Mark Whitaker On Life Inside the DC Fishbowl

FishbowlDC’s Matt Dornic talks with NBC News DC Bureau chief Mark Whitaker:

What has been the proudest moment in your career?

I was the Editor of Newsweek during 9/11 – we did a lot of groundbreaking coverage for a weekly magazine and won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence for it. On a personal level, I also got a big thrill out of writing the Newsweek cover story when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. But nothing beats the immediacy of TV. Nine days after the election, I stopped by Andrea Mitchell’s office around 6 pm and she told me that two solid sources had told her Barack Obama was in serious talks with Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. I called Alex Wallace, who was the EP of Nightly News with Brian Williams and urged her to put Andrea on for a cross-talk with Brian. Half an hour later she had the biggest scoop of the Obama transition. That was a kick.

More here, including how TVNewser and the Fishbowls fit in to Whitaker’s daily reading list…

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