Politico‘s Mike Allen is winning the morning start of the new C-SPAN digital bus that’s rolling around town today for a magnificent journo tour.

Here are the early morning pictures:

Mike Allen’s Mary Tyler Moore moment. He’s clearly taking the
day by storm. ‘Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly
make it all seem worthwhile?
…You’re gonna make it after all.’ (So the song goes…)

Mike Allen chats with C-SPAN Chairman and CEO Brian Lamb and
Communications Director Howard Mortman

Look for more pictures here as the day’s bus tour unfolds. And if you spot the bus, snap a photograph and send it to us at fishbowlDC@mediabistro.com.

With C-SPAN publishing a new book this week, The Supreme Court – A C-SPAN book featuring the Justices in their own words, it’s only natural that one of the judges would have thoughts on the media.

And they’re not all that flattering. (You’ve gotta love a Supreme Court Justice who sounds like he’d rather be doing anything besides reading what reporters have to say about the court.)

Here’s Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Fourth Estate:

On page 81 of the book, Kennedy discusses the media covering the Court. Here’s the exchange:

Q: What is your relationship as a justice with the long-term reporters covering the Court?
KENNEDY: I don’t see them on a regular basis other than in the court. Occasionally, there will be a retirement party at which we meet each other. We have each a professional obligation of keeping a certain amount of distance, a certain amount of independence. We never complain about what they write, even though they sometimes are wrong on the facts.

Q: But you do read what they write, obviously.
KENNEDY: Yes. I don’t really rush to do it. I am upset sometimes when I see an editorial, and it’s obvious they haven’t read the opinion and they don’t understand. The reason we write, as I explained, is to explain the reason for what we did. To just write an editorial that indicates that you’ve made up your mind without reading what we wrote is to me quite silly. But by and large, the people who cover us, I like their work. They, as you indicate, they know our traditions, they know the schedule, and they do a very good job reporting with this observation: The news cycle, the interest, the attention span being what it is, they have twenty-four to forty-eight hours to make the point. Well, we write for a different time dimension than that. It’s not just the results. It’s what the principle is. The press does a very good job of reporting what we do. It’s a little more difficult, for reasons I’ve explained, to report why we did it. I can understand their problem because they have the twenty-four-hour, forty-eight-hour news cycle. So they have a tough job.

The book provides views of the Court from the ultimate insiders – the nine current Justices and retired Justice O’Connor. The book is an edited collection of transcripts of interviews conducted by Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, and Mark Farkas for C-SPAN’s 2009 feature documentary about the Court.

In the latest “D.C. Decoder” on CQ-Roll Call owned Congress.org, video producer Andrew Satter films Craig Crawford interviewing C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb. They discuss C-SPAN’s new video archives, and most importantly, how callers are screened (relevant stuff after Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s segment on the caller who suggested C-SPAN should change its name to Black-SPAN).

Watch the video here.

Has any really lived until the invention of the C-SPAN video library? By the way journalists around D.C. and beyond are talking about it, it’s not likely life was as fulfilling before.

Remarked ABC’s Jake Tapper: “If the US had knighthoods, one of the first ones should go to Brian Lamb,” he tweeted, referring to C-SPAN’s founder and CEO.

@nbcnightlynews also weighed in: Video: C-Span junkies rejoice! Entire archive to go online http://bit.ly/9KGUP0

Listen to Capitol Hill radio reporter Todd Zwillich’s remarks on it from The Takeaway. “I haven’t looked up from my laptop in 48 hours,” he said on the show.

The LAT’s Andrew Malcom writes a story on the library on the Top of the Ticket blog. The headline: C-SPAN: This program lasts 31 years, with no end in sight. Malcom has mixed observations about C-SPAN. “It’s not a he. Nor a she. It’s an it,” he writes. “C-SPAN, which is short for something like Cripes, Some Politicians Are Numb.”

Then he compliments the network: “While the rest of Washington yadas on like a bunch of chugging crazies on spring break, C-SPAN provides a priceless sense of serenity amid the nation’s political storms.”

Then he insults the C-SPAN watcher: “Imagine being able to look up and watch a specific speaker at a specific committee hearing on a specific day in 1993,” he writes. “Or imagine getting a life.”

Read the LAT’s full post here. Let’s be clear: no one ought to be able to start his or her day until they watch presidential hopeful Gary Bauer fall off a stage while flipping pancakes. And former Jim “Beam me Up” Traficant (I-Ohio) floor speeches should also be required watching.

In a letter of support for C-SPAN’s recent request to Congress to open up media coverage of health care legislative negotiations,the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has fired off a similar letter to congressional leaders.

SPJ sent the letter in support of C-SPAN’s letter to leaders from CEO Brian Lamb. Though House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has supported the request publicly, the issue is still in limbo.

Read SPJ’s letter after the jump…

Read more

In a letter to House and Senate leaders just before the New Year’s recess on Dec. 30, C-SPAN’s CEO Brian Lamb wrote a letter asking for both the House and Senate Chambers to be opened to electronic media coverage.

Lamb wrote:
“As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.

The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.

Lamb implored, “…We respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.”

The letter was sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

So far, no response.

Read the full letter here.

Photo courtesy of C-SPAN: C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb, then C-SPAN President Paul FitzPatrick, and Sen. Byrd.

Good morning FishbowlDC! Congrats to Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) who becomes the longest serving member of Congress today. The above photo is from June 1986 on the day Senate coverage began on cable-funded C-SPAN2.

What we know and what we’re reading this Wednesday the 18th of November…

NEWSPAPERS | ONLINE| MAGAZINES | NEWS NOTES| RADIO

NEWSPAPERS

Yesterday, investigators in NYC raided delivery offices for the New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News and El Diario as part of a corruption probe into a powerful union.

The Examiner has a copy of the complaint filed by TWT‘s Richard Miniter against his employer. Miniter alleges religious,age and disability discrimination against TWT.

All eyes on Murdoch as newspapers ponder digital future.

Nostalgia: While cleaning out his home, Andy Medici ran across a 1955 toy printing press that promises you can “print your own newspaper.” If something doesn’t give, we might have to do just that.

ONLINE

YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers.

Time Warner Inc. has set the date (Dec. 9th) for its long-planned spinoff of the AOL division.

MAGZINES

Ba ha! Levi’s johnston is saving print media!

Bloomberg has named Time magazine’s Josh Tyrangiel the editor of BusinessWeek.

Newsweek taps Bush aide for Obama reporting.

NEWS NOTES

AP Layoffs Begin: One cut from Washington Bureau.

RADIO

Seems the Redskins drama has suddenly taken a back seat to the media drama. Wise responds to Kornheiser.

C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb with his gang of 10-year CSPANers, celebrating with a dinner last night.

C-SPAN executives Brian Lamb, Susan Swain and Rob Kennedy will host a dinner tonight at the Hyatt Regency to celebrate the ten year anniversaries of a number of C-SPANers.

Congrats to Tanya Chattman, Rick Clyburn, Debbie Davenport, Carl Foster, Doug Hemmig, Dallas Hill, Jon Kelley, Tony Laboy, Paul Loeschke, Wes Mangum, Garrette Moore, Paul Munson, Al Porter, Leslie Rhodes, Peter Slen, Art Tiller and Ellen Vest.

They’ll also get a “lovely Crystal Capitol dome” to commemorate the occasion.

Good morning FishbowlDC!

Got a blind item, interesting link, funny note, comment, birthday, anniversary or anything of the sort for Morning Reading List? Drop us a line.

Its day 84 covering the Obama administration and week 11 for us. Happy Birthday to mediabistro’s Mischa Bergeron! What we know and what we’re reading this Monday morning…

NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE | NEWS NOTES | FBDC’S PICK | JOBS

NEWSPAPERS

The NYT Co., which has threatened to shutter The Boston Globe, is seeking deep concessions from the newspaper’s union mailers that would account for more than 40 percent of their wages and benefits, the union president said.

After running a front-page advertisement for an NBC show that resembled a news story on Thursday, the LATimes Calendar entertainment section on Sunday was accompanied by a four-page ad for the movie The Soloist that was laid out like a news section.

Newspapers produced and sold by homeless people in dozens of American cities are flourishing even as the deepening recession endangers conventional newspapers.

TV

The Daily Beast brings us the “7 Best Moments from Sunday Talk.”

Chris Matthews paid tribute to Vic Vissari, a longtime editor for NBC News in the Washington bureau, on Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show. Vissari died of cancer earlier this month.

Washington Whispers profiles CSPAN’s Brian Lamb here.

Fox’s Glenn Beck is taking a comedy show on the road for six live performances. Beck calls his act a “poor man’s Seinfeld” and intends to mix topical humor with his modern-day reimagining of Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense.”

A look at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” here.

ONLINE

What type of web commenter are you? Or are you the worst kind- the anonymous criticizer?

NEWS NOTES

714,000 people visited the Newseum in its first year on Pennsylvania Ave (as compared to 480,000 in its last year in Arlington).

FBDC’S PICK

AdAge: “The new Russell Crowe movie “State of Play” feels like a memento mori for newspapers. Watching Crowe’s hero-journalist character extract important information, for the public good, from actual sources really broke my heart. Who’s going to do that anymore?”

HAT TIPS: Mediabistro, Romenesko

JOBS after the jump…

Read more