Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY) has a blog section at the bottom of most business stories at Reuters.com. It is called Business Blog Posts, and it is powered by Blogburst. Blogburst is part of blog syndication service Pluck. And, Reuters is one of Pluck's owners.

Complicated? Yes.

The business blogs that Reuters runs are mostly small, one-person operations like Phil's Stock World and Captain Currency. Some, like The Kirk Report and Bill Cara, are well regarded. But, Reuters does them a disservice. It keeps the traffic for their content when it runs on Reuters.com. So, Reuters gets the ad revenue on those pages. The bloggers get their names on Reuters, and a link back to their sites, which is probably rarely used.

It is interesting to note that none of the big business blog sites like SeekingAlpha or Ticker Sense run in the Reuters program. They understand that the deal is good for Reuters and bad for the blogs. They aren't prepared to let Reuters compete with them for eyeballs using their own blog content.

It is a shame that Reuters has handled bloggers this way. Many other media outlets like WSJ.com and TheStreet.com comment on blogs but send traffic to the bloggers. Reuters has decided not to give the little guy a leg up.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. which was approached about the Reuters program and turned the company down.

The reported tiff between CNBC's Money Honey Maria Bartiromo and upstart Erin Burnett, whom the New York Post dubbed the "Street Sweetie,'' is mana from heaven for News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.

His Post gets a juicy chick fight to write about -- although the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) cable channel denies there is a fight -- and it makes a rival to his yet-to-be launched Fox Business Channel look foolish as a bonus. Plus, it gives Fox a good excuse to try and lure either one of them away from CNBC. Interesting how corporate synergies work in today's media world.

Mind you, I have no idea whether Bartiromo and Burnett hate each other or not. Usually, Page Six is pretty truthy in the Stephen Colbert sense of the word. You have to think that someone close to Bartiromo or Burnett -- perhaps the person who looks back at them in the mirror -- is spilling their guts to the Post. Yes, the media world is just like high school.

Bartiromo has long been a subject of the gossip pages. I urged CNBC to fire Bartiromo earlier this year after her relationship with ousted Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thompson brought derision on the network. Since then, she's indicated that she's more interested in being a TV star than a journalist. Burnett, whose path I crossed when I was at Bloomberg News, is gaining the good kind of publicity. In fact, Broadcasting and Cable called her CNBC's "secret weapon."

But there's an extra dimension to this tabloid battle that's worth considering.

There are many media conspiracy theorists who argue that Rupert Murdoch will tabloid up the Wall Street Journal once he gets a hold of Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ). I think that these fears are overblown. Murdoch won't use the Journal to settle scores with his enemies and heap praise on his friends. Why should he when the Post does that so well?

Whenever big news like yesterday's crossing of the 14,000 mark of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and today's subsequent 100 point decline hits, journalists and pundits always try to prove that they aren't surprised by what's going on.

In fact, Eric Teal, chief investment officer of First Citizens BancShares Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina, told Bloomberg News: "A market pullback would not be surprising at all to us.'' Teal isn't alone. Spencer Clarke's Chief Market Strategist Michael Sheldon told Reuters that he also wasn't surprised, arguing, "It's certainly to be expected to have some profit taking given some of the earnings reports we had this morning and given the fact Dow closed at an all-time high on yesterday."

No one on Wall Street is ever surprised by anything, except for individual investors who buy and sell stocks. They are surprised all of the time.

To be fair, Teal and Sheldon are trying to feed the media's insatiable lust for pithy quotes on topics ilke the stock market, where there often are no clear cut reasons for why something happened.

Pundits, many of whom relish the spotlight, want to be helpful to the press but at the same time don't want to say anything that might get them in trouble with their bosses. Reporters, too, are under presure to make sense of the sometimes perplexing moves of the market.

The end result is that no one winds up saying much of anything.

In a sign of the increasing importance of high-end financial blogs, Reuters Group Plc (NASDAQ: RTRSY) is starting a new network of the sites. Or, it could be that the Reuters business development people have down time because of its upcoming purchase by Thomson Corp. (NYSE: TOC).

The offer that Reuters is making to a number of high-end blogs is that it will link to the participating sites from Reuters.com, offer free access to selected Reuters Headlines (RSS or Headline Wizard) and Reuters Video Player to publish Reuters News, and get 30% of an advertising program that the big financial services company will manage.

In return, each blog agrees to execute contracts with comScore and NetRatings to assign its traffic to Reuters.com. NetRatings ranks Reuters.com as the No.7 financial website with unique visitors of 6.1 million in May.

Reuters may be trying to match blog initiatives at media outlets including FT.com, WSJ.com, and AOL.com.

Either Reuters has a very high regard for financial blogs or it needs to pump up its audience ratings.

Disclosure: 24/7 Wall St. was approached by Reuters about this opportunity.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a principal at 24/7 Wall St.

The Fox network is about to go head to head with CNBC by launching its own business network. The new service is being built by Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, and Neil Cavuto, managing editor for Fox's current business news.

While the news was officially announced yesterday by Rupert Murdoch, the market has been watching its development for some time. Just last month, our Jonathan Berr blogged about Time Warner (NYSE:TWX)'s agreement to distribute the content to their cable subscribers.

The network has placed development in the hands of some pretty serious guys, but I wonder if they aren't missing a bet by not developing content more consistent with the Fox image. Why clone CNBC when they could offer:

The Simpson's Investment Hour: Focusing on energy stocks, medical advancements and remedial education, Homer shows the viewer how to make some 'D'OH!' The animated hour could provide a hilarious alternative to Larry Kudlow's usual contest to see who can talk the loudest.

Joe Millionaire's Hottie Tips: The gag is, the ladies don't know he's totally ignorant about stocks when they turn over their 401k's to his administration. They only know he's hot, and broadcasts from the most pimped-out hot tub/studio in all of Beverly Hills.

House Party: Stock experts take a sick stock and try to determine why it's on the decline. Will they find the key in the annual report? The administration? Federal regulations? Erratic currency? Stock shrinkage? Will they solve the mystery in time to keep it from being de-listed?

StockCops: Bad broker, bad stock, what you gonna do when they come for you? An hour of hard-hitting drama as Fox accompanies the men and women of the Security and Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General as they chase rogue traders and backdated-options executives through the mean streets of New York's financial district.

Madden in the Madhouse: The veteran sportscaster abandons his bus for a booth in the NYSE, where he gives the viewer a play-by-play of the last hour of each market day. " You see, what he's got to do here," (insert telestrator clip of traders on the floor) "is take the offer right at him. Bam! That's some kind of bid."

America's Most Wanted Stocks: AMWS will call upon the combined wisdom (?) of the American Public to suss out the wayward properties that have disappeared from the investors' minds, determine who is to blame for their malaise, and reunite them with now eager purchasers.

Or they could just clone Jim Cramer.

News Corp's fledgling (NYSE:NWS) Fox Business News cable channel reached a distribution agreement with Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX) cable business, a key step in Rupert Murdoch's plan to go head-to-head against General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) CNBC.

As the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) mentions, the deal will make Fox Business News, which Murdoch says will launch this year, available to Time Warner's 13 million subscribers. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq:CMCSA), the no. 1 cable company. has already agreed to carry the channel.

Ever since Murdoch announced his plans for Fox Business News, I've had my doubts about whether there is enough of an audience to sustain two business channels along with Bloomberg TV (I worked for Bloomberg for seven years) as advertisers shift their spending online. Fox probably is going to offer very attractive rates to advertisers to get them to buy commercial time on the network. Companies will respond enthusiastically at first because they always like to be part of something new. Whether those advertisers will still be around six months later when Fox Business News becomes part of the media landscape remains an open question.

Still, Murdoch faced those same questions when he launched Fox News several years ago to compete against CNN and look what happened.

Each Friday, I'll be bringing you my list of the top four stories from CNNMoney for the past week. Did I miss a story that you thought was really good? Leave a comment and let us know.

All right, here are my picks:

1. Be a millionaire: 5 ways to get there. Who doesn't want to be a millionaire?
   
2. 35 most outrageous fees (and how to avoid them). This originally ran in Money Magazine, and is a really great article. The one fee I can't stand is phone surcharges. Opening my cellphone bill each month reminds me of the game show Deal or No Deal. You just never know how much it is going to be.
   
3. Investors worry about Steve Jobs' future at Apple. Analysts doubt Jobs will step down, but it's a story all Apple Computers Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) investors should be following.
   
4. Trump mortgage chief inflated resume. From the "I'm going to call Rosie O'Donnell fat to keep this mess out of the news" department.

10) Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) has overtaken Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) to become the world's largest seller of personal computers: According to a survey by market research firm Gartner, HP had 16.3% of the global market in the third quarter of 2006, compared with rival Dell's 16.1%. In the three months ending September 2006, HP shipped 9.65 million units, while Dell shipped only 9.54 million.

9) Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has been ordered to repay millions of dollars to his ex-employers: Mr. Grasso has been fighting to keep hold of a $187 million severance package that he accrued while leading the exchange. A New York judge ruled that Mr. Grasso must return about $80 million in pension fund payments and interest on loans. Mr. Grasso said the ruling was "riddled with errors" and that he would appeal.

8) As the world seeks alternatives to oil as a source of energy, uranium has been on a tear, scoring a gain of around 700% in six years as interest in nuclear power has revived. Uranium has been one of the best-performing commodities in this bull market. Spot prices are trading at around $56 a pound, an eight-fold increase from as low as $7 back in 2000.

7) Daimler Chrysler said that it expects shipments to fall by 90,000 vehicles in the third quarter and by an additional 45,000 in the fourth quarter: DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group will tap executives from its German parent's Mercedes division to study restructuring moves, including the potential closure of an auto assembly plant. The initiative aims to cut $1,000 in costs from each of the vehicles Chrysler produces.

6) OPEC agreed on Friday to curb its output by 1.2 million barrels per day: This is the first cut for more than two years -- to halt a significant fall in prices. The reduction, amounting to 4.3% of OPEC's September production, was deeper than anticipated and the biggest since January 2002. The psychological market effect of this announcement should send oil prices back above $60 per barrel.