White House Correspondents Insider
Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.
The Washington Press Corps is proud of Savannah Guthrie who is moving to New York, but sad that she will be leaving Washington. Our hearts were lifted this morning with the news that Chuck Todd will continue to host “The Daily Rundown.”
Here is how our friends at TVNEWSER reported all the changes at NBC.
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.
Maddow to Bartend at MSNBC After-Party
Fox News set the bar for RTCA after-parties with its disco extravaganza in 2004, and this year, MSNBC will try to top it with Rachel Maddow, who will be mixing cocktails behind the bar. If that’s not enough, there will also be a chocolate fountain.
More than 400 guests are expected to cross the street from the Convention Center when the dinner ends to an MSNBC logo-swathed Washington Historical Society, at 801 K Street.
Maddow won’t be at the dinner; she’ll head to the party after doing her show; her “special cocktail” is being kept a tightly guarded secret. But an insider reveals the rest of the menu will include mini-milkshakes, ice cream bar, the chocolate fountain and breakfast, for those who stay to the bitter end. And a Starbucks Coffee Bar, in honor of the new “Morning Joe” sponsor. There won’t be a band, just a DJ.
MSNBC muscled in on the party after Fox News backed out. MSNBC was initially told Fox had locked up the Historical Society, the only party venue around in that part of town, and “It was this space or nothing,” said an insider. No official word on why Fox may have changed its mind but someone in the know said it was due to the ever-changing dinner date, from April 2 to June 4 to June 19, a Friday-and Father’s Day weekend, no less. (Many on-air talent types at all the networks are begging off this year because of the timing.)
NBC is going all-out with dinner tables, too, purchasing 13, which will seat administration guests including Attorney General Eric Holder; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisers to President Obama; White House economic adviser Larry Summers; Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Congressional guests include Sen. Susan Collins, R.-Maine, and Rep. David Obey, D.-Wisc.
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NBC’s lengthy list of on-air talent attending includes: Chris Matthews, Pete Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, Tom Costello, Savannah Guthrie, Jim Miklaszewski, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, John Harwood, David Schuster, Carlos Watson, Tamron Hall, Contessa Brewer, Monica Novotny, Alex Witt, Ed Schultz, Norah O’Donnell, Dylan Ratigan, Willie Geist, Kelly O’Donnell and Luke Russert, as well as a number of commentators and analysts (Lawrence O’Donnell, Ana Marie Cox, Michelle Bernard, Eugene Robinson and Richard Wolffe.)
Execs include NBC News President Steve Capus, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, SVP and Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker, and Betsy Fischer, the longtime exec producer of “Meet the Press.”
“This is our year, this is our time. We’re the place for politics and we really wanted to make a big splash in D.C. at this dinner,” said spokesman Jeremy Gaines.
Jennifer Loven with President George Bush at the 2008 WHCD.
The White House Correspondents Association “represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues,” the WHCA Web site says. Spearheading that duty is the WHCA president — currently Jennifer Loven, who covers 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for the Associated Press.
What does the duty involve? “As president of the association, you’re the go-to person between the White House and the reporters,” past-president Steve Scully of C-Span tells WHCInsider. (Loven declined to talk.)
“You mediate on issues like travel, or seating, on just about everything,” Scully continues. “And you really have to ride herd on the White House to get answers on anything that might come up.”
If anyone can get answers, it’s likely Loven. As NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd recently told WHCInsider, “Jennifer Loven decides when the briefings begin and end. [White House press secretary] Robert Gibbs knows. When it appears the pertinent questions of the day have been asked and everybody has gotten a shot, she closes it down.” [Read more…]
NBC WH Correspondent Chuck Todd
Elections usher in more than a new White House resident. It’s a time when the networks tap their new White House correspondent. For NBC, the highly regarded political analyst and editor Chuck Todd now occupies the NBC seat in the White House Briefing Room. While less than a mile away from his old perch at the Watergate as editor in chief of the Hotline, a back room backbencher of much political importance. WHCInsider talked with Todd about his much more public role. (He received an expensive old-fashioned shaving kit from a viewer when he won the NBC White House chair). Todd won’t comment on rumors he will be getting his own interview show on MSNBC, but he proudly shares anecdotes of 5-year-old Margaret and 2-year-old Harrison.
Chuck Todd
Q. What surprised you most about being a White House Correspondent?
A. The lack of physical access inside the White House. The high irony is we connect the two buildings, the White House to the West Wing. The folks in the white house get to decide where you sit, where you go. It is not new to this White House, it’s a every modern White House that’s controlling.
Q. Compare Obama campaign access vs. The White House?
A. The White House is more open and transparent than the campaign but only because you cannot run the White House in a tight circle of just five people.
Q. How about your transition into this reporter role?
A. I had a lot of real frustration. I don’t think Ana Maria Cox got it right about getting rid of the White House Correspondents. We still have a real value, but you have a lot of the good reporting outside the White House. It is easier to report from outside the White House. [Read more…]
Remarks Suggest President is Open to an Investigation
April 21 — Press secretary Robert Gibbs faced persistent questioning from the White House press corps, which focused primarily on whether President Obama is now open to possibly holding former Bush administration officials — including the former president — accountable for CIA interrogation methods of suspected terrorists.
In response to reporters after his meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah earlier in the day, Obama said, “If and when there needs to be a further accounting of what took place during this period, I think for Congress to examine ways that it can be done in a bipartisan fashion, outside of the typical hearing process that can sometimes break down and break it entirely along party lines, to the extent that there are independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility, that would probably be a more sensible approach to take.” [Read more…]
Chuck Todd Said to be in Line for New MSNBC Weekend Political Program
That’s what the New York Observer is reporting on its Web site, citing “multiple network sources.” Todd, once a contender to succeed the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” will start hosting a new show the cable channel will debut later this spring. The idea is to give Todd “more experience as a political moderator,” according to the story.
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