THE GATE CRASHERS

If you follow the political blogosphere, then you're probably aware of Yearly Kos, this weekend's first-ever conference for members of the Daily Kos community, a far-flung faction of fighting folks, united for the purpose of "crashing the gates" of the Beltway political establishment. Given the rising prominence of political bloggers, particularly left-wing bloggers, it's no surprise that more than a few Democratic presidential hopefuls and a sizable contingent of DC's political reporters made the trek to Las Vegas as welll.

I'd wager the whole event has already been hyped beyond its actual importance, but then again, this is what political reporters do best. Most of the change bloggers can bring to politics has already been realized (short of electoral success, although this point is hotly debated), and so I expect plenty of silly things to be written about the event, or I expect that they're already written and still awaiting editorial feedback.

But it's fun to see the attending media trip over regular-old attribution-agreement errors that long predated the advent of the blogosphere. And by "the attending media," I mean New York Times whipping boy Adam Nagourney, who probably gets it from both sides more than almost anyone else.

To set this up, we'll start with a long-ish excerpt of the report from NR's Byron York on Thursday, from the site of a workshop, the "Center for American Progress Pundit Project Training":

[W]ould-be mini-pundits weren’t the only ones who showed up at 8:00 A.M. in a nondescript conference room down several winding halls from the Riviera’s casinos. Reporters showed up, too, drawn not only by all the hype surrounding YearlyKos but because the pundit session seemed sexier than the other fare available—panels like “CivicSpace Website Building Workshop” and “Progressive Majority Workshop: Recruiting Progressive Candidates.” So the Center for American Progress trainers and their student pundits found themselves under the gaze of Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Ana Marie Cox of Time, Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard, and others.

That made organizers a little nervous. “This is off the record,” said one volunteer.

Off the record? Really? “You mean like this never happened?” asked one reporter.

“Off the record,” the volunteer repeated, adding that he needed to talk it over with the Center for American Progress people.

After a good deal of back-and-forth, it became clear that organizers weren’t so much running a secret society—that did seem a little out of place at a highly publicized political bloggers gathering—as they were concerned about privacy of the participants. They were amateur commentators from all around the country—teachers, activists, lawyers—who, in the training session, were going to sit in front of a camera and practice their punditry techniques, interviewed by one of the trainers from the Center. What if they messed up, or said something embarrassing? There was no reason to quote them by name, was there?

That seemed reasonable, so an agreement was reached. No names would be used. And then the Center for American Progress trainers asked that their names not be used, either. Echoing Vice President Dick Cheney and others who have defended Bush administration secrecy policies, the trainers said they wanted to be able to give candid advice without being quoted by name.

Okay, no names for the trainers, either.

York doesn't mention whether Nagourney was in attendance, which makes it harder to draw conclusions about the segment of his report I'm going to quote next. Dowd's presence doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't there, as the political desk of course operates independently of the editorial columnists, but it's also possible MoDo shared a bit of reporting with her colleague. So here's the relevant excerpt of Nagourney's report, from today's edition:

Jennifer Palmieri, a deputy White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, held a "pundit project training," where she told bloggers how to present themselves in television interviews — what to wear, how to sit and what to say.

No names?

It's possible that MoDo passed along the fact of Palmieri's involvement with this session without noting the injunction against using participants' names. It's possible he was in attendance at the actual event, and didn't abide by the same agreement. It's possible he wasn't there, MoDo told him the whole story, and he ignored it. It's also possible York overstated the agreement.

Now, it's also possible that Palmieri's name was simply on the daily schedule, Nagourney did not attend, and simply noted the fact without realizing an agreement had been made (it's worth considering the fact that he didn't write any more about this workshop). As I expect this would be the case, what a ridiculous request on the part of CAP's workshop organizers.

Requests for the anonymity of sources are always sort of a ruse to keep the outsiders (i.e. readers) out of the loop, but this one is especially dumb. If Nagourney hadn't blurted it out in today's New York Times, any one of the thousands of bloggers there could have (and may have) written about it themselves. I could probably fire off a few e-mails and find out who the other person was, but I'm guessing it's someone listed on this page with the word "communications" in their title.

But the parallel with Nagourney's former colleague Judith Miller — whose protection of sources culminated in last summer's best water cooler speculation — is one that, in other circumstances, Maureen Dowd wouldn't be able to resist.

P.S. — If you didn't already click on Nagourney's hyperlinked name above, "Adam Nagourney" has already written about the convo. Don't forget to stick around for the comments.

P.P.S. — In the interests of self-aggrandizement, I would like to point out that I was the only member of the national media to attend and report on the first-ever conference for members of the Atrios/Eschaton community (the second-largest left-wing political blog) last September.

---

posted by WWB at 8:54 PM |