Last week, the Washington press tried to gin up some sort of "scandal" when the Huffington Post's tireless Iran blogger Nico Pitney was allowed to ask a question of the President that was suggested by someone on the ground in Iran. And over the weekend, Pitney and Washington Post political gossip columnist Dana Milbank "debated" the point with Howard Kurtz. Both Michael Scherer and Joe Klein from Time's Swampland blog weigh in on it here with more insight. Suffice it to say the blogosphere is firmly with their guy on this one, which would seem reflexive except that Milbank doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on here.

Milbank is the epitome of the smarmy Washington media insider, so his taking offense at this fake controversy is utterly predictable. What Pitney has done covering the Iran election aftermath can be seen as a threat to the most traditional of the traditional media, but the degree to which it looks like burying your head in the sand is kind of staggering. I'm still of a mind that the election coverage could be a watershed moment for the transformation of news organizations, but I haven't put it all together quite yet. Plus the Twitter-as-raw-story was clobbered pretty hard by MIchael Jackson's death, although that may lend itself to differentiation of how this works for hard news, entertainment and maybe even sports.

Looks like Q2 was pretty good for the stock market, going into the black for the first time in a year and a half. Obviously, this isn't the be-all and end-all of economic indicators, but I think it's a big step in the right direction. As I've been saying this to anyone and everyone who asks me how the job search is going, I think we'll see a sort of slingshot effect in retail and employment going into late Q3 when back-to-school and holiday shopping starts to take hold. Coupled with some of the medium- and long-range investments of President Obama's recovery plan, I think all of this should put us on much better economic footing at the outset of 2010.

It's bad enough that Nicolino has suddenly become a huge fan of Twitter, now two University of Chicago students are embarking on a project where they rewrite great works of literature in 140-character bursts. Until recently, this method of delivery had been reserved for snark attacks on current events, although Slate seems to have taken down their Mark Sanford Twitter feed.

Somehow, this just seems wrong, although I'm still looking forward to explaining how Twitter can work for marketers and, more importantly, how you might be able to tell if it's working.