Quotes of the Day

What Politico‘s Mike Allen calls the “best part of opening your door” at Aspen’s swank Hotel Jerome.” He’s attending the Aspen Ideas Festival. See Playbook here.

Important Q to Ponder: “Calling NoVa historians! Is it 1) Tyson’s Corner 2) Tysons Corner or 3) Tysons’ Corner? And who is Tyson(s)?” — Mr. Norah O’Donnell, i.e. Chef Geoff, husband to CBS’ Chief White House Correspondent.

D. Shuster takes to Storm Complaining

“Storm + 72 hours: still no Internet service in NW DC. Hey @Verizon, are you pulling a full PEPCO? Embarrassing. AT&T working fine.” — Current TV’s David Shuster.

Writer gets naked

“It’s Naked Time at Casa Blymire. Thermostat says it’s 85 degrees inside. #thisissooooooomebullshit” — Takoma Park, Md. freelancer Carol Blymire.

Weingarten lashes out at FBDC writer on Twitter

“I mean.  Sure I’m childish.  But, coming from a man with shit next to his name, it hardly stings.” — FBDC’s Peter Ogburn on being called “childish” and “lame” and an “asshole” by WaPo‘s Gene Weingarten. His insults came in after Ogburn wrote a review of his Sunday column on a plastic duck in which he suggested that the Pulitzer-Prize winning Weingarten might need to be placed in a home.

Blogger wants drugs

“Boo, I forgot to ask the dentist for good drugs today. Time to down some Nyquil.” — Conservative activist and blogger Lisa De Pasquale, who writes The Lotus Blog.

HBO’s ‘The Newsroom’ gains another critic

“So why is the pacing on #Newsroom so slow? It feels like each scene has been stretched to fill another few minutes.” — foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen.

Journo proud of NPR performance

“I’m on NPR. I don’t sound like a total moron. Phew!” — Brian Wolly, Digital Editor for Smithsonian.com.

Convo Between Two Media Types

Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell: “Can @andersoncooper give us his expert opinion on teabagging now?” Bozell links to this story about Cooper making a vulgar tea-bagging joke regarding Conservatives on an AC360 program in April. CNN’s Anderson Cooper came out of the closet Monday in a letter to The Daily Beast‘s Andrew Sullivan.

Brad Phillips, a.k.a Mr. Media Training: “Wow what a jerk.”

Laura Rozen, a longtime foreign policy writer in Washington, has left Yahoo! News. Today The Envoy, a news blog she wrote for the site, is being written by Dylan Stableford. This morning a story on Iran’s nuclear program by Rozen has turned up in Tablet, a site on Jewish news, ideas and culture. Interestingly enough, her bio there doesn’t even mention Yahoo! News and reads as follows:

“Laura Rozen reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C. She is a former senior policy reporter for Politico and Foreign Policy. Follow her on Twitter @LRozen.”

Her Twitter bio does not include any previous publications where she has worked, nor does her feed broach her leaving her most recent employer. We’ve reached out to Yahoo! News public relations for comment.

Ken Bazinet had been keeping the news close to the vest. Family. Inner-circle friends. That’s all.

But earlier in the week people knew something was up when he retired his blog, “The Baz File,” without so much as a word of explanation minus a cryptic goodbye note on Monday that spoke of an “Arab spring” and read, in part, “The blog may be retiring, but the fierce pursuit of freedom and democracy surely will not.” (See the full post after the jump…)

It was Yahoo! News’s Laura Rozen who broke the news on Twitter late Thursday, saying, “Congrats to @bazmaniandevil who has taken a job covering gov’t/politics with Kiplinger’s!”

Bazinet’s political reporting career has spanned the past two decades. For the past few months, he has been an on-air correspondent and political analyst with the Talk Radio News Service. Before that he was a White House Correspondent for 18 years, starting off with UPI and winding up at the New York Daily News.

Congratulations to Bazinet.

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(From L to R): Lubold, Ewing and Hoskinson

Friday was Phil Ewing‘s last day writing Politico’s “Morning Defense” blog. His stint at the publication lasted less than six months. He’s now a blogger for DOD Buzz at Military.com. Gordon Lubold launched the early morning letter in May 2010 with the idea that it would be a “Playbook” for defense types. He left after eight months and now works as a senior advisor and writer at the United States Institute of Peace. The national security beat at Politico has collectively hit bumps in the road. Jen DiMascio, who covered defense, recently left for Aviation Week. As did Laura Rozen, who now works for Yahoo! News. Before Lubold, there was David Cloud, formerly of WSJ and NYT and now at LAT. He left after about four months.

Third time’s a charm? We’ll see how long Chuck Hoskinson, an in-house editor, who has taken over “Morning Defense” lasts with it.

When asked about the growing list of departures on this beat, Politico Editor-in-Chief John Harris told FishbowlDC: “The circumstances behind those individual departures vary quite a lot, but I think I won’t plunge into the details.”

Reasons for leaving include the following: lack of sleep, lack of resources toward the beat, lack of depth of understanding by Politico editors on what reporters on the beat must contend with in daily coverage.

Anyone who follows Politico‘s national security reporting closely can see that “Morning Defense” is on its third blogger since May. This summer management made a conscious decision before launching Politico Pro that defense news was not going to be part of Politico Pro’s lineup — it’s still unclear what their plans are for defense coverage.

The blog is said to have been embraced by the National Security community on Capitol Hill, the State Department and the Pentagon, all of which have fed it. One such blog loyalist observed to FishbowlDC on condition of anonymity: “Politico still doesn’t seem to be comfortable playing on a beat where they’ve clearly tried to make an effort but where continuity counts. It is hard to replicate their velocity/volume model in a field that isn’t necessarily as politically driven as other policy areas.”

If you want to see “On Foreign Policy’s” goodbye note from Laura Rozen, it could be found on Politico‘s website on Monday. That’s it. Today, she and the blog are gone as she makes her way over to Yahoo! News. She especially thanks many colleagues and readers. There’s Ben Smith, Ken Vogel and Keach Hagey plus Gordon Lubold, who no longer works for Politico. Strangely missing in her note of gratitude are those bosses — John Harris and Jim VandeHei — who hired her and sung her praises early on. Maybe she mentally clumped them together in that vague “and everybody else” category? We’ve heard from many sources that the departure wasn’t so rosy (and that’s putting it mildly).

See the note…

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Laura Rozen, Politico‘s chief foreign policy reporter, is leaving the publication for Yahoo News!

Yahoo News!’s Michael Calderone, the former media writer for Politico, broke the news earlier today. Rozen will be stationed out of the Washington bureau. She’ll write a new blog called The Envoy.

Though she has a cadre of high-powered sources, it’s known that she rubs some of her fellow State Department beat reporters the wrong way. We attempted to reach her for comment, but her voicemail mailbox is full and cannot accept messages at this time. We also emailed her.

Rozen went to work for Politico in August 2009. She had previously been employed for Foreign Policy Magazine. At the time, VandeHarris called “The Cable,” which was Rozen’s web column, “a must read for the Washington foreign policy community and beyond.” They released that news to staff in an internal memo.

Rozen’s new bosses seem equally enthused by her. In release, Dave Morgan, Yahoo!’s executive editor of North American audiences, said “the addition of Laura to The Upshot team is another example of how the Yahoo! News blogs have established themselves not only as a home to one of the industry’s largest audiences, but also a magnet for the industry’s best talent.”

It is uncertain whether Politico‘s “Laura Rozen: On Foreign Policy” blog will remain once Rosen goes. Obviously her name will depart. But will a new one fill her space, or will it be more generic like On Media that once bore Calderone’s name and cartoon graphic? “It’s simply too early for us to know what we’ll be doing long-term,” Editor-in-Chief John Harris told FishbowlDC by email. “We do not have a near-term replacement for Laura so this blog will go on hiatus at least for a while.”

Read the full story here.

Sarah Wildman, who covers foreign politics and culture wars for Politics Daily, has won the Peter R. Weitz Prize for excellence in reporting on Europe. She won the award for a five-part series she wrote for Slate.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States has given her the award “for excellence and originality in reporting on Europe and the transatlantic relationship.”

Wildman won $10,000 prize for her investigation of the International Tracing Service, the world’s largest Holocaust archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Her five-piece series was published in Slate. It was called “riveting” by one judge, and records her journey to the ITS in search of information on a relative’s final year, entwining personal family history with the larger struggle to categorize, analyze, and understand Nazi records and survivor accounts.

She is reportedly working on turning the series into a book.
Wildman will receive the award in July at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the German Marshall Fund.

A jury of American journalists selected the winner: Kevin Sullivan of WaPo, Ted Diadiun of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle, Laura Rozen of Politico, and Dan Vergano of USA Today.

David Nather is leaving CQ after almost a decade to co-write a book on health care reform with Tom Daschle.

Nather’s exit follows that of ace defense reporter Josh Rogin who took up at Foreign Policy last week, replacing Laura Rozen. Additionally, sources tell FishbowlDC that spy guy Jeff Stein has been spotted meeting with Politico editors Jim Vandehei, Bill Nichols and John Harris. When asked about a possible Politico future, Jeff Stein replied “no comment.”

See Susan Benkelman‘s announcement about Nather’s departure after the jump.

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Foreign Policy mag announced Laura Rozen‘s replacement at “The Cable” today– CQ‘s Josh Rogin. Rozen left the web column for a gig at Politico earlier this month.

Rogin had been a staff writer at CQ, focusing on defense and foreign policy, and he grabbed our attention at FBDC this summer when he got over 60 Congressional to sign a cast on his broken arm.

Foreign Policy‘s memo making the announcement:

We’re very pleased to announce that Josh Rogin will join Foreign Policy as our new columnist for The Cable, ForeignPolicy.com’s signature blog covering the making of American foreign policy in the age of Obama. Josh brings a zeal for scoops and a proven record of getting them as a defense and national security reporter for Congressional Quarterly, not to mention infectious energy and enthusiasm for the job and an extensive background on these subjects. We expect Josh to continue expanding The Cable and offering readers new regular features that will take them even deeper inside the people and institutions – as well as the ideas – that are shaping the national security debate. In just a few months since its launch under Laura Rozen’s great leadership, The Cable has become a daily must-read for FP’s influential audience in Washington and internationally (and, we should note, it’s still a fast-growing audience with ForeignPolicy.com on its way toward finishing August with a record count of around 5 million pageviews), and Josh is filled with exciting ideas for how to serve those readers even more original news and ahead-of-the-curve insight. Over the last few years at CQ, he’s been out front on everything from missile defense to the Pentagon’s budget wars to discovering that the predictive market Intrade was being manipulated to boost John McCain’s presidential prospects. A former defense reporter for Federal Computer Week magazine, Josh also worked as a Pentagon staff reporter in the Washington bureau of Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s leading daily newspaper. An international affairs graduate of GW, Josh speaks Japanese, “some” Korean and hails from outside Philadelphia. He’ll be working out of our offices here and planning to start filing starting Monday, September 14, so please join us in welcoming him.

– Moises Blake & Susan

>>MORE: Just heard from Rogin via email, who says, “It’s just a great opportunity to write about a whole range of topics and a chance to be part of a really aggressive and innovative new media project at foreignpolicy.com. Laura Rozen did an amazing job building up The Cable’s audience and reputation, so my job will be to keep The Cable growing and evolving. Should be a lot of fun, too!”

We told you earlier today that Politico would be beefing up its foreign policy coverage with the hire of Laura Rozen, and shared with you a memo from Politico‘s Bill Nichols, John Harris and Jim VandeHei.

Now, a note from Foreign Policy‘s Susan Glasser:

Dear everyone – Just a quick follow-up to wish Laura all the best and to note that The Cable is and will continue to be a huge part of what we’re doing on ForeignPolicy.com. Our readers have spoken, and there’s a clear demand for the kind of original reporting and behind the scenes understanding of the making of foreign policy in the Obama era that we’ve brought to them since January. Foreign Policy continues to grow by leaps and bounds on the web – we’ve just come off our most successful month yet, with some 5 million pageviews, an extraordinary growth in such a short period of time and one that’s a tribute to all of your excellence and hard work. So let us know if you have thoughts and ideas for the next incarnation of The Cable. And thanks!

And after the jump, a note from Rozen to colleagues…

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