The Revolving Door

Veteran WaPo reporter David Hilzenrath, an award-winning journalist whose work includes coverage of financial fraud and the fed’s efforts to reform Wall Street and health care, is joining the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) to lead the organization’s investigations into government corruption, waste and abuse.

Hilzenrath started his career at WaPo as an intern in 1987 after graduating from Harvard.  He will be POGO’s editor-in-chief. His work at the Post has highlighted weaknesses in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s policing of Wall Street and shown how former Pentagon officials have used the revolving door for personal gain. He was also part of the team that covered the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Snoozer press release quote: “David’s top-notch investigative skills, passion for holding government accountable and deep knowledge of how this city operates will help take us to the next level,” POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said. “We’re thrilled he’s coming to POGO.”

Congrats to Hilzenrath!

Roll Call has been quietly grooming Senate reporter David Drucker for a new position: Associate Politics Editor for CQ Roll Call. It’s a role that hadn’t been filled ever since Roll Call‘s Christina Bellantoni left to become Political Director for PBS’ NewsHour. In a phone interview with FishbowlDC Monday, Drucker, a Malibu native, shed light on his career, a physical altercation he once had with actor Gary Busey‘s son, Jake, and why he thinks Hollywood celebrities seek Washington’s limelight.

What will you be doing in your new role? I’m going to sort of be a deputy, but I’m going to write regularly both in print and for At the Races campaign blog.

How do you feel about the switch? It’s exciting. When I originally came to Roll Call in ’05, I was on the politics team. As much as I love the Senate and all the Capitol Hill intrigue, I really love campaign politics. It’s something that I definitely made a choice to do, both in writing and in editing to help to drive our politics coverage. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Will you be doing a lot more TV? That’s my plan. My plan is for this position to help me in that regard, not hinder me. Everyone here has been really encouraging about wanting what I do media wise to continue and grow.

Are you comfortable on TV? Yes, more or less. I’d never done TV until the summer or fall of ’06. The first time I did it I figured it was pretty much a disaster. I joke around here that I am a media whore, but I enjoy going on TV and giving my analysis. I like the stage. I think it’s fun. I think it’s good for the paper. I hope it’s helpful to the paper, but I really enjoy doing it. I feel our PR has helped me get places I’ve wanted to go.

It’s no secret that it’s looking like CQ and Roll Call are officially merging. How do you feel about that? [Before journalism] I was in a different business. You have to be very vigilant and pay attention to the business side of things. My thumbnail sketch of journalism is maybe it was always this competitive, but I think it’s more competitive now than what it used to be. I used to sell home furnishing products, [which meant] always competing on price and delivery. We had to find creative ways of delivery. To me, this is what I’ve always done. Make sure you love what you do, but make sure you are at a company that is successful so you can make sure you can pay the rent. It’s one of the things I like about Roll Call. Even through the recession we have continued to make a profit.

What do you think about the potential of Roll Call being swallowed up by CQ? I think we still put out  a really good product. In any company there are changes. Most of the changes I’ve experienced are positive. Change isn’t always fun, but I look at it as something that goes along with a business. In some ways I consider myself to be a part of both CQ and Roll Call. In a lot of the ways we are marketed as both. I write for Roll Call according to the masthead. My name appears in Roll Call and I’m still proud of that. My general rule of thumb is as long as the checks still clear and it is well received I will be happy with all.

Tell me about your start in journalism. I got my start at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, in Ontario, California. Eventually they sent me to Sacramento, where I covered the ’03 recall campaign and Arnold Schwarzenegger. After he was elected governor, the parent paper in our group, the L.A. Daily News, hired me to cover him and state government from their Capitol bureau. I had a great time.

You grew up in California? Grew up in Malibu. You can only do so much in Malibu when you’re not surfer. I fashioned myself a basketball player when I was a kid. I’d do that rather than surfing. It was still fun to live at the beach. I went to UCLA.

So stars were clearly part of the culture. I saw them in the grocery store. You see them dressed in their ratty grungy worst. Dustin Hoffman used to jog at the Junior High School. I went to elementary school with Josh Evans, whose father was Ali MacGraw and Robert Evans. And Jake Busey [son of Gary Busey pictured at right). We actually got in a fight once. Oh nobody won. It was a stupid Jr. High School fight. He kicked, I kicked. There were Roy Orbison’s kids in my junior high. I haven’t thought about this in a long time. you get so used to it.

With the White House Correspondents’ Dinner coming up this weekend, why do you think Hollywood is so focused on Washington? How can I say this? I think Hollywood actors under value what they do. I think they provide a lot of entertainment to people that is actually meaningful. They make a lot of money. I think they don’t value what they do, and I think they think what we do here is valuable. They can tell a story and make people feel happy or sad. It’s actually very unifying. I think they undervalue it, so they look at us and think we’re doing something really important. I think you could tell this to any of them and they might think I’m ridiculously idiotic.

See the memo… Read more

Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of Atlantic Media Company‘s new global business brand, announced today that Michael Donohoe has joined as Product Engineering Director for the new brand, which will launch later this year.

Donohoe comes to Atlantic Media from RealNetworks, where he served as a senior software engineer, working on video and sharing web applications. According to a release issued this morning, he and his team of developers and designers “will design products that fit the needs of today’s global business executives, a new class of leaders who spend much of their physical and intellectual lives outside their native lands.”

Um, translation? “Michael is responsible for some of the most creative product and engineering work in digital media over the past five years,” said Delaney.  “His leadership will drive innovation across tablets, mobile devices, and the desktop web, to provide global business professionals with access to information instantly, conveniently, wherever they are.”

Prior to his work at RealNetworks, Donohoe worked at NYT as a member of the Client Technology group responsible for implementing key innovations at the NYTimes.com.  He won the Times Technology and Innovation Challenge five times, most prominently for his work on TimesNow, which became Times Wire.

CQ Roll Call is losing its CFO Chip Wallen to “new opportunities.” They say it wasn’t a “sudden” decision. They say they have “mixed emotions” about it. Nonetheless, the long and short of it is that he’s outta there!

The “national” hunt for a new CFO is underway.

See the effusive internal memo…

Read more

Agence France-Presse has a new Iraq Bureau Chief. It’s Prashant Rao, who is the outlet’s Baghdad Deputy Bureau Chief. “It’s going to be a fascinating year ahead,” he wrote on Twitter.

Congratulations to Rao, and stay safe!

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center in Washington, has laid off four reporters and two business-side staff members this week. The Center focuses on ethics and public service issues. iWatch News, the Center’s online publication, has sought to produce original investigative pieces on public issues.

A statement from Executive Director Bill Buzenberg released to FishbowlDC this afternoon reports the following: “Letting good people go is never easy. This adjustment to our budget going forward was necessary so the Center can continue to deliver vital investigative reporting to the public.”

We tried seeking further details on the firings from the center. “It’s fairly terse but it’s what we have right now,” said The Center for Public Integrity’s Spokesman Randy Barrett in a Tuesday afternoon phone call regarding Buzenberg’s statement above.

UPDATE: The Center’s total staff is comprised of 34 employees. The editorial staff now has 28 people.

UPDATE #2: This was the third series of departures at the Center for Public Integrity, which apparently had a record fundraising year in 2011. First was in December. Read here.

“In a rational world, it seems obvious…”

This is the promising start to an early morning memo from Politico‘s Editor-in-Chief John Harris to staff. Makes you wonder where he’s going with it. Our minds raced. 1. Mike Allen will attend Arianna Huffington‘s sleep away summer camp for insomniacs. 2. There will be an uprising during the next Politico live show in which Ginger Gibson, Juana Summers and Reid Epstein will all say f&@k on air. Or 3. National Politics Editor Charlie Mahtesian will soon begin writing a new blog called “Charlie Mahtesian on the American Political Landscape.”

Ding. Ding. Ding. If you guessed number three you’re onto something. Mahtesian will be relieved of some of his grueling line-editing duties to write the new blog but will remain Politics Editor. Harris says if anyone deserves more time in the cockpit and less in the control tower, it’s Mahtesian. On another important note, Dave Catanese will be taking “a breather” from his blogging responsibilities. Harris says news from his blog can just as easily be presented through quick news stories. What’s more, he says Catanese “excels on the road.”

See the internal memo…It’s all carefully worded to mitigate any possible bad feelings.

Read more

Laura Rozen, a longtime foreign policy writer in Washington, has left Yahoo! News. Today The Envoy, a news blog she wrote for the site, is being written by Dylan Stableford. This morning a story on Iran’s nuclear program by Rozen has turned up in Tablet, a site on Jewish news, ideas and culture. Interestingly enough, her bio there doesn’t even mention Yahoo! News and reads as follows:

“Laura Rozen reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C. She is a former senior policy reporter for Politico and Foreign Policy. Follow her on Twitter @LRozen.”

Her Twitter bio does not include any previous publications where she has worked, nor does her feed broach her leaving her most recent employer. We’ve reached out to Yahoo! News public relations for comment.

Atlantic Media president Justin Smith announced today that Tim Hartman has been named President of Government Executive Media Group. Government Executive is an information platform for federal agency leaders.

Hartman shifted to President after being Group Publisher for the past year and, prior to that, General Manager. “He has played a critical role in leading Government Executive through an extraordinary period of growth and innovation,” states a release.

Hartman joined Gov. Exec. Media Group in 2007.

That music you hear is from a game of musical chairs happening at CQ/Roll Call. The staff is in the process of reorganizing, reconfiguring and re-trying to figure out what the hell they’re going to do next.

First off, they’re hiring. Or, more correctly, they’ve hired. From the all-editorial staff email:

“We are bringing a new editor aboard to handle technology, labor and education. I’m excited to announce that it will be Jill Smallen, a former editor with National Journal. Jill will oversee Ambreen Ali on the tech beat, tech EB editor Gautham Nagesh, labor and immigration reporter David Harrison and education reporter Lauren Smith. Up until about a year and a half ago, Jill worked at NJ for two decades, most recently as a managing editor at National Journal magazine, where she handled congressional coverage. Before that she was senior managing editor at Congress Daily. She’ll join us on April 9.”

So congratulations to Jill and those she will oversee for getting mentions in the memo.

There are a bunch of other staff shake-ups, but all just rearranging and reorganizing.

The email opens:

“I’m happy to announce some changes in our policy teams, with a slightly different configuration and a couple of personnel shifts, all of which we expect will strengthen our coverage and better position us for the future.

The new lineup will take us from four policy domains to five so that the assignment editors can specialize more intensively in their respective areas, and better coordinate news coverage with our specialty publications and Executive Briefings. In this structure, the vertical and EB editors will report to the domain editors while Anne Hoy will continue to oversee the verticals and EBs from a product-suite standpoint. She’ll work with the business side and with editorial operations to make sure the products run smoothly, set publication schedules and generally monitor the progress and success of this growing product line. Anne will also continue to oversee the CQ leadership team (Alan Ota and Rich Cohen) as well as our new legal affairs/judiciary reporter, John Gramlich, who started today.”

Yeah, I know, my eyes glazed over too.

Congratulations to everyone at CQ/Roll Call, or I’m sorry. Not sure which applies to you, but whichever it is, there you go. At least you all still have chairs now that the music stopped. At least in this round.