As many of our faithful readers know, every Wednesday, PRNewser posts an interview with a "mover and shaker" in the PR or media industries. This week we chat with Paul LaMonica, editor at large with CNNMoney.com. Paul covers, "the business of media and entertainment as well as macroeconomic and market trends," and also writes the influential Media Biz blog. PRNewser askes Paul about his predictions for 2008, what PR people should think about before contacting him and whether he'll root for the Nets if they move to Brooklyn.

What time did you wake up this morning?
6:15 am

Do you have a favorite NYC holiday tradition? Nothing specific. But I love how the city looks around the holidays with all the lights and decorations.

Who throws the best holiday party?
My friends George and Denise who live in Red Hook. Honestly, I tend to shy away from industry-related gatherings so I couldn't tell you which PR firm or ad agency has the best party.

Mets or Yankees?
Yankees. Joba rules!

Giants or Jets?
Giants. True story. My father took me to a Jets game in 1980. It was my first game. The Jets still played at Shea. They were playing the Saints, who were 0-14 at the time. Archie Manning was the QB. It was brutally cold and snowing. The Jets lost 21-20. That was the last time I rooted for the Jets.

Will you root for the Nets when/if they move to Brooklyn?
I am a Knicks fan but since the Knicks are a mess and because I am a proud Brooklynite, I do plan to root for the Nets if/when they move to the 718.

How many PR pitches do you receive daily?
About 5-10 direct phone calls. And more e-mails than I can count.

Out of these, how many would you say are useful?
Maybe a half-dozen.

Best part about covering the media & entertainment beat?
This is a very exciting and rapidly changing industry and there are many intelligent people who are trying to re-shape the landscape. So it's a good time to be covering the sector since it is in a constant state of flux.

Worst part about covering the media & entertainment beat?
At times, I feel that some media stories that I do may be too "inside baseball" if you will and are not as interesting to the broader group of readers that come to CNNMoney.com, particularly readers who are interested in stocks. I also think that those of us who write about the industry often make the mistake in assuming that the average reader cares about certain stories as much as we do. For example, I do get the sense that many of our site's readers care passionately about what will happen with the Sirius-XM merger, both from a consumer and investing standpoint. I don't get the sense that too many readers, or News Corp. investors for that matter, care all that much about the changes Rupert Murdoch is going to make at Dow Jones and the WSJ.

What blogs are on your daily reading list?
Of course (shameless plug alert) there are all the fantastic blogs from Fortune on CNNMoney.com. Some other must-reads for me are I WANT MEDIA, The Huffington Post, Romenesko, Techcrunch, GigaOm, TVNewser on Mediabistro, TV Decoder at the NY Times and The Deal Journal at WSJ.com.

In regards to your recent post, "Online ad strength? What online ad strength?" the powerhouses in online advertising are supposedly doing well, but besides Google, their stock prices are not reflecting this. Are we in a tech bubble?
I honestly don't think so. Google is putting up the numbers to justify the surge in that stock and the company's valuation is reasonable, particularly if you compare it to what many dot-coms were trading at in 1999 and early 2000. If anything, I think that investors have been ignoring some of the broader strength in the online advertising business because there is this notion that the town is big enough for only one sheriff and that this sheriff's name is Google.

You made some bold statements in your Five media predictions for 2008 post: Yahoo will be sold. GE will unload NBC. Social networking will start to peak. Which do you think is most likely to come true?
I think that Yahoo being sold is the most likely. I get the sense that investors are running out of patience with the "Yahoo is a turnaround story" story. If Yahoo still is struggling to gain market share against Google and is still reporting sluggish revenue and earnings growth by the time the one year anniversary of Jerry Yang taking over for Terry Semel rolls around, I sincerely believe that some big shareholders will increase the pressure on Yahoo to sell out. It also wouldn't surprise me to see an activist shareholder buy a stake in order to put more heat on management.

What are the most important things a PR person should think about when contacting you?
Read my blog. Read the CNNMoney.com site. And then send me only relevant pitches. Nothing irritates me more than a blind phone call from someone pitching me a story that is not only something that I would never cover because it's not on my beat but something that nobody at our site would even cover. The best PR people are the ones that do their homework. So anytime I see a pitch from someone that starts off, I noticed your story about X and I work with company Y, which competes with X, I'm much more likely to respond to that because I see the person took the time to pay attention to my work and what exactly I cover.

Google is:
One of many companies that are helping to take some of the guesswork out of marketing so that consumers don't have to sit through as many irrelevant ads. This is a good thing.

Who has influenced you most in your career?
My first job was at the now defunct magazine Financial World. I worked with a fantastic team of writers and editors there that helped teach me how to cover the world of business. Geoffrey Smith and Steve Taub are two editors in particular that definitely helped me become a better reporter. I also have to say that my primary editor during my brief stint at Red Herring, Duff McDonald, was also an influential person in my career since he helped me become both a better writer and editor. Plus, he introduced me to my wife!

What can we expect in 2008 from CNNMoney.com and the MediaBiz blog, in particular?
A lot more online video. The site has invested heavily to ramp up the production of CNNMoney.com videos and I hope to be contributing more video pieces to the site, be that interviews with interesting industry executives like my recent video chat with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye, or extensions of my written work, such as a video that expanded on my Five Media Predictions blog post.