BuzzMedia Can't Bill Out: Remember BuzzMedia? They're the Mom-and-Pop Blog Devouring Machine that recently took over Spin. And a press release today announces their latest new and exciting addition to the team: Suri's Burn Book! How excited is everyone for this? 

BUZZMEDIA’s mission is to define digital culture. One way we do this is by publishing digital media brands that engage a loyal and devoted fan following with their authentic voice, compelling original content, and unsurpassed storytelling. There are a limited number of influential publishers, and that is very true for the entertainment categ—

We'd rather not let you finish, BuzzMedia CEO Tyler Goldman, because at the end of the day, you just purchased a Tumblr. Then again, it is a brand world. And the more brands you own, well, the more brands you own.

One thing they didn't announce in that press release: That their Vice Preisdent/GM of Music Bill Jensen—previously Village Voice Media's Director of New Media—is out at BuzzMedia after just eleven months (compared to a five-year-plus run at Village Voice Media). An email to the publicist who sent us the press release about their acquisition of Suri's Burn Book wasn't immediately returned, because it's probably not the response they expected, is why. Jensen was with BuzzMedia during an intense spree of acquisitions, including the aforementioned Spin, as well as a foursome of punk rock blogs and an electronic music blog. What could ever be so volatile in a company dedicated to swallowing smaller companies as a growth strategy that would result in the parting of a fairly credentialed new media guru after only eleven months? You tell us.

Beloved Music Writer Gets Important Job: And speaking of Village Voice Media, last week, we took note of Bullett writer Luke O’Neil's piece about reading something so terrible it made him want to quit writing about music. The piece he read was an LA Weekly blog post titled "The 20 Worst Hipster Bands," and yes, it did in fact read like a bad Facebook note written by an insecure Young Republican having a tough first semester away from his parents. That guy who wrote it? His name is Ben Westhoff, and get this: Village Voice Media has put him in charge of the company's music coverage, "particularly the blogs," according to an internal memo. But of course.

And the guy who put him in charge? VVM executive associate editor Andy Van De Voorde, who is basically the Isaiah Thomas to VVM chief Mike Lacey's James Dolan (which is to say: not naming him alongside Lacey in this piece titled "How Management Killed The Village Voice" is to deprive the man of some serious due credit). As for Bullett's Luke O'Neil, if he hasn't hung up his music writer shoes and already started life as an organic tomato farmer by now, well, this ought to do it.

MSNBC President Excited Network Can Live Up To Base Expectations: So MSNBC president Phil Griffin exclaims with glee to Michael Calderone about the network besting others on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention:

"I'm thrilled. You kidding me?" Griffin told The Huffington Post, shortly after getting the news. "You have to take a moment. For all of us in here, we're just taking a moment. Nobody thought we could do this. But to beat CNN and Fox on a big night like that? To beat ABC and CBS on a big night like that? That is friggin' fantastic.

Flash back to New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley's astute review last week of MSNBC's news coverage, entitled "How MSNBC Became Fox's Evil Liberal Twin" in which she explains MSNBC's core product as a diametrically opposed but otherwise nearly identical version of Fox News. All of which goes to say: Why wouldn't you watch the DNC on MSNBC? They're obviously going to give it every second of airtime is does deserve, doesn't deserve, and then some. They're taking the nuance out of singularity. It may be a numbers victory for MSNBC—albeit a shortsighted one—but it's also a symbolic data-point for what it's taken to get there, and that's abandoning the pretense of news in favor of being an informational arms dealer for one of two factions. Thrilling. [Huuffington Post]

Today's Sole Piece of Semi-Uplifting News: News Corp bonuses got cut. So, schadenfreude out. [The Guardian]

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Tips? Love notes? Easy instructions for the assembly of an army of paper cranes? Thoughts on how loving How I Met Your Mother makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable? Tumblrs for BuzzMedia to acquire? Send 'em here, and we'll try to talk someone out of something.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Journalists from newsrooms, magazine offices and studios across the country digested the information, repackaged it appropriately for their readers and viewers and moved on to the next order of business. For a select few, that meant planning for the weekend's events, the most high profile of which was the annual White House Correspondents Dinner--a tradition begun in 1920 that brings together the press and the people they purportedly cover for an evening of entertainment, shmoozing and, as the name implies, dinner. It is the nexus of a series of events, mostly cocktail parties and a few selective brunches, that extend throughout the weekend and are hosted by various media organizations and attended by Washington insiders, journalists--and increasingly, California-based attendees with a presumed interest in public policy, like Kim Kardashian and the Jonas Brothers--some of whom are invited as guests to the dinner by media organizations represented there.

At 4:52 p.m. on Thursday afternoon,  The Observer emailed The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, to ask whether the dinner--an affair wherein journalists who are tasked with covering beltway power spend an evening socializing with it--is at worst, an outright conflict of interest, and at best, well ... a bit unseemly. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently left the paper to become a columnist for New York magazine, had criticized the paper's attendance at the event and was said to be influential in curtailing its official appearances a few years prior. (Mr. Rich, who was out of the country, did not respond to The Observer's requests for comment.) The Observer wondered whether Mr. Rich's departure changed the paper's thinking on the issue. "GROAN," Mr. Keller responded via e-mail. "SUCH a done subject. Why don't you try Dean Baquet in the Washington Bureau? I'm sure he'd LOVE to answer your questions."

Seven minutes later,  The Observer received an e-mail from Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet. "Here is the deal," Mr. Banquet wrote. "We are not being holier than thou, or criticizing anyone who chooses to go. But we came to the conclusion that it had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable."

An hour earlier, in the Situation Room of the White House, senior intelligence advisers explained to the president that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance Osama bin Laden had been located in a compound in Pakistan that the C.I.A. had been scouting for months, and the president needed to decide whether he would move ahead with an air strike or a ground strike, or if he would wait to gather further intelligence.

Around 7 p.m. that evening, Mr. Baquet followed up: "I don't want to trash the small and medium size papers that really care about this. It's just the way we feel." (For the record,  The Observer is a small-size paper, and does not officially attend the dinner.) 

It was Friday morning at 8:28 a.m. in New York and  The Observer scanned news of the Royal Wedding in London, which attracted approximately 22 million viewers in the U.S. As we prepared to head to D.C. to further inspect the Correspondents Dinner attendees up close, a meeting was taking place in the White House Diplomatic Room. Before boarding a helicopter to Alabama to survey flood damage, the president called his senior aides in and told them: it would be a helicopter strike. Security Adviser Tom Donilon; his deputy, Denis McDonough; and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan decided to move forward with Operation Geronimo, scheduled to take place on Saturday.

That evening in the W Hotel lobby, one of the first of the weekend's various parties had begun. Around 8:30 p.m. Hilda Solis, dressed in fuchsia, was ushered past New Yorker party security. "Secretary of Labor," her handler said to a young man with earpiece and iPad. Secretary Solis bounced in place to the elevator music. Forty-five minutes later editor David Remnick rested a plate of sushi on a table and debriefed The Observer. "Do you know about Mike Kelly?" In 1987, Kelly, then a  reporter, set the precedent for outrageous escorts by bringing Fawn Hall, Iran-Contra femme fatale. Kelly was killed reporting in Iraq in 2003. Asked about the decision by his former employer, The Washington Post, to bring Donald Trump as its guest of honor, Mr. Remnick replied, "Well, that should be interesting because I just ripped his ass. I'll have to stop by and say, 'Hi'."

About an hour later, The Observer intercepted the dinner's emcee, Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers, who provided intelligence on the impending roast of the president, a tradition of the annual dinner. Mr. Meyers was not nervous, "healthy butterflies," he said. "It's easier to make fun of a politician you do like," he said. "It comes off as less angry."

Saturday morning. Operation Geronimo had been rescheduled due to weather.

The weather was just fine at Tammy Haddad's annual Garden Brunch--held at the former home of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, which is now owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein--the weekend's festivities now in full swing. The Observer spotted New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich, who is reportedly working on a book about the incestuousness of beltway culture. Also in attendance were Olympic snowboarder Shaun "The Flying Tomato" White, Morgan Fairchild and Chace Crawford. Rupert Murdoch was ushered from the living room to the patio after being approached by reporter Gabriel Sherman, known to be working on a book about Fox News. Actor Tim Daly, in beard, shades and a threadbare velvet blazer, went largely unrecognized and explained to another guest that he wanted to meet Buzz Aldrin, who was being wheeled around the patio. He played [astronaut] Jim Lovell in the HBO series, he explained. Rosario Dawson, a guest of CNN, made sure to note that she was invited because of her advocacy work and not her celebrity status.

Mid-afternoon, REM bassist Mike Mills convinced an unidentified suit to submit to the powers of magician Gerard Senehi. "Mentalist," Mr. Senehi corrected. "If you call me a magician again, I'll kill you." Mr. Senehi correctly guessed the foreign word the suit has written on the back of his MSNBC business card. It was already written on Mr. Senehi's own business card, which he extracted from his wallet, to Mr. Mills' delight.

The Palin family arrived surrounded by photographers and clamoring fans and a TV producer was seen bragging about having given Sarah Palin his card.

Later that evening in the reception room of the Washington Hilton, a throng of people, including Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Piven, began moving toward the main hall of the hotel for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Greta Van Susteren engaged Donald Trump as a crowd looked on.  The Observer asked Mr. Trump who he was excited to meet at the dinner. "Everyone. Everyone," he said.  A Washington Times reporter thrust her comically oversize microphone at him: "Mr. Trump, what do you have to say about the rumor that Kim Kardashian will be your running mate?" He answered without looking at her: "That's, uh, I can't, that's not true." She persisted: "What about Khloe?" Trump and the throng trudged forward: "No, no." The reporter grinned as she turned away, pleased with her line of questioning.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., the president arrived at the dinner. Shortly thereafter, he left the dais, following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' lead. As revelers continued to sip their Champagne, the president was informed the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's son had been killed by a NATO airstrike.

An hour later, the New York Times reporter Peter Baker won the Aldo Beckman Award for his "deep insight about how Obama operates, from his response to the terrorist threat to his struggles to contend with what the president himself called our 'big, messy democracy.'"

At 10:22 p.m. Seth Myers was well into his routine for the evening. "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush," said Myers, "but did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" The president laughed heartily. Myers later noted: "I am, of course, contractually obligated to attend the MSNBC party. Everyone knows how the MSNBC party works: President Obama mixes the Kool-Aid, and everyone drinks it."

An hour later, The Observer was at the Italian embassy for the MSNBC party, where Rachel Maddow mixed drinks and tended bar below a sign that glows in cursive, pink-neon lettering: RACHEL'S BAR." The Observer asked her if she thought the dinner was a little too cozy. "I don't go to the dinner, I just go to this," she said. "What are you asking me is too cozy? That thing that I didn't go to that I don't know anything about? You should ask me about something else. I didn't go!"

The Observer asked MSNBC president Phil Griffin how the evening was going for him: "It gets better because, you know, we're making a statement," he said. "An event like this, we're letting everybody know, we're here. We're in Washington, a place for politics, we should be celebrated on a night like tonight. It's a night to let all the issues be put aside for one moment to step aside and enjoy yourself. O.K.?"

Eliot Spitzer entered the party. "I thought journalists weren't working tonight," he told The Observer.

At 1 a.m., Cee-Lo took the stage. The Observer squeezed its way over to Sarah Palin, holding court with the largest crowd at the party. Sean Penn was sitting across the room at a table with four other people, including REM's Michael Stipe. Ms. Palin, for her part, was vocal about the role of the press in such proximity to the president. "Well, I still would like the White House Press Corps to ask our president a bit tougher questions about where he really wants to go with this economy and does he understand and believe in free markets or does he really believe in government's ability to plan our economy for us? So I want the press corps to ask those questions!"

The next morning, the weather was nice in Pakistan--nice enough that Operation Geronimo received another green light. In Washington, it rained, but President Obama was reported to have played nine holes of golf.

Just after mid-day in the Hay-Adams Hotel Penthouse , the Reuters-McLaughlin Group Brunch was filling up; on the terrace, attendees noted a spectacular view of the White House. Inside, a caterer spilled an entire dish of butter onto The McLaughlin Group's Eleanor Clift.

Around 2 p.m., the president met with the core Operation Geronimo team before the final "go" order was given.

A few minutes before at the brunch, the Financial Times New York editor Gillian Tett was cornered by anti-tax lobbyist Mark A. Bloomfield, the president and CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation. Post-business-card exchange with Mr. Bloomfield, she talked to The Observer about her table's guests: "We had both the chairman of the S.E.C. and the chairman of the F.D.I.C. We weren't expecting to get both and they both said yes immediately. You know what's brilliant about the whole evening? Most of the time all these people would be at loggerheads, and at this, they're all relaxed."

"When you put them all in a room together and it's 3,000 people and it's all the show-business stuff, it looks kind of icky," said FT columnist John Gapper. "But actually, the reality is: How am I not supposed to not ever have lunch or talk with these people? You get a story out of it."

But the story was happening elsewhere. At 3:45 p.m. EST/12:45 a.m. PKT, explosions were heard by locals in Bilal Town, a suburb of Abbotabad.

An IT guy Abbotabad noted over Twitter: "A huge window shaking band here in Abbotabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S"

At 3:50 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was "tentatively identified as dead."

At 7:01 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was positively identified.

At 8:30 p.m.: President Barack Obama was given a final briefing on the operation.

And at 9:45 p.m., every major television network interrupted its broadcast with an update that the president would be briefing the nation. The Apprentice was cut short before America could find out who had been fired.

11:35 p.m.: News of the operation had already leaked out through unofficial outlets on Twitter feeds, some of which had been formerly sprinkled with the Correspondents Dinner's preferred cutesy moniker for itself: "#nerdprom." At 10:24 p.m., Donald Rumsfeld's Chief of Staff and Navy Reserve intel officer Keith Urbahn tweeted, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."

Then the president addressed the nation. Nearly ten years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden was dead.

The biggest story of 2011--the behind-the-scenes workings of which had happened within single-digit miles of the elite of the nation's press corps, in closer mass proximity to the president than they are at nearly any other time of the year--had broken.

And it had not leaked. Except perhaps at 10:24 to Urbahn, and via Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock. "Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free... home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!"

Mr. Johnson did not attend the dinner. 

kstoffel@observer.com, fkamer@observer.com

The fake correspondence was published on the Philadelphia gossip site Phawker.com, which has since published a correction. The email exchange began when Philadelphia Daily News reporter Stu Bykofsky contacted the Olbermann for an article he was writing about the suspension controversy. Olbermann was temporarily suspended by Griffin on Friday after an article in Politico revealed that he gave money to three Democrats during the last election in violation of NBC ethics policies.

Bykofsky emailed the address keith@keitholbermann.com and received a series of responses eviscerating his article and berating MSNBC management.

"I could have Phil Griffin fired tomorrow if I felt like it, trust me. And if he keeps yapping about me in public, I may," read one of the responses to Bykofsky.

The thing is, KeithOlbermann.com is actually owned by The Daily Caller. A visit to the site shows an archive of Daily Caller posts about Olbermann. Carlson purchased Keitholbermann.com in July from a Virginia man named Jason Drake. Drake told The Observer on Monday that Carlson bought the site from him for $400.

At the time of the purchase, Carlson wrote a blog post that explained his plans for KeithOlbermann.com.

“We plan to make The Daily Caller the one-stop online shop for Keith Olbermann commentary … We will be THE Keith Olbermann superstore,” Carlson wrote.

Bykofsky told The Observer that he "believed the emails to be coming from Olbermann."

"I was fooled, but I was fooled while I honestly tried to reach Keith Olbermann," Bykofsky said.

Carlson hosted the show "Tucker" on MSNBC from 2005 until 2008 when it was cancelled due to low ratings. He launched the Daily Caller in January. Carlson and Phil Griffin have not responded to requests for comment from The Observer.

Olbermann gave $2,400 apiece, the maximum allowable by law, to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, and to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway. Politico found Olbermann's donation to Grijalva in a campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

When Politico reached out to MSNBC for comment, the network forwarded the following statement from Olbermann:

“One week ago, on the night of Thursday October 28 2010, after a discussion with a friend about the state of politics in Arizona, I donated $2,400 each to the re-election campaigns of Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. I also donated the same amount to the campaign of Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky.”

Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann's show on Oct. 28. News of Olbermann's campaign contributions comes amid a controversy over fundraising at cable news channels. Rupert Murdoch gave a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association and another $1 million gift to the GOP-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this summer.

Fox News host Sean Hannity was also criticized for letting Ohio gubernatorial candidate John Kasich promote his campaign on his show. Kasich was a former Fox News anchor and regular contributor to Hannity's program. He later claimed that he raised over $21,000 in the 12 hours after his Hannity appearance. Kasich defeated incumbent Democrat on Tuesday. MSNBC has also been called out for allowing on-air fundraising. 

In a recent New York Times article on the political activities of cable news channels, MSNBC president Phil Griffin rejected the notion that his network was comparable to Fox News. “Show me an example of us fund-raising,” Griffin said in an interview. Last month, MSNBC embraced its liberal identity with the launch of a comprehensive, two-year advertising campaign featuring the slogan "Lean Forward."

Mr. Griffin was in Chicago last week to meet with advertisers. Along the way, he met up with the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal.

Here's what Mr. Griffin told Mr. Rosenthal about Mr. Ailes:

He's changed media. Everybody does news differently because Roger's changed the world...Roger early on figured it out and was brilliant.

As recently as October of 2008, Mr. Griffin was walking around 30 Rock with his old CNN I.D. badge tucked inside his wallet. Mr. Griffin got his start in TV working for CNN when Ted Turner was first pioneering the genre of cable news in the early '80s.

But these days, it's apparently Fox News not CNN from which Mr. Griffin is taking lessons.

"The critical lesson Griffin took from Ailes was that a news outlet that stands for something is one that consumers can stand behind and rally around," writes Mr. Rosenthal.

Chris Ariens of TV Newser reports that the move was made following yesterday's 3 p.m. show, during which Mr. Deutsch did a segment about anger in the media that included a clip lumping MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann in with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. During the follow-up discussion, guest Hugh Hewitt accused MSNBC's Ed Schultz and Mr. Olbermann of being two of the worst offenders in terms of spreading anger on the airwaves.

The New York Times, citing multiple sources, reports that Mr. Olbermann played a pivotal role in removing Mr. Deutsch from the afternoon lineup. Mr. Olbermann has subsequently denied having a hand in the move.

Mediaite's Steve Krakauer writes that it "appears when you want to criticize Keith Olbermann you have to do so without using his name or image, as Morning Joe has down to a science."

The 6 p.m. time slot has long bedeviled MSNBC executives. And, to date, the arrival of the popular, liberal talk show host has done little to boost the network’s numbers. In May, according to Nielsen data, The Ed Show, finished well behind CNN and Fox News at 6 p.m., averaging 510,000 total viewers and 126,000 in the 25-54 demographic--numbers, which were down 13% and 35% respectively compared with May of 2008 when David Gregory was anchoring the hour.

Perhaps as a result of the soft numbers, rumors have recently been floating through the TV news community that Mr. Schultz is working for MSNBC without a long term contract--the implication being that his future at the network seems far from guaranteed.

Not true, said Mr. Schultz when The Observer reached him on Tuesday morning. Mr. Schultz, who represents himself in all his business deals, said he has a solid deal with the cable news channel firmly in place.

“I have a three-year agreement with MSNBC,” said Mr. Schultz. “Anybody who thinks I don’t have a signed contract is completely wrong.”

Mr. Schultz declined to say how much MSNBC was paying him. One industry source, who spoke to the Observer, remained skeptical.

“In light of the financial crisis, and given how carefully MSNBC has been trying to manage their talent and resources,” said our source, “the notion that they would go on the hook for a three year firm deal for a guy who has never had a show on television before seems, at best, highly suspect.”

Said MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines, "Ed has a multi-year deal with us."

"The first couple of weeks I was on MSNBC, every night I would come home and she would meet me at the door and stare at me and say, 'Stop acting like a jackass on national TV!'" said Mr. Scarborough. "She said this back in 2003. I said, 'Well, that's what I'm getting paid for. They hired me for that reason.'"

"She said, 'You need to be more like Tim Russert,'" he continued. "My response was, 'Well, honey, they already have one of those.' She said, 'They need another.'"

Nearby, Mr. Scarborough's on-air partner, Mika Brzezinski, smiled. She was standing next to Donald Trump, who was wearing a pink tie. Mr. Trump slung his arm around Harold Evans and gazed around the room, which was packed with Morning Joe regulars.
 
Jack Welch, Mike Barnicle, Ray Kelly, Willie Geist, Leslie Stahl, Donnie Deutsch, Mark Halperin, Erin Burnett, Ana Marie Cox, Phil Griffin—they had all gathered at the media watering hole on 55th Street in Manhattan to fete the publication of Mr. Scarborough's new book, The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise.

A few minutes earlier, Tina Brown of the Daily Beast—in hyperkinetic hostess mode—had introduced Mr. Scarborough. "This man is so incredible," she said of MSNBC's morning political talk show host. "He's the only person, other than my husband, who has seen me at that time of the morning."

She ceded the microphone to Mr. Scarborough, who gamely launched into his stump speech on what's ailing the Republican party.

"Conservatives always like to talk about Ronald Reagan," said Mr. Scarborough. "They remember Reagan's ideology but they forget his temperament."

Mr. Scarborough told a story involving Colin Powell, Ronald Reagan and the Oval Office. The punch line  involved Mr. Reagan ignoring Mr. Powell to gaze out the window at some squirrels, which were eating some acorns that he had recently sprinkled in the garden.

"Reagan temperamentally was incapable of hating," said Mr. Scarborough. "If people wanted to fight, scratch, claw and yell, he always rose above that. That's what the Republican Party needs to do. ... If Reagan were alive today, he wouldn't be calling Barack Obama a communist. He wouldn't be calling the next Supreme Court justice—what did he call her?"

Mr. Scarborough scanned the room in search of someone who could recall what Rush Limbaugh had called U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

"A racist?" said Mr. Scarborough. "A reverse racist. This is insane."

"When I hear Rush Limbaugh and others calling Colin Powell a 'liberal' I just have to laugh because there is nothing liberal about Colin Powell's approach towards foreign policy," he said. "So what is a conservative? A conservative conserves taxpayer dollars. A conservative doesn't engage in military adventurism. A conservative doesn't add seven trillion dollars to entitlement programs that are already going bankrupt. A conservative shows restraint."

"The Republican party either reforms or it dies," he added. "Hopefully, they will look at this book and take some cues and actually start acting conservative again."

Everyone clapped, and then promptly returned to vodka tonics and passed mini crab cakes.

Sitting at a desk, beneath a framed drawing of Uncle Sam with an NBC peacock logo on his hat, Mr. Kelly tapped away at a laptop computer. On the other side of the room, a wall-mounted flat-screen television flickered to life.

The presentation began with a graphical story, rife with pie charts and upward-facing arrows, about MSNBC’s ratings growth since the 2006 midterm elections. The story progressed through the campaign primaries, shimmied through a Rachel Maddow victory dance, breezed over the excitement of election day and then lingered on MSNBC’s ratings in March and April of 2009.

“Here’s where we start getting into beating CNN in prime time,” said Mr. Kelly, gesturing at the screen. A series of brightly covered graphics highlighted MSNBC’s ratings. Various matrices showing Fox’s continued ratings dominance in cable news lurked in near invisibility at the periphery. “We have Fox up there, too,” said Mr. Kelly. “But they’re hidden.”

Anyhow. “This is what we look like,” he said. “And, oh, by the way, we have scale. And oh, by the way, we are No. 2. And oh, by the way, CNN is in decline.”

The presentation shifted from touting MSNBC’s anchors to touting MSNBC’s audience. A litany of buzzwords lit up the screen: progressive, young, professional, affluent. A video began.

“We are responsible leaders,” read a deep voice, the sonorous words accompanied by stark notes on a piano. “We are committed to change. We are younger and engaged. We are connected to the Internet. … We are the ones who make a difference. … We are MSNBC.”

The confident faces of young men and women of varying ethnicity looked out from the screen. A teacher posed in a classroom. A young Asian man, glistening with confidence and hair product, puffed out his chest. President Obama gazed out from a podium. An American flag waved in the wind. It was the United Colors of Benetton meets the Steelworkers of America meets Keith Olbermann meets President Obama meets MSNBC.

“Here’s that subliminal messaging that we put forward,” said Mr. Kelly. “We say we are the pulse of the nation right now. The change that this country voted for back in November is gathering each and every day and every evening on MSNBC.”

The person the country voted for doesn’t seem to mind MSNBC’s advances a bit. On May 4, a CSPAN clip went viral that showed Kareem Dale, a special assistant to the president for arts and culture, telling the audience at a black-tie event, “At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.”

This is not a mistake. And it’s not really a sentimental or political relationship. It’s all business.

“A year from now, we will look back and say, ‘O.K., have we moved the needle from the client who was spending 38 percent with CNN and only 18 percent with us?’” said Mr. Kelly. “Has that changed? I don’t expect to get 38 percent in a year’s time. But maybe we get ourselves to 28 percent or therein.”

OVER THE PAST TWO MONTHS, FOR THE FIRST TIME in the network’s 13-year history, MSNBC scored narrow prime-time (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) victories over CNN in the key ad sales demographic (25-54), touching off celebrations at 30 Rock and a flurry of articles and blog posts questioning CNN’s programming strategy.

Along the way, MSNBC had managed to translate a slight advantage in a narrowly defined criterion (in April, MSNBC averaged 298,000 viewers in the demo during weeknight prime time; CNN averaged 265,000) into a public-relations killing.

Now, behind the scenes at NBC, a more challenging task was kicking into high gear, as a team of revved-up ad salesmen feverishly struggled to translate MSNBC’s embryonic and fragile claim as the No. 2 cable news network into something bankable in a brutal advertising environment.

For MSNBC, Lieberman Research Worldwide corralled some 1,300 cable news users into a series of focus groups. After much poking and prodding about programming preferences, values and consumption habits, the research team came up with five archetypes of cable news consumers: (1) conservatives, (2) optimists, (3) stringents, (4) enterprisers, and (5) passives.

According to the study’s findings, MSNBC did particularly well among the optimists and enterprisers—an upwardly mobile, highly educated, cosmopolitan TV news consumer, more or less typified by spiky hair, a penchant for activism, affinity for gadgetry and love of Rachel Maddow.

Andrew Schulman, the director of marketing for NBC News networks, who was perched on a chair near Mr. Kelly, jumped in to explain how the marketing campaign had evolved from there.

“We re-branded those groups to work in the voice of MSNBC and the voice of our sales initiative,” said Mr. Schulman. “We changed the names so that they were a little bit more direct, a little bit more salesy.”

To wit: “Optimists and enterprisers” evolved into “movers and shakers,” which ultimately gave rise to “changemakers.” “That’s our battle cry,” said Mr. Kelly.

Back in November, when MSNBC began using “the power of change” as a tag line for the network, conservative critics howled angrily, citing the echo of President Obama’s rhetoric as further evidence of MSNBC’s liberal bias. But despite being dragged through the mud in right-wing corners of the Web, during recent months, the MSNBC marketers have, in a sense, flipped the proposition: Being associated with the Obama movement, they clearly believe, will be good for business, not bad.

Mr. Schulman stood up and handed The Observer an April 27 issue of Advertising Age, which was turned to a full-page ad touting MSNBC’s audience. “WE, THE PEOPLE, the doers, the movers, the activators, live with purpose today, empowered by the promise of tomorrow,” read the ad, which continued for several more declarative lines (“We watch, read and blog”) before culminating in “MSNBC Changemakers … Join the Momentum.”

“It’s our manifesto, in a way,” said Mr. Schulman.

The words of the manifesto were superimposed over the image of a man whose face was cut off by the top of the page and whose hands rested, palms up, in the foreground. The MSNBC model’s complexion and body language called to mind … President Obama!

The presentation, Mr. Kelly explained, was one part of an overall strategy to gobble up some of CNN’s market share. Just a few days earlier, he had traveled to Chicago with MSNBC’s president, Phil Griffin, where they had sat down with dozens of advertising agencies and, again and again, told the representatives why their clients ought to be shifting their precious advertising dollars from CNN to MSNBC.

“Certainly, advertising budgets are not robust,” said Mr. Kelly. “Some are contracting. The notion is—where am I spending the money for the greatest value?”

“CNN over time, being this strong brand, has elevated its price point such that, generally speaking, they are the most expensive cable news network out there,” he added. “Fox and ourselves both take issue with that given their performance. Why would you continue to buy the premium CPM for the third- or fourth-rated network in our universe?”

“Look, it might not pay off this month or next month,” Mr. Griffin said to The Observer a few days later. “It may not pay off until the first quarter of next year. But as long as we keep growing the way we are, advertisers are going to start to take notice. We want a bigger share of what they’re investing in. Because we now deserve it.”

ON MONDAY, MAY 4, AS PART OF A recently launched print campaign geared toward advertisers, MSNBC took out a full-page ad in the business section of The New York Times. The ad features the smiling head shots of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. “MSNBC beats CNN in Primetime,” read big block letters. “Again.” And below the fold: “Buy into the momentum.”

When contacted by The Observer for a response, CNN representatives suggested that MSNBC might be overplaying their momentum to advertisers. The original cable news network does their integrated ad sales across all platforms, including its Web site, CNN, HLN (formerly Headline News) CNN Airport, iReport, etc., and thus arguably continues to offer advertisers much greater overall reach to consumers than MSNBC. When considering that combined reach, for instance, during the month of April, either a HLN or a CNN show topped MSNBC for second place in the demo in every hour between 6 p.m. and midnight, except for 9 p.m.

CNN insiders suggested that what advertisers pay CNN a premium for is not what MSNBC is delivering.

Mr. Kelly said that MSNBC’s pitch to advertisers was bolstered in large part by an audience-segmentation study, which the network commissioned back in November on the heels of the election.

At the time, Mr. Kelly and his colleagues turned to Lieberman Research Worldwide, a firm already familiar to the brass at NBC Universal.

Several years earlier, Lieberman Research Worldwide had helped Bravo brand its audience the “The Affluencers”—a class of upwardly mobile, cosmopolitan TV consumers, identifiable by their spiky hair, stylish couture, willingness to throw disposable income at anything that accessorizes well with their BlackBerry or iPhone, and a love for Tim Gunn. For MSNBC, “Changemakers” was the result.

Throughout the discussion of MSNBC’s audience, neither Mr. Kelly nor Mr. Schulman had said one word about their viewers’ political inclinations. At one point, The Observer asked why the Lieberman study had pinpointed conservatives as an audience type but not liberals. Mr. Kelly immediately corrected us, pointing out that “conservatives” referred to viewers with particularly curmudgeonly consumption habits. It had nothing to do with, say, who they had voted for in the 2008 election.

So did they ever bring up the subject of the president’s popularity and his legions of young fans in the meetings with advertisers? Not explicitly, said Mr. Kelly.

“In our presentation, we talk about how MSNBC is the pulse of the nation,” he said. “It’s an intuitive, subliminal sort of messaging that lines up nicely with President Obama, who is younger, progressive, affluent, well educated and a man of color, obviously.”

“The country has voted for change—as demonstrated in the midterm and presidential election,” Mr. Kelly added. “It doesn’t surprise us that our numbers are growing.”

Last night, MSNBC President Phil Griffin officially announced that progressive radio host Ed Schultz would be joining the network and anchoring a new 6 p.m. weekday program, called The Ed Show, premiering Monday, April 6. Danny Shea of the Huffington Post broke the news.

The Observer first reported on March 20 that MSNBC had made a job offer to Mr. Schultz. MSNBC officials and Mr. Schultz denied it at the time.

Ten days earlier, on March 10, The Observer first reported that sources at the network believed that the 6 p.m. hour—then anchored by David Shuster—might be in play for Mr. Schultz.

Yesterday, as part of their announcement, Mr. Griffin noted that Mr. Shuster would be moving back to dayside, where he will co-anchor from 3 to 5 p.m. with Tamron Hall and continue to serve as the substitute anchor for Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Mr. Schultz, 55 years old, is a former sportscaster. Until the late '90s, he was (in his own words) a "hard-charging, what’s-in-it-for-me conservative radio talk show host" who was "a shade right of Attila the Hun." Subsequently, he converted to liberalism and has become a progressive populist,  who regularly rails on his radio show about how corporate America is running roughshod over the needs of the middle class.

Last night, Mr. Schultz appeared on Countdown, where he trumpeted his populist beliefs and told Mr. Olbermann that his new show would "have a strong focus on the middle class."

"I’m going to be the guy who represents people who take a shower after work," said Mr. Schultz. "I’m going to be that guy who is going to be there for the working folk of America."

Mr. Schultz and his wife Wendy have six children. He currently lives in Fargo, North Dakota. One question left unanswered in yesterday’s announcement: where will Mr. Schultz anchor his new show from—New York or Washington, D.C.?

On Thursday morning, a network spokesperson told us that for the first week or two The Ed Show will originate from New York. No word yet on who will serve as the program's executive producer.