MSNBC and Keith Olbermann parted ways Friday, seemingly out of the blue, except, perhaps, for some at the Iowa State Daily.

On the morning of Jan. 21, due to an error on my part while submitting an article through our online submission service at the Daily, said article was published online for approximately an hour and a half. In the article, I referred to Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” segment.

In the brief time my article was up, Olbermann himself saw it and felt the need to fire off an e-mail chiding me for not fact-checking properly.

As you can see in the attached screenshot, I agreed in a very general sense that the segment was canceled insofar as it had not yet returned. However, the link to which I referred was little more than a video from the Jan. 10 episode of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” in which Olbermann stated in no uncertain terms that the segment would return. So I posed to Olbermann whether or not the segment was going to make a comeback.

There was no reply. The sheer fact Olbermann had sent me an e-mail, had taken an interest enough in my article to do so, left me confused.

With that confusion I contacted the MSNBC News Communications office. I was instructed to e-mail Lauren Skowronski, communications director for MSNBC.

As you can see in the second attached screenshot, I asked simply if Olbermann had been right Jan. 10 or if he had been right Friday; he was not agreeing with himself.

The e-mail was sent at 4 p.m. Friday to Skowronski; she never replied.

At 9:45 p.m. or so, I was shown a New York Times news alert that had appeared in a friend’s inbox: Olbermann’s contract with MSNBC was up.

While so far it seems the reason for his departure is unknown, I struggle to accept the story NBC is now telling: that Olbermann’s departure was weeks in the making.

If that’s the case, why would Keith Olbermann contact a columnist at a student newspaper on his last day at MSNBC to defend himself and his show when he knew it was going to be canceled that night? 

Whatever the reason for Olbermann’s sudden exit, my correspondence with him on his last day was intriguing, to say the least.