By Kristi Berner      Special to The News

For five prolonged minutes, Al Gore filled the Columbia Journalism School classroom with his voice yesterday,
taking great care to explain the topic that he and his guest, David Letterman, were about to discuss.
Then it was Letterman's turn.

"I was talking to my friends on the way here, saying that I was a bit nervous, and they said,
'Don't worry, Al will do all the talking anyway,'" Letterman said, pausing as he scanned the 80 or so faces in the class.

"I'm happy to see that it's worked out."

For most of the 90 minutes, Letterman was more talk-show host than lecturer.
But he did broach the class topic: How humor affects news coverage of politicians.

Said Gore: "I was ahead [in the polls] until I went on your show."

Letterman replied: "The same could be said for me."

He also riffed on former President Bill Clinton, global warming and local television news.

On Clinton: "We would love to have Bill Clinton [on the show]. If it were up to Bill, he'd be on every night.
But it's unlikely, considering his less-than-smooth transition from public to private life."

On global warming: "You can get more ice out of a Slurpee machine at a 7-Eleven
                                than the North Pole is producing now."

On local TV news: "When I was a kid, local news was the specter of Edward R.Murrow.
Serious, conscientious men and women reported it. It was sacred. ... I was watching a network affiliate station
the other day, and you got as much information as one would get from rifling through the yellow pages, kind of
quickly. This affiliate is struggling, so they're doing everything they can to remove all content whatsoever."

The talk-show host said he doubted that he had any impact on the presidential election.

"I would guess that very few votes were cast based on a joke that either I or Jay Leno made," Letterman said.
"If someone cast a vote based on one of our two interviews, I would be flattered."

Mr. Gore cited a study that found that 13 percent of Americans got "a good bit" of their news from shows like
Mr. Letterman's "Late Show" and "Saturday Night Live." For adults under 30, the figure was closer to 50 percent.
This drew a so-what reaction from Mr. Letterman and a reference to a comic strip already middle-aged when
he was young. "More people read the funny pages than the front page. But do they act on what they see in
`Blondie' on a given day? Do they say, `Here's what Dagwood did, so I'm gonna do it?' "

Letterman, who repeatedly pleaded ignorance on world affairs ("I went to state college," he explained)
said he enjoys having politicians and journalists as guests instead of actors.

"When I have guests with world experience, who actually do something for a living, you get legitimate opinion
and thoughtful conversation," he said. " With actors, the conversation is about makeup."