Wires

(A Sprinkling of What we Think you Ought to Know…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newt’s campaign still upset about tame audience– Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich complained Tuesday about NBC’s Brian Williams requesting that the audience remain silent during Monday’s debate. After experiencing a relatively docile audience during Thursday’s debate, the Gingrich camp is now getting conspiratorial. Kevin Kellems, a senior adviser to Gingrich, accused rival Mitt Romney‘s campaign of manipulating the makeup of the audience. “They definitely packed the room [with Romney supporters],” Kellems told HuffPost. Goddammit. Where are those moon colonists when you need them?

In jealous rage, The Atlantic calls Weigel a “raging jerk”– As bitchy as journalists can be, the ones on the Republican primary campaign trail have a lot to be happy about. They’re in Florida where the temperature is hanging around a balmy 70 degrees. But that doesn’t mean The Atlantic, founded in frigid Washington, has to be happy for them. On Thursday the magazine called out the braggy tweets from journos in Florida. They called Slate‘s Dave Weigel a “raging jerk” for sending out a tweet last week in which he said, “High on the pleasantness scale: That moment the Florida sun retreats behind a cloud.” And WaPo‘s Philip Rucker is “cruel” for tweeting about the “sunset in Ormond Beach.”

Two Speakers sit down for “This Week”– Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will appear on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to discuss his campaign and the Florida primary with ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper. Then it’s out with the old and in with the orange. Speaker John Boehner will be on after Gingrich to comment on the details of President Obama‘s State of the Union speech. Other guests: conservative columnist George Will, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, and conservative talk radio show host Laura Ingraham.

Editorial writer recalls “most embarrassing correction” of his career– After The Daily Caller‘s Matthew Lewis found glaring errors in a Thursday morning article about Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio published by Reuters, Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner offered up a quasi-defense of the wire service. In a blog post, he recalled his own time at Reuters and a mistake he once made that resulted in a dirty mudslide of corrections:

“[B]ecause it was the most important news of the day and it was rattling many markets, other Reuters reporters simply grabbed my wording to put into our stock report, bond stories, foreign exchange dispatches, and so on. So after I corrected the story, it triggered what my co-workers teased was a ‘global correction tsunami,’ as reporters throughout the world had to issue corrections because of my bungle. It was one of the moments in my career where I could have starred in a Southwest ‘Wanna get away?’ commercial.”

Klein went on to lambast Reuters for their errors Thursday, saying that it was different from his own experience because “this isn’t the type of breaking news financial news story that needs to be pumped out in minutes. It’s a longer feature that the writer and editor had more time to work on. There’s no excuse for being this sloppy.”

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Earlier on FishbowlDC: “The AP Byline Strike: The View from Washington”

“AP Byline Protest: Update”

From our tips box:

Glen Johnson, Ted Bridis and Laurie Kellman were the only APers in the DC bureau who broke the byline strike the last time. Wonder if they’re doing it again?

Click here to learn about the Associated Press’ three-day byline strike, which is to protest “the news agency’s proposals that would threaten job security, dramatically raise medical costs, and freeze wages.”

Turns out that Washington, D.C. played a crucial role in this strike. Although there is near unanimous participation in the strike here in Washington, sources tell FishbowlDC (DC has one of the AP’s strongest union shops in the country) that they almost didn’t participate…but not because they didn’t want to.

When the union decided to organize the protest last week, the D.C. bureau was initially reluctant, simply because the bureau’s size, coupled with the fact that reporters are hardly ever in one place at the same time, made it difficult to coordinate. As a result, they thought about taking action in a different way, but there was an outcry from union workers around the country: In order for this to work, Washington has to be on board for this to work.

And so, via email, the DC bureau got its act together and joined the protest.

Side note: Despite the protest, you may still notice that some bylines will appear on some articles. Why? If a story has source material, they are required to have a byline.

Yesterday we brought you the Associated Press’ new DC bureau reporting team. Today, we’ve obtained an internal memo from AP’s Ron Fournier concerning the wire service’s regional beat structure.

Join us after the jump…

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FishbowlDC has obtained an internal Associated Press memo, which outlines the wire service’s full reporting assignments here in DC. The list was sent to staffers today and goes into effect on Jan. 1.

Join us after the jump…

Read more

From the release:

The Associated Press announced today that it would restructure its regional reporting team in Washington to provide every state with regional representation in the nation’s capital by the start of the new Congressional year.

Under the plan, AP’s current corps of regional reporters will be reorganized into teams from four regions. They will be responsible for spot news from the Congressional delegations they cover and broader Washington issues affecting their region. The restructuring will provide AP regional Washington coverage for 28 states that now are not represented.

“Every state will soon have coverage from an AP Washington regional reporter,” said Michael Oreskes, AP managing editor for U.S. news. “Just as important, they’ll have a team focused on regional issues of vital relevance to them and, with the team structure, they will also have back-up.

“We believe this move will appreciably help our members at a time when many are hungry for news of their delegates in Washington. Where once we had no ‘local’ coverage, now we will.”

The teams will correspond geographically to the four regional editing desks now being established by AP across the U.S. and answer to news managers in each of them. The first desk, in Atlanta, was established earlier this year, followed by the East Desk, in Philadelphia. Locations of the two other regional desks have not been announced yet. Until they are, the Washington regional teams for the West and Midwest will report to regional managers to be named.

The new structure will allow the regional teams to prioritize needs for all the papers in their area and increase coverage of the most relevant and important news in their region. The reorganization will involve the reassignment of about 12 reporters into the four regions.

Reporters have been assigned to the regions. Beats and specific state responsibilities will be refined in the next few weeks.

We hear that Rob Doherty is leaving his position as Washington Bureau Chief for ThomsonReuters. He is heading to a PR firm in Bethesda called The Hatcher Group.

ALSO: A tipster tells us that former AP DC bureau chief Sandy Johnson has applied for Doherty’s position.

AP reports that “Newhouse News Service, a supplemental wire service founded in 1961, will close on Nov. 7, after the election.”

“The decision to close followed the direction of our clients, the editors of our papers,” said Linda Fibich, editor and Washington bureau chief. “They felt they could not afford to pay for a central Washington bureau at a time when they were steering all available resources to local coverage back at home.”

Remember when we reported that Sandy Johnson was out as AP D.C. Bureau chief? Looks like there are some sour grapes:

Ron Fournier says he regards Sandy Johnson, his predecessor as head of The Associated Press’s Washington bureau, as “a mentor.” Johnson, though, regards Fournier, who replaced her in a hard-feelings shake-up in May, as a threat to one of the most influential institutions in American journalism. “I loved the Washington bureau,” said Johnson, who left the AP after losing the prestigious position. “I just hope he doesn’t destroy it.”

From E&P:

The Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and some 25 daily papers have teamed up with AP’s Washington bureau for an unusual joint project that investigates congressional earmarks.

The project, set to be unveiled this weekend, includes a four-story package produced by the AP and a congressional earmarks database that will be available to all AP members.

The package, centered on a 2,200-word story, includes content supplied by 25 daily newspapers that have been reporting on the earmarks of their local congressional delegations since April. Earmarks are those federal budget items procured by local representatives specifically for local entities.