White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

TODAY show: President Clinton Talks Haiti, Wedding

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“Proud, grateful, wistful.”
That’s how former President Bill Clinton summed up his feelings about daughter Chelsea‘s upcoming summer nuptials to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in an interview with another former first daughter, TODAY show contributor Jenna Bush Hager. “I just hope I can keep it together when I walk her down the aisle.”

Hager sat down with Clinton in Miami, Florida at the third annual Clinton Global Initiative University, where over 1,300 students met with university officials and leaders from nonprofits to talk about creative solutions to today’s global issues. Included among the students were six from Haiti. President Barack Obama called upon Clinton and Hager’s father, former President George W. Bush, to help in relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake earlier this year.

One particular area of interest to both Clinton and Hager, a teacher and author when she’s not on NBC: education. Clinton says the issue is vitally important:
“The country needs to start educating its people, so what we’re trying to do now is use this as the beginning to total universal enrollment.”

Check out the entire interview below:

White House Correspondents' Dinner: Time Scores Big Guests

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More folks are clamoring for tickets to the 2010 White House Correspondents’ Dinner than ever before and we’re starting to learn who some of the lucky ticket bearers will be: WWD reports Time will be bringing Steven Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw, along with Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley.

Spielberg is no stranger to the WHCD or Washington; he was recently in D.C. to screen HBO’s latest miniseries “The Pacific” at the White House for the president. The Commander in Chief just happened to also be the number one person guests wanted to meet at last year’s WHCD, according to our random and unscientific poll at the 2009 Garden Brunch.

WHCI Garden Brunch 2009: Who Do You Want To Meet? from whcinsider on Vimeo.

CBS News' Mark Knoller To Receive WHCA Award

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Courtesy CBS News

We’ve heard that voice for more than thirty years. Now CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, 58, known around the Press Room for being the unofficial statistician of all things presidential, will be honored by the White House Correspondents’ Association with the Aldo Beckman award for sustained excellence in White House coverage. Knoller was a reporter with the Associated Press before joining CBS News in 1988 and has covered every president since Gerald Ford.

Check out Politico for more on Knoller’s award and others to be handed out at the 2010 WHCD.

Voto Latino's ON SERIES talk Green in DC

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Voto Latino, the non-profit organization founded by actress Rosario Dawson to promote American Latino youth civic participation, celebrated its five-year anniversary last month by kicking off its ON Series here in Washington, DC.  Dawson and Voto Latino Executive Director Maria Teresa Kumar were joined by the President’s Domestic Policy adviser Melody Barnes and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis for “ON: Greening the Next Generation Workforce” to discuss the role of Latino’s in the emerging green economy.

Voto Latino ON Series in DC from whcinsider on Vimeo.

BizBash Political Fund-Raising Primer

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The changing landscape of political fund-raising was the focus of the inaugural BizBash Media Eye Opener Breakfast Series discussion. CBS News’ Nancy Cordes moderated the panel that included The Ashcroft Group’s Juleanna Glover, Hillary Clinton’s former National Finance Director Jonathan Mantz, Wiley Rein’s Jan Baran and Lisa Spies from The LS Group.

Stephen Geer, who successfully helped raise some $500 million online during the 2008 presidential campaign as Director of Email and Online Fund-Raising at Obama for America, says Twitter will be a powerful fund-raising tool in the future but will never replace email.

BizBash Media Eye Opener Breakfast: Political Fund-Raising from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Grove Attacks WH Press Corps: The View from Michael’s

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Former Washingtonian and Washington Post reporter Lloyd Grove has picked up the attack against White House correspondents launched by Ana Marie Cox last year.  Ana Marie, did you spend anytime with Lloyd at Michael’s when you visited your new GQ editors in NYC? Grove’s Daily Beast blog recently harrumphed against the hardworking, hard tweeting members of the most exclusive club in Washington journalism – the ones who report to work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

While I enjoy Michael’s like the next media maven, what’s so wrong with covering the leader of the free world 30 feet from his office and home? Grove’s complaint about Robert Gibbs tweeting reminds of when we began putting Ross Perot and President Bush and a former governor by the name of Bill Clinton on Larry King Live in 1992.  Our newsroom colleagues lamented the end of journalism, but social media didn’t just start on the Internet; interactivity has always been an important part of journalism.

Ask Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s communications director, how much his press shop likes responding to the five reporters who call with follows on each White House reporters’ tweet.  Take a quick look at the stories and interviews done by NBC’s Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie as well as ABC’s Jake Tapper; you want them to pull back and tweet from Café Milano?

Tell WHC Insider what you think after reading Lloyd Grove’s column.

Garden Brunch Tweet for Moms in 2009

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2009 White House Correspondents Garden Brunch headliners Susan Axelrod (CURE Epilepsy) and Ann Curry (NBC News) led guests in a group tweet for mothers. This year’s brunch will be given in honor of Mothers Day Every Day and CURE Epilepsy.

WHCI Garden Brunch 2009: Mothers Day Every Day from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Defending Twinkies

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First Lady Michelle Obama is on the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine with a shiny red apple but last week she came to the defense of the Twinkie (the cream-filled sponge cake is apparently a favorite with the Obama girls).

The First Lady spoke with Newsweek’s editor Jon Meacham at the magazine’s Executive Forum in Washington about her Let’s Move initiative to fight childhood obesity.

She’s challenging grocery companies to rework their products and wants nutritional information put on food packaging that’s easier to understand. The First Lady draws a line at putting a warning label on Hostess Twinkies or Kellogg’s Froot Loops cereal but appeals to parents to use common sense when it comes to feeding their kids.

“I’m all in favor of good snacks. We grew up with snacks and chips. But we have to exercise more. Parents have to understand what’s in the Twinkie. So we don’t need a warning, we need information that’s easy to understand.”

The First Lady Defends Twinkies from whcinsider on Vimeo.

Social Networking and the 2010 Election

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Socnet

Now that the dust has settled and the 2009 election results have sunk in, the pondering and pontificating by the pundit elite (and not so elite) continues on cable news and online media sites about what the results mean for the president and the nation’s political future. Much of what is discussed is, and will continue to be, partisan in nature (as is the nature of cable news) and quite frankly, without much merit or solid research beyond party talking points and Wikipedia entries.

President Obama discusses SAVE awards at White House

Discussions have been playing out on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News on whether Obama’s coattails are still strong; whether 2009 elections are a prediction of the 2010 midterms; whether the GOP can turn 2 key gubernatorial wins into a midterm Congressional movement, and so on. Most of these are unknowns, but there is one major continuous thread of the ’08 and now ’09 election cycle that is guaranteed to be part of every successful future campaign whether GOP or Dem or Conservative or Independent: the integrated use of social media and online communications (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, SMA, web 2.0, etc), combined with an authentic, engaging candidate, must be paramount within a campaign’s overall strategy in order to be successful.

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