Insert Something About A Blogger Ethics Panel Here

Howie "the Putz" Kurtz spent the first segment of his CNN program this morning plugging his book, Canker Sores. To return the favor, Kurtz then ran a commercial for Time magazine in the guise of an interview:

KURTZ: Even on TV there was a lot of pundits talking about whether Giuliani or Romney had won that exchange, but again, not much on who was actually right or wrong. Mark Halperin, you mentioned the role of the new media. When you were at ABC News, you wrote something called "The Note," which was sort of an insider's guide to politics. Tomorrow you are going to debut a new Web page called "The Page" at time.com.

Tell us a little bit about that.

HALPERIN: Well, "The Page" is for people who want to know what's going on in the presidential race all the time, 24/7. We are updating it all the time. Time colleagues overseas as well. So while we sleep here on the East Coast, the site is being updated. The Web page is thepage.time.com. It has got everything, the best reporting from Time magazine but reporting from around the whole country, local papers, local television, national television, cable, all consolidated on one page.

So if you're interested any time in knowing what's going on in this race, "The Page" is where people are going to look, I think and I hope.

KURTZ: Just briefly, do you think we're drowning in information on the Internet? And are you trying to sort of organize it?

HALPERIN: Even my colleagues -- our colleagues who cover this day to day, even the campaigns, there is so much to read, there is so much good journalism being done, watching on television, listening on the radio. Our idea is to consolidate that, to aggregate it all in one place. So if you are busy and you can't read every paper or watch every TV show, "The Page" is the one place where it is all going to live all the time on one page.

Jaysus. The product placement is more subtle in a Rob Schneider movie.

Howie then went back to plugging his book.

Halperin, of course, is the former ABC News political director who proudly takes his marching orders from internet slander merchant Matt Drudge. (And yet he claimed today that he was interested in honesty. Imagine that.) Fortunately, Time doesn't have a reputation which can be tarnished.