White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of one of the most powerful clubs in America.

WHC Weekend Update

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With less than two weeks until the White House Corespondents’ Dinner, the celebrity guest lists are growing.  The National Journal‘s roundup provides an overview of who’s who and who’s sitting where:

  • ABC: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Erin Andrews, Jane Lynch, Bob Iger, Senator Marco Rubio, Eric Holder,   Janet Napolitano, William Daley, Tom Donilon, Admiral Mike Mullen, Jeremy Bernard, Eric Stonestreet, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Senator Mark Kirk, Senator Amy Klobuchar
  • Bloomberg: Shaun White, Brooke Burke
  • Fortune: Mira Sorvino, Evan Williams
  • Fox News: Kate Hudson, who is coming with Greta van Susteren
  • The Hill: John Wall
  • Mother Jones: Sean Penn
  • The New Yorker: Jon Hamm, Zach Galifianakis, the Coen brothers
  • Newsweek: Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Colin Powell, Tina Brown, Barry Diller, Jon Favreau, Jason Sudeikis, Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg, Representative Aaron Schock
  • NPR: Michael Stipe, David Byrne, Scott Z. Burns, Annie Clark, Mike White, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice
  • People: Bristol Palin, Mindy Kaling, Steven Tyler, Chris Colfer
  • Time: Steve Buscemi, Senator Scott Brown,Terrence Winter, Tom Hooper, Tara Subkoff, Jay Roach, Danny Strong
  • USA Today: David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Rick Fox, Eliza Dushku
  • The Washington Post: Donald Trump

The guest lists are not the only thing in motion, this year’s White House Corespondents’ Garden Brunch is changing.  See Matt Dornic’s write up in FishbowlDC for the highlights.

Re-Introducing The National Journal

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Let’s forget the Midterm and focus on the more important news: National Journal’s relaunched itself today. The gist of Atlantic Media’s relaunch? Unified newsrooms!

Yes, NJ has combined CongressDaily and The Hotline into itself to form another political media hydra to wage war (and share links with) Politico, CQ-Roll Call and The Hill. But there’s also focus on original video content, faster web production and the new new cover story interview with President Obama 2.0.

The full release is after the jump.

[Read more…]

Chen: Fox News' front-row seat a "travesty of a decision"

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Fox News Channel Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett announced he’s joining National Journal as a Congressional Correspondent on September 3, just in time to avoid the new war over Fox News‘ front-row seat in the White House Briefing room.

Public Campaign, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Media Matters for America sent a letter Monday to the White House Correspondents Association in response to reports of News Corp.’s $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. In the letter they ask for the WHCA to “reconsider its decision to allow Fox News Channel a front-row seat in the White House briefing room” calling News Corp.’s donation “a massive ethical lapse that demonstrates Fox News’ inability to function as an objective media institution.”

Media Matters reports current WHCA President David Jackson of USA Today rejected the seating change request, stating: “The decision has been made.”

Jackson’s predecessor, Ed Chen who left Bloomberg News a few months ago and returned to the Natural Resources Defense Council, calls that decision “a travesty.”

Explaining further to Media Matters:
“The vacancy was created because of an ideological conflict,” he said, referring to [Helen] Thomas’ anti-Israel comments that led to her resignation. “To fill the vacancy with another cloud of ideological conflict was most unfortunate and inappropriate.”

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

"NewsHour," ABC News Cutting Back on RTCA Tables This Year

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McCain And Obama Square Off In First Presidential Debate

Jim Lehrer of PBS' "NewsHour"

Two of the news organizations that won’t be taking as many people to the RTCA dinner this year as in the past are PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and ABC News.

In conjunction with “Washington Week with Gwen Ifill & National Journal,” “The Newshour” normally takes 15 tables, but this year, it is down to just two. The show’s financial crunch in the last year, due to corporate underwriting cutbacks, has been well documented.

“It’s a tight economic climate and we can’t afford it,” says Rob Flynn, VP of communications and marketing. “The organization is important to us and we’d like to do more.” Indeed, Linda Scott, producer of Capitol Hill and Congressional coverage for “The NewsHour,” will serve as chair of next year’s dinner.

Despite the smaller presence, the “NewsHour” snagged a high-profile administration guest. Sitting at one of its tables will be retired Marine Gen. James Jones, the National Security Adviser, and his wife Diane.

Also at the tables: “NewsHour” correspondent (and soon to be co-anchor) Judy Woodruff, PBS President CEO Paula Kerger and her husband Joe Kerger; the new COO of PBS, Michael Jones and his wife, Vicki Hawkins-Jones; and Les Crystal, the president of MacNeil Lehrer Productions. Ms. Ifill won’t be in attendance because “Washington Week” duty calls.

ABC News' Jonathan Karl

ABC News' Jonathan Karl

ABC News, meanwhile, will have just a single table. George Stephanopoulos won’t be there, but Jonathan Karl, the network’s senior congressional correspondent, will be in attendance, and of course Robin Sproul, VP and Washington bureau chief.

“We made a decision to cut back and have a smaller presence at the dinner this year. Since the White House Correspondents’ dinner was Obama’s first journalism dinner as President, we had a greater presence there and the guests to show for it. We’d also rather focus our resources on covering the news right now,” said spokeswoman Emily Lenzner.