What News Was

In a speech at Columbus University, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt candidly talked about his decision to promote the Internet over broadcasting as the one and only "common medium" for the United States while he was chairman of the FCC between 1994 and 1997.

Last week, bloggers returned to the hot-button subject of gay rights, a topic that has repeatedly proven to be of more interest to commentators online than to the mainstream press.

The deep U.S. recession -- which erupted into a full-blown crisis with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 -- was the biggest story in the mainstream news media in 2009. But the media by and large did not see this coming. Attention to the economy was minimal in 2007.

As Americans continue to track the debate over health care reform closely, a growing minority -- now 39% -- says they think health care legislation will pass this year.

With President Obama dramatically raising the stakes and investing a major chunk of political capital in the battle, the health care debate continued its resurgence in the news, topping the media agenda for the second straight week.

A warning about the potential health hazards of children chewing hot dogs triggered an impassioned backlash and registered as the top subject among bloggers last week.

"The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

Gene Chenault, who with his business partner, Bill Drake, reshaped rock radio in the 1960s with prepackaged programming that delivered more music and fewer commercials to hundreds of stations, creating the automated format common today.

Fueled by the spectacle of a televised bi-partisan meeting on the deeply polarizing issue, the health care debate re-ignited last week to dominate the news agenda.

The blogosphere last week once again fixated on one of its most popular topics, global warming, following a BBC interview with Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the so-called "Climate-gate" controversy last year.