The handover of a storied comedy empire to the next generation turned into a clash of the late-night titans. Back in 2004, NBC had promised that Conan O'Brien, then host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," would take over "The Tonight Show" from Jay Leno in 2009. When the time came, Leno had said affably, "Conan, it's yours!"

But the low ratings for Leno's new show, which aired in an earlier time slot, had NBC affiliates in revolt. A poor lead-in meant smaller audiences for local news broadcasts, which bring in a third of station revenues. Meanwhile, Conan's "Tonight Show" wasn't doing so hot, either. The old lineup was looking better and better to NBC. It couldn't fire O'Brien outright without forfeiting $45 million, so the network gave Leno the old "Tonight Show" time slot and shoved O'Brien to a later time. An aggrieved O'Brien quit on January 29, and the "I'm With Coco" movement was born.

Soon everyone was taking sides but mostly backing O'Brien. The week before he left, he definitely led the will (or at least the online attention) of the people, with a peak 297% more Yahoo! searches than Leno. David Letterman, who'd lost the scramble to succeed Johnny Carson back in 1992, gleefully parodied his old rival's high voice on his CBS show, "Late Show With David Letterman," and showed a fake promo for a new series, "Law & Order: Leno Victims Unit." Jimmy Kimmel piled on too, putting on a gray wig, a jutting false chin, and a lisp to play a jovial Leno. Even President Obama, who knows the pain of approval ratings, got in a dig or two at the big-chinned guy at the White House Correspondents Dinner: "I'm also glad that I'm speaking first, because we've all seen what happens when somebody takes the time slot after Leno's."

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was one of the few to speak up for Leno. Then again, the defense came at the same time as a plug for his new show, "The Marriage Ref," which happened to be premiering that fall on NBC.

Leno may have won back "The Tonight Show," but he certainly lost the battle for hearts and minds: O'Brien's last episode of "The Tonight Show" trounced the competition. Highlights included performances by Neil Young, a celebrity band featuring Will Ferrell, and O'Brien on guitar playing "Free Bird." And then it was time to say goodbye.

Days after the curtain fell, a newly bearded O'Brien took off on his sold-out "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,"  took to Twitter, landed a new late-night show on TBS (motto: "Very funny"), and promoted it by blowing up a car and flying a big orange blimp up and down the East Coast. That helped juice premiere ratings, which then slid after losing that fall-guy status.

Leno is still tops in the ratings, for the most part, but his total audience is down 21% from what it was two years ago, and down 25% among the younger viewers whom advertisers love. But, O'Brien does get the last laugh: The "Tonight Show" received Emmy nominations for four episodes -- all of them his.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

A slip of the lip can sink your career, especially when you're talking to a member of the media on the air. But of course a professional journalist knows better than to tumble into that trap, right? Maybe not. In 2010 no less than three high-profile journalists made unwise comments about religious groups: Rick Sanchez, Juan Williams, and Helen Thomas. Rick Sanchez had been the host of "Rick's List" on CNN, the cable network that had ushered in the era of 24/7 news coverage, where no gaffe goes unreported. For Sanchez, his comic nemesis was Jon Stewart. The "Daily Show" host couldn't resist poking fun at moments like Sanchez getting tased, Sanchez falling overboard a boat, Sanchez asking what "nine meters in English" is, and Sanchez reading aloud the instruction "ad-lib a tease" from his TelePrompTer. But when the CNN anchor called the "Daily Show" host a bigot during a September 30 radio interview and implied that Jews run the media, it was no laughing matter (well, except to David Letterman). Said Sanchez to Sirius XM radio host Pete Dominick, "I'm telling you that everybody that runs CNN are a lot like Stewart, and that a lot of people who run the other networks are a lot like Stewart and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah." Under Dominick's quizzing, Sanchez softened the bigot accusations to "prejudicial," but by then it was too late. Within hours, the journalist had become the news, and a day later CNN threw Sanchez overboard. His wife, in a Facebook post, blamed exhaustion. Sanchez's apology came soon after, and he called Stewart "the classiest guy in the world" for accepting it. (At least, that's what he said before Stewart's final "Daily Show" piece on Sanchez, a montage comparing him to the clueless boss played by Steve Carell on "The Office.") Sanchez has since ducked out of the limelight, even cutting back on much-needed book promotion. He may want to study the professional recovery of another CNN employee who lost a gig for unwise remarks: In July, veteran Middle East reporter Octavia Nasr tweeted on her CNN account, "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot." (She later blogged that she had intended to salute his "contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on women's rights," not his "praise of terror attacks," but she was soon ousted.) These days, Nasr owns her own consulting firm and talks about using social media to shake up news reporting. That could be safer than XM radio. --Cicely Wedgeworth

For years NPR commentator Juan Williams's bosses had warned him about his borderline comments. Strictly speaking, he tended to tread that border at his non-NPR gigs, as a newspaper opinion columnist or as an analyst for Fox News, where he said things such as "[First Lady Michelle Obama] had this Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer dress thing going." (Carmichael was the 1960s civil rights activist who promoted the term and the concept of Black Power.)

The remark that finally got NPR to sharpen the ax came during Williams's October 21 appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor." Williams was responding to Bill O'Reilly's appearance on "The View" and his comments on the 9/11 attacks, which caused Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk briefly off the set.

Williams said, in part, "When I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they're identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Did Williams display a lapse in judgment in expressing his personal views? Or was this a Shirley Sherrod teaching moment? Either way, the swinging ax also caused damage to NPR, which weathered a storm of accusations of political correctness and even received death threats. The public station defended its decision to end its relationship with Williams, explaining that he had violated NPR's code of ethics by expressing a personal view. (Williams was hired as a news analyst, not a columnist or pundit.) CEO Vivian Schiller took the matter a step further, saying that Williams's opinion should be between him and "his psychiatrist or his publicist -- take your pick." She later apologized.

An apology didn't come from Williams for "speaking the truth"; instead, he signed a three-year, two-million-dollar contract with Fox two days after his exit. His new boss, former Republican strategist Roger Ailes, said of NPR executives, "They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism." He too apologized, to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). He had new words for NPR, as he explained in his letter to the ADL, "[I]n my now considered opinion, 'nasty, inflexible bigot' would have worked better."

The firing pulled the station into the cross-hairs of critics -- including Williams -- who wanted to see taxpayer dollars pulled from NPR. The House measure was defeated but may have been moot anyway: Federal money amounts to about 2% of the network's budget.

—Cicely Wedgeworth

Editor Claudine Zap covers what's hot on the Web, and why, on Yahoo! Buzz Log. She contributed to this article.

With the economy stuck in the doldrums and unemployment at a high, many people count themselves lucky to have a job -- any job. But that doesn't mean they have to like it. Job dissatisfaction probably explained the summertime surge in popularity of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant.

Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh didn't start well, as Slater would later tell police. A passenger's large carry-on bag fell out of an overhead bin, cutting the flight attendant's forehead. Adding insult to injury, the passenger who owned the bag cursed at him as they taxied to JFK Airport. Slater let loose with a curse-laden rant on the plane's public address system, snagged some beer from a fridge, popped the emergency slide, and slid into notoriety.

JetBlue has been the target of passenger bitterness. In 2007 nine planes were stuck on the tarmac during a snowstorm at JFK Airport in New York, one of the planes for 11 hours, with no working restroom. This time, public sentiment was firmly on the side of Slater, whose tale struck a chord among everyone who's ever wanted to say, "Take this job and shove it!" With a Facebook fan page and a tribute ballad sung by Jimmy Fallon, Slater seemed like a folk hero for the unhappily employed.

But like Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, Slater's tale may be just myth. Investigators who interviewed every crew member and every passenger on the flight couldn't find one person to corroborate Slater's account of the events leading up to his dramatic -- and expensive -- exit (estimated cost for the slide: $25,000). Slater expressed remorse and the wish to return to his job, but Jet Blue didn't oblige. He pleaded guilty to charges of criminal mischief, and agreed to undergo substance abuse counseling and to pay $10,000 in restitution. Despite the plea, the self-confessed alcoholic stood by his story of the rude passenger in a round of October interviews on "Larry King Live," "The Today Show," and "Good Morning America."

That may not matter in any case. Slater traded on his outlaw status to become a rapper pitchman for Mile High Text Club, a contest that rewards the "most outrageous story" on an airplane with an NYC holiday shopping trip and lunch with Slater ... although no promises he'll stick around for dessert.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

Veteran reporter Helen Thomas had been writing about the White House for 57 years. She had earned a few perks: the best seat in the White House briefing room, with her name on it; birthday cupcakes from the president; cameos in light movies about the White House; and even a starring role in an HBO documentary directed by JFK's niece.

What she didn't get: a free pass to tell the Jewish people in Israel to "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland and Germany, as she did in late May.

Thomas apologized for her remarks, but both her speakers' agency and her book collaborator dropped her with a thud. After fielding recriminations from just about everyone, including the White House, she resigned from her job at Hearst four days later.

The next burning question: Who would get That Seat? Thomas's front-and-center chair in the briefing room was perhaps the most coveted piece of furniture in the West Wing, after the chair behind the Oval Office desk. With the cushion still warm, the competition started closing in: CNN, NPR, Fox News, and Bloomberg were virtually locked in a death match. One Bloomberg correspondent compared the power struggle to "musical chairs in elementary school ... except it has the cut-throat viciousness of a snake pit." In the end, the Associated Press came out the winner.

Thomas broke her post-retirement silence four months later in a radio interview with an Ohio reporter she knew, reaffirming her stance on Israel but denying being anti-Semitic. Setback aside, the 90-year-old Thomas says she still hopes to work again.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

With an African American president in the White House, the United States seemed to enter a new post-racial era. Or did it? Eager to prove that it was color-blind, the Obama administration ended up red-faced after summarily firing Shirley Sherrod, an African American employee of the Department of Agriculture, based on a video clip in which she seemed to describe how she had discriminated against a white farmer.

The firing by BlackBerry -- the entire decision-making process took less than five hours -- turned out to be overly hasty. The video excerpt, posted by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, had actually been part of a larger anecdote about overcoming bias.

The farmer and his wife, both in their 80s, quickly surfaced to defend Sherrod and all she'd done to help them.

Cue frantic backpedaling. Sherrod racked up apologies from the White House, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Bill O'Reilly, and the NAACP, which had joined the rush to condemn her, even though the speech had been made at one of its own branches. Vilsack, who had earlier dismissed Sherrod's pleas that he hadn't heard the whole story, offered her another (better) job, but Sherrod said no thanks.

Perhaps hoping to turn over a new leaf, the USDA hosted a two-day race and diversity conference, which was closed to the press. Sherrod has been keeping a low profile, but she popped up on Fox News in August, when the folks at "On the Record" mistakenly used her photo to identify Representative Maxine Waters, who is also African American. Oops. "We so screwed up on this one and we are sick about it," blogged Greta Van Susteren, host of the show.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

Michelle Rhee had never run a school when she was tapped by newly elected District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007 to run the Washington, D.C., school system, ranked one of the worst in the nation. A veteran of  Teach for America, Rhee had gone on to found the nonprofit New Teacher Project, which recruits and trains teachers for high-need school districts. Fenty, the youngest mayor of D.C. ever elected, moved to take over the school system on his first day in office, and Rhee, who'd earned a reputation as a reformer, was his pick for schools chancellor. For better and for worse, their political fortunes were hitched together.

Rhee came on like a hurricane, firing teachers and principals and playing tough with the unions. She got plenty of media coverage, becoming an icon of the education reform movement nationwide, and was prominently featured in a documentary critical of the U.S. educational system, "Waiting for 'Superman."

She even got  props from Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, although Rhee has criticized Democrats on education (she's a strong supporter of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind) and says she almost voted for John McCain in 2008. Back home, Rhee had made bitter enemies as well as ardent fans. She was a polarizing figure in a racially divided town: Her support among African Americans, who are the majority in D.C., plunged over the years, and so did Fenty's.

In 2010, Fenty lost the Democratic Party's nomination for mayor. Rhee's days were numbered. She'd clashed with Mayor-Elect Vince Gray in the past, so no one was surprised when she announced her resignation in October. Rhee had served for only three and a half years, but that was enough to make her one of the district's longest-serving school leaders in two decades.

Rhee had predicted, when she first met Fenty, that hiring her would be his political undoing. But their work may not have been wasted. Rhee won $75 million for D.C. schools from the federal Race to the Top fund to overhaul schools, and the funds are tied to the reforms that she put in place, and so is $64.5 million that she solicited from private foundations.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

Mark Hurd's ouster from Hewlett-Packard shows that even a disgraced Wall Street darling is almost certain to have a soft landing. When it was first reported that former actress Jodie Fisher had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Hurd, Fisher experienced a spike of interest in her film and TV career (highlights: "Body of Influence 2" and "Age of Love," a reality dating show). But her contract work for HP's marketing department as a party hostess and event organizer was much less colorful, and her suit was settled out of court.

As far as HP's board was concerned, the case wasn't closed. The board accused Hurd of falsifying expense reports to conceal his dinners with Fisher and fired him. Sure, the $20,000 in disputed charges is no chump change, but it's not a $1.2 million office renovation, either.

The real story may be that HP employees didn't share Wall Street's love for their cost-cutting CEO. He slashed more than 48,000 jobs as he was bringing home $24.2 million in compensation.

But when you're the head of a Fortune 500 company, you tend to have friends in high places. Hurd's buddy Larry Ellison blasted HP's board for demanding his resignation, then offered Hurd safe harbor at Oracle. HP fired back with a lawsuit accusing Hurd of planning to violate company secrets, and the company settled by cutting a swath out of Hurd's golden parachute.

With at least $12.2 million in cash, he's sitting pretty -- especially when his new gig comes with a potential bonus of $10 million, which dwarfs his $950,000 salary. Despite laying out all that money, Oracle doesn't really need Hurd, who is sharing the title of president. Some think he's being groomed as Ellison's successor. In the meantime, maybe Hurd will relax and take up sailing with his new boss.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

U.S. military officials talk about fighting wars on two fronts, but there's also a third front: the war for public opinion. To win those hearts and minds, the Pentagon initiated a program just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to "embed" journalists within military units, giving the media close-up access but also strict supervision. It's not enough to be making progress Over There, if no one back home knows about it. General Stanley McChrystal felt that not enough Americans knew about the gains being made under his command in Afghanistan, so he agreed to be profiled by a freelance journalist working for Rolling Stone magazine and ended up a high-profile casualty of the battle between the military and the media.

How was McChrystal, who had led black ops and helped catch Saddam Hussein, caught off-guard by a reporter? Perhaps the straight-shooting general forgot one of the ten commandments of the workplace: Thou shalt not disrespect thy boss. Or thy boss's aides.

The article, "The Runaway General," was leaked online before the issue came out. It recounted that one of McChrystal's advisers used an unflattering nickname for Vice President Joe Biden, and described a general lack of respect for other administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Not long after publication, McChrystal was called back to Washington, where he resigned after a brief meeting with the president. When the Rolling Stone issue finally hit the newsstands, the magazine sold at least five times as many copies as usual.

The cover story proved a journalistic and a PR coup for Rolling Stone, mostly known for its music coverage, although it has a long history of investigative reporting. Still, reporter Michael Hastings found himself at the center of a debate on journalistic ethics. At least some of the quotes in the profile came from inside a bar, where Hastings was hanging out with McChrystal's staff. And thanks to an Icelandic volcano, Hastings also lucked into a long bus ride with the group. Hastings, however, denied using remarks that were intended to be off the record.

A later inquiry by the Army cleared McChrystal and his senior officers of making the disparaging remarks about administration staffers quoted in the article, but the hunt continues for who said it. Meanwhile, McChrystal is teaching leadership at Yale. Hastings, the journalist who brought down the general, attempted to get embedded in a unit in Afghanistan. He was denied.

--Cicely Wedgeworth

Of all people who should know the dangers of leaving an electronic trail of naughty behavior, a district attorney who has championed victim's rights really ought to know better.

But 30 text messages earned Kenneth Kratz of Calumet County, Wisconsin, the moniker of "the sexting D.A." The target of his texts: a domestic-abuse victim, whose case he was investigating. At the time, he was prosecuting her ex-boyfriend, but he warned that he might drop the case if she didn't encourage him properly.

He asked if she was "the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA...the riskier the better?" And he declared of his intentions, "I'm serious! I'm the atty. I have the $350,000 house. I have the 6-figure career. You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize!"

The victim reported Kratz's behavior to the state Department of Justice, which concluded that no crime had been committed. Then the Associated Press reported the story, and outrage swept the nation. More accusations emerged: He had invited a woman to an autopsy, provided she dress up as his date, and he had sexually harassed a law student seeking a pardon for a teenage drug offense.

Kratz at first characterized his words as a "series of respectful messages," but Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle, himself a former prosecutor, said that the case was "a terrible violation of trust." Letters flooded the governor's office, demanding Kratz's removal, but the governor said that the legally required process to remove a district attorney was time-consuming. Kratz apologized and resigned as chair of the Wisconsin Crime Victims' Rights Board, which he'd helped create. Still, he hung onto his job, saying that he wouldn't leave until he was voted out. He checked himself into rehab and, weeks later, the embattled D.A. finally resigned.

The state Department of Justice announced that Kratz was the subject of a new criminal investigation. And the domestic-abuse victim has filed a civil lawsuit, claiming that Kratz violated her constitutional rights. No comment from Kratz, though -- after saying he would undergo therapy, he has been in treatment outside Wisconsin.

--Cicely Wedgeworth