Cory Bergman over at LostRemote points to Action 25 News, a cable TV site for Macon, Ga., that NBC stations all over the country are reporting is a fake set up by Internet scammers selling DVD "training" programs. Apparently the website the website was created to lend credibility by having a fake TV consumer reporter claim you can make $84,000 a year by working at home.

Neil Thurman of City University, London, has published a review of the ways British news media are using the tools of interactivity -- "user generated content initiatives," as he calls it. In many cases it's been a struggle and the outcomes have not met everyone's hopes.

Reading through it, I was struck by a recurring theme in his interviews with UK journalism executives. It goes like this: How can I add some of this user-generated filler to my soup without losing control of the flavor?

Somebody at CNN.com should have his/her tail kicked for being dumb enough to launch an online poll asking: "Does Barack Obama show the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be president of the United States?" Ben Smith at Politico.com is reporting that CNN ran that poll.

I can't find it online right now. Perhaps someone woke up over there.

Congratulations to Dan Shorter for receiving the 2008 Online Innovator Award from the Newspaper Association of America. Dan was the longtime online chief at the Palm Beach Post and recently was named Internet VP at the Star Tribune, my old stomping ground up in the Great Frozen North.

I worked with Dan at Cox Interactive and he's a great guy. Wish I could have been in Orlando to hand him the award (I was the 2007 recipient), but I couldn't go this year.

Here's another item I wasn't going to touch: The uproar at Northwestern University, where Medill Dean John Lavine is being raked over the coals for writing a letter promoting the school in which he used an anonymous quote that he can't back up. But I am inspired by Gawker firing both barrels of double-ought snark into the middle of it:

I wasn't going to comment on the McCain story, but my friend Howard Owens has pulled my chain by dismissing it as "nothing but gossip from either unnamed sources or pure speculation." He aims that charge at the lead, but implies that there isn't any substance to the story. There is.

I am as puzzled as anyone by the construction of the NYT story. The focus on the Iseman anecdote obscured the point for many people instead of illustrating it.

The nut graf is here:

"Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain" is the headline on today's New York Times piece smashing yet another set of assumptions about who really does what on the Internet. "Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of 'The X Files.' On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls."