CHAMP: CBS News

It will probably never climb out of third place in the evening news race, but CBS earned some big-time respect in the closing weeks of the election. Katie Couric dismantled Sarah Palin with such exquisite sympathy that no one but the most blinkered partisans could accuse her of acting in bad faith. Couric kept her questions basic and substantive, helping to bury memories of her excruciating "Miss Frigidaire" tete-a-tete with Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Bob Schieffer moderated what was inarguably the feistiest of the three presidential debates -- although that probably owed more to luck and timing than anything he did right.

CHUMP: ABC News

Perhaps if Peter Jennings were still alive, he would have been similarly successful as moderator. But he's not, and when no one from ABC was picked to referee a debate, many wondered whether the execrable work of Charles Gibson and George Stephanapoulos at the final meetup between Clinton and Obama was the reason. Gibson didn't help matters when, conducting the first national interview with Palin, he came off as impatient, supercilious and more interested in playing "gotcha" than in plumbing her thoughts.

CHAMP: Paul Krugman

He was the voice of angry liberalism in 2004, but early in the current election cycle Krugman stumbled by aligning himself too mindlessly with the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic party. (One low point came when he uncritically regurgitated a false and patently incredible anecdote Clinton had been using on the stump.) Lately, however, a Nobel Prize and a global economic crisis have stored his must-read status.

CHUMPS: Bill Kristol and Maureen Dowd

Has there ever been a pundit who's been as wrong as often as Kristol without suffering a catastrophic loss in stature? Promoting Palin as a slam-dunk pick for the vice presidency wasn't quite as consequential a choice as plumping for the Iraq War, but, then again, at least in his support for the latter Kristol wasn't quite so alone. As for Dowd, her instincts, questionable at the best of times, seem to fail her utterly when it comes to Obama. Hers was the loudest voice insisting Obama's temperament was too cool and passive to defeat Clinton in the primary; a year later, she made the same mistake in assessing Obama's general-election campaign. Assuming he wins tomorrow, can Dowd find anything worthwhile to say about a president who's not one of her caricatures?

CHAMP: Bill O'Reilly

There's not much question which side he favors, but Fox News's O'Reilly is smart enough to value his reputation for independence, however exaggerated it may be. He started agitating early on to get Barack Obama on his show, and when the opportunity arrived, he delivered a performance that was opinionated and confrontational but not rude or bullying.

CHUMP: Sean Hannity

The counterexample to his colleague O'Reilly, the none-too-bright Hannity is only too happy to have his slavering fealty taken for granted by fellow Republicans, and grateful for every chance to prove it afresh. His toadying interview with Palin was an instant joke.

CHAMPS: David Letterman and Tina Fey

Yeah, we all know how late-night comedy shows have all but succeeded the Sunday-morning chat shows as vital proving grounds for candidates. But while other comics acted as marginal critics or accessories, Letterman and Fey dominated the campaign narrative and moved public opinion. Letterman did it by raising hell after McCain stood him up and savaging the candidate's reputation for straight talk. Fey did it by diving into the image vacuum surrounding Sarah Palin, creating a caricature that was more vivid and more ubiquitous than anything the campaign was putting forth.

CHUMP: The National Review

Conservative apostasy has been a recurring strain in 2008 campaign coverage. Two of the most noteworthy betrayals involved National Review contributors: Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley. The magazine could have used those instances to advertise its intellectual suppleness and independence from party politics. Instead, it became a symbol of the sort of unthinking loyalty and adherence to dogma that's led the Republican party to its present dire state.

CHAMP: MSNBC

"The liberal Fox News": Such a simple formulation, yet it took the 2008 election for MSNBC to turn it into a consistent, winning strategy. It's only in the past two months that the network has gone all-in, dumping 9 p.m. host Dan Abrams for Keith Olbermann protégé Rachel Maddow, whose instant draw helped the network top CNN in the 25-to-54 age group for the first time ever in October.

CHUMP: MSNBC

On the other hand, pro wrestling gets good ratings, too. MSNBC's new positioning has made it -- and, more alarmingly, NBC News as a whole -- a bogeyman for those who think the media is already liberal enough. Signs that the lunatics were running the asylum abounded at the Democratic National Convention, where Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough couldn't keep their mutual contempt off-camera. That led to Matthews and Olbermann getting taken off anchor duty, which only raised the question: What the hell were Olbermann and Matthews doing anchoring straight news coverage?

[With apologies to Charles Kaiser for shamelessly boosting his "Winners and Sinners" format.]