Again, sorry for the sparse blogging. Some day, Monsieur Godot, more words will appear at this site. For now, the work time for this writer has been overwhelmed with business concerns – Pajamas business obviously. I spent the last few days Sleepless in DC (hanging out with Rich Miniter does that to people) playing a supervisory role for our coverage of the DLA Piper pre-election breakfast at the Willard Hotel, some of which is already up over at PJ. (About the Willard: definitely a great atmospheric place to stay, especially on company money. The rubric “lobbyist” came from the Nineteenth Century schmoozers making deals behind the pillars in the hotel’s neo-Classical lobby. I made a few paltry attempts myself…. but enough about that. )
After the breakfast at which Dick Armey and Dick Gephardt were of good cheer but bemoaned the partisanship of it all, I took microphone in hand and tromped off with our video guru Andrew Marcus and our business guru Sandra Rozanski to interview some key journalists around the nation’s capital. Our purpose: a Pajamas Media series we are launching with mainstream media players discussing the way things are going between new media (blogs, etc.) and old media and whether we can work and play well with each other. Given the season, I also asked them about the coming election and got the usual round of predictions, none startling but, hey, the video cameras were rolling.
Who were the big time Fourth Estate-ists I spoke with this first round? Tony Blankley of the Washington Times, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post (yes, I asked him about his appearance on Keith Olbermann in quail hunter drag), Nina Easton (Fortune’s Washington correspondent, also Fox News), Michael Barone (We could say Pajamas Media advisory board, but that would be bragging. Everyone knows Barone has more roles than Richard Burton. Minutes after I interviewed him, he was off in his capacity as Senior Writer for US News to interview this Bush guy who is trolling for votes. You could tell he was headed for something special because Michael was resplendent in a bespoke pinstriped suit with Hermes tie and matching handkerchief. Michael’s an agreeable guy but I doubt he’d be wearing duds like that for a Pajamas Media interview … yet.) Finally, I spoke with Chuck Todd, editor-in-chief of The Hotline. For those who don’t know that’s the Variety of politics, where the political insiders get their dope. Pajamas Media, alas, may soon have to subscribe pero cuesta mucho, hombre – six “large” per annum. Note to Chuck: Variety costs nowhere near that much. In fact it’s free to us Academy members during Oscar season.
Not surprisingly, none of these MSMers had that much bad to say about blogs anymore (at least to me), although more than one eyebrow was raised about that old bugaboo – the lack of formal editing/fact checking in the blogosphere. But when I countered to one of those skeptics, Nina Easton, that I had received more editing on this blog than I ever did writing for mainstream publications (for simple reasons of manpower), to her credit, she took my point. Anyway, more to come, some with our redoubtable cigar-smoking Washington editor Mr. Miniter at the helm.
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2 Comments
1. jedrury:The myth of editing.
If anyone thinks newspaper editors are green
Oct 26, 2006 - 5:47 am 2. heather:eye shade fact checkers like those presumably at the New Yorker are dreaming. Roger can probably inform us far better about the publishing industry but I feel that Maxwell Perkins died
a long time ago, not to replaced.
CORRECTION ALERT!: “lobbyist” is an old British parliamentary term. The fellas who wanted to chat with their Member of Parliament were not allowed to go beyond the lobby of the Houses of Parliament. Therefore, they waited in the lobby, and became “lobbyists.”
Also: I love reading about Euro history. The BBC publishes a magazine every month, with lots of great pictures, not very great articles, but what do you expect? Anyway, last night I looked through the thing again.. it is so sad. There they are, busily preserving, restoring, studying broken down churches and granerys and Elizabethan houses… with nary a thought that all that world of theirs will probably be gone by the end of the century. I don’t think the Wahabis will be terribly interested in British Historical Sites, do you?
Oct 26, 2006 - 10:07 am