Dennis Kneale Profile…

The New York Observer’s Felix Gillette profiles CNBC’s Dennis Kneale…

Finding your rhythm as a rookie anchor in cable news, circa 2009, is in large part about learning to tap your inner outrage. On the night of Tuesday, June 30, Dennis Kneale found his. At the time, the 51-year-old business reporter was several weeks into a tryout, anchoring CNBC’s 8 p.m. hour. He stared at the camera in a TV studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and lambasted the anonymous bloggers who were making fun of him on the Internet for, among other things, his recent and repeated claim that the recession was over. Mr. Kneale called the “digital dickweeds” cowardly and cynical.

“I say dickweed because apparently it is indeed a plant akin to pond scum,” said Mr. Kneale, “and name-calling seems to be the lingua franca of the blogosphere.”

Afterward, Mr. Kneale’s producer told him that his outburst was poetry, the best thing he’d done on the show. The next night, Mr. Kneale returned to the subject. He called the blogosphere the “bitterest realm on earth,” and noted that he didn’t spend much time reading “the vitriol spewing out of these miscreants and these digital imbeciles,” but that, apparently, they were watching him. “Nanny-nanny boo-boo,” said Mr. Kneale.