Anderson Cooper

Michael Phelps has the money to pretty much sleep anywhere, in anything, that he wants. It turns out for the last year or so, the Olympian has been hitting the hay in a high-altitude sleeping chamber. Mention of the so-called "contraption" got a big eye-brow raise out of Anderson Cooper on Sunday's "60 Minutes. " "Inside Michael's apartment, an unusual contraption," Cooper said with drama. "A chamber he sleeps in that simulates high altitude. " And, Cooper added for effect: "He doesn't want anyone to see it, but he was willing to talk to us about it. " Phelps described the weirdness of heading into his bedroom, but then having to enter something else before retiring.

A year prior to our daughter's graduation from Tulane University, Ellen DeGeneres spoke during the ceremony, followed by Anderson Cooper, who delivered the commencement address. It was a pleasure to be a member of the audience of this widely respected journalist. We would have been appalled and angry if either of these speakers had been excluded or pressured to relinquish their role based on their outspoken personal beliefs, sexual orientation or alternative lifestyle ("Hopkins looking for replacement for Carson," April 12)

Anderson Cooper recently shared a picture of himself on Instagram with a patch over one of his eyes after he was blinded while on assignment off the coast of Portugal. The CNN host said UV light bounced off the water and burned his eye, resulting in 36 hours of blindness in one eye. "I wake up in the middle of the night and it feels like my eyes are on fire," People Magazine reported he said. Janet Sunness, a retina and low vision specialist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson, said it is likely the ultraviolet light burned Cooper's cornea.

Kathy Griffin's desperate efforts to get some shock buzz New Year's Eve on CNN were so obvious that I vowed I wouldn't write about her -- wouldn't write about her kissing Anderson Cooper's crotch and trying to make sure every viewer knew what she was doing. You can see the video above. (And don't write to me about using the video from the right-wing Newsbusters website. It's the best edited of the lot, and most of the YouTube cuts have such bad video you don't know what's being said unless you're a lip-reader.)

AKA: Why Anderson should have just stuck with CNN. I'm beginning to question why exactly Anderson Cooper decided to do a daytime talk show (other than money). He's a respected journalist. Has been for awhile. But spray-tanning with Snooki for "Anderson"? Who's idea was this? It's perfectly fine to do something fun and irreverent, but this is a pretty lame attempt at filing space in a talk show. We all know Cooper's a pop culture junkie (NeNe Leakes: on speed dial!

Kathy Griffin's desperate efforts to get some shock buzz New Year's Eve on CNN were so obvious that I vowed I wouldn't write about her -- wouldn't write about her kissing Anderson Cooper's crotch and trying to make sure every viewer knew what she was doing. You can see the video above. (And don't write to me about using the video from the right-wing Newsbusters website. It's the best edited of the lot, and most of the YouTube cuts have such bad video you don't know what's being said unless you're a lip-reader.)

Anderson Cooper's "AC360" show found itself in the middle of the Casey Anthony trial drama this week when the Anthony family attorney told CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman that George and Cindy Anthony, the parents of Casey, did not think their daughter was innocent. After suggesting yesterday that his remarks had been taken out of context, attorney Mark Lippman came on "AC360" last night in what he described as an attempt to clarify his remarks. I think cable TV -- even at the most responsible end of the spectrum -- is a tricky place for attorneys to be making statements about guilt and innocence.

Sherrie Westin's smash-hit Sesame Workshop annual bash at Cipriani 42 Street gets our vote as the benefit that most benefits its generous donors. The evening, with Anderson Cooper and the Muppets hosting, let people go home at 9:30 p.m. My date whispered to me that he had seen there "every important person I've ever known in New York!" The evening was inspiring, with an emphasis on how Sesame Street helps millions of children in India to better preschool education. Since one out of every six kids in the world lives in India; this is really something!

If you poke your head out of Anderson Cooper's spartan office on the fourth floor of Time Inc. headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and glance to the right, you will see a seemingly endless row of offices stretching off into the distance. Far down the corridor, workers dart in and out of doors, en route to meetings or bathrooms or water coolers or copiers. Seems like an incongruous place for a guy who spent a big chunk of the '90s on the African savannah with a 35-pound beta cam on his back and reporting on third-world hotspots for Channel One, the high school news network.

To anyone watching television in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it was obvious that of all the windswept reporters assailing the chaos, Anderson Cooper stood out. Now, the intense, silver-haired Cooper has been rewarded. CNN, the network he joined four years ago, announced yesterday that as of Monday, Cooper will be the sole anchor of its two-hour slot beginning at 10 p.m., effectively "topping off CNN's prime-time schedule" on weekdays. The network's announcement that Cooper, 38, would be its late-evening standard-bearer came in a press release that did not once mention Aaron Brown, 56, whose NewsNight show has been vaporized as a result and whose career at CNN is suddenly over.

Anderson Cooper recently shared a picture of himself on Instagram with a patch over one of his eyes after he was blinded while on assignment off the coast of Portugal. The CNN host said UV light bounced off the water and burned his eye, resulting in 36 hours of blindness in one eye. "I wake up in the middle of the night and it feels like my eyes are on fire," People Magazine reported he said. Janet Sunness, a retina and low vision specialist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson, said it is likely the ultraviolet light burned Cooper's cornea.

CNN announced Thursday morning that Jeff Zucker is its new president worldwide. Here's the release on the former NBC executive:   For release: Nov. 29, 2012 Jeff Zucker Named President of CNN Worldwide   Jeff Zucker will join CNN Worldwide as president of the multi-platform global news enterprise, it was announced today by Phil Kent, chairman and CEO of CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.  In January...

When it comes to the relationship between Southern Californians and massive storms like Sandy, the conventional wisdom is that such weather (“such” meaning the kind not commonly found in Southern California) can give rise to just a tiny bit of gloating. Think of it as stormenfreude. Were it a real word, “stormenfreude” might be defined as this: “Pleasure taken by those in temperate climates at the suffering of those in less temperate climates, especially in the wake of a storm that causes said temperate climate inhabitants to justify all the other miserable things about their region by asking, 'Why would anyone live there?

With Gary Tuchman in Haiti and Anderson Cooper on the ground in New Orleans, no one covered Isaac better that CNN. By Wednesday morning, the Atlanta-base news channel was the only place to be for coverage of the storm. But Tuesday night, when it was a tough editorial call between the storm and the GOP convention, Fox News also seemed to have a very good feel for the huge importance of this weather story. Give credit to the producers and managers at Fox for not only moving Shepard Smith and  other correspondents and camera teams into place on the Gulf this week, but also for understanding and journalistically responding to the fact Tuesday night that the storm was about to become a huge story -- as big or bigger than the convention.

UPDATED with copy of CNN memo and confirmation of cancellation ... John King's nightly show on CNN has been cancelled. King, the star of political reporting during the 2008 presidential campaign, will continue with the channel as its "lead campaign correspodent," according to an internal memo from CNN President Ken Jautz. King was chief national correspondent. Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room," which now runs two hours, will be expanded to three hours, 4 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

Michael Phelps has the money to pretty much sleep anywhere, in anything, that he wants. It turns out for the last year or so, the Olympian has been hitting the hay in a high-altitude sleeping chamber. Mention of the so-called "contraption" got a big eye-brow raise out of Anderson Cooper on Sunday's "60 Minutes. " "Inside Michael's apartment, an unusual contraption," Cooper said with drama. "A chamber he sleeps in that simulates high altitude. " And, Cooper added for effect: "He doesn't want anyone to see it, but he was willing to talk to us about it. " Phelps described the weirdness of heading into his bedroom, but then having to enter something else before retiring.

CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper is riding about as high as you can in the TV news business these days. His cable news ratings for his nightly Anderson Cooper 360 are tops in his time period for November, and he's winning them with serious, fact-based journalism. Then, there's his part-time job as a correspondent for the top-rated CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, where he's doing first-rate newsmagazine journalism that ranges from a report on rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to a recent Michael Phelps profile that drew an audience of more than 18 million viewers.

With Gary Tuchman in Haiti and Anderson Cooper on the ground in New Orleans, no one covered Isaac better that CNN. By Wednesday morning, the Atlanta-base news channel was the only place to be for coverage of the storm. But Tuesday night, when it was a tough editorial call between the storm and the GOP convention, Fox News also seemed to have a very good feel for the huge importance of this weather story. Give credit to the producers and managers at Fox for not only moving Shepard Smith and  other correspondents and camera teams into place on the Gulf this week, but also for understanding and journalistically responding to the fact Tuesday night that the storm was about to become a huge story -- as big or bigger than the convention.

I promised myself I was going to give CNN's new weeknight host Erin Burnett a full week of shows before I reviewed her. It was hard keeping that promise Monday night when I saw her pay a visit to the Occupy Wall Street encampment so she could look down her nose and mock the folks there. I thought it downright cruel the way she and her producer cut one kid from the herd and then tried to make him look like a fool. This was cool kids mocking outsiders on the playground, and it made me angry.

AKA: Why Anderson should have just stuck with CNN. I'm beginning to question why exactly Anderson Cooper decided to do a daytime talk show (other than money). He's a respected journalist. Has been for awhile. But spray-tanning with Snooki for "Anderson"? Who's idea was this? It's perfectly fine to do something fun and irreverent, but this is a pretty lame attempt at filing space in a talk show. We all know Cooper's a pop culture junkie (NeNe Leakes: on speed dial!