Is Wash Post publisher Katy Weymouth that much worse than the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the Atlantic Monthly, not to mention the New Yorker? All Katy wanted to do was rent out her fancy mansion, her paper, and herself to corporate lobbyists anxious to meet government movers and shakers. In a fascinating follow-up to its initial piece, Politico reports on what a discreetly passed wad of cash can buy from some of the most prestigious publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recently, the WSJ charged $5,000 a head for a get-together with Obamaland honchos. It was all supposed to be on the record, but at the last minute National Economic Advisor Larry Summers got shy, and insisted on an off-the-record session, no reporters allowed, at the White House. Well, OK, Larry, if you insist! Hey, our hands were tied!
The Economist, which has always believed in free markets, makes no pretense of letting in reporters when it brings together business and government leaders for mini-Davos sessions around the world. Money talks, and the press walks.
But it’s likely that Katy’s real role model is David Bradley, owner of the Atlantic Monthly. Last April, the Post’s Howard Kurtz described Dave’s modus operandi in near-swooning prose:
Last Tuesday evening, Rahm Emanuel quietly slipped into an eighth-floor office at the Watergate. As white-jacketed waiters poured red and white wine and served a three-course salmon and risotto dinner, the White House chief of staff spent two hours chatting with some of Washington’s top journalists—excusing himself to take a call from President Obama and another from Hillary Clinton.
As the journalists hurled questions and argued among themselves, Emanuel said: “This feels a lot like a Jewish family dinner.”
For more than a year, David Bradley, the Atlantic’s soft-spoken owner, has hosted these off-the-record dinners at a specially built table in his glass-enclosed office overlooking the Potomac. And the guests, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, are as A-list as they come.
“White-jacked waiters”! “Excusing himself to take a call from President Obama and another from Hillary Clinton”! “Specially built table”! Hey, I’m getting an erection!
Yeah, those dinners are definitely trés cozy, but at least they’re free. Katy wanted people to pay for them, pay to meet her, pay to hang with her reporters, pay to hang with government honchos. Sorry, but it was a DC cluster-fuck sans pareil, with the meter running.
Afterwords 1
In her latest effusion, Weymouth emits clouds of ink and darts backward in squid-like fashion, tentacles flailing. She still wants to hold sponsored get-togethers, but, she assures us, “any conferences or similar events The Post sponsors will be on the record.”
Well, I wonder if a dinner at Katy’s place, with or without a specially built table, will qualify as a “similar event.” And even if it did, I can’t imagine any Post reporter who happened to be there printing a word that might offend anyone present.
For decades, the Washington Post has howled over the cess-pool of DC lobbying. Now we know why. They haven’t been getting their fair share of the take.
Afterwords 2
One intriguing fact about this whole farce is that no one except the Post and Politico are writing about it, not even the National Review. Are people still afraid of making the Post mad?
Afterwords 3
What about the New Yorker? Actually, the Post came up with that one. Every year the New Yorker has a big blow-out for all its editors, writers, cartoonists, etc. Every year a group of corporate big-wigs bands together to pick up the tab. Would Harold “No free tickets” Ross be embarrassed?* Your guess is as good as mine.
*To get this joke, go here and read footnote 4.
