WaPo reports on the rambling editorial, which seems to make the argument that American media is both too restricted and too free. While it seems to be a generalization of ALL of American media, two reporters get glowing reviews from The Dear Leader.

Who are Kim Jong-Un’s approved reporters? continued…

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Now let’s proceed to the really important stuff.

If you were a carbonated beverage which would you be? Cherry Coke Zero

How often do you Google yourself? Once or twice a year.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to an editor (or vice versa)? My old boss, Jim Farley, who hired me twice – first at NBC years ago and later at WTOP – taught me WGAS: “Who gives a shit?” It has universal applications today and I’ve used it to great effect in various times and places. WGAS is also text-friendly.

Who is your favorite working journalist and why? Anyone who understands it’s not about them. Anyone who eschews the limelight and simply focuses on finding things out, communicating about it well and not pretending to be an expert or feeling compelled to have an opinion on everything.

Who is your favorite White House reporter and why? The wire service folks are usually the best. Not flashy, just solid, nose-to-the-grindstone types day in and day out. I really admire them.

Do you have a favorite word? “Dada.” Uttered by a certain 17-month old little girl.

What word or phrase do you overuse? “Dumb ass.” Use it a lot.

Who would you rather have dinner with – CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s John King or CNN’s Piers Morgan. Tell us why. I think John King is an honest, hard-working, straight shooter guy. You know what I like about him? He made a mistake during the Boston coverage and dealt with it in a transparent, humble and honest way. People err – and it’s how they deal with it – for better or worse – that I remember. I tend to get along well with people like that.

What is the most interesting conversation you’ve had in awhile in the course of your work and who was it with? If I hadn’t hung up on Ronald Reagan in 1990, it might have been the time when, on a dare, I called him at home in 1990. This was a year after he left the White House. The Reagans were living in Bel Air and I never thought he would answer the phone himself. But I heard that famous voice: “Hello?” on the other end, freaked out and hung up. To use my favorite word, I was such a dumb ass. So I guess the answer would be the time I downed vodka shots with Boris Yeltsin at a Fourth of July party at Spaso House, the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. I was lurking by the bar when he came over and we wound up downing a few and chatting. That’s what you do in Russia. Drink. Talk. Drink some more.

Tell us a funny story from the White House Briefing Room. Can be long or short. There used to be a guy named Lester Kinsolving, who used to show up in the briefing every day. Haven’t seen him in many months. He used to ask the most bizarre, completely out of left field questions imaginable on completely obscure, irrelevant matters. Bush’s flacks and now Obama’s used to call on him as a diversion. And, in this digital age, he used to carry a giant cassette recorder around with him like it was 1983 or something. Not picking on Lester, he is a nice guy. Hope he’s OK.

Without naming names, tell us some shitty thing that happened in the course of you covering the White House… continued…

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Mysteriously, the photo vanished and Ballasy declined to tell us more about the counter. We had a modern day Helen Thomas mystery on our hands.

However, in honor of that episode, we wish Ballasy and Thomas a happy Valentine’s Day and present them with their hypothetical love child. We’ve named him Rufus.

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Say hello to Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief, Kiplinger publishing (Kiplinger Letters, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, Kiplinger.com). We spoke by phone this morning just after he did his ritualistic yoga exercises. He spends 20 minutes each morning doing stretches and poses to put himself in a good frame of mind. “I don’t watch much TV,” he noted quickly into the call, saying the Fishbowl interview wasn’t necessarily ideal for someone who doesn’t watch a lot of TV. (We’ll keep that in mind.) “I’m not older than dirt, but I came up through newspaper journalism and print journalism so that’s kind of my bias in my news diet.” Asked about the current state of journalism, Kiplinger’s thoughts are enlightening. POLITICO reporters, you may want to stop reading now. “I think we’ve seen the decline of careful consideration, the emphasis is on quick response, the immediate reaction,” Kiplinger said. “The best journalism is not always the fast journalism. The first analysis is often not carefully considered. Good journalism takes time. It takes reporting. We’ve seen a decline of in-depth reporting. A newspaper reporter had eight or ten hours to do hard reporting, deep reporting, talking to many, many sources before writing a story. The internet has forced everyone to work faster and that sometimes undercuts journalistic quality. So that is the problem.” Here’s the point where WaPo‘s Ezra Klein should stop reading. “These days a lot of young journalists, they all want to be columnists, giving the world their opinions,” he said. “Journalists try to build themselves into a brand, into a marketable entity that can move from periodical to periodical. Of course, that’s what columnists have always done.” Kiplinger sees danger signs. “With too much emphasis on celebrity, the content of journalism gets short shrift. A bigger threat to quality journalism is the unwillingness of young adults to pay for journalism. Older adults will still pay for content. They comprise the subscription-paying readership.” Kiplinger still gets two newspapers at home: WaPo and TWT. At the office he reads WSJ and NYT. “I look through them very rapidly,” he says of WaPo and TWT, saying he prefers to read them in print than online and can do so faster. He particularly enjoys WaPo‘s Metro section. He’s also a relentless reader of obituaries. “In my next life I am going to be an obit writer,” he says. Moving along, he has grave concerns about the industry: “Revenue on internet is not sustaining high quality journalism,” he said. But on a positive note, he added, “the internet has given everyone [a medium]…that is a powerful force, a positive force. This trend will continue.” On the future of journalism: “There will be fewer jobs in traditional journalism for young journalists who want to be the reporter, who want to tell the story of modern life. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon. We’re in the throws of a great democratization of media. Editing today is a luxury many media feel they can’t afford. You don’t have the level of trust that you once had. Traditional media were gatekeepers to information. They were the mandarins who selected what they thought the public needed to know.” Kiplinger is on Twitter, but he’s not enthralled by it. “Yeah I tweet,” he said. “If you went to my Twitter account you’d see I tweet infrequently. I try to restrain my tweets to kind of broader observations about things going on in the economy. I work very hard to condense and distill. I don’t have a Twitter support staff as a lot of semi-celebrity journalists do.” As an aside, he notes…“There are some people who think I am a celebrity. I just think I’m an ink-stained wretch. I’m not a hyperactive tweeter.” On family…He’s a longtime choral singer and met his wife in the Washington Chorus in 1979. Incidentally, his daughter also met her fiance in the Washington Chorus (a detail reported in WaPo earlier this week). Facebook? “I don’t do Facebook at all. I don’t think the world is that interested in my daily life, and even if they are, I don’t want to share it with them.” Finally, I asked…what one piece of wisdom should every journalist know? He replied, “There’s no substitute for hard reporting.”

If you were a carbonated beverage, which would you be?  

Schweppes Tonic Water (with real quinine), my teenage favorite, even before I started adding gin.

How often do you Google yourself?

Rarely (Just noticed they now have photos of the search subject, too!)

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to an editor/boss (or vice versa)?  

To the owner of the first newspaper I worked for, at 22 years old: “Reporters ought to earn as much as the layout guys with their razor blades and paste pots.”  (He disagreed.)

You have an intriguing name. What is the story behind it?

It was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name (full name: Daphne Knight). No relation to the Knight publishing family, darn it.

Who is your favorite working journalist and why?

David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal.  No one explains complex economic issues with more clarity and common sense than Wessel.

Do you have a favorite word?

I’m told I overuse “unconscionable,” so maybe that’s it.

Who would you rather have dinner with – CNN’s Candy Crowley, ABC’s Martha Raddatz or Fox News’ Megyn Kelly? Tell us why.

I’m sure each of them would be a fine dinner companion, but I’d rather dine with Renee Montagne of NPR, co-host of “Morning Edition.”  She’s a brainy journalist (Phi Beta from Berkeley), award-winning correspondent in South Africa and Afghanistan, adept anchor—and she sounds like a very nice person (based on interviews I hear regularly, and ones I’ve done with her while I was in the DC studio and she was at NPR West in California).

The Earth’s human population is dying out and you must save it. You will spend a romantic evening with either Scandal’s Kerry Washington, any of the women from FNC’s “The Five” or MSNBC’s S.E. Cupp. Who will it be? (None is not an option.)

I don’t know any of these women on sight (don’t watch much TV), so you pick one for my blind date, and I’m sure she and I will be able to save the Earth together. [Okay, we'll play your game. We pick Helen Thomas. That's what you get for not answering.]

What swear word do you use most often? “Damn!”…used sparingly.

You’ve just been told the big news: You get to have your own Sunday morning talk show. Who will be on your roundtable? (Pick four journalists or pundits types.)

Cokie Roberts, David Frum, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks. (Back-ups for when someone is traveling or out sick: Peggy Noonan and E. J. Dionne.)

On a serious note for a moment, if you could have dinner with a person who has died, who would it be?

My zany and wise mother, Gogo Kiplinger (1919-2007)

continued…

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“Sunset over BloomingdaleDC” by Tracy Wahl, Supervising Producer at National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

BuzzFeed bureau chief gives D.C. tavern a big thumbs down

“If you can’t clean your damn collards and put a lil swine in em, WHY TRY YOU DUMB YANKEE?? #fallofshawstavern,” wrote John Stanton. “Also I have some sharp ass teeth. If its hard for me to eat your damn ribs YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, Shaw’s Tavern ‘Chef.’”

Post respiratory failure diet

“Pizza for dinner, cupcakes for dessert, washed down w a Super Big Gulp. Sounds like a lonely single guy’s political statement.” – Breitbart.com‘s Dan Riehl‘s riehlly stupid diet.

Wife orders editor to Target at 5:30 a.m.

“Dispatched by bride to Target at 530a to get in line for lad’s Xmas present. Second person just showed up. #merryxmas.” — National Journal Editor-in-Chief Ron Fournier. When asked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Robert Schlesinger what the present was, he replied, “The new Wii system. I’m just following orders.”

This 4-year-old wants your job 

“My 4-year-old daughter to me: ‘Dad, I want to be a blogger.’ #changingtimes” — Political writer and jazz pianist Peter Daou.

And this father is in big trouble… “Bad dad forgets ballet slippers <shame>” — WTOP’s Neal Augenstein.

Journo bugged by building noise

“My weekends are now filled with the noise of construction on the apartment below. There oughta be a law.” — Kelly Jane Torrance, writer.

Peter Ogburn and Eddie Scarry contributed to this report.

A mean Helen Thomas joke and a journo spends part of weekend in ER…

continued…

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“Her jowls are Churchillian, and she uses them with statesmanlike eloquence. Her eyes are bright and expressive, even if the sentiment they usually express is some variant of ‘Huh?’ She is given to idiosyncratic head tilts that can express inquisitiveness, defiance or concern. Her ears are enormous, heroic things, and though they are too large for her to prick up, she can raise and lower them like matador capes, as semaphores for her mood.”

The dog’s name is “Murphy“, though by his description, he should have named her “Helen Thomas.” Weingarten then talks about an encounter he and his dog had with a mouse. As Gene was working in the dining room, he and his dog saw a mouse walking across the floor. He (Gene, not Murphy or the Mouse) proceeds to conjure up an imaginary conversation that he had with his dog and the mouse. Here’s an example of the banter.

Murphy: I’m definitely thinking of getting up and doing something about this. I wonder if those things have teeth.

Mouse: Food?

Me: Murphy?

Murphy: Okay, I am getting up now, real slow and loud and squirmy-like, with a great deal of unnecessary lateral motion.

Mouse: (looking up) YIKES!!!

Just to be clear…  A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the WaPo did an entire column on a fake conversation he had with animals. Either Gene has watched one too many Disney movies or he’s high on bath salts.

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Something smells fishy. On his Facebook page last night The Daily Caller‘s typically ballsy Nicholas Ballasy posted a photo of himself posing sweetly with former White House reporter Helen Thomas. The caption said he happened to run into the 92-year-old woman and she offered to buy him drinks.

We know love is blind and sometimes involves strange fetishes. But we thought, isn’t he a little young for her? We put that thought (and others) out of our minds.

FBDC asked Ballasy if he’d tell us more about the encounter (where he saw her, what they canoodled about, whether Thomas smelled like BENGAY, etc.). “She was just being nice by offering because we were talking to her at a hotel bar” Ballasy said.

We asked him to elaborate. “I’ll pass but thanks for the offer,” he said. Then mysteriously, the photograph vanished from his wall.

This is a modern day Helen Thomas mystery.

First we have Thomas offering to buy Ballasy a drink (at a hotel bar). Then he won’t tell us what they discussed. And then the photo disappears. Without making any salacious allegations, we just want to say the coverup is always worse than the affair crime.

We’ve reached out to Ballasy for comment.

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HuffPost

In his first version, Calderone reported that the Association turned down Thomas’ request for a full table. Soon, however, there was a “clarification.” Thomas had always known that as a past president of WHCA she would be able to purchase two tickets for the dinner. But she was greedy. With her impressive resume (which includes a spread in Playboy) she wanted the whole goddamn table. That two ticket offer still stands, Calderone wrote in a parenthesis he added to a later version with a “clarification.”

Is it news to say a former journalist can’t buy a whole table for an event that’s always overcrowded and inevitably has news organizations whining about not having enough seats? It isn’t against Association rules for any one person to buy a table. It just isn’t typically done. “Given how tight the room is (I think we have refunded more than one thousand seat requests this year) I can’t imagine any single person getting a whole table, but I don’t think there is any rule against it,” said SiriusXM’s Julie Mason, who sits on the board. “Usually an unaffiliated member — like a freelancer, or single-member bureau — gets a couple of tickets.”

While the insider letters exchanged between Thomas and the Association are interesting along with the history that she paved the way for female reporters to attend the dinner, the lede was inflated. Helen doesn’t get a table? No one person would likely ever get a table. Not even HuffPost‘s own Arianna Huffington can get all the tables she wants, no matter how much she complains.

What many Washington insiders feel is this: The evening is WHCA’s annual fundraiser, not a celebration of Helen. She is feted, celebrated, awarded and paid tribute at a level that could make a person vomit. Maybe HuffPost would like to give up one of their tables? We can hear Arianna screaming now.

Commenters on the story are sublime. For her: “She deserves a table…this is sickening.” And, “She did journalism and women a favor with her determination, talent and courage. The profession owes her.” And, “Let her have her last harrah [sic] she has earned it!!!!!!!!!!!” Or, “It’s beyond petty of the WHCA to do this to Helen Thomas, they should be ashamed of themselves.” Or, “She earned her place at that table. One comment and she gets fried.” Against her: “I know she is old but we can’t always expect more than what is fair because of it.” And, “Sense of entitlement runs deep in these former elite talking heads.” And, “It’s her choice to go and have a good time or sulk because she’s ONLY being accomodated like former Presidents.” Many questioned why it was a news story in the first place. “I wonder if I write a letter to President Obama for a personal audience and get I turned down, to whom should I submit this for a news story?”

Ultimately, the news is this: Helen can purchase two tickets. It’s her party and she can go if she wants to.

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The Fillmore Silver Spring, as part of it’s community philanthropy program, is hosting, of all things, an event dubbed “Seniors Sweetheart Social.” It’s a Valentine’s Dance for 90-year-old’s. The press release says that there will be “dancing, frolicking and enjoying Valentine’s Day.” I guess that makes sense if you count reminiscing over favorite “Matlock” episodes  as “enjoying Valentine’s Day.” The release goes on to say, “Forget age 64.  Will you still need me?  Will you still feed me?  When I’m 94?” As long as it’s soft food, yes, I will still feed you.

This could be a sweet event, assuming they all make it through the party. Who knows, you might even get a chance to meet Helen Thomas? Festivities will kick off this Sunday at 6:30pm ET at the Fillmore.

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Politico

Why is Ginger a reporter? Why ask why when she can explain herself? On her website she writes, “When I was a kid, I was always in trouble for ‘back talking.’ [Uh oh. Watch out, VandeHarris] I insisted on knowing not only why the sky was blue or how cars worked, I wanted an explanation for why I had to eat my veggies, go to day care or pick up my toys. I never grew out of that phase. As I got older the questions became more complex. Why were specific lessons at school selected? Why were some laws written? And since I apparently liked being in trouble, why was my curfew so early? All that trouble paid off. Now I get to ask ‘why?’ for a living.”

Ginger insists there is more to her than journalism. Louisiana holds a special place in her heart — while residing in Baton Rouge the 2008 LSU graduate lived through Hurricane Katrina. Food is also big in her book and she says there isn’t anything she won’t try. Her role model? It’s Helen Thomas. Yes, that Helen Thomas, the longtime 90-something spitfire White House reporter who resigned after telling Jews to get the hell out of Palestine. “I try everyday to ask hard questions,” Ginger writes on her site. “And to wear red.”

Congratulations to Ginger.

See the internal memo from National Politics Editor Charles Mahtesian after the jump…

continued…

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But don’t hate the Bloomberg TV reporter for grabbing so much media attention for her looks. She was born that way. And today The New York Observer put her on their Media Power Bachelorettes list.

O’Leary isn’t the only Washingtonian to make the list. Alyssa Rosenberg, apparently known for having nerd crushes directed her way, is also on it. A Culture Blogger for ThinkProgress, she has contributed to Washingtonian, The Atlantic, and TNR. The Observer writes, “Despite the many times New York publications have tempted her, she has remained—to our loss—in that wretched pit of a town with all the national landmarks in it to the south.”

Gone but not forgotten, former Washington Examiner gossip scribe Tara Palmeri, now a Page 6 reporter for NYP, is also a Power Bachelorette. They say she has survived her first year on the job “alarmingly well.” They also mention her battle royale with Sean Penn.

Congratulations to all.

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In a pool of sex machines like The Hill‘s Hugo Gurdon and Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson it’s tough to imagine anyone winning FishbowlDC’s Sexiest Male of 2011 title by a landslide.  But believe it or not, the boyish good looks of Politico’s Patrick Reis clobbered the competition with over 50% of the popular vote.  Capitol Hill Ken Doll aka Kevin Madden came in a distant second with 16.3% of the vote.  Tucker Carlson, just shy of the silver, trailed Madden by only three votes.

The stress of the spotlight proved too much for Coral Davenport, Amy Harder and Olga Belogolova.  Citing migraines and lack of sleep, NJ’s Energy trio accidentally moved sexy forward when they should have been bringing it back.  The slip bumped them into second place while WUSA-9′s Kristin Fisher took gold and the title of Sexiest Female of 2011 with 38.5% of the vote.  In case you’re wondering, sultry senior seductress Helen Thomas finished third.

The title of Most Underrated went to Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post.  The rock-solid reporter earned 36.61% of the vote, pushing him ahead of Roll Call’s Paul Singer who snagged  a respectable 28.5% of the vote.

Winning by only a hair, Cabbage Patch lookalike and 2011′s Biggest Self-Promoter Matt Mackowiak upset Daily Caller’s Kurt Bardella and stole all the glory with 36.36% of the vote to Bardella’s 34.93%.  Ouch!

Congrats to Reis, Fisher, Grim and Mackowiak!   And there you have the FishbowlDC Class of 2011!

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Dear Anonymous Tipster: Let’s break this down. Kara Rowland, a TWT White House reporter, has been on many of FBDC’s best looking journo lists over the years. There is such a thing as being overexposed no matter what Potomac Flacks blogger Matt Mackowiak says. Furthermore, Dame Helen Thomas is far sexier than Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who, if you read this site regularly, may or may not have recently tooted on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. Now how is that sexy? More importantly, Frank is not a journalist. With the exception of our Best Press Secretary on Capitol Hill category all contestants are journos or pundits. Nonetheless, we take all comments we receive extremely seriously and thank you for writing in.

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