Once a year for the past three years, female TV news personalities have come together to wear pink and raise money for a local deserving cause. They call themselves “newsbabes.”

This year the charity group will host its annual Bash for Breast Cancer on June 27, and organizers are expecting it to be the biggest event yet. The fundraiser will be at The Hamilton and will raise money for Howard University Cancer Center, which specializes in research and prevention of cancer among minorities.

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So you’ve been given a major award and you plan to graciously accept it with a speech about how you got where you are in life, the people who helped you along the way, how humbled you are to even have been nominated, etc., etc., etc. Well, you’re a fool.

Take a lesson from Fox New Chairman Roger Ailes, who knows exactly what award acceptance speeches are really for: shrewd attacks on political enemies, deft displays of one’s lack of self-awareness and boldly told, yet mostly discredited conspiracy theories.

Ailes was at the Kennedy Center last night to receive the Bradley Prize from the Bradley Foundation, a conservative group that honors those it thinks have most advanced its mission of limited government and free markets. After Ailes said he was donating the $250,000 that comes with the award to a charity for senior citizens, he got right down to business. Here’s the Cliff Notes version: American exceptionalism, immigrants, Benghazi, President Obama, election fraud (with poor people), immigration again, the IRS, healthcare, and some more American exceptionalism. Read on for a few choice selections:

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The new Washington Examiner has hired away two reporters from The Washington Times. They are Susan Crabtree and Sean Lengell.

Crabtree said the decision was a difficult one. “The Examiner made me a good offer and I’m excited about the new team,” she told FishbowlDC. “But the decision was not any easy one. My friends and colleagues at the Washington Times were some of the best people I’ve worked with in 20 years in the business.”

Quotes of the Day

“Her internship application was impressive!” — NPR Morning Edition.

On Journalism.

“In this city, talking on the record is so rare, that when someone does it on something important, we make him the story, not what he says.” — AP investigative reporter Matt Apuzzo.

“If you’re a journalist and your first instinct in the Snowden case is to attack him, maybe you should consider a different line of work.” — The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza.

Huh? Someone get this woman a manicure. Pronto!

“I bit my nails down too far then painted them a heinous, white-out-esque color. I am scared to remove. Physical pain or sartorial pain?” — Marta, a Capitol Hill communications aide.

Attn: Publicists

“Note to PR folks: I just programmed my Outlook account to delete any message with the words ‘Interview Opp’ in the subject. kthanksbye.” — Mother Jones‘ Josh Harkinson.

Convo Between Two Media Types

This morning’s conversation is between The Daily Caller‘s Alex Pappas and conservative blogger Matt Mackowiack. It transpired at about 4:15 a.m. this morning.

PAPPAS: “Do you ever sleep? You tweet at all hours!”

MACKOWIACK: “I’m sleeping now.”

Columnist gets “fishy” emails

“Dear @BarackObama — I’ve been getting some fishy emails about the NSA tracking my phone calls. That can’t possibly be true, right?” – Washington Examiner‘s David Freddoso.

Politico Playbook Publish Time: 7:56 a.m.

Reporter runs out of gas

“To make my day even more interesting the rental car I got ran out of gas two blocks after I picked up the car.” — Pittsburgh Tribune-Review political reporter Salena Zito, who has also written for TPM.

BuzzFeed Editor tries love, peace and understanding

“:(. Our kids will be teenagers soon enough. There but for the grace of god?” — BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith to TPM‘s Josh Marshall and BuzzFeed’s John Stanton regarding the story on Sen. Jeff Flake‘s (R-Ariz.) son tweeting racial slurs against blacks and Jews.

And another.

“Glad my parents weren’t personally accountable for the crap I pulled growing up. Kids need freedom to make mistakes.” — Radley Balko, senior writer, HuffPost.

Journo TV habits

“Watching #ImHavingTheirBaby. I love @oxygen for showing tough, courageous decision to carry and put a baby up for adoption. Important.” — MSNBC’s “The Cycle” Co-host S.E. Cupp.

And Trump hates “Modern Family”

“Just tried watching Modern Family – written by a moron, really boring. Writer has the mind of a very dumb and backward child. Sorry Danny!” — America’s know-it-all Donald Trump.

HuffPost

Politico

Roll Call

“There is power in looking,” said bell hooks, in Black Looks: Race and Representation, back in 1992. She encouraged black women to develop a critical gaze toward the way they were represented in Hollywood films as a means to create  their own identities. Things have come a long way since then; the world now knows its first black president. However, that’s not saying that race and identity issues no longer exist.

At The Root, freelancers have the opportunity to join the discussion about topics affecting the black community today. The online publication, launched in 2008, covers the nation’s biggest news stories — with an African-American angle. “The idea was to bring smart, thoughtful pieces that bring a black perspective to the news of the day and reflect the conversations that black people are having,” explained Lauren Williams, deputy editor.

The  pub welcomes freelancers to share their stories and experiences, given that they provide a fresh and creative prespective.

For pitching etiquette and editors’ contact info, read How To Pitch: The Root.

– Sherry Yuan

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

Broach the most difficult topics in the world with sex columnist and author Dan Savage –we’re talking every kind of sex imaginable including the kinds that involve animals, children and feces (seriously, this exists) — and he has no problem talking about any of it.

Just so long as he’s behind a computer screen or telephone receiver. “I’m very brave behind my computer,” he says.

But ask if any of the tens of thousands of questions he has received over the years have ever given him an idea in bed and suddenly he’s…shy? And seriously turning various shades of crimson. “I get all freaked out,” he says of people confronting him in person on personal matters. “I’m shy.”

He politely apologizes and explains that his husband, Terry Miller, a hot underwear and swim model, once told him he could write about sex all he wants. Just not about sex with him. Savage wouldn’t answer the question specifically, but said that yes, some questions have made him sexually curious.

Savage showed up to the roof of the W Hotel in downtown Washington Sunday night for an event organized by BrandlinkDC. For three hours he faced a packed room of raging Dan Savage fans to sign copies of his new book, American Savage: Insights, Slights and Flights on Faith, Sex, Love and Politics. “I love low-rise cities,” he says when asked what he thinks of Washington. “I have more friends here than I do in Seattle, Washington,” where he lives.

He says strangers often consult him about sex and he’s faced with pointed questions wherever he goes. “People have asked me questions in urinals,” he explains.

Before we met him, we were told he was “down-to-earth” and “super chill.” All that, in fact, was true. But one thing he isn’t so super calm about, even now, was the time… Read more

With more technology comes more opportunity for minor mishaps. “Face the Nation”s Vine account proves it.

Vine is still a new type of online social network, so not everyone in media has caught on yet. It allows users to take 6-second mini-movies and share them with followers. Until Wednesday, the CBS program had uploaded two separate videos to its official account.

The first video, posted in May, appeared to be a behind-the-scenes look at “Face the Nation.” It showed the inside of an office with a few people working at computers and one woman staring into the camera, seemingly confused.

The second video… Read more

Today we perused the opinion-laced pages of HuffPost, mostly so you don’t have to. Here’s what we found:

Job Advice for Your Post-Pipsqueak Years 

HuffPost senior editor Anne Brenoff has some tips for those of you who might be seeking a job later in life, say after you’ve hit 45. The real promise here, though, is that these will be tips we haven’t seen a “million” times already. Her first? Emphasize your experience. Nope, never saw that one. We’re not sure how one would de-emphasize experience in a job hunt. Maybe it involves hiding your resume from HR? Making them answer riddles to figure out what your last job was? It doesn’t really get better from there. Aside from her penchant for attaching less than flattering labels to everyone around her (Pipsqueak, 20-something hipster, millennial—trust us, the way some of you use that last one, it’s not flattering) and telling us to address age-related stereotypes head on in the same column, she recounts a bizarre desire to correct a 30-something interviewer who had the absolute, unmitigated gall to not yet be married. Horror! The shame! Do tell, Anne. At what age should we all have been married to meet your approval?

Who Gave Justice John Roberts a Copy of the Gay Agenda? Who?!

In the category of it’s about time someone brought this up, HuffPost’s Gay Voices editor-at-large Michael Signorile recounts the Supreme Court’s arguments over DOMA and how a few Justices, namely Chief Justice John Roberts, made it a point to emphasize the supposed political clout of an “‘all-powerful’ gay lobby.” The argument is more serious than most probably realize, as a group’s political power plays a big part in how courts decide to review the way government treats them. As stupid as it seems, if you become too good at fighting discrimination, our legal system gives the government greater latitude to discriminate. Signorile doesn’t get into those legal nuances, but he does point out the obvious: the idea that gays have risen to the point that they don’t need the Court’s protection is a right-wing fiction along the same lines of the gay agenda. You know, the one it seems they’ve always got a copy of?

If you use a computer, are you a conformist?

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Bob Massi, a legal analyst for Fox News, may have more lookalikes than anyone in the United States. So if FNC ever needs a stand in there are plenty of options. But to keep things manageable, we’ve chosen three. They include TNR‘s Leon Wieseltier, Kenny Rogers, and actor Christopher Lloyd, who plays Doc Brown, the scientist in Back to the Future. (He could also be the guy on the Quaker Oats box, Captain Kangaroo, in certain lighting, Michael Landon and weirdly Wayne Newton.)