FNC

Why should a news organization have a reporter based full-time in Rome?

According to FNC’s Rome-based correspondent Greg Burke, it’s a no-brainer. ”There are more than a billion Catholics, and you have the Vatican here,” he told TVNewser during this writer’s recent vacation to Italy. “You’re always going to have some news out of the Vatican.”

Not to mention that despite the recent political departure of Italy’s never-dull prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the country “produces good, colorful stories.” For example: the trial of Amanda Knox, and the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner.

Important storylines could originate from Italy this summer as well, considering the shaky state of the eurozone. It’s evidence of what Burke predicts will be a news “comeback” for Rome, which experienced its greatest recent media crush in 2005, when Pope John Paul II passed away. The city, Burke says, “is important for a lot of reasons.”

Italy is a second home to Burke, who’s been there for nearly twenty years – first working for Reuters, then for TIME magazine.  Just a few weeks ago, in fact, he obtained dual U.S.-Italian citizenship. One benefit: near-seamless travel within the European Union.

More, including a video interview with Burke, after the jump.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

‘Tis commencement season, and so without further ado, we present TVNewser’s fifth annual list of who’s-speaking-where-and-when at America’s colleges and universities (in alphabetical order):

ABC/CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: University of Southern California - Annenberg School of Journalism,  May 11

NBC’s Tom Brokaw: Arizona State University , May 3…Vanderbilt University (TN) – Senior Class Day, May 10

FNC’s SVP of News Editorial Michael Clemente: Warren County Community College (NJ), May 19

ABC’s Katie Couric:  University of Virginia, May 20

NBC’s Tom Costello: University of Colorado, Journalism & Mass Communication, May 10.

NBC’s David Gregory: Emerson College (MA), May 14

CNN/CBS’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: University of Michigan, previously on April 28

NBC’s Savannah Guthrie: Hobart and William Smith Colleges (NY), May 13

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: Wellesley College (MA), May 25

PBS’s Maria Hinojosa: Simmons College (MA) – Morning Commencement, May 18

NBC’s Lester Holt: Pepperdine University (CA), previously on April 28

PBS’s Gwen Ifill: Holy Names University (CA), May 12… Bates College (ME), May 26

More after the jump, including Koppel, Lehrer, Sawyer, Schieffer, and three Williamses (Brian, Juan, and Pete)

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Tonight Fox News presents a 2004 edition of “War Stories with Oliver North” as a special tribute to journalist Marie Colvin, who died last week covering the Syrian civil war. The one-hour program features an interview with Colvin in which she talks about how she got into war reporting and the violence she’s seen along the way. “War correspondents have to be able to deal with absolutely everything,” she says. The special delves into the history of war reporting in interviews with Pulitzer Prize winners Eddie Adams and Nick Ut, as well as News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch who talks about his father’s work as a journalist during WWI. Colvin worked for the News Corp.-owned Sunday Times.

“War Stories with Oliver North: Deadlines on the Battlefield” airs tonight on FNC at 9pmET/PT.

Conservative columnist David Frum — who was named a CNN contributor last month — writes about the past, and the future, of the Republican party in New York magazine this week. Buried toward the end of the piece is an interesting few sentences about what may be the source of the rift between Frum and Fox News Channel, which he has frequently been critical of in the past two years:

Back in 2009, I wrote a piece for Newsweek arguing that Republicans would regret conceding so much power to Rush Limbaugh. Until that point, I’d been a frequent guest on Fox News, but thenceforward some kind of fatwa was laid down upon me. Over the next few months, I’d occasionally receive morning calls from young TV bookers asking if I was available to appear that day. For sport, I’d always answer, “I’m available—but does your senior producer know you’ve called me?” An hour later, I’d receive an embarrassed second call: “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

Fox News Channel’s Shannon Bream is profiled in this month’s Northern Virginia magazine, and the Washington correspondent reflects on her interesting, and unusual, career path. Bream was a corporate lawyer in Tampa — which she described as “a square peg in a round hole” — before getting her start at a local station in Florida:

“It was love at first sight being in the newsroom,” recalls Bream. “I immediately felt this is where I was meant to be all along.” An intern at Tampa’s ABC affiliate, WFTS-TV, Bream worked as a corporate lawyer by day and then into the wee hours at the station by night and on weekends—all in addition to attending a necessary class to qualify as an intern. Hungry for industry knowledge, Bream would do anything she could at the station to learn more about the craft. “On weekends, I would beg some reporter to let me go along with them to learn.” Read more

Fox News will tap into Google’s web technology to involve viewers in a jointly-hosted Republican presidential debate, slated for September 22 at 9 p.m.ET.

The debate will take place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando and will be moderated by “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier, with panel contributions from Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly. Fox News will ask for question submissions via Google-owned YouTube, and viewers will be able to vote on the questions they want answered. The debate will also incorporate Google search trends and public data, “to help provide context to the questions and inform the debate throughout the evening,” according to the Fox News release.

The September 22 debate follows the ratings success of the last FNC Republican presidential debate, held in Ames, IA, on August 11.

The cable news networks juggled a lot of breaking news yesterday, shifting away from Libya when the Virginia earthquake struck shortly before 2 p.m. Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith attempted to put it all in perspective on “Studio B,” kicking off the 3 p.m. broadcast by saying, “The east coast appears to be, for reasons unknown, in a bit of a freakout mode. That is a mistake.” Smith went on to say that the live pictures of evacuations in New York and DC — which were all over the cable networks, including FNC, for most of the afternoon — were “ratcheting up a sense of panic that is completely unnecessary and absolutely counterproductive.” Watch:

Fox News has been reporting all day on the progress, or lack thereof,  Tulsa police are making negotiating with a man who has been perched on top of a broadcast tower — which belongs to Tulsa’s Fox affiliate, KOKI — since Thursday. The man, who police identified today as William Sturdivant II, has been without food or water since Friday in what police say is the longest standoff in Tulsa history. Watch:

Read more on our sister site, TVSpy.

FNC’s Shepard Smith got a little tripped up yesterday, as he is sometimes famous for doing, while trying to say “top cop.” Watch:

After the jump, watch a similar moment from 2006 between Smith and then-FNC anchor Jane Skinner. Read more

Megyn Kelly returned to the Fox News Channel this week, and it didn’t take too long for Jon Stewart to jump on the “America Live” anchor, who is a favorite target of “The Daily Show.” At issue on Thursday night was her stance on maternity leave, which she took on this week with radio host Mike Gallagher. Watch:

Kelly also returned to “The O’Reilly Factor” for the first time since giving birth last night. Watch Kelly react to Bill O’Reilly‘s classification of her time off as “vacation,” which happens about 4:50 into the video (after the jump). Read more