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Brokaw to Lead Meet the Press (Politico)
Tom Brokaw will replace Tim Russert as moderator of NBC's Meet the Press through the November presidential election, the network announced today. Brokaw, 68, filled in for the first post-Russert week. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was the host yesterday, and revealed Russert's interim successor during the broadcast.

Ellen DeGeneres and Rachael Ray Share Emmy Spotlight (Reuters)
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres and cooking-lifestyle guru Rachael Ray shared the Daytime Emmy spotlight on Friday as they split television's top two awards for entertainment talks shows. The victory for Rachael Ray in the race for best talk show marked an upset triumph over The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which had won the prize in each of the last four years. AP: Complete list of winners at the 35th annual Daytime Emmys.

U.S. Network Falters in Mideast Mission (WaPo)
Al-Hurra — "The Free One" in Arabic — is the centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. Taxpayers have spent $350 million on the project. But more than four years after it began broadcasting, the station is widely regarded as a flop in the Arab world, where it has struggled to attract viewers and overcome skepticism about its mission. NYT: 60 Minutes and ProPublica partner for investigation into Al Hurra.

Madison Avenue Likes What It Sees in the Mirror (NYT)
A television series about an advertising agency in the 1960s may be generating almost as much buzz on Madison Avenue as the three-martini lunch once did. The series, Mad Men, is inspiring commercials; designer fashions; window displays in department stores; merchandise like cigarette lighters, CDs and calendars; and a mock issue of the trade publication Advertising Age. NYT: Mad Men has its moment.

Robert Thomson Speaks! (NYO)
Friday Robert Thomson gave his first public speech as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal at a kick-off event for a conference for South Asian Journalists Association. In Thomson's remarks, and in a question-and-answer session that followed, he said The Journal would most likely move to News Corp.'s headquarters next spring, wsj.com would be redesigned in the fall and that, yes, The Journal is still a business paper.

Forget the New York Times: Google Should Buy The AP (Wired)
Betsy Schiffman: Why doesn't AP give up the non-profit status, buy out members' interest, and sell itself to a new co-op of Internet companies, such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft? Conceptually, it would be a lateral rather than a forward "Hail Mary" pass since they'd be replacing one consortium that was once the center of the news universe — newspapers — with the current publishing leaders.

Hachette to Relaunch All Titles' Sites By Year-End (Mediaweek)
Six weeks after the housecleaning at Hachette Filipacchi Media's interactive division that lead to the departure of 15 people — including online editorial director Matthew Rothenberg and Elle.com fashion director Joe Berean — the company's new digital chief is revealing the Hachette's new Web strategy. Portfolio: Of the 12 current Hachette titles that were around when Kliger took over, only three had more ad pages last year than they did in 1999.

Reporters: Networks Put Wars on Back Burner (NYT)
For reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is getting especially hard to get a story on the evening news, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

New Mag to Cover Racial and Ethnic Issues in America (Newsweek)
With Barack Obama's historic nomination, race and ethnicity are sure to be hot topics for the rest of the year — which could be good news for RiseUp, a new weekly magazine that will be inserted in Sunday newspapers beginning June 22. Printed in Kansas City, the magazine is expected to initially reach 4.5 million readers.

Slow Summer Start for Broadcast Nets (TV Week)
Network TV's post-strike malaise has turned into an early-summer slump. Hoping to shake off the Nielsen blues caused by the 100-day Writers Guild of America work stoppage, networks loaded up their late May and early June lineups with a smorgasbord of first-run programming. So far, viewers don't seem to like what they're being fed.

Investigative Journalism Under Fire (B&C)
Investigations of the rich and powerful, the multinational corporations and monopoly industries, have all but dried up. To be sure, enterprise reporting on the network level is far from dead. But the days of news divisions rich with staff and resources claiming multiple hours a week of prime-time real estate with newsmagazines are now history.

No More Talk of Media End-Times (Ad Age)
Simon Dumenco: The chorus of death rattles — all that gruesome gurgling and gasping! — is getting to me. So I propose a moratorium: Let's stop obsessing about the lost golden age of easy media profits and just get on with inventing the media future (which will, let's face it, involve lower margins for just about everybody — except Google!). I'll go first.

Revolving Door Newsletter: Other Shoe Drops at WSJ (mediabistro.com)
At The Wall Street Journal, the other shoe finally dropped last week, as managing editor Robert Thomson consolidated his control over the paper. His sweeping reorg at the top was headlined by the formation of a "triumvirate" of deputy managing editors running a newly centralized news desk with three directories: National, International, and Enterprise.

Delaying News in the Era of the Internet (NYT)
Online journalists like Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton rely on the fact that their scoops will be read by influential members of the news media. But for the other self-made reporters out there, collective enterprises like Wikipedia, which allows anyone to make an edit, or the liberal blog DailyKos, which allows any registered user to post a diary, offer a rare chance to speak to a large audience.

Universities Above the Law in Treatment of Student Papers? (Inside Higher Ed)
Student newspaper advisers are something of an endangered species these days. They often get caught in the middle when administrators and student journalists clash over content, and in more than a few cases on college campuses in recent years, advisers — sometimes faculty members with tenure or tenurelike protections, but often vulnerable staff members — have found themselves losing their jobs.