Earlier this week, we wrote about all the changes going on at WNBC. On Thursday afternoon, station general manager Tom O'Brien sent out an email to staffers, elaborating on the "evolution" of the station’s newsroom into a so-called "content center."

The text of the email:

I wanted to thank you for your participation in Tuesday's Town Hall. I hope you felt it was a productive discussion and helped put in context the changes in the industry and at WNBC. It’s clear that many of you are interested in more information about our soon to launch news and information channel, so I’d like to take this opportunity to give you a better sense of both our current and future plans.  read more »

Is there more work to come from the late Roberto Bolaño? Leon Neyfakh reports that agent Andrew Wylie will be "flying to Barcelona next month to see what other work was left behind. Mr. Wylie said the papers in Bolaño’s residence have not yet been rigorously reviewed, but that he understands there is more material, including several short works of fiction and a collection of poetry, that publishers will see 'in the course of time.'"

Felix Gillette checks in with WNBC where an "upheaval began back in May, when NBC executives announced that they would be restructuring WNBC’s newsroom. As part of the transformation, NBC would be creating a new 24-hour local news channel, a revamped local news Web site and increased services for mobile news consumers.  read more »

MINNEAPOLIS—TV news dean Gabe Pressman was hanging out yesterday in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, where the New York delegation is staying, and was kind enough to share his opinion of the media coverage in Denver, specifically the storyline about Hillary Clinton supporters holding out on party nominee Barack Obama.

“They fomented a Hillary revolt but I never saw any sign of it. I saw disappointment and unhappiness but never a sign of revolt. And they got a five-day story out of it.”

He went on to say, “Many of the pontificators were peddling a story that wasn’t true. They never got off their butts and talked to people and found out.  read more »

In an apparent effort to cash in on the highly lucrative wedding-industrial complex, NBC Local Media is teaming up with the ubiquitous wedding brand, The Knot, to create a ten-episode weekly series titled I Do!, which will air this summer on WNBC.

According to today's press release, the show will focus, in part, on "the reality and drama of planning and throwing a wedding in the New York City area."

Scary!

The news comes amid reports that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is scrambling, as the New York Post recently put it, "to grow the media giant despite being given the financial equivalent of the cold shoulder by parent company General Electric."  read more »

Veteran local news anchor Rob Morrison is leaving WNBC, as first reported today by Fishbowl NY. For the past several years Mr. Morrison has anchored "Today in New York," the lead-in to NBC's lucrative Today.

Sources confirmed to the Media Mob that in recent days Mr. Morrison cleared out his office and left 30 Rockefeller Center for good.  read more »

Who is Rivka Galchen, M.D.? The author of Atmospheric Disturbances, which according to Leon Neyfakh is, "a winding, psychological quest story involving weather control, quantum theory, and an intricately calibrated, radically counterintuitive conception of space and time..." She also may be the new Thomas Pynchon. PLUS: The return of Mark Leyner.

Choire Sicha bravely asks, "Why can’t men write anymore?" According to Mr. Sicha, "A little penis, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing. But it’s not crazy at all to feel bad for the young male writers of our time, despite all they have done to us with their books. There are these legends that loom; all women, all terrifying."  read more »

On Thursday morning, ESPN broke the news that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte would be among the players named in George Mitchell's forthcoming report on steroid use in major league baseball.

Shortly thereafter, a link on the Drudge Report -- "complete steroid list" -- directed browsers to the Web site of WNBC, the New-York-based flagship station of the NBC network. There, justice reporter Jonathan Dienst had posted a roster of player names, "expected" to be included later in the afternoon in the official Mitchell Report, which included stars like Albert Pujols, Nomar Garciaparra, Johnny Damon, and Jason Varitek.

But soon after posting that list, Mr. Dienst received a phone call from an official at Major League Baseball questioning the accuracy of his reporting.  read more »

Here’s a bit of Bill Thompson’s interview with Jay DeDapper of WNBC in which he discusses Eliot Spitzer’s still-unfolding Joe Bruno problem.

Thompson said that if a circumstance arose in which his own chief of staff failed to inform him that he was doing the kinds of things Spitzer’s top aide, Rich Baum, admitted to doing, Thompson would fire him.

From the interview:

JD: If your chief of staff didn't tell you about something like this that was going on and was actively involved, would he still be working for you?

BT: My chief of staff would not be working for me. I'm not going to commenton what Eliot should do with his staff, at the same point, the one thingthat has to occur, his two staff people, it has come out today that they have not spoken to the Attorney General's office. They have to come forward.

Later in the interview, Thompson says he's open the idea of another inquiry into the whole matter, as long as it's carried out by both houses of the state legislature, not just by the Republican-controlled Senate.

From Spitzer's point of view, it's not exactly clear that getting the Democratic-controlled Assembly involved in this matter would be an entirely good thing.

A longer excerpt of the interview is after the jump.  read more »