ReadWriteWeb

TV star Keith Olbermann will join Current.tv, the online and cable TV news media company co-founded by Al Gore, according to a report tonight by The New York Times.

Conservative critics are going to have a field day if the partnership is in fact a reality. The Times reports that Olbermann will take an equity stake in Current, likely the only way a man accustomed to contracts in the tens of millions of dollars range can be effectively compensated by a small, struggling media company. We've covered Current.tv's many innovations for years here at ReadWriteWeb; Current's Twitter annotation of the Presidential debates was incredible, for example. Launched more than 5 years ago, the company has got to be getting worried about turning tech smarts into money. Olbermann may or may not be able to help with that.

While in New York earlier this month, I attended New York University's annual ITP Spring Show. ITP is a graduate program for communications studies and the Spring Show is a chance for students to showcase their interactive projects. I saw everything from Matrix-like interactive squiddies, to a woman on stilts powered by an iPhone app, to a paint brush that made music.

Probably the most impressive thing I saw, though, was a media project by a student named Zoe Fraade-Blanar. Current: A News Project is a prototype meme tracker using data visualization.

At the Web 2.0 Summit today Current.tv co-founder Joel Hyatt told the audience that his video site and TV channel has landed multiple multi-million dollar advertising deals with giant companies, based on non-professional commercials created by fans. That's something that a whole lot of companies have been trying to do, unsuccessfully, for years.

Hyatt was joined on stage by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who once again repeated the "wait and see" answer when asked about his monetization strategy. Side-by-side with Current's success, Twitter's continued stalling seemed more unsatisfying than ever - but success in general felt more possible when we saw what Current has done.