The Gab Fest on a fiasco for journalism. This is the Slate Daily podcast for Friday, August 3rd.

I'm June Thomas. The fiasco we're referring to is not the fact that John, David and Emily,

our usual Gabfest crew, are unavailable in August.

For the next month or so, the Gabfest is going to come to you from New York.

In today's episode, we talk about Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Dow Jones Company,

the latest news from Iraq and the Republican side of the presidential race.

To introduce today's discussion, here's me.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest, as you can tell.

I am not John Dickerson.

John, Emily, and David are otherwise engaged.

Let's just say that this week.

Rather than have no Gabfest, we have decided to put together an August team.

We have Slate editor, Jacob Weisberg, back from a book leave.

Hello, everyone. Let me apologize for being me and not for being David Plotz or Emily Bazelon.

We know how devoted the listeners that the GabFest are to the regular staff.

And all I can say is this may go on for a few weeks, but it won't go on for long. You'll have them

back. I'm quivering in fear for the emails we're going to receive. But we have a very special guest.

We have Jonathan Alter, senior editor at Newsweek and columnist there, the author of The Defining Moment, FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, which is just out in paperback.

Thanks very much for having it.

Oh, we're so grateful that you can.

I feel like in those old episodes of Petticoat Junction, I guess, in Green Acres that they'd visit from the competing sitcoms every so often in the

60s. There was a really special moment when people would go from one to the other. And since Newsweek

...