Ryan Lizza - FishbowlNY

The More Things Change, Etc.: Obama Emulated Bush Press Tactics

Glynnis — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:16:48 +0000

Over at Politico Michael Calderone got his hands on an advance copy of this Sunday’s NYT Magazine which features a profile of Barack Obama‘s incoming press secretary Robert Gibbs by Mark Leibovich. The piece also talks about the campaign’s four letter word strategy when it came to the press: Bush. It’s not new news that more than once over the campaign season journalists commented and complained about the Obama camp’s strict press access and control over his message, so perhaps this excerpt pulled by Calderone shouldn’t come as a total surprise.

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Boys (and Girls) on the (Stockholm) Bus: Election Coverage ’08

Glynnis — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:46:03 +0000

Well, here’s a description of the inside of the Obama plane you don’t come across everyday:

It felt like the Lord of the Flies in there…The people who have been there for a long time have all of their little decorations and knickknacks all over the back of the plane. Everyone’s a little grumpy and territorial, and there’s this sense of people thrown together who have been with each other way too long. I got the sense that I was dropping in on a hostage-captor situation.

Nope, not hostages per se, just the state of Obama’s press corps as The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza discovered it upon his return after a few months away. Over at The New Republic journalists are describing the peculiar aspects of the sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” that has developed in the press corp during the longest campaign season in history. For example, CNN’s Candy Crowley sets three alarms each night and writes the following down before she goes to bed: “What city is she in? What time zone? What time does she have to be out of the hotel room the next morning? What day is it?” Says the NYT Jeff Zeleny, “Now that the campaign is winding down, they’re all taking pictures of one another, and you get the sense of summer camp coming to an end.” And some people, like Politico‘s Ben Smith don’t want the madness to end: “It’s so built into my system, that it’s going to be hard to stop…it’s pathological, really.” Six more days!

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How do You Say ‘Crush on Obama’ in German?

Glynnis — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:42:12 +0000

Maybe you’ve heard. Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama is on a trip overseas, along with the entire American Press Corps (not including Ryan Lizza and the one guy who met John McCain at the NH airport the other day). And apparently Americans are not the only ones “slouching after the senator…scouring his every word, expression, bead of sweat, basketball shot and accessory” (that’s MoDo, by the way, every once in a blue moon she is sort of funny). Nope, the international press appears to be in LOVE with Barack, too (no word on whether McCain also plans to make a video about this phenomenon).

Over at Politico Michael Calderone has a piece up about the “rock star coverage” Obama is receiving from the Germans, in particular.

The German press, looking from Berlin, behaves as if the election of Obama is a foregone conclusion,” said Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Die Zeit, a weekly German newspaper. “He’s being celebrated like a victorious Roman general who comes back from the conquest of Gaul or something.”

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