Love and Romance

Say “Politico” three times in the bathroom mirror and Mike Allen shows up with an eBook. Say it four times and you have John Cassidy‘s gushing piece in the New Yorker.

In a lengthy defense of modern political reporting, Cassidy named several publications that offer up solid journalism in the field. Among them, the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, The Atlantic and HuffPost. But none were showered with kisses like Politico.

WSJ was mentioned twice. NYT also twice (with a separate mention for NYTimes.com). HuffPost, once. The Atlantic, once.

Politico was referenced four times. Love at first scooplet?

It’s worth noting that the D.C. publication’s original competitors, The Hill and Roll Call, weren’t mentioned at all. Looks like there’s a growing perception that Politico is now out of their league.

NBC Congressional Correspondent Luke Russert is playing matchmaker for his reporter pal Politico‘s Jake Sherman this week. Yesterday he put feelers out about Politico‘s Sherman to the popular daughters of GOP Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman.

“Don’t worry ladies, @JakeSherman is single!” Russert wrote on Twitter.  Unfortunately one of the pictures now associated to this tweet is a frog in a block of ice.

The ladies replied saying, “Oh good! Mary Anne was wonderin.”

Sherman doesn’t appear to be protesting. After the Huntsman’s daughters wrote, “Hook a sista up,” Sherman wrote, “Luke, you have your charge.”

Washington D.C. journos may be sad to hear that Katie Couric and her beau of five years Brooks Perlin are splitting up. NYP’s Page Six broke the news just after midnight Tuesday. Pictured below is the couple in happier times. They attended a number of events together, including the White House Correspondents’ Assoc. Dinner and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009. Perlin, 17 years Couric’s junior, is CFO of Eco Supply Centre, a green materials distributor.

There may be no love lost between Fox News PR and Politico after they declared Politico scribes unfit for their airwaves in a recent quote to The Daily Caller. But there is a heated romance going on between the publication and FNC anchor Bret Baier.

In today’s edition of Politico, not only did author Mike Allen devote the first three graphs of “Playbook” to his story on Baier, but the piece itself is two pages of graph after graph after graph of gushing evidence about just how terrific Baier is. It’s the sort of piece you hang on the refrigerator — for years.

Baier says the biggest thing he does in his work is …. he listens. This is deep listening, not your garden variety ignore your subject and move on. Is this supposed to be unusual for a reporter? Allen even had a GOP consultant study Baier’s TV tapes. He compares Bret to a Boy Scout with a “very sharp” knife. As analogies go, how great is that?

The bulk of the story reads like a publicist’s dream with quotes that sound like soundbites such as this one from Baier in which he remembers to include the obligatory mention of former Bureau Chief Brit Hume: “I always wanted to cover politics when the American people were interested in politics, and, as you know, that’s now,” Baier said. “And I always aspired to follow in my mentor, Brit Hume’s, footsteps, and I’ve done it, so I’m living what I wanted to do.”

We did learn one thing we didn’t know about Fox News. In page two of the bland, smoochified profile, it’s revealed that the network has a “Brain Room” — a room packed with briefing books — that Bret flees to before moderating debates.

Even if FNC PR hated Politico last week, surely they’re warming to them now.

A good rule of thumb to live by: Never let a jealous fiancé anywhere near a computer. Social media is an obvious no-no. Case in point: WRTI news anchor Windsor Johnston, who apparently seethed with jealousy when adoring female fans of her future husband, Sirius XM Radio host and former NPR Host of “Morning Edition”  Bob Edwards, began complimenting him. Windsor, who didn’t turn into a green-eyed monster, claims it was a friend who shot off nasty emails to a woman in Ohio. Phili.com’s Dan Gross had the scoop Wednesday.

One of the missives that Windsor didn’t write: “Are you unaware that Bob Edwards is engaged to be married? If you EVER post on his page again – well, you’d be smarter than you look.” She also didn’t accuse the woman of being in menopause even though the woman is just a few years older than Windsor, who is 34.

Edwards, 64 and obviously sexy, was NPR’s first host of “Morning Edition.” He held the job from 1979 to 2004. Despite high ratings, in 2004 NPR removed Edwards and brought in Steve Inskeep and Renée Montaigne to replace him. Colleagues like Cokie Roberts were none too pleased.

When The Daily Caller broke its widely-known “exclusive” that President Obama borrowed the title of his book “Audacity of Hope” from a sermon given by Reverend Jeremiah Wright in 1990, HuffPost media critic Jason Linkins was among the first to knock them for it.

He also cited Slate‘s Dave Weigel who earlier pointed out a post on BigGovernment.com that rehashed the story of Bill Ayers hosting a dinner for Obama in the ’90s: “Hey, Dave Weigel, what else is going on this morning?” Linkins wrote in his story. A little odd. But maybe not considering the relentless man crush he seems to have on Weigel.

Over the years, we’ve noticed a lot of cross referencing in stories and blog posts by Linkins and Weigel. We mean, a lot. Though Weigel tells us he doesn’t recall he and Linkins hanging out “one on one, ” they met through DCist and ever since, they come off like a team in their work. Like Sonny and Cher. Captain and Tennille. Laverne and Shirley. The Odd Couple.

Since 2009, Linkins has referenced Weigel by name in his media news stories no less than nine times. And that’s just on HuffPost. On his personal blog, we found two references, in one he gushed about Weigel, calling him “a really great person.” In an interview with Washingtonian, he named Weigel as one of D.C’s “especially” great reporters.

He must be. Maybe even perfect. Not one of the references to Weigel in Linkins’ reporting was negative. Media critic? “Maybe he’s just reading me on even days,” Weigel joked to FishbowlDC.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the fierce, almost boyfriend-like defense Linkins offered up for Weigel over the JournoList scandal that resulted in Weigel’s resignation from WaPo. (He said FBDC should die in a fire for breaking the story.)

Weigel has returned the back rub, though to a much lesser extent. He has dropped Linkins’ name on Slate at least five times in the last two years.

The turkey coma has finally worn off enough to offer belated our congratulations to CQ Roll Call’s Peter King.  Peter and his wife, BNA’s Heather Rothman, celebrated the holiday by welcoming to the world Eli Wilson King at 10.29 pm on Thanksgiving Day.  The little pilgrim weighed in at nine pounds, seven ounces and measured nearly 22 inches.  Fun fact: Eli’s big sister Abigail was born the day after Christmas two years ago.  Congrats to Peter, Heather and Abigail.  And welcome to the Fishbowl, Eli!

Note to readers: The bizarre pilgrim baby photo is not actually Eli but it is representative of the way we imagine him.

Here in the Fishbowl it’s beyond rare to receive a note of praise for Newsweek/The Daily Beast‘s Washington Bureau Chief Howard Kurtz. In fact, it hasn’t occurred since I started working here in December 2009. But this weekend an anonymous Fishbowl reader broke the spell and wrote in the following note of admiration. Since it is “anonymous,” one never knows if it’s the person himself writing in, but we’re giving Howie the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t write his own fan mail. Same goes for Current TV’s David Shuster, though we’re less convinced that Shu didn’t have a hand in this.

“Love, love, love Howard Kurtz’s F-you to NBC News this morning.  He and his guests trashed Chelsea Clinton’s hire, with one guest referring to NBC as the “Nepotism Broadcast Company.”.  In the very next segment, Howard brought on David Shuster to talk about political news. Shuster was smart and interesting, as always… not so subtly reinforcing the idiocy of NBC News. Kudos to Kurtz.”

Note to the admirer: If your feelings for Howie continue to grow, write us again. Within the confines of good judgment, we’ll print it.

SKDKnickerbocker’s Andrew Shipley and wife, Laura, welcomed to the world this week Henry Cole Shipley.  Baby Henry (who looks remarkably like an elfin rapper in this picture) was born at 11.56 pm on November 15th.  He weighs 8 lbs. 10 ounces and is 21 inches in length.  Congrats to the proud parents and welcome to the Fishbowl, Henry!   h/t Drew Cole

On Monday The Daily Caller loaded up the cannon and blasted Politico for it’s cozy ties to MSNBC. The charge: liberal bias. Politico reacted to the ugliness by going into a self-induced coma, staying mute on all of it. Even Fake Jim VandeHei responded on Twitter by asking, “What’s The Daily Caller?”

But by late Monday the rumor mill was whirling: Politico was coming after the publication with what was expected to be a hit piece on Executive Editor David Martosko, who came to the publication in July with no journalism experience and a long rap sheet.

Anticipation heightened. On Tuesday the piece by Politico‘s Keach Hagey emerged and it was…nice. It questioned Martosko’s truthiness in an overall condescending tone one might expect from a Goliath publication analyzing a smaller one “with growing pains,” but it also praised the two-year-old outlet — repeatedly and even allowed Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson to take a jab at Politico. She wrote, “To this day, Carlson won’t call the site conservative, only quipping, ‘I would say we are probably more conservative than POLITICO.’” The story concluded on a lighthearted note from a former Daily Caller reporter that seemed to save Martosko, a recovering alcoholic, if, in fact, he needs saving. Jeff Winkler, who left in August, told Hagey, “The only complaint I have against Martosko was his sunny disposition. His friendliness drove me to the bottle.”

To be sure, there was heavy chatter about the story at Carlson’s book party for Jack Abramoff last night. Just one Politico reporter, Patrick Gavin, attended.  Reaction was largely surprise that the story wasn’t scathing and disappointment that Politico didn’t have any real juice on them. “Weak” was among the words used. They wanted a worthy battle and instead got hit with Nerf balls. At least one party guest believes this is tactic — that Politico will eventually return fire with fire. It could come sooner than anyone thinks. Daily Caller Publisher Neil Patel went on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss what he believes are Politico‘s liberal leanings with host Steve Doocy, whom MSNBC’s Ed Schultz refers to as “Douchey.”

Back at the Abramoff party, there was heated discussion on which reporters cracked under Hagey and helped with her story. Many guesses. But no one would fess up, not even Roll Call‘s Jonathan Strong, who declined to comment for Hagey’s story and insisted in Carlson’s living room that he was not among the moles.

Read the full piece here.