In the Newsroom

Everyone knows times are hard in the journalism industry but we sincerely hope it hasn’t gotten so bad over at WaPo that the publication is saving money by skimping on restroom supplies.

FBDC obtained an internal email from the newsroom yesterday indicating that at least one of its women’s restrooms was out of soap.

“[FYI], the ladies’ room on the fifth floor (near the 15th street elevators) is out of soap. i’m trying to see if someone can replenish supplies,” the email, from an anonymous source, said.

First WaPo was offering buyouts to newsroom employees. Now this?

“I cannot speak for the availability of hand soap in the women’s restrooms here,” WaPo‘s media reporter Erik Wemple told us. “In the restrooms that I use, hand-soap availability can be a touch spotty, but I hadn’t even given it a second thought till I received this e-mail. Stay on this!”

We will, Wemple. We will.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

This week The Daily Caller‘s Publisher Neil Patel played a prank on Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson by circulating an email to staff with a conked out Carlson. The email included the following orders and accompanying picture:

“Brian Danza and Chris Bedford have volunteered to build a bar for our new party room.  Tucker will be assisting them on the project and will be reporting to Danza for this purpose.  Tucker sometimes falls asleep on the job so please help Danza and Chris by giving Tucker a little kick if you see it happening again.  Thanks.”

When told of the picture, Carlson fully admitted to easily being able to fall asleep in public. Carlson referred to Patel as his “evil business partner” and remarked, “I sleep like a golden retriever, often and in public, so the shot could have been taken anywhere. I don’t care.”

Got an office prank you’d like to share with us? Write us at FishbowlDC@mediabistro.com or to me at Betsy@mediabistro.com.

The Daily Caller recently moved into a new, larger workspace in the same building over off Farragut Square. The publication, known for its loose rules, had parties in a room with a bar and keg. As you can see here, the new barroom is well underway. It’s not finished yet, but we’re told that it should be ready for gatherings soon. Details on who is working on this barroom assignment are mum, or “classified” as our source put it, but we’re pretty sure that reporter Matthew Boyle is not on construction detail.

In the final installment of this week’s Media Beat interview, Frank Rich, New York magazine columnist and executive producer of HBO’s Veep, discusses the meshing of politics and pop culture. Having covered Broadway for years, he says the nonstop spectacles, gaffes and minutiae that become “news” just make his job more fun.

“To watch [President Obama and Mitt Romney] grapple on the one hand with the changes in the news media [and] on one hand with the world of The Voice and American Idol, The Daily Show, and SNL, it’s fascinating,” Rich explained. “But people forget this didn’t used to be the case. It was considered a huge deal when Bill Clinton played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show 20 years ago. It’s a development that’s spiraling; it’s developing. It’s interesting to watch. It’s great theater.”

Watch the full video for Rich’s take on that supposed liberal media bias and to find out what he thinks the “real danger” in today’s news reporting is.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Part 1: Veep Executive Producer on DC: ‘Young People Jockeying for Power in Offices that Look Crummy’
Part 2: Frank Rich Compares New York Times and New York Magazine

The Chronicle of Higher Education Editor Liz McMillen, who fired blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley this week for a post concerning Black Studies, has responded to our questions. It would be easy to provide snappy reactions to some of her responses — and believe me, I’m tempted — but to be fair, we’ll let her words speak for themselves. If you have reactions you’d like us to consider publishing, send them to me at Betsy@mediabistro.com or to FishbowlDC@mediabistro.com. If you are late to this story and want a refresher on what happened, read here. You may also want to read Brad Phillips‘ take on how McMillen handled the controversy on his Mr. Media Training Blog here.

1. Why were there no proper standards in place to guide Naomi in what was acceptable and what was not? We do have guidelines in place for all of our bloggers. But this is the first time that any of our bloggers has written a post dismissing an entire discipline based on the titles of three in-progress dissertations and quick summaries. For any kind of opinion piece, that is intellectually sloppy and poorly argued.

2. Naomi took the steps you asked of her. She wrote the response to critics. Why then did you fire her? We asked Naomi to write a response to the criticisms. She again insisted that she did not have to read the dissertations to make a judgment of the field. In fact, she couldn’t have read the dissertations because they are not finished, but she could have offered something else, something stronger, to support her opinion.

3. Why did you cave to a group of strangers who are calling Naomi every disgusting name out there? We made our own judgment about Naomi’s post and determined that it and her response did not meet our editorial standards for opinion writing. The length and format of a piece do not negate the responsibility of the writer to offer informed opinion. Criticism of any discipline, including black studies, is legitimate as long as it’s not sloppy, overgeneralized, and badly argued.

4. Do you see your action at all being a disservice to all bloggers out there who are also not edited before they publish? Or perhaps do you see it as a teachable moment? Like many publications, we have added new blogs, some by our own reporters and some by outside contributors. It continues to be a learning experience.

Against a backdrop of buyouts and plummeting circulation and a disappointing Pulitzers outcome, a group of prominent WaPo journos met secretly at the Bethesda mansion of Bradley Graham, a former WaPo reporter, to talk to Steve Hills, president and general manager of the newspaper. Adweek has the story this morning. The meeting transpired on April 17.

Although the 10 or so journalists who attended agreed not to talk about the meeting, Adweek‘s Lucia Moses got someone yapping. Hills is one of three WaPo employees quoted in the story. He downplayed the importance of the meeting. The others: Executive Editor Steamed Marcus Brauchli and WaPo Ombudsman Patrick Pexton, neither of whom attended the apparently not so hush-hush meeting.

As the magazine states, if the goal was to get assurances that there would be no more cuts and to convince Hills that the newsroom needs more to produce the high-quality journalism and investigations it’s known for, they left disappointed. Question swirled around the fate of the investigations unit, a permanent group started by Bob Woodward in 1982 and a crown jewel of the paper.

Brauchli insists he is committed to investigative journalism and will not dismantle the unit. Pexton spoke of newsroom pressure to pick up the pace of reporting.

Early this morning Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard tweeted out a peculiar picture a dozen doughnuts along with a preciously placed issue of the Examiner, headlined “Gangs find profits in teen sex trade.”

Yum!

“Ah, the Leesburg Dunkin manager’s special in the corner won’t last long,” Bedard wrote. He clarified for FBDC that the “Dunkin manager’s special” is the chocolate, sprinkled one.

Bedard said he gets in to the Examiner‘s office early to prepare for radio hits. On Mondays he brings doughnuts for him and his coworkers, which he affectionately refers to as his “posse.”

As for the newspaper placed on the box, Bedard says “I pose and post the photo to announce that it’s donut time in the newsroom.”

To be sure, Bedard’s photograph did not go unnoticed. DC Dunkin’ Donuts tweeted at him: “Tx for keeping the Monday #traDDition alive! BTW: We need to create you a DD Cuppy Bobblehead for the collection.”

Bedard’s something of a bobblehead expert. The background image on his Twitter profile is a bunch of bobblehead dolls.

Steve Levingston penned a goodbye to his job as head of WaPo‘s “Political Bookworm” blog. The blog saw its final post yesterday. It’s safe to conclude that the early bird has eaten the worm. But Levingston offered readers zero explanation as to why the publication decided to abandon the blog.

“It’s time for Political Bookworm to close its doors,” Levingston wrote. “The range of books we’ve covered has spanned a wide spectrum: from tiny houses to major trade publishers to renowned university presses. We’ve had heated exchanges and thoughtful conversations — the signs of vibrant democratic life.”

WaPo‘s book coverage has waned in recent years. In January 2009, they shuttered the stand-alone Book World section and moved reviews to two pages within other sections.

Levingston isn’t leaving WaPo. He wrote that now he’ll be “writing for the Post in print and online” and editing nonfiction reviews for the publication.

FBDC asked Levingston the same question as a sole commenter on the blog’s final post: “Why?” Levingston never replied. We’ll update if he has anything to say.

Cathy Taylor is barely four months into her gig as the editor of Human Events and the conservative weekly is already facing a massive shakeup under her leadership.

Taylor recently terminated Tony Lee who spearheaded the publication’s election blog and also dropped Brian H. Darling, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a regular columnist for nearly four years. FishbowlDC hears there are more major changes on the horizon and possibly more layoffs.

Sources close to Human Events tell us Taylor is moving the news outlet, known for its hard right conservatism, into a more “big tent” direction with an emphasis on original reporting. There will be a relaunch of the paper product and website in mid April.

Despite not pulling in a profit, Human Events isn’t thought to be in financial trouble. It is funded by its parent company Eagle Publishing.

Dismissing Lee

Lee joined Human Events in late 2010. He was initially hired to report on politics and culture but moved into political analysis with the website’s launch of “The Chase,” an opinion blog on the Republican presidential field.

Lee faced long-term health issues before and during his tenure at Human Events. A source close to the publication told FishbowlDC that this was likely a major factor in his termination, but there was also a series of conflicts between him and Taylor regarding the direction of Human Events into more centrist territory. Multiple sources expressed doubt over Taylor’s bona fides as a conservative.

The New Direction

At the core of Human Event‘s makeover…

Read more

Last night, according to TV spies, The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza spent the night hanging out in Politico‘s newsroom as they did their livestream show. He observed backstage production and pestered politicos with lots of questions. He was dedicated. The date went long. He started at 6 p.m. and stayed until the end, which was 11:30ish.

So…presumably, Lizza was preparing for a piece on the show?

We reached out to Lizza for comment. As most reporters know, revealing too many details on upcoming stories is a serious no-no. “‘Spending the night with Politico‘ sounds so risqué!” he wrote FishbowlDC. “It was strictly platonic, I assure you. Probably shouldn’t say more than that, but nothing earth-shattering is in the works.”