WaPo Book World Editor Ron Charles was having a pretty tough morning. Not only is it dark and dreary out there, but he couldn’t get onto WaPo‘s website. That’s right, before 8:28 a.m., he was locked out of his own paper’s website. Whoever the genius is that makes WaPo‘s technical calls deserves a prize, or at least a free meal at Chop’t with the restaurant’s favorite consumer, Ezra Klein, for achieving this. Although we’re guessing Ezzy may have been able to help Charles out had he been in the neighborhood.

The much reported death of website passwords can’t come too soon for me. Am locked out of the Wash Post site this morning…. ARGH.

— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) May 7, 2013

And then the day got worse.

Now that it’s definitely raining very hard, I will walk to work….(sigh)

— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) May 7, 2013

As journalists were scrambling to get their piece of the bombing story last night, WaPo‘s Ezra Klein, who usually goes wonky and chart-obsessed on most matters, kept his thoughts close to home. He wrote about his wife, NYT‘s Annie Lowrey, waking early each morning to train for a marathon.

CBS Political Director John Dickerson called it a “lovely story.” And indeed, it was.

An excerpt:

“My wife has been training for a marathon. She leaves the house early in the morning and runs for hours and hours. She comes home tired and sore. And then she does it again. And again. And again.There’s no reason for her to do it. There’s no competition or payoff or award. It’s just a quiet, solitary triumph over the idea that she couldn’t do it, and it all happens before I even wake up.”

Read the full piece.

In the D.C. dining scene, Graffiato’s Mike Isabella‘s porcine cuisine reigns supreme. Sunday night, DC diners had the opportunity to stuff their faces with pork at Cochon 555. The  competition-style event gives 5 chefs 5 different breeds of heritage pigs and let them create a pork-centric menu for diners willing to pay for the all-you-can-eat event. Diners grazed throughout the evening, which took place at the Newseum, and vote for their favorite chef at the end of the night.

Not only did diners get a chance to eat like maniacs, there were cocktails, wine and beer at every turn to make sure every attendee could wake up the next day with a nasty mix of hangover and meat sweats. The competing chefs, Mike Isabella, Jeff Buben, Kyle Bailey, Haidar Karoum, and Bryan Voltaggio each rolled out several dishes, including desserts that had people rolling out of the Newseum in a food coma. Some highlights included Voltaggio’s chocolate truffles with lard caramel and crushed pretzels, Buben’s Porky Sticky Buns, Bailey’s “Pigs in a Blanket,” Karoum’s “Thing-a-ma-Pig” candy bar, and Isabella’s “Fat Arancini,” a porky rice ball that was breaded and fried.

In the end, Isabella’s table, which had been transformed into “Isabella and Sons” meat shop, complete with little butcher hats, was crowned the winner. A picture of his entire menu is after the jump…

Food porn and party pics, anyone? Read more

You’re a journalist.  Come on, you love to see your byline. So we have an unusually fishy idea: name an Oyster after yourself (or a coworker) and have the name immortalized forever. P.J. Clarke’s is introducing its’ own signature oyster on Tuesday, with its name to be chosen by secret ballot.

Brad Blynier, one of the owners of the War Shore Oyster Company, the company that’s harvesting the exclusive oyster for the restaurant, describes the oyster as “farm raised, premium cocktail-sized and has a robust brininess with a clean, mild and sweet finish.”

Based on the oyster’s characteristics, we’ve come up with naming suggestions but feel free to come up with your own (write us at Betsy@mediabistro.com,  fishbowldc@mediabistro.com or use our Anonymous Tips button):

The Badass Oyster: Do we even need to name the journalist who comes to work with a chain tied to his waste? That’d be BuzzFeed D.C. Bureau Chief John Stanton. The Meghan: For Meghan McCain, a tart oyster served naked of its shell; The Rose Garden: after The Daily Caller‘s Neil Munro, an oyster served live and will never shut up. The Burger Oyster: it’s cocktail-sized, after all, and has former TIME scribe and professional partygoer Tim Burger written all over it. To spice things up, we have The Rosie: sweet, tart and can cuss like a sailor for BuzzFeed‘s Rosie Gray (and we mean nothing by the tart, only that it’s a flavor that might be present in an oyster.). The Bob Schieffer, farm raised, but still clean and sweet– an undeniable D.C. institution. The Hardball Oyster: All robust and briny things should be named after MSNBC host Chris Matthews, shouldn’t they? The Pothead Oyster: all laid back and smooth, HuffPost‘s Sam Stein. The Howeeza: after mild, sweet Judy Kurtz from The Hill. The Ezzy: serious and wonky with a touch of lemon and an aroma of fresh figs for WaPo‘s favorite “f–k you” blogger Ezra Klein. The Weingarten: a little sour-aftertaste for D.C.’s ultimate curmudgeon, WaPo‘s Gene Weingarten. The Luke: for MSNBC’s Luke Russert, a very meaty oyster;  “Shorty” the Jake Sherman oyster. The Stealth Spunkster: she’s everywhere and nowhere all at once after Hollywood on the Potomac‘s Janet Donovan; and The Lady: the always well-mannered and comedy-laced Neda Semnani from Roll Call‘s HOH. The Angry Oyster: Can you guess? That’d be Tim Grieve, who just gave Politico the middle finger and bolted to National Journal. The Fresh Mouthed Oyster: Politico‘s own salty tweeter Ben White, who likes to share his crappy hotel experiences. Hey, maybe this time the Jefferson Hotel will actually hold a reservation for him or the W will give him a room that doesn’t place the bathroom in the foyer. The Potty Mouthed Oyster: Mike Elk, a brusque, sharp-flavored oyster for the labor journo who swears more than any other. The Shooter: Who else? After the gun activist journalist herself, Emily Miller of TWT. And finally, we offer The Boyle: for you-know-who, the always all blown up Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News.

Do not stop reading. We’re not kidding. Here’s the fun part… Read more

Quotes of the Day

Blogger laments overusing F-bomb (well, sort of)

“I really have an unhealthy usage of the F word. I should put a cap on it such as 48/day. Yep, that should do it.” — Javonni Brustow, editor of TheDCPundit.com and PopGlitz.com.

TV and the Mark Sanford affair

“TV today seems to be arguing today that Sanford’s affair was somehow ‘better’ than other sex scandals since he fell in love/engaged now #SC1.” –  Jessica Taylor, senior analyst and reporter at Rothenberg Political Report. Photo credit: this picture appeared in The Daily Caller.

Journo promotes his story for Autism Awareness Day

“For #Autism Awareness day, here is a story I did last year about my son, two presidents, love, guilt and parenthood.” — NJ‘s Ron Fournier on the story that he couldn’t have self-promoted any more unless he a) formally renamed himself Howard Kurtz and b) implanted Howard Kurtz‘s brain cavity inside his own. Oh and in case you somehow missed this one — and the nerve of you if you did — read here.

Sen. Manchin isn’t heartless about dead reality star 

Howeesha Kurtz (a.k.a. The Hill‘s Judy Kurtz) proves that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) isn’t a total heartless prick this week. She sent the senator a question regarding the death of a MTV “Buckwild” reality show Manchin had denounced as trash. See what the senator had to say here.

Ezzy under “social pressure” to follow certain peeps on Twitter

“It’s kind of not great in D.C. I’ve tried to unfollow people before and they’ve gotten very mad at me.” — WaPo‘s Ezra Klein. “So it’s actually not worth unfollowing people to me, it creates a sort of social anger.” Please Ezra, let us back in to your feed! Slate‘s Dave Weigel, who has grown rather cranky as of late, we can do without. But you? We just know we’re missing out. Watch the rest of Klein and Brad Plumer‘s thoughts on Twitter usage here. Plumer’s insightful thought: He’s not sure Ezzy knows just what he wants from Twitter.

TV journo admits her desk is a mess

“OK, now I’m really admitting it: My desk is littered with old scripts, water bottles and coffee cups. Time to do something about it.” — CNN’s Erin McPike. Here’s to hoping the network newbie doesn’t wind up on a future episode of TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive.”

Whoa, what?

Roll Call‘s Jonathan Strong has a freelance story on Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) in The Weekly Standard this week. Is it a one-time thing or what’s happening? Read here. Update: The piece was just freelance. Like many pubs, Strong had pre-approval from his bosses.

Anonymous ranter has thoughts on ABC and Jake Tapper… Read more

Esquire rips Ezra Klein a new a–hole: Charles. P. Pierce of Esquire‘s “The Politics Blog” is impressed with WaPo‘s Ezra Klein, and simultaneously not that impressed. In an afternoon post Monday he writes, “The problem is that he’s so entirely a creature of this exploitative new journalism order that he seems to believe, as Molly Ivins once put it of Camille Paglia, that he is the cosmos.” He also discusses Ezra’s ideas about sources, who Ezra claims are the unpaid “academics, business consultants, marking analysts and former politicians.” Pierce writes, “Ezra, dude, all of journalism is not the op-ed page. Most of the people you cite above couldn’t cover a one-car fatal on 128 on a Sunday night. Somebody has to do the grunt work that involves calling the cops or the coroner, or the drunk high-school baseball coach, and not whoever is on call at the Center For American Progress that day.” Read the full story here.

Investigating Bob Woodward: Today Tanner Colby writes a lengthy story for TNR. In light of WaPo Bob Woodward‘s recent claim that he was threatened by the White House, Colby explores other “regrettable” moments in Woodward’s life and lets the reader in on how Woodward does what he does. Such as the book he wrote on John Belushi after he died. Colby writes, “Twenty years later, in 2004, Judy Belushi hired me, then an aspiring comedy writer, to help her with a new biography of John, this one titled Belushi: A Biography. As her coauthor, I handled most of the legwork, including all of the interviews and most of the research. What started as a fun project turned out to be a rather fascinating and unique experiment. Over the course of a year, page by page, source by source, I re-reported and rewrote one of Bob Woodward’s books. As far as I know, it’s the only time that’s ever been done.” He says Woodward’s problem is execution. He writes, “There’s no question that he frequently ferrets out information that other reporters don’t. But getting the scoop is only part of the equation. Once you have the facts, you have to present those facts in context and in proportion to other facts in order to accurately reflect reality. It’s here that Woodward fails.”

The piece includes damning thoughts on Woodward. “Like a funhouse mirror, Woodward’s prose distorts what it purports to reflect.” And the ending is disquieting: “When you imagine Woodward using the same approach to cover secret meetings about drone strikes and the budget sequester and other issues of vital national importance, well, you have to stop and shudder.” Sure the piece might be a little look at me self-serving. But this is Washington and what you expect of it. Read the full story here.

Neda Semnani is a full-time columnist for CQ Roll Call‘s “Heard on the Hill.” Yet there she was last night with a piece about Craigslist sex ads published on BuzzFeed. Was she changing jobs?

Nope. Just working her ass off.

“You know how journalism is today,” she told FishbowlDC when we asked what was going on. “Its all a bit of a hustle, get the stories reported, written and published.”

More and more often reporters are working full-time one place and serving as contributors elsewhere (as I do here at FBDC while working at The Blaze). In many cases, they juggle between publications or they contract with a cable news outlet to serve as on-air commentators.

“It is definitely a challenge to write everyday for my job, freelance and do my own stuff,” Semnani said, “but I feel like I’m still making my bones in this business and this is all trial by fire. If this schedule is what it takes to do it, then that’s just the way it is right now.” Read more

TNR Senior Editor Isaac Chotiner left teeth marks in Washingtonian Editor-at-Large Carol Joynt for what he perceives to be a suckup story on lawyer, crisis counselor Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton. The piece isn’t sharp-edged, but it is in-depth and includes details about Davis’s clandestine dealings with reporters — mostly off the record, he says. Hard to imagine a crisis counselor would screw up his own interview with Washingtonian, not exactly known for hit pieces, despite being beaten up in the media in the past. Few, if any, publication in Washington is immune from the occasional puff piece that results in beneficial source greasing. Does Chotiner recall TNR’s recent largely squishy love note on WaPo‘s Ezra Klein? Sure, it included goofy pictures Ezzy shouldn’t have enjoyed. But that’s about all.

apparently @caroljoynt and @washingtonian think there job is to do PR for Lanny Davis: washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalc…

— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) March 1, 2013

Joynt didn’t appear to mind the critique, but got finicky about Chotiner’s spelling error.

@ichotiner @lannydavis Isaac, I don’t mind criticism but it drives me nuts when people can’t spell. The correct word is “their.”

— Carol Ross Joynt (@caroljoynt) March 2, 2013

Not surprisingly, this yanked up the heat on their bickering.

@caroljoynt yes i corrected my typo in a later tweet. perhaps i can help you spell the word DICTATOR.

— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) March 2, 2013

@caroljoynt are youbothered more by bad spelling or people who work for dictators? just curious.

— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) March 2, 2013

Of course we enjoyed this question in Joynt’s interview… Read more

Here in the fishbowl, we like to see what happens when the left and right come together for a little hanky panky. So here we have WaPo‘s nerd extraordinaire Ezra Klein and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Think about it. It could happen. We’ve named their daughter “EzraAnn“and their son “Colt.”

Valentine’s Day came early for WaPo uber blogger Ezra Klein as The New Republic released their profile of him last night as the clock struck midnight. The profile is gushing and full of unbridled passion for Klein. Maybe they’re still kicking themselves in the shins for turning him down for a reporter-researcher position?

1. Enter Ezra the bad Jew. We’re not sure what kind of a Jew Ezra Klein is, but he’s far from traditional. So much so, that it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that he eats shellfish with a side of pork and a glass of milk. For starters, he gives the reporter, Julia Ioffe, a prosciutto sandwich as a peace offering at one of their early meetings. “I have a little spiel I do at this,” he tells her on the way to a speaking engagement at Northern Virgina Community College. And this is the most Yiddish he’ll use in the entire profile. The prosciutto sandwich? Hardly a Jew-y choice, but Ezra has a wonky explanation involving a study that says more judges offer parole once they’ve eaten. So Ez figures she’ll go easier on him if she has some non-kosher food in her stomach. Another non-Jew detail about Ezra: In high school he graduated with a 2.2 GPA (a shameful admission to smart Jews everywhere). Turns out, Ez got into college by the skin of his teeth — University of California-Santa Cruz was the only institution that would let him in. Ioffe described the talk Ezra gave at the community college as reminiscent to a “schticky Bar Mitzvah speech.” What? In our forced vast experience with Bar Mitzvah attendance, there are never “speeches.” Just performances known as “haftorah portions” in which the boy or girl reads from the Torah. We only hope Ezra sang his and that there’s video lurking in his mother’s basement. Finally, Ezra loves Christmas. Whoa! What?

2. Friend-sourcing. For all of Ezzy’s angst about the profile, the sources are painfully tame. The author relies repeatedly on Ezra’s fellow Boybanders for expertise. In a true, believable profile, you get skewered and praised. All your questionable acts arise — his infamous and now defunct Journolist, briefing Senate Democratic Chiefs of Staff about the Supercommittee just days before the Committee announced its failing, and once writing of Tim Russert, “fuck tim russert. fuck him with a spiky acid-tipped dick.”  What, the author of the profile can’t even press him to explain this? The only act she mentions is what he wrote about Russert and then doesn’t bother to ask him about it. No, here we get the usuals — Slate‘s Dave Weigel and Matt Yglesias and TPM‘s Brian Beutler — all his nerdy pals saying typical, boring stuff. Which would be fine, if she found a few people who happen to think he’s pontificates way more than he reports or that he’s more of a Democratic policy advisor than a journalist — and there are plenty of journalists in Washington who share this point of view. But nope, in her profile, they don’t exist. The boys verify that Ezra is wound a little tight — in fact, Weigel rolls through his weird memory of dinner parties and can’t recall a single instance in which he ever saw Ezra drunk. Yawn.

3. Ezra’s angst. By far, the most interesting part of the story comes when the author continuously goes into exquisite detail about the internal angst Ezra feels about having a profile written about him in the first place. Before he agreed to it, he met with the author to discuss what the piece would entail. He wrestles with all of it and doesn’t seem to know what tactic to take with Ioffe. Does he open up? Does he expose his discomfort? Does he lay down the law? Does he compliment her, befriend her, cuss with her, scold her and ultimately invite her to his favorite Chinese haunt to finally at least pretend to let her see the real him? In the end, Ezra does all of the above. But our all-time favorite part of the piece is when Ioffe’s hanging out in the “Wonkpod” of The Washington Post — i.e. the nerdy nerve center for Ezzy’s five-person operation. As she scrutinizes his every move — how he sits, his constantly bouncy knee, how he types — he gets all tight-ass on her and instructs her “sternly” that she’s not to print any of the emails on his screen.

An excerpt:

“I was not to speak to his family or to his wife. Before I arrived at the Wonkpod, he sent me an e-mail warning me that the Post bigwigs prohibited me from talking to anyone in the newsroom. At one point, he turned around and said, ‘Can you see my screen?’ ‘My e-mails,’ he added sternly, ‘are off the record.’ So were his phone conversations and the names of the people he spoke to throughout the day. He was also worried about revealing the name of an economist at a conservative think tank he considers to be ‘an intense thinker,’ his habit of watching ‘Battlestar Gal- lactica’ in the evenings, as well as his love of Christmas.”

Photograph above by Spencer Heyfron for TNR.