If this were the eighties, Soledad O’Brien (born Maria de la Soledad Teresa O’Brien) would be the perfect “Enjoli” woman (remember those annoying commercials about the power suited gal who could “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan?”). The telegenic and tenacious anchor has carved out an impressive television career for herself without sacrificing her much-coveted personal life. The mother of four, who self deprecatingly admits she’s “set a low bar for perfection” manages to rise and shine for three hours of live television every day on CNN’s American Morning all while juggling the full slate of motherhood. “I embrace the chaos,” she says.

Mastering this juggling act is something O’Brien learned from her own parents, who raised six children (all of whom wound up going to Harvard). Mom Estella, a black cubana, worked as a teacher and dad, Edward, a white Australian of Irish ancestry, was a mechanical engineer. Says O’Brien: “As children of immigrants, we grew up feeling the world was wide open to us. My parents just assumed we could do anything if we worked hard enough.”

Name: Soledad O’Brien
Position: Anchor, CNN’s American Morning
Résumé: Before joining CNN in July 2003, anchored NBC’s Weekend Today for three years, launched MSNBC’s technology program, The Site in 1996. Joined NBC News in 1991 as a field producer.
Birthdate: September 19, 1966
Hometown: Smithtown, New York
Education: BA English & American Literature , Harvard University
Marital status: Married to investment banker Brad Raymond; the couple have four children (Sophia, 6, Cecilia, 4, and twins Jackson and Charlie, 2 ½)
First Section of the Sunday Times: “Real estate. I find real estate in Manhattan fascinating. I have to read all the profiles of the things that are for sale. I always compare my apartment which I bought four years ago; was it a good or bad deal? I also compare my apartment that I bought two apartments ago. Both were good deals. I was in the Flatiron (district) first and flipped it and made a ton of money; then the most recent one in Chelsea was a good deal — it was before Chelsea got cleaned up a little.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
It’s truly a story of hard work and taking advantage of some really great opportunities. I think I have a reputation for being very persistent and attacking problems and things that I needed to personally work on whether it was interview style or how to become a better writer. In a way, it’s comforting because it’s not magic. It’s going over things again and again and again.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever done on air?
Probably my interview with Michael Brown from FEMA — “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.” I remember after I did that interview, a girlfriend of mine, my first boss in TV, sent me a note and said it was the best interview I’d ever done.

Why?
Katrina hit on a Monday and it was on the Friday. (Brown) was laying out all the supplies that were coming to the victims and this was after we had seen the people at the convention center and heard all the reports about the looting. He was laying out all the things that were making their way to New Orleans and it just seemed a little bizarre that he was highlighting these big pluses when the question was, “Why five days later?” I think it was a good interview because it was actually the right tone and it captured a lot of the disbelief that a lot of people were feeling — Stop spinning us about how great the efforts are going when we can clearly see in the double box it’s not going so well. On the one hand we were seeing “Brownie” and on the other hand, we’re seeing people begging for water. To be highlighting all the successes FEMA was having seemed a little inappropriate.

How did your experience in New Orleans after Katrina stack up against other on location reporting you’ve done for other news stories?
We were literally shooting stories on our way to shoot stories. There were a lot of places we were getting to that nobody else was getting to, because logistically it was very hard. Emotionally, it was very tough to see some of those things. The tsunami was also a very devastating story to cover but there was so much response and the entire global community was focused on rebuilding. In New Orleans, it just felt like everybody was just sitting there waiting — it was a very tough story to capture on a lot of levels.

You’ve worked in both network and cable news. How do they compare from a career standpoint? Is there a difference in the way in which the job is done?
On paper, our show has fewer viewers than the show I did at Weekend Today, but anecdotally, we have so many more. I cannot walk out of my house without someone saying to me, “I watch you all the time on CNN” — and talking very knowledgably about the stories we cover. That really surprised me because on paper our audience is so much smaller. I think that’s because we cover the news that’s very relevant to people’s lives, so in a way I think it makes a bigger impact. Because of that, I’ve really loved covering hard news stories. It’s so much more interesting to me to show up in cargo pants and boots and sleep on the floor of an RV and be knee deep in a story. It’s so much easier for me as a reporter than doing cooking or fashion segments. As a reporter, you’re much more fulfilled when you can be on the ground and say, “Look at what we’ve discovered here.”

In a lot of ways I’ve found there’s a great freedom at CNN to go find a story that’s breaking. You get a lot of support within the company. If you call in on a satellite phone and say, “I think I’ve got something here,” that’s it. Everybody is listening up and listening in. That’s not for me — it’s for all the correspondents. The first week I got here they handed me a little bag with a head lamp, a gas mask — at NBC you get the slicker and an NBC baseball cap. (Laughs)

What do you think of the media’s coverage of Iraq and CNN’s in particular?
I’ve been very proud of our coverage in Iraq. To watch our correspondents and see them flinch when there’s a bomb going off and the fact that they don’t run off screaming is remarkable. I could not do that. I think we’re really solid. We’re there every day. We have a live reporter updating us every day.

What about Iraq being labeled a “Civil War” in the media?
I don’t think the media gets to decide it’s a civil war. I don’t think anybody needs me to tell them when I believe it’s a civil war. I think it’s up to me to ask the questions. What is the definition of a civil war? When, if it ever occurs, does Iraq need that definition? I think somebody declaring it a civil war because they’ve decided it’s a civil war — I just don’t think that’s something I’d be comfortable with. (CNN) did not declare it a civil war. We have not declared it a civil war. I think it was NBC or maybe the LA Times that went first with that definition so I’d be interested in hearing why they felt they could declare it a civil war.

Any thoughts on how the media has been covering Katie Couric and her evening news broadcast?
It’s been really fascinating how many stories focus on her outfits. That has been a little surprising to me. I think the American public truly does not care. I think people understand that you dress up like Peter Pan on Halloween because that’s what The Today Show did. It’s not indicative of what kind of journalist she is. For journalists to write about that was surprising because I don’t think your average person is running around saying, “How can someone who dressed up as Peter Pan report hard hitting news?” I think journalists made a much bigger deal about it. I don’t think people critique her outfits. I think journalists are way off on this.

Are the networks doing enough to promote a racially diverse workplace?
My answer is I think everybody could do more to hire more people of color. I truly believe you get a wider range of stories coming to you when you have a real diversity of who you’re talking to in your editorial meeting. I think everybody could do a better job of that.

Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic comments when he was arrested this summer and Michael Richards’ rantings at an LA comedy club in November both got a lot of media coverage focusing on public outrage. But afterwards, sales of the Seinfeld DVD skyrocketed and Gibson gets a standing ovation on The Tonight Show and his movie opens number one. What do you make of all that?
I think it’s an interesting conversation. Both of them have said “I didn’t mean it and it’s not me speaking.” I’m pretty confident if I were pulled over, I wouldn’t be spewing racial epithets at the cop. I think clearly there’s a conversation to be had about race in this country.

The Richards story was everywhere for days. Did it receive a disproportionate amount of coverage?
I thought it was an interesting story. There’s clearly something going on. I would love to interview him. Outside of the apology — no one needs to apologize to me — it’s not about that. I would like to know why. What’s going on? I find that fascinating. I don’t think (the coverage) was disproportionate. I think people talk about things as long as they’re interesting.

You were on a recent cover of “Working Mother.” What do you think of ABC News’ handling of Elizabeth Vargas’ pregnancy and how that became part of the story of her stepping down from her co-anchor position on the evening news?
What I resent the most out of all of that is the sense that all pregnant women or all women having children should all respond in the same way. One side says, “You should all suck it up and march on and make it work.” The other side says, “You’d be a much better mother if you’d just stay home and raise those children.” The truth is, for every person it’s an individual decision. Elizabeth, I’m sure, has ten more reasons than we know about for the decision she made. It’s so much more complicated than “good mommy, bad mommy.”

How do you manage to do your job and raise four kids?
Some days I think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to just stay home and bring everybody to school?” Then I spend a couple of days bringing everybody to school and I think, “Oh God, I can’t wait to get back to the office. I exhausted.” For most of us, you just figure it out. Some days you do more and some days you do less. I want to cover the big story but I also want to go to the sing-along at kindergarten. How do you balance? That, to me, is hard and I don’t think people articulate that well yet.

Are you a tech geek?
No, Miles (O’Brien, co-anchor) is so I live vicariously through him. He’s really into laser pointers so I’m getting him one for Christmas. I have the latest Blackberry and I love it. When I covered technology I learned a lot. Women are much more practical about their technology. I would never have a laser pointer but a Blackberry frees you up.

Do you miss anything about those early days doing that tech show (The Site) on MSNBC?
There are things I miss about it and things I don’t. It’s really hard to do a start-up, but there’s something great about it because every idea is potentially a very cool idea. In that field, I felt like we were doing stories that someone would come back and look at in 30 years, because just by covering the digital revolution we were making news.
Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to mediabistro’s FishbowlNY.com.

From her perch at NBC’s Studio 1A, Campbell Brown is at ease chatting with the steady stream of newsmakers and celebutantes who visit Weekend Today shilling their latest projects to sleepy weekend viewers.

But, get her talking off-camera, and it’s clear one of her greatest passion is politics. Her worldview has been shaped by a career that was first ignited by her desire to see the world. “When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to travel,” she says. “So much was happening in what was Eastern Europe at the time — it was the summer the wall came down. I moved to what was Czechoslovakia, and lived in Prague and taught English. The very first foreign minister was one of my students. That gave me the bug. I loved politics — I’ve always been a political junkie.”

Brown found a role model in a future colleague.

“My dream job was to be Andrea Mitchell, who was the White House correspondent at the time,” she says. “So I took several internships in Washington with local NBC affiliates to put a tape together. I sent out 200 tapes all over the country, and the NBC affiliate in Topeka, Kansas, KSNT-TV, called me and offered me their political reporter job covering the capital. That’s how I got my start.”

Name: Campbell Brown “Here’s the real story: Campbell is my mother’s maiden name. My full name is Alma Dale Campbell Brown. My great grandmother was named Alma, and she married John Dale. My grandmother was then named Alma Dale, and she married Richard Campbel. My mother was named Alma Dale Campbell, and then she married a Brown. I’m the fourth in a generation. It’s so Southern. Everyone thinks I made it up for television. The story is too ridiculous to make up.”
Position: Co-anchor, NBC’s Weekend Today, and correspondent for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
Resumé: Before joining Weekend Today in September 2003, she served as NBC News White House correspondent for three years, while also reporting for Today and MSNBC. Brown covered the 2000 presidential election, and traveled with the Bush campaign. She joined NBC News in 1996 as a correspondent for the NBC News Channel.
Birthdate: June 14, 1968
Hometown: Ferriday, Louisiana. “Hometown of Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley. Is that good company or what?”
Education: B.A. in Political Science, Regis College
Marital status: Married last April to Dan Senor, private equity advisor and Fox News Analyst.
Favorite television show: “I feel under pressure to say an NBC show, and a year ago I couldn’t answer that, but I can now say Friday Night Lights. I love that show! I hate football, but I’m in love with the show. I hope they don’t kill it.”
Last book read: Prisoners: A Muslim and A Jew Across the Middle East Divide, by Jeffrey Goldberg.
Guilty Pleasure: Créme brulée
First section of the Sunday Times: The front page. Sadly, it’s not the most exciting answer, but it’s true.

What is the most interesting news story out there right now?
The most important story is Iraq. There’s no question about it. It’s consuming all of us as journalists and as Americans. If you look at all the polls, the country has been telling the members of Congress and the administration that they don’t want them to deal with anything else until they deal with Iraq. There’s just no escaping that. We’re spending a lot of time on it here. The stories that I’m most deeply affected by now are the stories about these vets coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and hearing what they’re going through right now, and the impact this has had on so many families in this country.

In conjunction with that, when I think about what I would like to be covering, probably the most interesting interview would be with Syrian President Bashar Assad because Syria, in tandem with Iran, is a direct conduit for so much of the instability in the region.

How has the war in Iraq changed the way the White House has been covered?
I was NBC’s White House correspondent when Bush was elected, through 9/11 and through the start of the war. In the wake of 9/11 — I don’t want to say ‘free pass,’ but journalists were in the same boat as so many Americans in wanting to support a wartime president. There was an undercurrent of that, and that’s certainly turned. What is frustrating for me when you try to think where you go from here, is that you can’t look at the war in Iraq or our options on how to deal with the war right now without politics playing a role. It would be impossible for any administration to make decisions without having to weigh those considerations.

Political considerations are so important, given 2008 is a wide-open field. You can’t look at this problem in a vacuum. It’s all about 2008. We’re all craving wisdom — someone who can truly lead us out of this mess, whether that means staying there or bringing our troops home. It’s hard to find that in this political environment.

How do you see the coverage of the 2008 election shaping up?
In terms of the nitty-gritty, I hope to be able to do more big-picture stuff. I have covered a presidential campaign in the so-called “bubble,” where you’re with the candidate 24/7. I picked up and moved my life to Austin, Texas. It’s fascinating for a reporter, but it gives you a limited perspective because you’re so in that world that you’re incapable of seeing the big picture.

What are the best and worst parts of traveling with a presidential candidate?
To have that access — to see this person who could be the most powerful person in the world up close, and see their strengths and weaknesses up close. It’s fascinating. As much as the candidate tries to control their environment, you do get a sense of what is authentic by just being there every day. The downside: is I could never leave my husband for that long now. I would not want to do daily campaign coverage again, not as a newlywed. Once was enough.

To what extent do you think the cult of personality is going to affect 2008?
Name recognition matters in a way it never has before, because [the race] is starting so early. You also have primaries and caucuses that are bunched together at the very beginning. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Iowa are happening much earlier. California is talking about moving their primary up. In many ways, the nomination process could be over much sooner. You can make a pretty strong case that it’s over before most of the country has even tuned in to the process, which means that big money and name recognition become huge factors. It’s the Obamas and the Hillarys.

In national polls, Hillary is polling well ahead of Obama, and Edwards, and other competitors. There are really two campaigns going on right now. Edwards has spent the last year practically living in Iowa. If you look at the Iowa polls, he’s running ahead of everybody, versus the national polls where Hillary has a huge jump because she has name recognition.

With media stars like Obama and Hillary, can we expect to see the campaign covered differently — say, the candidates on entertainment shows?
This goes to the big issues that we’re all struggling with in how our industry has changed. It’s become so fragmented. I think you will see politicians on Entertainment Tonight, and doing interviews with InStyle and People, as much as they’re doing [them] with Newsweek and Time.

Why is that?
To reach a different generation that isn’t tied to the traditional format. Everything is about the Internet. You don’t have to be a technology wizard to make this observation about the transformation that’s taking place. We all have to adapt to it. We, in television, are far more subject to viewer feedback because it is such an interactive process, with email and the Internet. People aren’t just watching us, they’re dialoguing with us. Politicians know that. It’s not a fluke that Obama and Hillary both announced [their candidacy for president] on their Web sites rather than at a press conference or on a television show. I struggle with what it means for us and how we have to make editorial decisions now.

Do you have your own blog?
I don’t. We all file for Brian’s [Williams] blog. He’s definitely leading the charge on that. It’s amazing the extent to which that has become such a huge outlet for all of us. Anybody who doesn’t embrace it is making a huge mistake. You can’t hold on to the good old days. When I first started working at NBC, the emphasis was almost solely on the Nightly News — you’d have all day to debate and discuss what was going to go into those 22 minutes, triple-check facts and sources. Nobody has that luxury today.

With those time constraints, the A.D.D. nature of the media and the audience, are we losing anything?
There is intense pressure to be first with a story, and I do worry that our need for immediacy may compromise accuracy at times. To go beyond that, there’s a major transformation taking place in the news business — unlike anything that’s ever happened before in my career. The good news is that it’s clear that consumers are hungry for information, but they are also hungry for transparency. They want us to tell them not just what the news of the day is, but how it’s gathered and, probably most importantly, what informs our editorial decisions.

Because viewers have so many choices, I think all the players are being held to standards they’ve never been held to before — which is a good thing. The downside is that we have to guard against is the blurring of the line between news and opinion.

We should expect that there is truth in advertising. People who are in the opinion business are a critical part of the dialogue, but it’s equally critical they make it clear they’re about opinion, just as it’s equally important that people in the news business be clear that they’re there to provide news. We have an obligation to bring some clarity by defining our roles; otherwise our roles will be defined for us because of the interactive nature of it all.

What do you consider your best on-air interview?
Recently, I did a fascinating interview with President Clinton. I traveled to Rwanda [with him], and given all that’s happening in Dafur right now, hearing a president openly admit that he made the wrong decision choosing not to intervene in Rwanda, and how that decision was one of his greatest regrets, was pretty powerful.

What you role do you think he’ll play in Hillary’s campaign?
I think they’ll be very careful how they use President Clinton. I don’t think you’re going to see them together. At Coretta Scott King’s funeral, Hillary gave a speech that was perfectly acceptable in that moment, then he followed her with an extraordinary speech and it so outshone Hillary. At the time, it was written as a lesson learned for the campaign in terms of how to best use him.

If you could do one interview over, which one would it be?
Sometimes the toughest interviews are the ones that you don’t expect to be difficult. Often on Weekend Today, when people have experienced an unusual event — like a lottery winner will come on. They’ve never been on TV, they’re overwhelmed by the experience, and they clam up. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done where it doesn’t matter what you ask or how you ask the question — you will get nothing but one-word answers. I can think of a million times where we’ll throw to commercial and [co-anchor] Lester [Holt] will just look at me and say, ‘I so feel your pain right now.’ Those are by far the toughest.

What’s more fun: running around Washington or sitting on the Today show couch?
My passion has always been hard news. That’s how I cut my teeth in this business. Those are the stories I get most excited covering. All the highs in my career have been when I’ve been out there covering major news events, be it Hurricane Katrina or the first Iraqi election — to be there experiencing it on the ground: There’s nothing like it.

What’s your dream job?
Right now, I have it. It is a near-perfect job. I have a co-host I adore. We have a great time on the weekend. The show gives us an incredible platform to do interesting projects, but I also have the freedom during the week to go out and cover stories for Nightly News. For the moment, I’m pretty happy.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

While his Today show colleagues might garner more ink, Al Roker has an impressive story to tell. Now in his 11th year on the job, the man New York magazine has twice named “Best Weatherman” does a lot more than track hurricanes. “He’s the glue that holds the show together,” says Today‘s executive producer Jim Bell. “Al can do anything – and he has.”

When he’s not being P.Diddy to Matt Lauer’s J.Lo (the pair’s Halloween costumes have become a Today show signature) the tireless “features reporter” has done his share of celebrity interviews, including his sit-down with Star Jones the day after she was booted from The View.

But Roker has had his sights set on a bigger arena for some time. He founded Al Roker Productions in 1994, which produces shows for Lifetime, Oxygen, the History Channel, Court TV, Food Network, and PBS. His burgeoning empire is nicely documented on one of his two Web sites. The other site, AlRoker.com, is directed more towards fans — there’s even a line of Al Roker merchandise he’s designed — where Roker says he “answers all my emails.” Here, he answers us.

Position: Weather and feature reporter on Today
Resumé: Began his broadcasting career while in college as weekend weatherman at WTVH-TV in Syracuse. Worked at a series of stations as weathercaster in Washington, DC (1976-1978) and Cleveland, Ohio (1978-1983), before landing the job as weekend weathercaster at WNBC in New York in 1983. Joined Today in January 1996. Author of four books, including the best seller Don’t Make Me Stop This Car! Adventures in Fatherhood.
Birthdate: August 20, 1954
Hometown: Queens, New York
Education: B.A. in Communications, SUNY Oswego (“Home of the 120-inch snowfall”)
Marital status: Married to ABC News 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts; three children (Courtney, 19, Leila, 8, and Nicky, 4)
First Section of the Sunday Times: “The arts section. It usually has the stuff I’m interested in — theater, movies, music, television. I already get the news I need at work.”
Favorite television show: “That’s a toss up — if you went with comedy, I would say it’s between 30 Rock and Scrubs; if it’s an hour long drama, I’d be hard pressed to choose between 24, Lost, and Heroes. P.S. I will also say I’ve never watched them on TV, I’ve only watched them on my iPod. It’s a kind of intimate viewing experience. I put my headphones on — the sound is incredible. I’ve got a 42-inch TV in my family room — I don’t miss the size. Although Meredith [Vieira] gave me one of these things you put on — they’re like video glasses — you look like Gordy from Star Trek. I’ve not tried them yet though because I don’t want to look like a total geek. I am a geek, but I just haven’t completely surrendered to it.”
Guilty pleasure: “Spending as much time as possible with the kids — although that’s not something you should feel guilty about. I just take such immense pleasure in getting home, picking them up from school, which I don’t get to do enough — maybe twice a week. And, I love to cook for them. They’re favorite meal I make is a toss up between roast chicken or meat loaf, roasted Brussels sprouts and wild brown rice.”
Last book read: Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

What would you say are the qualities you possess that have helped get you to where you are?
Not being afraid to make fun of myself and basically looking a little worse than about 90 percent of the population.

What do you mean by that?
I think I’m just an average to below-average looking person, and when you look at TV most of the people on TV — with the exception of most sports people — everybody else is good-looking. People feel a little more comfortable with somebody, who, at best, looks as good as them and, in many cases, looks a little worse.

So, has anything changed for you as a result of your dramatic weight loss awhile back?
It’s funny. The conventional wisdom was you’re a jolly, fat weatherman and are people going to relate to you differently. Now, I’m the jolly, thinner weatherman. In fact, what’s very heartening is the positive reinforcement. I go out there and people say, “You look great!” or “Keep it up!” It’s nice to know people that are rooting for you.

You had a very long interview with Star Jones the morning after she left The View. What do you think of her incredible physical transformation?
She looks spectacular. This is a great opportunity for her — I think people forgot that this is a highly intelligent, very smart lawyer. She is a brilliant legal mind. A lot of that got lost in the frivolity of The View. I think people will get to see what attracted the networks to her in the beginning.

The television weather jobs — especially in New York — have become so high profile and great stepping stones. What do you make of that?
It’s nothing new, really. Frank Field was one of the first. Willard Scott, my mentor, was a huge success in Washington, D.C. and then made the jump to the networks. Bob Ryan, who was before Willard — Willard and Ryan did a swap and he’s now at WRC in Washington. Dave Price went to CBS; he was at Channel 5 (FOX) in New York. So the weather person has always been the “lightness” in the newscast, whether it’s local or national. It’s just the way it is. It’s a chance for everyone — the viewer and the folks in the control room — take a breather, a breath.

Today underwent a huge change last year with Katie’s departure and Meredith’s arrival. In your view, how did that effect the core group of talent?
What’s great about it is we don’t really think about it. It just is. The show just is. Meredith is just there. When I say that, I mean she is Meredith and the show is there. I wouldn’t even say the show has changed. The very nature of the show is the participants of the show change — Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley, Deborah Norville, Katie Couric. They’re all part of the history of the show and the show goes on. The show is bigger than we are. At the end of the day, it just keeps churning along. I’m very proud and protective of the show. At the end of the day, people can say what they want and spin what they want. The fact of the matter is, we’re number one, we’ve been number one for 11 years. End of story. I feel it’s because the sum is greater than its parts.

Your role on Today has evolved and expanded with the addition of the third hour and will likely continue to do so with the upcoming fourth hour. How would you describe your career trajectory on Today?
I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve worked for people both locally and nationally who gave me a chance to get out of the box. When I was at WNBC [in New York] I did a lot of pieces. When I started on the Weekend Today show, I started doing a lot of stories and that continued when I moved to the Today show. It’s continued — I’ve been very fortunate in that folks have said, “He can do more than just weather,” and have given me a chance to report a wide range of stuff from wild fires in California to the last interview with Charles Schulz, which was just heartbreaking, and everything in between. I don’t take it for granted because not everybody gets that opportunity.

What would you say is the best on-air story you’ve ever done?
Wow … [sighs] … Getting to interview Rosa Parks, and interviewing Charles Schulz, for completely different reasons. Rosa Parks being one of the people in this country’s history that showed literally that one person can make a difference and basically changed this country. Not just for African Americans, but for everybody. And Charles Schulz because I’m an amateur cartoonist and revered him and got to do two interviews with him. One for the 50th anniversary of Peanuts, and his last interview before he passed away. On a professional level, and as an amateur cartoonist, that was very meaningful.

You’re also a very prolific producer. How did that come about?
I never intended to be on television. It didn’t cross my mind — I wanted to be a writer or a producer. When I went to college at the end of my sophomore year, my department chair, Lou O’Donnell, got me up for a job to do weekend weather. I got the job and everything followed from there. Right around 1994, I started this company [Al Roker Productions] really just to launch a Web site. I did a show for PBS called Going Places and a produced the ins and the outs for that, and then I did a special for the Food Network under Judy Gerard. She said do you want to produce it, and I said, “Sure.” That kind of started the ball rolling. I enjoy it. I enjoy creating television and in a way, it makes me a better on-air person. As an on-air person, you tend to take for granted what the producers do from our executive producer Jim Bell, all the way down to our line producers and my producer, Jackie Olensky. They kind of make these things happen, and as talent you kind of walk in and go, “Okay, make me sparkle.” I look at it now from both angles because most of the shows I produce I’m not in and I have to deal with talent and try to find really good talent and build shows around them. I really enjoy doing that. We’re doing stuff for the Food Network. We’ve got a law enforcement show coming out that I can’t talk about. We’re doing a lot of stuff for the NBC-owned and -operated stations. We produced a documentary on the 50th anniversary of Profiles in Courage. For the History Channel, we did an hour-long documentary on the seven African Americans who were finally given their medals of honor for [their service during] World War II. We did a special for E! on behind the scenes at the Miss USA Pageant. We run the gamut of television.

What are the qualities of a good producer?
I think you want to be honest. You don’t want to pander to your audience and without sounding too Zen, be true to what you are doing. Don’t try to bend this too much. If you’re far afield from what you set out to do or from what the talent is comfortable doing, you’re not going to make a good television show.

You’ve been posting regular journal entries on your Web site for a long time. Given the spate of blogs that are out there now you must feel like something of a pioneer.
I actually start “blogging” in 1994. I called it a journal. I kind of laughed when I heard about blogging. I asked, “What is that?” Then I said, “Oh, wait a minute. I’ve been doing that and calling it a journal.” I’m not making any Al Gore claims, but I’ve been doing it for a while. I find it fascinating. The Internet is such a democratic place in that you can be a guy in your basement with a Web site and have the same access to people as NBC Universal or Sony or MTV or any of those places. You never know what’s going to be the next big thing, a la YouTube. We’ve been experimenting with some stuff I don’t want to give away … I think people are really over-thinking this.

You’ve written a great deal about fatherhood in your books (Don’t Make Me Stop This Car: Adventures in Fatherhood). Much is made of your former (Couric) and current colleagues (Vieira) being working mothers. How has being a father affected you professionally?
It’s multi-layered. You’re trying to juggle the time you spend at work and this job has some travel with it. You want to raise your children with the proper values — just because Daddy and Mommy are on TV doesn’t make us any different or better than anybody else. I want my kids to see me doing “normal” things. I cook dinner, I wash the dishes. I’m not saying we don’t have a great life because we do. I’m not downplaying that at all, but I don’t think we live such an extravagant lifestyle. If someone else is paying we’ll fly first class, but if Daddy is paying, we fly coach unless Daddy has enough frequent flyer miles so we can upgrade. You try to keep your kids grounded.

Do you have a professional motto?
Willard [Scott] gave me two bits really good bits of advice early on. He said, “Never give up your day job and always be yourself.” I can do all these other things, but the best thing is having the Today show. You can do all these others things and be all these other things, but if your persona is as close to who you are as possible, at the end of the day, it’s a lot easier because you’re just who you are.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

Glenn Beck isn’t a reporter — and he doesn’t play one on TV. “What’s frightening is that people like me are being lumped in with journalists. I make a point to make sure people know I’m a conservative and I’m not a journalist,” he says. “People are getting their news from Jon Stewart because it’s entertaining, but there’s no real credibility there. They try to make [news] more entertaining and go for the hot stories. You can’t do both. You can’t be credible and lead with Anna Nicole Smith every night.”

Beck prefers to tackle politicos and the PC police with impassioned monologues tempered with the comedic bits that have become his cable show’s signature. Love him or loathe him, he’s registered some seismic waves on the pop culture Richter scale. Media Matters for America, a liberal Web site that tracks conservative commentary, continually chastises him for his controversial comments including these bon mots: antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan is a “tragedy pimp” and former President Carter is “a waste of skin.” As of January ’07, he’d increased viewership in his timeslot by 65 percent and by 88 percent in the coveted 25-54 demo. His November ’06 special, “Exposed: The Extremist Agenda,” which chronicled how Middle Easterners are being schooled on hating Americans was the highest-rated program in Headline News history.

Earlier this year, Beck inked a deal to join Good Morning America as a guest commentator, after Diane Sawyer herself wooed him over a meal. (“She actually asked me to lunch!”) As he recalls, the unlikely duo talked about “how television is trapped inside of itself.” Clearly smitten by television news’ über blonde, Beck adds: “She is amazing. I walked away from that meeting thinking, ‘She really gets it.'”

Having survived drug and alcohol addiction (“two glasses a day — but tall glasses, and all Jack Daniels”), with the help of AA and his newfound Mormon faith, Beck has said he is “genuinely happy for the first time in my life in the last 10 years,” despite having earned the title of “Worst Person in the World” from MSNBC’s Keith Olberman numerous times. It’s clear from our conversation with Beck that a far greater slight would be not noticing him at all.

Name: Glenn Beck
Position: Host CNN Headline News, and a nationally syndicated radio broadcaster
Resumé: Began his career in radio broadcasting at 13 after winning a local DJ contest and wound up with three different jobs at three radio stations in Seattle. Became a successful Top 40 DJ, but by 30, “alcohol and drug addiction took over.” He went into recovery and became a Mormon. In January 2000, he moved to Tampa, Florida and landed a gig at WFLA (AM) hosting The Glenn Beck Program, a mix of comedy and conservatism. Within 18 months, the show became No. 1 in that market. He joined CNN Headline News last year. Currently, his radio broadcast is heard on nearly 200 stations and XM Satellite radio. Author of The Real America (Pocket, 2003) and the upcoming An Inconvenient Book (Threshold Editions). Editor-in-chief of Fusion, subtitled “Entertainment & Enlightenment” — a monthly mix of right-wing editorials, humor, and future obituaries (including a recent entry chronicling the death of Katie Couric’s career at CBS and the demise of 44-year-old broadcast itself — “Katie Couric’s career and the CBS Evening News died last week in what investigators are calling a double murder. A suspect, Katie Couric, 50, is being held for the slayings.”)
Birthdate: February 10, 1964
Hometown: Mount Vernon, Washington
Education: Courses at Yale for one semester (“No big deal.”)
Marital status: Married to second wife Tania, with four children; Mary, 18, Hannah, 16, (both from his first marriage); Raphe, 2, Cheyenne, “about to be one” with his current wife
First section of the Sunday Times: “The front section. I just read it cover to cover.”
Favorite television show: “It was 24, but not this season. I think it’s jumped the shark. It’s probably a tie between House and The Office.”
Last book read: “It’s by Bob Thomas on Roy E. Disney” (Building A Company, Disney Press)
Guilty pleasure: “‘My Grandmother’s Chocolate Cake’ from Allen Brother’s steakhouse. Each piece is 3,000 calories. It’s unbelievable.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
I’d be bluffing if I told you I knew. The best explanation I could give is working with incredibly talented people, being on the same page with them so they could create their dreams while helping me with mine. And, I think, being stupidly honest. Just saying what you mean and meaning what you say. The only thing that is shocking in this society is knowing how people really, truly feel because we live in such a climate of fear. Whether it is the left or right, nobody ever says what they really, truly believe. Most of us when it comes to the real issues of life — I don’t mean politics — are the same. Most of us are hiding from something we did or something we’re ashamed of. The big scars in life — they are generally the same in nature. We hide it and we think, ‘Gee, if someone found out about this, they’d hate me.’ When indeed, if someone found that out about you, most likely you’d find more people around you saying, ‘On my gosh! I can’t believe you said that. I feel the same way.’

Do you think your outspokenness about your battle with drugs and alcohol has helped your career?
Yeah. It’s counterintuitive but… I was just talking about this on the air. I picked up The Globe. My stepmother was flying in from Seattle to stay and she said, ‘I picked this up in the airport and look who got a story on alcoholism?’ They had done some story on me about my alcoholism and had some LA psychologist comment on me. I didn’t even know this thing was running. We were just laughing about it, [like] shut up about the alcoholism thing!

I read several interviews where you said after interviewing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the first Muslim ever to be elected to Congress — and saying to him, in part, “I feel like saying, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies,'” you would take back the wording of the question if you could. How often do you feel that way?
A lot. I’m on four hours a day, five days a week. As much as people write up the things I say, I also do a lot of comedy. You can’t do that live for three hours a day without making mistakes. I’m celebrating my 30th year in broadcasting. How can you do something every day for thirty years and not say something and go, ‘Boy that was stupid.’

With Imus’ firing, do you feel the punishment fit the crime?
No. I think the crime, if you will, was absolutely despicable. There’s absolutely no defense for Imus. I was surprised by the surprise. He invented the ‘shock jock.’ He’s been saying these things forever. No defense for him, but I worry about any culture that decides to impose through fear, intimidation, protests, boycotts — whatever — to shut someone off and get them pulled off the air. I think that’s for the individual to decide by turning the radio off. Let the market work through ratings. I was equally horrified when I heard a few days later that Tom DeLay said it was time to pull Rosie O’Donnell off the air. I don’t agree with almost anything Rosie O’Donnell says, but I’m worried about the McCarthy-like atmosphere where people think we should curb speech. If you really appreciate freedom of speech, it’s not less speech — it’s more.

What did you make of the noticeable silence from all the journalists who had been regulars on Imus’ show?
We all have our own masters. We all have jobs. Wherever you draw that line is a personal decision. I personally think that if you didn’t think Don Imus was a racist, you should have said so. I don’t think he’s a racist, I think he hates people equally. What I spoke out on — and it was a difficult thing to do because we’re in hit-and-run media — was your right to be despicable. There were people in the media as soon as this happened on the left and the right — Tom DeLay and Keith Olberman — they both said, “Here’s the list of the next people that we need to get out.” That’s not America. I thought we learned our lesson from the McCarthy days. You’ve got to able to be human — to make mistakes. I make them. Everybody makes them. Let me put a microphone in your office for four hours and you tell me if you’re not going to say something stupid that you’re going to have to apologize for. One universal common phrase in real life is, “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” If we can’t accept that from people in media who are live every day, then we need to brace ourselves for a sterile, boring environment with absolutely no diversity and no debate. That’s not good.

Have the powers that be ever privately asked you to back off or tone it down?
No. I have been asked to explain. For example, with Keith Ellison — my producer was like, “What were you thinking?” It wasn’t calling me on the carpet. I said it to Keith when we went off the air, “I didn’t mean it that way.” He was like, “No, I understand.” I knew it was a mistake. I don’t think I’ve ever been called on the carpet for anything. I had lunch with [CNN Worldwide president] Jim Walton recently. We didn’t really trust each other when we first started. We didn’t know each other. I said to him, “I hope I’ve proven myself to be a reasonable partner with you.” He said, “Everything that you’ve said — whether I agree or disagree with it — doesn’t come from a position of hate or anything else. I think you’ve proven yourself to be a very reasonable partner.” I think he has, too. The day I come out with something hateful is the day I should be called out on the carpet.

What’s the best thing you’ve done on your show?
The best thing we’ve done is twofold: remained fairly true, on a daily basis, to who we are; but that is also the worst thing we’ve done, in a way. We’ve been running so fast, so hard at times, that we have also not done that. We have to keep coming back and resetting because of the grind. That’s what I find so fascinating about television — it is neverending, always there. I tell people all the time, “You might like sausage, but you don’t want to see it made.” It is, “What are we doing tomorrow?” Panic! I don’t have enough time. I run a magazine, my show, my radio show — I get so bogged down that I don’t have time to step back and say, “That’s what everybody is doing, but it’s not who were are.”

You’ve said that the sound of Hillary Clinton’s voice makes “blood shoot from my eyes,” and that she “sounds like the biggest nag on the planet.” When you say she “cannot be elected president because there’s something in her vocal range,” is that comedy or your real opinion?
I thought it was really funny, but I also mean that sincerely because if Fran Drescher was running, I’d be saying the same thing. If Fran Drescher was the biggest conservative on the planet, I’d be saying the same thing about her. It really has nothing to do with her political leanings, even though I’m not a fan of Hillary’s. There is something about her when she speaks and really gets strident — all I hear is, “Get up off the couch and take out the garbage.” I just don’t think that’s electable.

Do you think this country is ready for a female president?
I think that if this country is not ready to elect a woman, we’re in bigger trouble than I think we are [in]. I find it amazing that there are people that would say, “We can’t elect a woman” or “We can’t elect a black” or “We can’t elect a black women.” What is that? I’d vote for Condoleezza Rice — from what I know about her now — in a heartbeat. This is stuff that is east of the Hudson and west of Hollywood. I don’t think people think that way. I think people want someone who is real. Bill Clinton, like him or not: The guy came off as genuine. Hillary doesn’t. Maybe she’s the most genuine person in the world, but she comes off too calculated.

Rudy Giuliani has got that bullhorn moment in him. He’s honest. That’s what people want. They want somebody who is not trying to be perfect, who is not trying to say, “I’m everyperson.” I’ve voted for people that I’ve strongly disagreed with on a lot of things, but I prioritize. I’m never going to vote for a guy who agrees with me on everything because that person is lying because I’m a psycho. How can you rule the country if you agree with me on everything?

What do you think Obama’s chances are at winning the democratic nomination?
I think that if this were not “The Clintons,” he would be the candidate. I think the Clintons have far too much power and Bill is just too powerful of a motivator. He’s good and she’s so packaged. With all the money and everything else, I can’t imagine her not getting the nomination. If she makes a critical misstep, then he’d be the guy. I disagree with almost everything he stands for politically, but I admire the man and that he is honest and has an ounce of integrity. God help us all, we need someone like that.

The biggest recent story has been the Virginia Tech massacre. Did you air footage of the shooter?
I think I aired a six-second clip and a nine-second clip. I’ve said I regretted doing it. I think I talked myself into thinking that it was okay to run it. I’m not sure if it was or not. I didn’t like the way some were just capitalizing on, “Hey, look at this. Mayhem! Crazy dude with a gun.” I aired part of it because, in my head, I was trying to make the point of playing him saying, “I’m anti-rich” and playing him saying “I’m Jesus Christ” because my point was we completely missed the whole story, and that was this is a sick guy in a culture that is all about fame and fortune, and this is what you get when you couple those things. That’s why I played it. Before I played it, I said, “I’m going to show you these specific clips and you’re not going to see this guy’s face again.” I don’t even say his name. I never said his name on the air because that’s what he wanted.

Are you at all worried that Rosie O’Donnell is going to pick you for her next celebrity smackdown?
(Laughs) Not at all. I think Rosie O’Donnell is a microcosm of the hypocrisy that the media just doesn’t see. I’m on the front of everybody’s burner the minute I misspeak and give a poorly-worded question to Keith Ellison. How many months ago was that and I’m being asked again about it in this interview? Rosie O’Donnell can get on ABC television and say the United States government blew up World Trade Tower number seven — that’s insanity — and nobody is standing up and saying, ‘That doesn’t belong on television.’ I don’t believe she should be fired. I’m a capitalist. As long as there is a market for it, God bless you. [Editor’s note: This interview took place before the announcement of O’Donnell’s departure from The View due to a “contract dispute.”] She can get on and say those things, but God forbid I get on and say, ‘Ten percent of Islam, give or take five percentage points either way, is out of control and wants to kill every single one of us.’ It’s insane.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to Fishbowl New York and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

[NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

One need look no further than at a list of titles of Kate White’s nonfiction books to get a glimpse into what makes the perennially perky editor tick. Her 1996 book, Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do, has become something of a mantra for its author. White has climbed many ladders in publishing, and seemingly done so leaving admirers, not gossip, in her wake. When she’s not writing Cosmo‘s “cheeky” cover lines, White seemingly spends every spare moment cranking out bestselling books — most notably her five novels in which crime journalist Bailey Weggins ferrets out the felonious among Manhattan’s glitterati. Her latest, Lethally Blonde, hit stores last week. The prolific author will debut her latest nonfiction work next month — its Cosmo-inspired title: You On Top. On her Web site, the advice tome is described as offering insight on everything from “when to act like a bitch and when not to” to how to discover “the moan zone on a man’s body that most women ignore.”

We’re all ears.

Name: Kate White
Position: Position: Editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan
Resumé: Before landing her current gig as editor-in-chief of in 1998, White helmed several other titles: Child, Working Woman, McCall’s, and Redbook. She began her editorial career as an editorial assistant at Glamour (White won the magazine’s “Top Ten College Women” contest and appeared on its cover) and worked her way up, becoming a feature writer and columnist.
Birthdate: September 3 (“A year far before most Cosmo readers were born!”)
Hometown: Glens Falls, New York
Education: BA in English, Union College
Marital status: Married to television syndicated host Brad Holbrook; two kids: Hunter, 19, and Hayley, 17.
First section of the Sunday Times: “Always page one — I’m a news junkie.”
Favorite television show: Law & Order (the original) — “Being a murder mystery writer and reader, I love the plots and twists.”
Guilty pleasure: “Great Bordeaux”
Last book read: The Woman in White by Wilkie Colins. “Nora Ephron recommended it in her book. It’s from the 1800s and it’s intoxicating.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
I definitely think that being a good idea person — I have my weaknesses — but of the things I do do well is that I’m a good idea person. I think that’s how you get noticed when you’re in an articles department and as you’re working your way up whether you’re an associate editor, junior editor, or a senior editor. People with ideas get noticed.

I also think I’ve probably been a bit of a rule breaker. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for bosses like Art Cooper [Family Weekly] who found that engaging. You can work for a boss who doesn’t like rule breakers, but if you work for a boss who likes someone like that and let’s you push the boundaries, it’s actually great. You run with it and the next thing you know, they’re rewarding you for that.

A lot of it is putting one foot in front of the next because sometimes you see people on staff — they may be thinking, “I should shoot that idea to them” but they don’t get around to it. I was a little bit of procrastinator early on in my 20s just because I didn’t always know how to complete a task. I once did this wonderful study — “Understanding Reader Response” — when I was at Glamour and I never handed it in. A couple of years later when I was having lunch with [then editor-in-chief] Ruth Whitney, I told her about it. She said, “God, Kate that is so interesting. Why didn’t you ever hand it in?” The notion how to finish projects, take those next steps and bring it to fruition and not procrastinate — I bet there are a lot of people sitting at their desks in their 20s who have thought of an idea that they want to present or told their boss they’d get them something and haven’t. If you can really triumph over that by using time management tricks or whatever, I think you can really make a difference.

What magazines did you read when you were younger?
I read women’s magazines like Cosmo, Glamour, and Mademoiselle, but I even as a college girl loved Esquire. Just as men say they read Cosmo to understand how women think, I think it gave me a sense of how guys thought. It’s actually interesting — it was Esquire that led me to be a mystery writer.

How?
They once did a great story — “Everything a Young Man Should Know.” It was all these little things that you needed to know and one of the boxes was the “Ten Best Murder Mysteries Ever Written.” I’d always read Nancy Drew, but I hadn’t really graduated to other stuff. I thought this is the perfect list to start with. I read those ten, fell in love and became a maniac in terms of mysteries. As I began to read them, I decided one day I’d love to write one.

So you knew early on you wanted to write mysteries?
Oh yeah, definitely. I think it was right around the time I graduated or shortly afterwards. I just always loved the macabre. If you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was a magazine writer and a private detective.

Who is “Bailey Weggins”? Has she changed over the course of writing the books?
I think she has evolved a little bit in that she had a bad breakup. She had her tail between her legs in the first couple of books. Now she’s feeling together, she likes her job — she covers celebrity crime for Buzz magazine. And, of course, there’s a lot of that these days. She’d be out covering Paris Hilton right now!

How much of Bailey comes from your own life?
One of things that I would say is that because she’s a freelancer — and even though I’ve worked for corporations — I’ve got the soul of a freelancer. I get to work that out in a nice way by writing about someone like her. Maybe there are little things about her that are like me. Sometimes people say, “Oh Kate, that sounds like you, you are Bailey,” but I see her as different. She’s a little bit more ornery in terms of her view of the world. She’s more jaded. Partly because she is a freelancer and she has an irreverent take on things because she isn’t caught up in having to be part of the system. But like me, she loves New York, she likes to dress cute. So it’s not that I’m totally unlike her but I don’t necessarily think, “I’m Bailey Weggins.” Plus, she will go into an abandoned house with a dead body smell coming out of it, and I’d be like, “Get out! Get out!”

She sounds like the perfect character for Lifetime or TNT. Has there been any talk or interest in developing a television series or movie based on the books?
Lifetime has optioned the books for a series called “Bailey Weggins.” They’re working a script right now for a pilot.

Who would you like to see play her?
I don’t know. I think it would be great if it was someone who wasn’t particularly well known but so claimed the role the way Sarah Michelle Gellar claimed Buffy [The Vampire Slayer]. If I could have someone come in and do it the way she did it, that would be great.

You’ve helmed several women’s magazines and have this flourishing second career as a novelist.Hhow do you juggle it all?
I write on the weekends on Saturday and Sunday mornings because my kids don’t get up until one and my son is in college part of the year. I think one of the key things when you have some sort of secret dream is to be aware that there may be moments when you are juggling so much that you are going to have to give yourself a pass at that time in terms of doing it.

With my nonfiction, I wrote those books while I watched Law & Order after the kids were in bed because nonfiction just doesn’t require the same muscle in your mind. Then, with fiction, I started it when they were a little bit older and what I discovered was I couldn’t do it at night. It’s impossible. My brain just didn’t want to form a sentence. The first couple of years I wrote my mysteries, I’d get up at 6:15 on Saturdays and Sundays. By putting in a few hours of work each weekend day and also trying to aim for a certain number of pages — I try to get six pages done in a short period of time. If I had the whole day, I’d aim for ten. I try to get six on Saturday and six on Sunday, and one or one and a half every day during the week.

That’s pretty ambitious considering your day job.
To get a page of a book done in the mornings isn’t so bad. What I try to do is plot it out when I’m taking a shower. See the page and work out the dialogue. If you were to walk into the bathroom, you’d see my lips moving a lot, and I’m not singing “Feelings.” As I’ve gotten to know the character through five books, it’s so easy for me to know what phrase she would say. In the early years, I would say, “Would Bailey really say that? I don’t know.” Now I feel like I have her down pat.

What’s a typical day like for you?
The very early part is pretty typical because I take my daughter to school, but once I hit Cosmo, you never know what’s coming. I usually get in about 8:15 a.m. It could be anything from Ludacris coming by or one day two friends of mine who are members of [the British] parliament came in for a tour. Now with overseeing Cosmo Radio, our huge Web site relaunch, Cosmo Books — my days vary so much. Even though I try to get home at a reasonable hour because of the kids, I literally do not stop working — and this is terrible because I’m not a workaholic. There is rarely a night where I’m not still working at midnight. I try to get home a little after six. I’ll eat with my daughter and husband, and while my daughter is doing her homework, I just sit there next to her and grind it out for the next few hours.

So you do most of your editing at home?
Yeah, because of all the brand expansion now, I’m in meetings a huge part of the day. I used to be able to block out a few hours for editing during the day but I do not have that [luxury] any more.

What’s the biggest challenge you face as an editor today?
So many things are competing for the attention of the reader. Glamour is no longer a major competitor on the newsstand. Our newsstand sales are significantly more than double theirs now. But there are lots of others vying for our readers: from the celeb magazines to YouTube. If you’re not careful, it could be death by a thousand paper cuts. How we compete is by dazzling the reader and making her wonder: What will they do next month?

What’s changed at Cosmo since you became its editor?
The big area I’ve added since I’ve been here is health. Our reader is really interested in being proactive about her health. She’s also interested in stories that deal with social issues involving young women whether it’s date rape or the whole notion of partying too hard. But when it comes down to it, women think of us as “the Bible.” So it’s that mix of fashion, beauty, and entertainment — even though it shifts a little bit, those components have been there forever.

You also got rid of some features that had been around forever, like the awful sounding “Agony Column.”
Irma Kurtz had written that for years and I liked her but it was just too negative sounding. What was funny was that just as we decided not to renew her contract, Glamour picked her up. I never understood why. I don’t know. Maybe our reader is just a little hipper than theirs. It was a voice that was left over from another era.

During the era of the Scavullo cover in the ’70s and ’80s, Cosmo launched the careers of so many models. Will we ever go back to that and move away from the celebrity cover?
One great thing we’ve done at Cosmo is continue to do model covers every year not what we were doing when I first got here which was five or six. At that point we were still launching careers — Rebecca Romijn, James King, Molly Sims were all on the covers in my early years and that was before they were out in Hollywood so I feel like we still had that power then. We had an adorable girl on two covers last September and March — Tori Praver — but she’s had enormous success. I know she got several huge campaigns because of the covers. We’ll probably do a model cover in the fall. I was just down the hall looking at portfolios so we are planning to shoot someone for the fall. For us, I hate to be held hostage in having to use celebrity covers every month. The great news is we can still sell two million copies with a model.

For the Cosmo reader, who is the hottest celebrity role model out there right now?
Our reader loves women who are truly fun, fearless females. It doesn’t surprise me that Fergie sells over two million copies or that Carmen Electra did. Katie Heigl was a huge seller for us. Beyoncé was huge. They are women that not only have gorgeous faces and bodies to die for, but they also have this great confidence in themselves. They exude that and to the reader, that’s what they relate to. You just look at Beyoncé and think, “She just really loves her life.” She doesn’t seem at all like this neurotic creature who is tortured by fame.

Who is the most over exposed celebrity that needs to go away?
(Long pause) Oh … I think … if we didn’t hear anything more about Paris Hilton from this day forward I think we would be okay as a civilization.

Did you ever put her on the cover?
No.

Would you ever?
I would say our reader really relates to women who’ve got real jobs and are doing really incredible things, and have worked hard for it. There might be some point in time where she pulls it all together and has a particular career but until then, she doesn’t really fit what we look for in a cover. Even the models we pick are hard working who’ve come to New York to try to make it as models and actresses.

What do you make of the across the board obsession with her? She’s no longer just in the tabloids. Her arrest was the lead story on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show the other night. Why do we care if she goes to jail?
It’s hard to answer because I don’t care myself. My guess is our reader doesn’t care either. I’m not saying this is Paris, but she doesn’t have a lot of patience for someone she can’t truly admire.

What’s the difference between the Cosmo edited by you and the magazine edited by Helen Gurley Brown?
It’s more irreverent. It’s more sophisticated. Helen, of course, did a fabulous job.

Helen is famous for sending people notes. Are you in touch with each other?
She’s great. She’ll often send me a little note saying she likes a particular story or she was impressed with a sale of an issue after getting wind that something sold — she’s very thoughtful that way. She always reads my novels and sends me notes afterwards so I’ll be sending her Lethally Blonde, of course.

Do you have a motto?
My motto is “go big or go home.” Some girls on the staff use that expression when they’re out having fun, but I think it’s the perfect motto for working at Cosmo or for life in general. As long as you’re going to put in the time, make sure you do as fabulous as possible.

What’s your dream job?
This one. It’s almost illegally fun to edit Cosmo.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

Leave it to Tina Brown to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong. Forget second acts. The British-born Queen of New York is on to her third. Having presided over Manhattan’s media elite throughout the ’90s, she’s come roaring back with a vengeance. Her first book, The Diana Chronicles, an exhaustive take on the life of Princess Diana, hit No. 1 on the New York Times‘ nonfiction list this week. Virtually overnight, the highly public failure of Talk and her short-lived cable television series Topic A with Tina Brown — both gleefully reported at the time by her detractors as the decline and fall of the once untouchable editor — have been reduced to mere footnotes.

Looking back at Brown’s career, one could argue she was fated to have what might prove to be her greatest individual success due to her unique and enduring connection to the late princess. At 25, Brown became the editor of the musty, centuries-old British magazine Tatler, fortuitously tying her fortunes and those of the previously irrelevant glossy to a certain other quintessentially British girl who, over time, would prove just as brilliant for her ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Brown once remarked that Diana’s wedding did for Tatler‘s newsstand sales “what the O.J. Simpson chase did for the ratings at CNN.” In 1985, just as S.I. Newhouse considered shuttering Vanity Fair because it wasn’t generating enough buzz, Brown — who’d been tapped to be its editor-in-chief less than two years before — penned a cover story on Diana, famously dubbed “The Mouse That Roared.” The issue’s runaway newsstand success helped buy Brown more time to create what evolved into the holy grail of celebrity reporting. It’s worth nothing that one of Brown’s most memorable pieces written during her tenure as editor of The New Yorker focused on — who else? — Diana, in which Brown recounted her last lunch at the Four Seasons with Vogue‘s Anna Wintour and the princess just weeks before that fateful night in Paris.

Name: Tina Brown
Position: First-time author
Resumé: Editor of Tatler 1979-1983; editor-in-chief Vanity Fair 1984-1992 until moving to The New Yorker; founded Talk Media (including Talk Miramax Books) with Bob and Harvey Weinstein; helmed the book imprint and the namesake magazine until it folded in 2002; host of CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown from April 2003-May 2005; former columnist for the Washington Post
Birthdate: November 21, 1953
Hometown: Maidenhead, England
Education: M.A from Oxford at St. Anne’s College
Marital status: Married to Sir Harold Evans, president of Random House and former editor of the Sunday Times of London; two children: George and Isabel
First section of the Sunday New York Times: “The op-ed pages because I’m always hungry to have my mind changed. To be honest, I usually find it more stimulating at times to read the Wall Street Journal because I usually disagree and that makes me more engaged.”
Must read British papers: “The thing about England is that there are so many papers I prefer to sample all of them every morning, so I get them all. I like the Times, the Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail — which is the great glorious daily rag you have to read and has a lot of human interest stuff that is irresistible.”
Favorite television show: “I still like Charlie Rose a lot. He does a great job. 24 has jumped the shark — it used to be my favorite show. The Sopranos — I don’t know how the hell I’m going to replace it. I think Army Wives is pretty interesting. I could become addicted to that.”
Guilty pleasure: “Yellow tabs — National Enquirer, Star. Gotta have it. The cover stories about Bush and Laura on the brink of divorce — it’s wonderful fantasyland. It really is fun to read sometimes.”
Last book read: David Talbot’s Brothers: “Terrific and gripping. I haven’t read all the Kennedy books because being English, I didn’t read them as they came out. I am a kind of case-closed believer but I loved having David pick apart some of my views.”

With so many books having been written about Diana what made you want to enter the fray?
I felt it was important to look at Diana in the context of her era and the culture of England and the media culture at the time. Those three aspects of the world that Diana was moving in seemed, to me, as important, in a way, as the story of Diana herself. That was what attracted me — her story itself is riveting — but she’s also an emblematic life. Through her, I was able to talk about class, media, and celebrity culture.

Any surprises along the way?
I found writing about her early life the most fascinating part of all. It’s like Bush’s lost years in the National Guard [laughs]. There was a moment — just a little tiny moment — when Diana Spencer wasn’t famous. The Spencers were a very complicated family. I think they were far more jaggedly at odds with each other than I had realized. I thought simply that her mother had left and it was a sad thing, but when I went deeply into it, I could see that this family had been plagued with ill feelings.

When did you start writing the book? How much time went into that and the reporting?
It was two years, start to finish, from the moment I got the advance to the moment I delivered it. I did a year of reporting and a year of writing, but during the writing I was continuing to report. I would then be reporting a lot on the telephone, going back for second and third interviews. Basically, I had to spend the first year doing that first round of interviews. Frequently, when you get to the place in the book when that whole story occurs, you know a lot more by the time you get there and you know more things you want to ask, so it’s great having made the personal contacts that you can go back for second and third interviews. That was what I was really doing that second year.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered in doing the book?
The biggest challenge was the amount that had been written about Diana — so much of it was inaccurate. You just have to keep guarding against stuff that is tabloid legend. At the same time, you’re also dealing with a very closed society. They may not like it when you get it wrong, but also don’t necessarily want to help you get it right. Fortunately, I got very good sources who could usually verify what I was after. It wasn’t any easy thing to get that. One had deploy a lot of persistence at times. There are some people who are just tired of talking about [Diana]. Some people have gotten so badly burned by some tabloid that they feel they don’t want to talk to a journalist again. I came to see that there were certain sources that were reliable and others that you decided not to go to at all.

One of the other things about biographies is that sometimes somebody who was there and saw everything still wasn’t helpful, because although they want to tell you, they don’t have any particular powers of observation or recall. There was one person who was right in the middle of everything in the last days of Diana — the funeral time at Balmoral — and I thought, “What a drag. This person doesn’t have any eye.”

I found myself wondering about this question as I read the book and couldn’t come up with an answer: Did you like Diana?
I came to like her more and more, actually, as the book wore on because the more complicated she became and the more of a “piece of work” she could be, the more — I guess — I related to her. [Laughs] If she had been a goody-goody, she would not have been as interesting. It was her complexity — on the one hand she was capable of tremendous acts of compassion and had this extraordinary gift for communication with humble people, people who were sick. It was genuine. It was real. At the same time, what was equally real was her canny workings of the media and her devious and even vindictive behavior, which was sometimes a real surprise. I always liked her because I just feel she was up against something that was very, very hard to deal with. I know enough about the English “establishment” to know what it’s like when they close ranks because they are scared. Unlike America, that has many interlocking establishments, England is still dominated by one. Even though it’s changed a lot, the “establishment” is still very much around and can make your life difficult and unpleasant, and they did for Diana all the time. She was immensely brave. The way she took on the House of Windsor never fails to astonish me.

What would Diana be doing now if she’d lived?
Aside from having her first facelift? [Laughs]

Would she have really gone for that?
Oh, I think Diana would have always been very much about keeping her looks as best she possibly could, because she did have a fabulous sense of how to look great.

With Diana, her love life would always torpedo her. This is also what makes her interesting and human. When she was on top — and she was in the last months of her life — when I met her in July [1997] she was so together, so ready for her second act and so much a woman of the world and yet, at the same time, she winds up in the tunnel in Paris with Dodi because she was always was sabotaged by this needy insecurity — this desperate need to have a man who loved her — which she couldn’t find. It was all going to be in the end about what happened there.

Why do you think your harshest reviews came out of the U.K.?
That’s a much more competitive culture. There are a thousand and one newspapers competing in one tiny market, so the goal is to be different from the guy who wrote last week. It’s really about that. Secondly, it’s because Diana herself is an industry. Diana herself brings out the lovers and the haters in the English press. She remains very controversial. There are people there with a lasting irritation about Diana, and anyone that writes a book that gives Diana any kind of a due is also up for the knife, as it were.

Lifetime is doing a special based on the book. What’s your role?
It’s an hour-long special looking at Diana’s life, based on my book. They’re basically using a lot of material from the book and I’ll be the linking perception. I’ll be on air.

Speaking of TV, any desire to do another show?
It was fun doing Topic A. It’s funny, on the book tour, it’s been amazing how many people told me they loved Topic A. I was sort of surprised and delighted actually, because I think we did do a pretty good show. It would be fun to do something based on books and popular culture and current affairs. But I know in this media climate it’s not likely that a show of that kind is going to get done. I’m not lobbying for it. I’m more interested in writing and getting on with another book.

You told The Guardian you “missed being a journalist.”
I miss editing. I wouldn’t want to do another startup magazine just because it’s a five-year battle to see if you can get the magazine properly displayed on the newsstand. It’s not a good era to start up a magazine. Editing comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s not like I’m wedded to only editing in just one form.

What’s your take on the growing influence of new media?
I think it is incredibly influential and great voices are coming out of it more and more. Every day the Internet is being used to do interesting new things. I actually think we’ve seen the great shift between print and online. I get more and more of my news online, although I happen to love — and always will — the whole tactile experience of reading print. I very rarely wait, though. The weekly newsmagazines that I enjoy reading — I read them online. I don’t wait to get the magazine.

Which sites do you make a point of looking at?
Newsweek has one of the best Web sites. I like ABC’s The Note. That’s very good. I like smokinggun.com, the Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan’s blog. I read mediabistro.com every day. I sometimes check out the fun on TMZ.

mediabistro.com: What would Diana be doing now if she’d lived?
Brown: Aside from having her first facelift?

Celebrities must be terrified by the news TMZ is doing a show, don’t you think?
Totally terrified, but at the same time there’s almost like this new world of celebrity, which is like a proximate world. I kind of feel it’s become so remote from the celebrities themselves — that more and more there are these strange clones of celebrities that they write about that don’t have anything to do with the real person. Whenever you meet a celebrity, they’re nothing remotely like their image. If they could only find a way to do themselves in 3-D animation, it would solve all problems. There’s just way too many outlets and too few celebrities.

Who out there in the celebrity culture do you find most interesting?
I think the whole thing to staying interesting is by being more aloof. One of the things that’s interesting about the enduring old stars is that they always saw a way to dole out something to the public but keeping things private. When you think about Paul Newman, Robert Redford — even Clint Eastwood — how much do we really know about them? We really don’t know very much about them at all. Amongst the movie-acting hemisphere I can’t think of anyone I’d buy a magazine for. [Pauses] Actually, Brad Pitt is a pretty interesting guy. I’m told he’s far more interesting than he seems. The thing that’s difficult is no one wants to write about someone’s actual work at the moment. It’s all about the personality.

Steve Martin has written a book that’s coming out in November, Born Standing Up. He sent me the galleys. It’s absolutely wonderful — it’s his memoir on his life as a stand-up comic. What’s fantastic about it is, it’s all about process, about how he became a comic, how to structure a joke, what’s it’s like to be in front of an audience. What’s fabulous about it is it’s all the stuff that gets left out of celebrity interviews. I saw the interview Larry King did with Al Pacino and it was really good because Al Pacino was able to talk at length about how he got his accent for Scarface, which to me is so much more interesting than hearing about some tired old go-round about affairs and houses and lifestyle. I think we’re all so OD’d on lifestyle. I’m more interested in the life.

What do you consider your greatest success?
I do think The New Yorker was a very exciting success. As much as I loved Vanity Fair and still do, I still feel The New Yorker was the harder challenge. The stakes were so high with The New Yorker. I felt all the time I was doing it there wasn’t an option to fail. If the magazine’s not a viable proposition or set for closure — and it was really going down so badly when I took it over. It was so important to revitalize this magazine — the letters, narrative journalism, high standards and the writers that could take three weeks to six months on a story could still be allowed to do that work. What I did realize was that no one again ever was going to start up a magazine that would allow literary journalists to go off for months at a time to study and write and do something, so if we failed it would be a horrible consequence.

What’s been your biggest disappointment?
Well, obviously, I was disappointed when Talk folded only because the point at which when Talk folded was the same point at which S.I. Newhouse considered folding Vanity Fair in 1985. I’d been with Vanity Fair for a year and a half when Condé Nast thought it wasn’t building fast enough and didn’t show any signs of traction. It was a real moment when it was going to be folded until I begged for another six months to show them what I could do. With Talk, we were 17 percent up in advertising in those last three issues. The circulation was climbing. We had a very difficult launch, but it got really good in those last six months. It was a real shame that it wasn’t allowed to continue. What’s also amazing about Talk was how amazing the staff turned out to be. The people I hired have all gone on to the most amazing jobs. [Senior editor] Sam Sifton is now culture editor at The New York Times, [senior editor] Danielle Mattoon is deputy culture editor, [founding editor] Tom Watson is national editor of Newsweek, [executive assistant] Margaret Aro is a producer at 20/20 for Diane Sawyer. [Editorial director] Maer Roshan is, of course, doing Radar. It was an amazing group of people at Talk. I’m very proud of that.

You must feel some sense of vindication towards your critics who happily reported on Talk‘s demise and Topic A‘s cancellation.
[Laughs]. It’s exciting as hell to be No. 1. I’m well aware that there’s a lot of books out there, and I really didn’t expect this. I’m absolutely thrilled. I didn’t expect such terrific reviews.

Why?
I guess it’s called managing expectations. [Laughs] I’d hoped to get a couple of nice ones but I really didn’t expect such good ones at so many places. It’s selling in the U.K. I’m No. 3 this weekend in England. It’s really wonderful.

Will you be doing another nonfiction book?
Probably, yes. They [Doubleday] want me to. What I don’t want to do is jump into a book just to do a book. I really have to get another passion going. I went right up to the deadline with my [Diana] book. I was doing stuff right up until March and then went straight into the foreign editions, so I haven’t really had a breathing space to get my mojo back. I have to run on empty for a bit. I haven’t gotten a galvanizing idea yet, but I’m sure I’ll get one.

Any truth to the reports that you’re considering doing something on Tony Blair?
That was suggested to me by somebody else. I don’t know how that got into the papers. I don’t think that’s for me. I’d like to do something American. It was very awkward being in England all the time. I prefer to be here. [Laughs] I think it’s very difficult to write well about a living person, actually. It’s so complicated because you’ve got their interventions all the time, and their version of it. It’s actually better if you can go in and clear the thicket of a life that you can see whole.

Ideally, what would you like to see yourself doing over the next few years?
I feel wonderfully poised for a new phase. I’m not sure yet what that will be. Very likely it will be another book. I’m interested in theatre; I’m interested in producing, in editing. I’m very much just feeling creative, so I could go in any direction. Probably by the fall I’ll have more of a sense of what will be fun to do.

Looking back over your career thus far, how would say you’ve got to where you are?
[Sighs] Oh God … [Pauses] Workaholism and luck? I don’t know.

Do you have a motto?
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

It seems only fitting that Jim Bell wound up in a job whose duties could be defined as being both Today‘s team captain and head cheerleader. A former all-Ivy League defensive tackle who cut his teeth in television working on NBC’s Olympic coverage, the morning show’s executive producer says the analogies between sports and morning television are endless. As Bell explains: “You’re preparing for opponents and coming up with strategy and doing so with a group of people that come together where there is a lot of work that goes on off camera that people don’t see, the same way they don’t see the work that happens for the athletes when they’re not on game day.” A seasoned TV vet who oversees every aspect of one of television’s most venerable — and profitable — franchises, Bell quarterbacked Katie Couric’s fond farewell, Meredith Vieira’s arrival, and is currently developing a playbook for Today‘s fourth hour.

Name: Jim Bell
Position: Executive producer, Today
Resumé: Fresh out of college, Bell began his career in television joining NBC in 1990; two years later was tapped to work on the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Worked on every subsequent Olympics since; between the games has toiled on a cross section of major sports events as a producer including the 1997 NBA Finals, the French Open, and Wimbledon. Created and produced “Gameday NY” for Mike’d Up on WNBC. Joined Today in current capacity in April 2005.
Birthdate: July 20, 1967
Hometown: Branford, Connecticut
Education: B.A. in government, Harvard University
Marital Status: Married to Angelique; four sons Jimmy, 11, Lucas, 9, Emmett, 8, and Nicholas, 4
First section of the Sunday Times: “Real Estate. It’s just juicy. I think a lot of people grab that real estate section to see what’s going on out there. It’s a little bit of fun, fantasy — a little bit of everything.”
Favorite television show: “The Wire. It’s a brilliant ensemble cast featuring a lot of people you probably never heard of. I just think it’s painfully real.”
Guilty pleasure: “Anything from Williams-Sonoma. They just have the coolest little gadgets. I do love to cook and I will often put those things to good use. They’re not wasted in the cabinet.”
Last book read: Uncle Wiggly’s Nighttime Stories. “It’s a great, great series. Old school.”

How would you say we’ve gotten to where you are?

Ah … [laughs]. That’s a big question. The short answer: I don’t know. The more specific answer has to do with the unlikely similarities between morning television and the Olympics.

Did you always think you’d wind up in television?

No. I thought I’d go to law school and maybe end up in politics, but I took a little detour and lived in Spain. I was hired over there to push a guy in a wheelchair [Randy Falco, then vice president of Olympic programming] who had snapped his Achilles tendon playing basketball. From that experience, I caught the attention of [NBC Sports President] Dick Ebersol. I got to know him and he suggested that I take a job working on the Olympics profiles unit, which goes around and does all the ‘up close and personals.’ I took him up on it and then worked on the Barcelona Olympics, had a wonderful time and thought that television was, in fact, something that I might be interested in doing.

After Barcelona, I was fortunate enough to be asked by Mr. Ebersol to join him in the sports division. It was this incredible period for network sports television because you had Michael Jordan winning championships for the Bulls, we were covering Super Bowls, the World Series, the Atlanta Olympics, Wimbledon, and preparing for the Sydney Olympics. The sense of camaraderie and family really came together when we were covering these events and that’s really what I loved about it. When some of the major sports properties went elsewhere, I personally refocused almost entirely on the Olympics. Sydney, Salt Lake, and Athens were events that I was very much involved in and they involved a huge amount of production planning.

What are skills you developed on those jobs that have served you well in your current position?

I think it’s important to have a plan and keep things as simple as possible. The more complex and bigger the task is, the more the need is there to keep things simple. A single-mindedness to the task at hand is something I’ve brought to those events in the past. It’s been something I’ve been able to share with the people I’ve been fortunate enough to work with on those events. In the case of the Olympics during those blessed 17 days and nights, or in the Today show’s case, every morning from 7 [a.m.] until 10 [a.m.], it helps keep people on the same path.

How has the work you did juggling star athletes translated into working with talent at your job as executive producer of Today?

Whether you’re an editor, a gofer, or Matt Lauer, you appreciate clarity and focus. All anybody can ask for in an executive producer is a sense of direction and sense of guidance: “This is what we’re doing and here’s how we’re doing it.” As long as you have an answer for that, I think everyone appreciates it. There’s really no mystery with talent versus anyone else in professional life: they bleed, they put their pants on one leg at a time.

How does your background in sports translate specifically into working in morning television?

It’s competitive. It’s rigorous training whether it’s physical or mental. At 10 o’clock, we don’t put our feet up and say, “I’ll have my latte now.” We launch into the next day, the next week, the next month.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I get up at 3:45 a.m. and it’s usually wheels up from [my home in] Connecticut at 4:15. I get in around 5. We make any sort of changes to the show around 5 and put in our last pitches on how we think the show should stack up and what, if any, overnight news has developed. 5 to 7 is a fairly busy time and we try to make it as productive as we can and react. It’s a simple thing, but the show is called Today — so hopefully there’s not a lot of yesterday in it. We do the show; I try to get out of the control room by 9 to get a jump on the next day. I watch the third hour in my office, have a meeting. If I’m lucky, I try to get a workout in and then at 10:15 or 10:30 we launch into the next day. By 11 o’clock, we really want to have a show we could put on the air if we had to for the next day. It’s an important shift. There was a mindset at one point, given the way that news happens and the speed of it, I think, that things could be left until later and I learned early enough it was better to give the producers, correspondents, and reporters a chance to get the right interviews, shoot the right B roll, and book the right guests and get it launched early. We’ve been really focused on that and it works.

Of course, there are times when there are a lot of changes between what we think is going to be the show at 11 o’clock and what winds up on the air at 7 o’clock the next morning. There are as many days when it doesn’t change, frankly. I try to leave by about 5:30 or 6 to hopefully spend a little time and have dinner with my family and read Uncle Wiggly.

What’s the biggest story out there at the moment?

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan — especially Iraq. I think it’s dominating the political cycle, it’s dominating the news coverage, it’s dominating discussions whether you’re talking about Capitol Hill, the White House, or the Pentagon. It’s obviously a huge story in terms of the 2008 election.

How is the war going to effect election coverage once things really start heating up?

It’s going to be right there on the forefront for all the candidates to address as the story develops. I’m not sure I can come up with what’s second. It’s that big.

Paris Hilton’s post jail life is at the polar opposite of the spectrum. The uproar over the interview, and Today‘s subsequent decision to pull the reported $1 million offer to do it, drew a lot of criticism. What do you say to those who called it ‘checkbook’ journalism?

The question is flawed: NBC News does not pay for interviews. There was clearly a lot of interest in this interview. There was even considerable coverage of the process of who was getting it, and I’d bet that at least a few of the people wringing their hands over this story tuned in to watch.

Okay, so let’s set the record straight. Did Today ‘get’ Hilton and later decide not to do the interview? If so, why? Was there any financial offer of any kind made to her from NBC for licensing of images or photographs relating to the interview?
Today never had a confirmed interview with Paris Hilton. I know this starts to sound like a broken record, but NBC News does not pay for interviews. Never has. Never will. I know there are those out there who would like to make it more complicated than that, but it’s really just that simple.

Will Today being pursuing an interview with Lindsay Lohan in light of her current troubles?

Of course we would be interested in an interview with Lindsay Lohan. She’s been a guest on Today several times.

You’re launching the fourth hour of Today on September 10 — word is that it’s not going to be a news hour, but more of an infotainment hour. How would you describe it?

I’m not sure how to describe infotainment, but I think it’s best to look at the third hour of Today, which has a healthy mix of segments on topics like relationships to women’s health to home improvement, fashion and fitness. I almost don’t think the ‘tainment’ part is accurate if it’s short for entertainment — you might see more of that at 8:30.

[The fourth hour] is a natural extension of the third hour of the show. [For example,] health is such a huge topic and [there are] so many ways to cover it. The fourth hour is a logical place to see more of that.

When will you be announcing the hosts of the new hour?

I expect that we’ll make the announcement on the fourth hour team in the next few weeks. We didn’t want this to get lost in the middle of the summer and as such, are waiting until we get closer to the launch.

Any hints on who it might be?

I think it’s going to be familiar faces. We feel like what happened in the past with Later Today was it just had the Today name, but it was like, “Who are these people?” I think you’re going to see it in a setting more consistent with the third hour and with people more consistent with the third hour as it currently exists.

The war of words between the morning shows has heated up this year. What’s your take on your competitors these days?

Historically there’s been a healthy rivalry. My position has generally been whether we’re talking about the show or the competition, we’re always better talking about ourselves. Not to dismiss them, but we really compete with ourselves. We went through sweeps undefeated and we didn’t lose a single day. People can talk about the gap one way or another and pick a week here and there, but the bottom line is the Today brand is as healthy, if not healthier, than it’s ever been. We don’t feel there’s much to be gained from the silliness that occasionally rears its head. We’re proud of the show we put on day in and day out. Meredith has been great. Matt is the hottest thing in television news right now.

Why do you say that?

I just think he’s on a great roll with some of these gets. There’s an ease about what he’s doing right now. It’s not forced; he doesn’t struggle. Whether he’s interviewing a politician, a movie star or royalty, he just always has the right tone. He always asks the right questions and it’s never about him. He’s without peer right now.

Let’s talk about his former co-host for a moment. Was Katie’s grand send-off your idea?

It was a collaborative idea. I’m proud of that day and that show and the idea behind it, which was to celebrate what was an incredible fifteen year career and wildly successful run here at Today. It was a no brainer.

Have you spoken to her since she’s moved to CBS?

I have.

Do you speak often?

Not that frequently. We’ve emailed now and again. I think we’re both pretty busy. She’s working away and doing what she can over there. Eventually, I think we’ll connect and break some bread.

Now that it’s been almost a year since Meredith replaced Katie, how would you say the transition period went? Did things go as you expected?

I would say it went about as expected. I really felt that based on what I had seen from her on television over the last twenty years and what my meetings with her had been like, there was no question we had the right person. Fortunately, that put the ball in the producer’s court to come up with good bookings and get her up to speed in terms of the daily grind and the beast that is the show. I think she’s done so brilliantly. I understand — maybe I don’t understand — perhaps because it’s the Today show maybe we don’t quite or Meredith doesn’t quite get the credit she deserves because I think she deserves an enormous amount of credit for what she’s done to be able to seamlessly step into that.

It’s over two years now [since Bell joined the show] and I remember what it was like when I started. It’s a lot. It’s an adjustment to your personal life, to your professional life — you have to be fairly well-versed on an enormous number of topics, you have to be fast, you have to be smart, you have to be funny. Meredith is all those things.

Where do you get your best ideas?

[Laughs.] It’s generally outside the office. I like to go for walks in the woods or on the beach with my family. Something might strike me in the car. It’s usually by accident. It generally doesn’t happen in scheduled meetings. If we schedule a half hour idea meeting, nobody is going to come up with much. [Laughs.] You’re better off saying, “Let’s all go see and movie and go out for a beer afterwards,” and then you might get lucky.

Do you have a motto?

One day at a time, my friend. That’s certainly a good motto to have in this job because it’s an every day job in comparison to the Olympics where you had two years to prepare for two weeks. This is a daily grind. But I think my motto is more “This too shall pass,” because it’s the kind of phrase that keeps your spirits up when times are tough and it keeps you humble when times are going well.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to TVNewser and Fishbowl NY. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview has been excerpted for clarity and length.]