place was going at full tilt — just the way the regulars like it.

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Dan Rather, Eliot Spitzer, Tom Tuggle and another ‘suit’ we didn’t recognize. For the record, it looked like ‘The Steamroller’ did most of the talking …

2. Today show’s Marc Victor, frequent morning show guest security expert Bill Stanton and Men’s Health honcho David Zinczenko. Did you happen to catch the cover story in the Style section of this Sunday’s New York Times chronicling Dave’s relationship with BFF Mediaite founder Dan Abrams? All we can say is: Gentlemen, give your publicists a raise.

3. ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong and money man George Farias.

4.  Departing NBC Uni honcho Jeff Zucker, who we spied listening intently to the whisperings of  CNBC Squawk Box anchor Joe Kernen. Stock tips, perhaps?

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The Daily Beast‘s Tina Brown, NBC’s Lauren Zalaznick and Jeff Zucker, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gathered among other powerful women (and men) in media and marketing this morning for Women@NBCU’s annual Power of the Purse Breakfast. This year’s event was held at New York’s Cipriani’s as part of Advertising Week and focused on “Women in Power: Marketing to the Educated Consumer.”

To reach female consumers, Brown said it was important to remember the way women think. “Men want to know what happened. Women want to know what really happened,” she said. “Women have the incredible bullshit detector about everything.”

After the session wrapped, we spoke with the media veteran about her work at The Daily Beast, which she praised for pulling in a healthy five million unique visitors a month. Brown also said she’s looking forward to several upcoming Beast events, including a conference on reviving the economy in New Orleans featuring D.C. public school chancellor Michelle Rhee, and their Women of the World event in March featuring Diane Von Furstenberg and Meryl Streep.

But Brown was still mum on where those Newsweek-Daily Beast merger rumors originated. “I’ve already said everything I have to say about that,” she said.

Follow the jump to watch video from this morning’s panel and for more photos from the event.

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New York Post: As Comcast CEO Brian Roberts prepares to take over NBC Universal, he’s been meeting with ex-NBC exec Randy Falco to learn which execs he should keep and who he should dump. Is Jeff Zucker‘s job safe?

Advertising Age: Is radio making a comeback?

Daily Intel: Steve Jobs holds secret iPad meeting with New York Times execs.

E&P In Exile: Looks like the resurrected Editor & Publisher is still using ex-editor Greg Mitchell‘s name to sell renewals.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So the week of nail-biting is over, and Conan O’Brien is signing off as host of “The Tonight Show”… well, tonight. Fans are not the only ones sad to see CoCo go: both NBC and Jay Leno are doing major damage control to try and spin all the ill-will they’ve garnered lately for muscling Conan out of the 11:35 slot.

First stop on Jay’s “I’m sorry America” tour? “Oprah,” then the White House.

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