Having actually looked at the flier, oy.To hear the Postdescribe it, this was a thing the third intern from the back made up in MS Paint and posted in the local Starbucks, and the problem was that he used Comic Sans instead of Rage Italic and that was what all the fuss was about. Like they were doing a piece on kittens and ran a photo of puppies instead. Like this was a packaging issue. As you can see, this clearly wasn’t made in an hour and not by an intern, either. Multiple people saw this and nobody said, “Um, hell to the no?” How hard is this shit?
(Confession: I would have posted this earlier but I’m kind of fuzzy around the edges from a migraine. Because I have ethics and standards and shit, I’m disclosing that to you. Mostly in hopes of staving off the many e-mails about my typos.)
public officials. This raised the specter of a money-losing newspaper
doing the same thing — and charging for access to its own reporters
and editors as well.
No, kitten, it raised theactuality of you hosting something you un-ironically named a “salon” and were telling people was an off-the-record chance to snuggle with the powerful once they’d put some dough in the kitty. I’m not naive, really. I understand the desire for the head of a newspaper to be not only a person doing a job in the newsroom but also a figurehead to represent the paper publicly in important discussions about the issues of the day. I just don’t think hosting “salons” is what that job ought to be.
For example, if I might offer an alternative, there are about a gazillion opportunities every single day to call out some conservative dickhead autowittering on about how the Post sucks and newspapers suck and reporters suck and your mom sucks, such that a person could keep very busy defending journalists and journalism and get nice and famous that way. I hearthese dudes keep a running list of scary journalistic shitin which you could get involved, if you feel the need to talk to senators and policymakers to feel important.
See, the emphasis on a fancy pay-for-play party to talk about how fucked poor people are offends me more than the money itself. Mostly because the pay-for-play in this case is just a little more blatant than it is usually. Do you think I could walk into the office of Katharine Weymouth in my Salvation Army dress and Target shoes and get a moment to talk about health care or the rule of law or how John Kerry should have been president? Fuck no. But if I had some numerals after my name and a huge checkbook and carried a Kate Spade bag, that would be different, and it’s the way it was before Politico worked up a head of steam about the actual price tag being out there for us to read.
Granted, I thought it would be a higher price than $25,000, to get in a room with Katie, but the fact is that there was a price tag on access to the elite of our punditry yesterday, and there will be one tomorrow, even if there’s no flier out there with the number on it for all to see.
A.