CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.

"They wanted him out," according to a source.

Dobbs, who a source said had a year and a half to go on his $12 million contract, shocked viewers last Wednesday by announcing he was quitting.

CNN boss Jonathan Klein and Dobbs, 64, had been publicly feuding over the kind of reporting Dobbs was doing on his show -- especially stories about illegal immigration and the anti-Obama "birther" movement, which contends the president was not born in Hawaii and is not an American citizen.

But it was not clear until now that CNN was willing to pay Dobbs so much money to leave.

"What they do is their business," Dobbs said yesterday. "I tried to accommodate them as best I could, but I've said for many years now that neutrality is not part of my being."

Klein long believed Dobbs was at odds with CNN's desire to position itself as an opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals -- conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC.

8 million to take a vacation--what a deal!

What I found really interesting though was the last paragraph; "...at odds with CNN's desire to positions itself as opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals..."

Its an open question as to whether its even possible for a cable news channel to go out of business. Our experience with newspapers suggests that the lure of influence is so profoundly attractive, that some billionaire somewhere will pay big dollars for established brands regardless of the complete lack of a business plan. CNN may end up testing that premise in the cable news business.

There is an amazing irony is watching the network that created cable news, dwindle into irrelevancy and prospective extinction. I recall when CNN hit the big-time, and more importantly, how they did it. While the network news channels were spending big money on personalities, CNN was hiring actual reporters and opening bureaus around the world. When the Gulf War hit, the broadcast networks were scrambling to put people into place, but CNN was already there--in Baghdad and Kuwait. Of course the deals they made to be in those places bit them in the hiney later on, but the principle was sound--invest in reporting to build credibility and audience.

The rise of Fox and MSNBC is attributed, by virtual consensus, to the rise of opinion journalism. Well, you might already be aware of how little I value the "consensus". I was there, and I was paying attention and I remember clearly why I switched to Fox News at the beginning of this decade--all the news CNN was NOT reporting.

The firing of Lou Dobbs isn't about Dobbs himself, its about the stories CNN doesn't want discussed--immigration and the strange unwillingness of the Obama administration to finally bury the controversy over the President's birthplace. How long can a news network that doesn't investigate and report news, actually last?

The problem in the news business isn't that people have opinions--the problem is that they don't report the news.