NPR recently moved from Chinatown into its new 400,000 square-foot home on North Capitol, and they’re excited about it. Eager to show off the new facility, the organization offered a tour to members of the media Tuesday morning, starting with breakfast from their in-house chefs, along with some talking points from CEO Gary Knell, who outlined some impressive features of the space.

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Tim Mak, a reporter for Politico Pro Defense and coauthor of Politico’s Morning Defense blog, is leaving for a new job at the Washington Examiner.

Mak tells FishbowlDC he’ll cover breaking news in Congress and national security.

The news broke today when Byron Tau, Politico’s lobbying and influence reporter, sent an email inviting colleagues to a soirée in Mak’s honor, with a promise to “celebrate the man, the myth, the legend,” this Friday night.

Mak started at Politico on the breaking news desk. Congrats to Mak, and best of luck with the new job.

Not just one of you, but two (two!) of you have so little to do with your time that you made it a point to get in touch and express disapproval of yesterday’s spotted feature, wherein Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, paid a visit to The City Church.

Dynamite post of the week (then again, it’s onlybMonday): Spotted: Sen. Harry Reid at City Church. With a great back of the head photo that could have been a zillion other people. Needless to say, I was riveted

As were we. We would’ve said enthralled, though, but riveted works, too.

Re: Reid photo choice: You’d be a great selection to head the photo staff at the Chicago Sun-Times

Ha. Good one. But seriously? How is it that you don’t recognize the back of Reid’s head? Are you really Washington journalists? We don’t think you’re really Washington journalists.

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Earlier today, DC police evacuated CBS News‘ Washington bureau and shut down a section of M Street over a suspicious package that turned out to be just a harmless suitcase.

Those on site reported that police brought in a robot an an x-ray machine before giving everyone the all-clear to go back inside.

Tweets and pictures from the scene, after the jump…

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Defense One, a new site from Atlantic Media, announced that Politico’s Stephanie Gaskell will join the site as a senior reporter and associate editor.

“Stephanie is a true pro, well-known across the military beat for her no-nonsense style and fair voice,” Kevin Baron, Defense One’s executive editor, said in a news release. “Having covered New York City, two wars, and now Washington, D.C., from the Pentagon to Congress and industry, Stephanie was an obvious fit for Defense One, which will benefit tremendously from her respected track record of unabashed journalism and eye for the stories that matter to readers.”

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Politico’s Editor-in-Chief John Harris and Executive Editor Jim VandeHei recently sat down with The New Republic’s senior editor Isaac Chotiner for a two-hour interview. They talked about Politico’s role as an insidery conversation driver, about market corrections in politics (as in the flame outs of Sarah Palin, Herman Cain) and who on Capitol Hill is savvy when it comes to the media (not many, says VandeHei).

It seemed like a pretty ho-hum if not overly positive interview, at least until Chotiner brought up the charge that some women find Politico a difficult place to work. Harris responds rather matter of factly and tosses in a little deflection. He tells TNR that in the beginning, Politico was a startup and it was a difficult place for everyone to work, not just women. If that sounds like a PR-crafted soundbite, it just might be because VandeHei says sort of the same thing, just not so tactfully and with an obvious air of being on the defense. “Wait a second,” he says to Chotiner. “I want to add to what John said. I find this critique both offensive and wrong.”

From there, things went downhill. What was that about who has media savvy and who doesn’t?

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Yesterday, the White House released a transcript of a press briefing with Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor, that had a pretty big typo. Talking about the difference between the American and European response to Syria, the White House said that Rhodes remarked:

“…in fact, I think on Syria as a general matter we have been a leading provider of humanitarian assistance, on lethal assistance, and we’re taking this step to provide support for the military opposition.”

Emphasis added. This morning, the press office issued a correction noting that he’d actually said non-lethal assistance.

Oops!

We can see it now. The 10 angry facial expressions of NBC Political Director Chuck Todd. The 7 safari animals that most resemble Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd with a cornucopia of mustaches and facial hair ensembles — which one is best? Oh wait — in May of last year they already ran a listicle on Chuck Todd’s goatee on everybody.

The old-school newsman is at odds with BuzzFeed this morning. The last 18 hours has been a flurry of controversy ever since BuzzFeed butchered an embargo set by PBS on President Obama‘s appearance on “The Charlie Rose Show” last night. The embargo was set for 11 p.m. BuzzFeed broke it and ran a preliminary transcript of the interview at 3:45 p.m. And soon, others such as WaPo, which sought permission from PBS to break the embargo after BuzzFeed did, followed.

Was BuzzFeed in the wrong? Will Todd get over it and should he?

“We take agreements with sources very seriously. In this case, there wasn’t one,” BuzzFeed Political Editor McKay Coppins told FishbowlDC early this morning. When pressed, he added, “An embargo is an agreement, not a command.”

Todd aggressively disagreed. “Come on. It’s a crappy thing to do to PBS,” he wrote on Twitter last night. “It’s Charlie Rose’s interview. Not mine. Not BuzzFeed’s. The entire thing airs tonight.”

He went deep with it, talking about honor and manners. “This is not a legal dispute,” he wrote. “It’s about basic manners … it’s about whether there’s any honor left.” He spoke of old, worn established media rules. “Many news orgs are respecting PBS 11 p.m. ET embargo on the Rose POTUS interview. Some have chosen to ignore. Who changed the ‘rules?’ Wow, so in the obsessive world of trying to get clicks, we have news orgs no longer respecting embargoes. Can we have some rules respected?”

Todd has had a mostly warm relationship with BuzzFeed and has had the outlet’s reporters on his program, MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.” But he has bristled at the name, saying repeatedly that he doesn’t like it. In November of last year, theGrio.com‘s Perry Bacon praised BuzzFeed on “The Daily Rundown” and Todd cracked, “I’m not crazy about the name. I agree, I agree, the work is good, but the name sort of bothers me. BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed? Sounds like electroshock [unintelligible word] therapy.”

Others quickly jumped on Todd’s embargo bandwagon. TIME‘s Mark Halperin wrote on Twitter, “history + digital + fast food, hit-and-run culture. Forward an embargoed email to your non-pro cousin, have ‘em email back. Presto.” Mark H. Anbinder, contributing editor at TidBITS, added, “There’s a generation of reporters (I hesitate to say ‘journalists’) without proper training who don’t know what an embargo is.” And James David Dickson, op-ed editor for The Detroit News, answered Todd’s thoughts on honor, saying, “You live in Washington and ask if ‘there’s any honor left’ No, Chuck. There isn’t.”

But even those with time in the business don’t all agree with that. Commentary‘s John Podhoretz, among others at BuzzFeed, remarked that no agreement existed, and Todd argued that the “golden rule applies.” Still, Podhoretz insisted, “If PBS sends out transcripts that simply state there’s an embargo, no agreement exists on embargo.”

Which happens to be BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith‘s take on off-the-record interviews. Ever since his days of manning a blog at Politico, he has consistently vocalized his staunch belief that they are agreements to be forged, not assumptions. “Is this like implied off the record?” he asked on Twitter last night. Coppins backed him, saying, “Is it that crazy? I see the golden rule arg, but if we never agreed to an embargo, why are we bound?”

Officially bound or not, a longtime Washington editor declared BuzzFeed “wrong” and had this ominous thought: “What BuzzFeed did was wrong, and they will pay the price by not getting embargoed transcripts in the future. There has to be an agreement for speaking on background or off the record. The same principle doesn’t apply to embargoes.” And Eric Koch, a Democratic strategist and flack who formerly worked on Capitol Hill, warned, “Issue is flacks (like me) will probably just stop sending stuff out and giving people time to plan.”

With that very real prospect in site, some scribes are not pleased by this apparent new way of doing things. A political reporter who spoke to FishbowlDC anonymously said it was a “pretty shitty” thing for BuzzFeed to do. Read more

Quotes of the Day

Howie uses the f-word

“F-word: For those who object to my calling Daily Show fake news, Jon Stewart has used it many times. Doesn’t mean criticisms aren’t real.” — CNN and Daily Download‘s Howard Kurtz. Damn, we thought for a moment he was actually dropping an f-bomb.

AnonymASS Tipster of the Day I: “Dynamite post of the week (then again, it’s onlybMonday [sic]): Spotted: Sen. Harry Reid at City Church. With a great back of the head photo that could have been a zillion other people. Needless to say, I was riveted.” Thanks Ass. So glad you wrote in! Yes, it was only Monday, and actually it was, in fact, Sen. Reid. There were riveting pictures of the front of his face that we didn’t show you.

Reporter wants to shoot up coffee

“It’s one of those just-inject-the-coffee-directly-into-my-veins kinda days.” — National Journal‘s Elahe Izadi.

Politico Playbook Publish Time: Whoa! 5:25 a.m.

AnonymASS Tipster of the Day II: “Do a story about DCRTV Dave Hughes!” Great idea! We have. Gobs of them. See here, here and here. We’re bored of that washed up lizard for the time being, and he hasn’t blatantly stolen anyone else’s copy lately.

Stephen Tschida Condo Update

“Kids the condo quest continues… the first board rejected me because of my boys. This time another problem… 48 hours to make it work!” — ABC7′s Stephen Tschida. By his “boys” he means his adorable pooches pictured here.

Sadness is…

“Grim fatherless fathers day here at Casa Frum/Crittenden.” — Daily Beast/Newsweek and CNN Contributor David Frum.

“When I walk into the spare bedroom in my house where Dad frequently stayed when he was sick, I can feel his presence as if he were still suffering there in bed, and I think, ‘Dad, I miss you.’ But then guilt and self-doubt strike. Did I miss you yesterday? Did I even think about you yesterday? Is the memory of you beginning to fade already? Am I sometimes still too busy with work to reserve even a few precious seconds every single day for the man who gave me life? God knows I neglected him enough as his life slowed down and mine sped up.” — Rare Editor-in-Chief Brett Decker in a Father’s Day first-person remembrance. Read the whole story here.

This just in from Talking Points Memo political reporter Benjy Sarlin…

“As of June 3, I am now reporting for MSNBC and Hardball, based out of NBC’s Washington bureau. My new work e-mail is [BLANK] and you can reach me at the office by phone at [BLANK]. Please update your records and apologies for the mass e-mail!”

Politico previously reported the memo on new MSNBC hires. And on Monday, the New York Observer reported additional hires, including reporters Irin Carmon, Timothy Noah and a new social media editor, Nisha Chittal. Carmon is from Salon, Noah hails from TNR and Chittal was at the Travel Channel.