Who is National Journal‘s biggest competitor?

“Myself,” replied Editor-in-Chief Ron Fournier this afternoon to a question posed within a small gaggle of media reporters convened in the Watergate office’s Shenandoah boardroom. “The only thing I worry about is if I’m up for the job. We really don’t see any one publication as a competitor.” He remarked that his “friend,” Politico‘s Editor-in-Chief John Harris, is building his own niche as are his “friends” at Bloomberg. But soon, Fournier blatantly employed Politico‘s own catch phrase: “I want to win the morning, every evening, and the year. We’re going to out-think everyone. But why can’t you have fun doing it? Why does it have to be a nasty fight?”

Competition. What competition? “No one is doing what we’re doing, or doing it better, insisted Fournier. “…We’ve found ourselves a distinctive spot.” By  the end of the week,  he added, “We’ll have you equipped for the dinner party.”

National Journal stayed up into the wee hours of Sunday morning putting the final touches on the launch of its new web site this morning, with some employees pulling an all nighter to get the job done. No matter that he stayed up late, he says. Fournier will take Friday off to spend time with family. The afternoon gaggle included Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone, Mediaite‘s D.C. part-timer Nisha Chittal, and New York Observer‘s Nick Summers, who recently left Newsweek for his new job writing a weekly 1,000-word media column. The PR team, which includes The Atlantic‘s V.P. of Corporate and Strategic Communications Linda Douglass and Taylor West was present, but mostly stayed mum.

Upon shaking hands with Calderone, Fournier said, “Michael hasn’t always done what I wanted him to, but he’s always fair and thorough.” Calderone smiled in response.

During the overview, Fournier spoke thoughtfully and in a medium-volume voice.  “We seek to break news,” he said. “We don’t cede anything to anyone.” He said the newsroom will be supportive, not backbiting. Reporters will work hard and have traditional individual beats over which they will hold expertise. “We really think there is a market for serious journalism. Let the others race to the bottom. And son of a gun, there are people paying a lot of money for it in this town.”

Fournier management style appears easygoing but dogged. He said he wants his reporters working harder than they’ve ever worked, but wants them happy doing it. “‘Let’s work our butts off,’” he said he told his team today. “I worked for bosses at the AP who made me work hard not because they scared the crap out of me, but because they made me feel like I was a part of something bigger.”

When reporters do well, he plans to highlight it. And when they don’t? He plans to pull them aside and say, “That’s just not how we do things here.”

> Update: Read Yahoo! News’s Calderone’s take on today’s meeting as well as Chittal’s story.

Gloria Borger, Michael Crowley, Mike Allen

Despite election distractions, TIME‘s “40 Under 40″ party brought out a surprisingly charming and interesting crowd last night.  Nearly half of the mag’s 40 featured rising stars and roughly 200 attendees joined TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel for sushi, cocktails and conversation at Zentan restaurant in the hip Donovan House hotel.

Representing the White House were Jen Psaki, Reggie Love, Dan Pfeiffer and Macon Phillips who mingled with guests like CNN’s Gloria Borger, Yahoo’s Michael Calderone, MTP EP Betsy Fischer, Michael Steel, Politico‘s Mike Allen, Roll Call’s Jackie Kucinich, Brad Dayspring, Taylor Griffin, TIME‘s Jay Newton-Small, Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman, Sarah Feinberg and Kevin Madden.  Also spotted was a gimpy Tammy Haddad on crutches.  When asked about her injury, Haddad joked, “my husband was chasing me around the house.”

In addition to an impressive list, the event offered an open bar with three specialty drinks like the popular ”Iced Tea Party” and the “Blue State Fizz” that helped lubricate party tensions while guests chattered about the upcoming midterm elections.

Honorees (idenitified by nifty “40 Under 40″ lapel pins) in attendance included:  Brendan Steinhauser, Jeremy Bash, Nathan Daschle, Jared Polis, Ben Rhodes, Cedric Richmond, Jay Webber, Carte Goodwin, Ellie Hill, Benjamin Jealous, Adam Kinzinger, Rachel Kleinfeld, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Stephanie Schriock.

Richard Stengel on stage.

All photographs by:  Julie Fischer McCarter for TIME  

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Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone has the inside information on which news outlets are forbidding their employees to attend the upcoming Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert competing rallies in Washington. At WaPo, staff were told they can “observe” the rallies, but cannot march, chant, or wear buttons or T-shirts of support. At ABC and NBC journos cannot attend unless they’re covering the event. At NPR, staff cannot attend.

Read the story here.

> Update: NPR employees can attend the rallies, but only if covering them. Read about their rules and guidelines here. There are strong suggestions for staff about not slapping on bumper stickers or putting up yard signs. NPR also asks for reader input — what do folks think of management’s rules?

National Journal’s Matt Cooper hides from the paparazzi behind one of Arianna’s book-themed pillows. 

Arianna Huffington made a splash last night at the home of Tammy Haddad.  Guests such as actress Geena Davis, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Dennis Kucnich and wife Elizabeth, Richard Wolffe, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Hilary Rosen and  MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan flooded Haddad’s Foxhall backyard to toast Huffington’s new book, “Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning The Middle Class and Betraying The American Dream.” 

The event, which Huffington joked was like an “Obama backyard party” played host to hundreds of the city’s political and media set who mingled over cocktails in the brisk fall weather.  One of the most popular topics of conversation was Howie Kurtz‘s recent announcement that he will leave the Washington Post for a new gig at the Daily Beast.  Several guests agreed that Yahoo’s Michael Calderone seemed like the only viable option to replace WaPo’s longtime media beat writer. 

We caught up with Calderone who admitted that he wouldn’t spill to Fishbowl if he was in talks with the Post but joked that, “Marcus [Brauchli] hasn’t even returned my calls about Kurtz leaving so it’s safe to assume that he hasn’t pursued me to replace him.” 

Also spotted at the backyard book bash were HuffPost’s Peter Cherukuri, Sam Stein and Mario Ruiz, Qorvis’ Kelley McCormick, SKDKnickerbocker’s Emily Lenzner, National Journal’s Matt Cooper and Taylor West, Janet Donovan, Tim Burger, Bloomberg’s Ha Chan, Politico’s Kiki Ryan, NYT’s Jeff Zeleny, Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers and Dr. Marty Makary, Pamela’s Punch blogger Pamela Sorensen, ABC’sPolson Kanneth, Jim Courtovich, CBS’s Christine Delargy and The Hill’s Emily Goodin.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Arianna Huffington. 

Geena Davis, Michael Calderone and more after the jump. 

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Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone is  reporting tonight that the AP is set to name Sally Buzbee as its new Washington Bureau Chief. The announcement is expected Friday. She has been at AP since 1988.

Read the story here.

> Update: Read the official AP announcement here.

Many gossip columns, including this one, employ the use of its own name from time to time. FishbowlDC hears…, a FishbowlDC spy told us…, and so forth. It’s an odd but widely accepted humanizing of a column. But there’s a line that needn’t be crossed. When you notice too many self-mentions, you might just want to drown us in our own Fishbowl. Note to self: Keep mentions light and scarce and use only when necessary.

Roll Call‘s HOH went a little overboard on the self-mentions Monday when it used six HOH’s in its column. Most were reasonable – “An HOH spy saw…” But a few could have been omitted. (i.e. “HOH is weak at the knees about…” and “HOH continues to swoon.”

In the following column from Aug. 2, HOH has seven references to itself.

> Update Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone (who is featured on this topic after the jump), had this to say about his usage of “The Upshot” in his prose: “Sure, I may have used “upshot” a few too many times in that post for some. But the reason for doing so wasn’t to show how special I am. I was trying to differentiate between what Howard Kurtz, Ben Smith, and Marc Ambinder wrote on their blogs/twitter about Ken Mehlman and what each of them told me individually.”

HOH scribes aren’t the only offenders…

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Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone reports late this afternoon that ex-WaPo blogger Dave Weigel, despite strong rumors that he’d flock to HuffPost, has secured a job at Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post Company. Weigel resigned from WaPo after e-mails he wrote skewering conservatives surfaced from the liberal listerv Journolist. He will continue to contribute to MSNBC.

The piece calls the conservative movement Weigel’s “area of expertise.” Calderone reports that Weigel will cover politics (but not just conservatives) and will write “long form” pieces as well.

See the full story here.

By now, you know that Dave Weigel and the WaPo have parted ways. And by now, you may or may not be aware of the heavy criticism (and more privately, praise) that FishbowlDC has received for first publishing e-mails from Weigel to the private email listserv, Journolist.

MSNBC Keith Olbermann has named me among his “Worst Persons in the World.” I was called “Fishbowl F-ck” and a “scumbag” (HuffPost’s Jason Linkins). I was called “sleazy” and “skuzzy” and to DIAF (that would be die in a fire (HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney). I’ve been called a “hack” journalist. I’ve been told I’m the one who should be fired, not Weigel.

The criticisms are missing the mark, but like any journalist, I’m not above rebuke, so allow me here to address the critics:

1.) I have something against Weigel personally.

This is untrue. I had never met Weigel in person until Thursday night at a HuffPost party. We had exchanged a couple of e-mails in the past. He was icy. But I wasn’t surprised, hurt, or offended. A little background: Journalists have always had a love/hate relationship with FishbowlDC: Reporters love its inside-baseball, occasionally catty, sometimes serious look at the reporting world in D.C. But they hate it when they’re the ones getting covered unless it’s glowing. “Fishbowl is not supposed to be writing about [fill in the blank]” is a frequent defense when a reporter is asked for a response to something involving them. But it’s not that they don’t understand — they do — it’s just that they’re uncomfortable that our beat is them. Business reporters cover Wall Street. Military reporters cover Iraq and Afghanistan. FishbowlDC covers journalists.

So, Weigel is a journalist and it’s my job to cover him and hundreds of others in Washington. It’s understandable that Friends of Weigel (FOW’s) are defensive on the topic of his departure from WaPo. While the motives of the Journolist leaker are fair game for critique, my decision to publish them is me doing my beat dutifully. It’s business, not personal. That said…

2.) We shouldn’t have published the emails.

Yes, we should have (see above, it’s my job and my beat). Anyone who
thinks otherwise may not understand this: It’s not a reporter’s job to worry about the outcome of a genuine news story in that it may upset some people.

What’s noteworthy here is that the anger to publishing the e-mails is a selective anger. For instance: We’re not the only ones who have published private emails from Journolist. So, too, have respected journalists such as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone, who wrote about Journolist while at Politico. In fact, they did it long before FishbowlDC did. Find out how TIME’s Joe Klein felt about having his listserv emails disclosed by Greenwald in 2009. Read Greenwald’s post. But what’s alarming here is they haven’t come under the same squall of ethical scrutiny as FishbowlDC has because, well, they’re all in the same protective bubble of friends (talk about a real life Fishbowl…). So, when HuffPost’s Linkins — displaying an apparent deep-thinking maturity — says of me and my co-editor Matt Dornic that we’re “Fishbowl F-cks” for our work and that “this is how scumbags launder their karma,” one has to wonder: Did he write about Greenwald and Calderone with a similar scathing bitterness? Of course not – they’re friends. He wrote that those not on #TeamWeigel are “sellouts, scumbags and bitchasses.” With such selective outrage, spare me lectures on journalistic integrity.

3.) I cost Weigel his job.

No, I didn’t. I didn’t write those messages to some 400 people on Journolist. I wasn’t in management meetings at WaPo when what to do with Weigel was discussed. My take on Weigel’s behavior as a journalist covering media: I don’t believe a reporter can hate those he or she covers and do it carefully or fairly. There are some who blame WaPo for Weigel’s behavior, but in the end, it’s Weigel who is responsible. But I’m not in charge of him. I wasn’t in charge of him. The aftermath? Out of my hands.

4.) FishbowlDC focused on this story for the traffic.

The reality is most websites worry about traffic. Like how you worry about earning a paycheck to pay bills. Or how you eat enough to sustain energy. Or that you breath enough so that you might not pass out. These are basics. But Wonkette claimed we are “trying to get some traffic for the long-ignored mediabistro blog by posting some banal crap from that ‘JournoList’ email group.” Salon’s Alex Pareene thinks the aim was to score a Drudge link. Traffic did, in fact, come our way because it was a genuine story. Traffic did, in fact, go Weigel’s way for it, too. Some may not have liked that someone leaked Weigel’s e-mails. Others may not have liked that WaPo parted ways with Weigel. But the notion that a reporter’s biases on his own beat are not grounds for a legitimate discussion here on FishbowlDC or anywhere else is short-sighted at best.

> Update: Apparently I’m not alone in my views. Read WaPo’s Ombudsman report by Andrew Alexander on the Weigel matter here. In addition, read Greenwald’s explanation of why he printed Klein’s e-mails back in 2009 here.

Secondly, a correction: HuffPost‘s Delaney didn’t say I should DIAF (die in a fire). That was another gem from his colleague, Linkins. What Delaney did say was this: “FishbowlDC takes a break from sucking up to DC media types to cost a guy his job.” He also called our posts “jackass sanctimony.” A little over an hour later, he apparently felt badly and said over Twitter, “I should say FishbowldDC didn’t cost @daveweigel his job, since they’re reporting what they’re getting from whoever’s got it in for him.”

Journolist, the clubby listserv for liberal journos created by WaPo‘s Ezra Klein , is shuttering its cyberspace doors. The news was first alerted to us by Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone, who said over Twitter, “I hear that @ezraklein is shutting down Journolist.” Just moments ago, Klein posted on it. He says simply, “Journolist is done.” He also mentions the irony of The Daily Caller’s Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson recently asking to join and him turning him down. The Daily Caller published a story this morning exposing more of Weigel’s anti-conservative thoughts after FishbowlDC revealed e-mails of this nature Wednesday.

An excerpt
There’s a lot of faux-intimacy on the Web. Readers like that intimacy, or at least some of them do. But it’s dangerous. A newspaper column is public, and writers treat it as such. So too is a blog. But Twitter? It’s public, but it feels, somehow, looser, safer. Facebook is less public than Twitter, and feels even more intimate. A private e-mail list is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. It’s easy to talk as if it’s private without considering the possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public.

FishbowlDC has obtained e-mails written by WaPo‘s conservative-beat blogger Dave Weigel, that the scribe sent to JournoList, a listserv for liberal journalists. (Read up on JournoList with Yahoo! News’s Michael Calderone‘s 2009 story that he wrote for Politico).

Seems Weigel doesn’t like (and that would be putting it mildly) at least some of the conservatives he covers. Poor Drudge – Weigel wants him to light himself on fire.

Weigel’s Words:

•”This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.”

•”Follow-up to one hell of a day: Apparently, the Washington Examiner thought it would be fun to write up an item about my dancing at the wedding of Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman. Said item included the name and job of my girlfriend, who was not even there — nor in DC at all.”

•”I’d politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it.”

•”It’s all very amusing to me. Two hundred screaming Ron Paul fanatics couldn’t get their man into the Fox News New Hampshire GOP debate, but Fox News is pumping around the clock to get Paultard Tea Party people on TV.”

Weigel says he “happy to comment” to FishbowlDC but it seems he’s tied up on the phone. Will bring you his remarks as soon as he provides them.

UPDATE: Rather than responding to our inquiry, Weigel posted an apology to his readers on WaPo here.