I stopped reading Politico a long time ago, partly because my favorite reporters there all left, partly because the solid beat reporting is increasingly buried under an avalanche of “big picture” wankery. This piece on that Mike Allen “Playbook” thing (which is unbelievably worthless, even relative to other daily political digests) blew my mind:
Allen’s updates have become perhaps the Beltway’s most impressive journo-business story of the past decade. As previously reported, advertisers pay a good $35,000 for a weekly run in “Playbook,” a price tag that has inflated nicely for Politico in recent years.
[….]Another big name that’s gotten a healthy dose of earned media from Playbook is BP, a company that has faced quite a challenge in image-conscious Washington, thanks to the 2010 oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by the company. In recent months, BP has blanketed “Playbook” with ads hyping the company’s status as “America’s largest energy investor.” The free BP mentions authored by Allen tell a similar story.
Last June, for instance, Allen found newsworthy an AP story about a BP campaign to challenge settlement claims stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The item quoted from a full-page ad that the company had placed in newspapers, and that the AP story had cited. It also included a link to the ad.
But the Villagers are all good friends and Allen is such a nice guy, so no biggie!
To skim Playbook is to experience Washington in the midst of an attention-deficited conversation that can bounce from the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the health care bill to news of a “state visit” from Feldman’s parents (Jud and Sunny) to an all-caps directive that we all “ask Hari about his new puppy.”
muricafukyea
“I stopped reading Politico a long time ago, partly because my favorite reporters there all left.”
roflmao…the shit ball juicers say really crack me up. Considering Politico has always been run by a bunch of right wing hacks and only employed right wing hacks that statement says a lot about you Doug of the Juicy Ball Dougs.
Villago Delenda Est
“Tiger Beat on the Potomac” really is an insult.
To Tiger Beat.
schrodinger's cat
Whoever called them Politho was right.
LAC
@schrodinger’s cat: I always called it that,but I know that I am not the only one. When was this gossip rag ever good?
Elizabelle
Could we have a JFK memorial thread up at some point today?
I really don’t care to talk about Mike Allen or Politico.
Violet
@LAC: I had no idea there was a print version of Politico. I was in D.C. in the summer, stopped into a Starbucks to get a coffee, and Politico was available in a print edition. I was near the Mall and around a bunch of government buildings, so maybe they have limited availability in and around that area.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I imagine the firing squads could go for weeks and weeks after The Glorious Revolution.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Elizabelle:
Tired of all the JSF memorial threads?
Anoniminous
O/T Neat techy-tech thingie:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/electroninks/circuit-scribe-draw-circuits-instantly
Despite all the nonsense, we live in an amazing age.
C.V. Danes
Politico is merely another piece of the alternate reality from which the history of the victors will be written.
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Firing squads can be so stressful, as the Nazis discovered when using them to “take care of” Jews in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union.
Not to mention expensive. All that ammo…
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t rain on my parade, asshole.
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I’m still pushing for tumbrels.
I’m a traditionalist.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
How Obama managed to crawl from Kenya to Dallas at the age of two, as some say, calls for investigation.
/wingnut
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: The tumbrel doesn’t do the dirty work. Need the guillotine for that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
THAT is where John Kerry earns his big salary…by persuading the French to lend us their unused old equipment.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: Are you wanting to turn it into a spectator sport too?
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
“Turn it into”? It was ALWAYS a spectator sport. Just ask Madame Lefarge and her knitting needles.
ericblair
@C.V. Danes:
I remember when Politico started up: the local DC news radio just started referring to Politico as an authority with no introduction, and acting like it had been around forever. No introduction, nothing. I got seriously weirded out. It was just like some alternate reality/alien mindfuck movie where one day some key thing was different and everybody around acted like it had always been there.
Crusader
Mike Allen was the editor of my high school newspaper. His writing hasn’t changed at all in 30 years.
schrodinger's cat
Politiho’s kindred, the columnists from Washpost sing a dirge for the death of bipartisanship.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: I know it was. I mean if there were modern executions. These days, it’s all done behind many layers of security where only a select few are allowed as witnesses.
fuckwit
@ericblair: Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
My needles are at the ready, good sir.
Steve in the ATL
Mike Allen gets a lot of coverage in the W&L alumni magazine. Every time I see him in there I reduce the amount of my donation.
schrodinger's cat
@ericblair: Being a Villager is useful, your buddies always help you out.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: The death of JSF is naught but a cheery fantasy.
ranchandsyrup
You really don’t miss comity until it’s gone. Poor senators. :(
fuckwit
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Hmm. The Glorious Revolution was called that because it was relatively bloodless. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_revolution No firing squads. Not even much guns back then either, maybe muskets and cannons. It was all swords and shit.
It is starting to annoy me to hear so much bloodlust from the left. And curious to see it directed at the media. The media are tools, dupes, boot-licking lackeys, they deserve contempt and disgust but I really can’t justify hating them anymore for just being whores.
The evil deserving of hate are the media’s paymasters: the 1%, corporations, Wall Street banks, the Kochs, etc. And even then, I don’t think violence would solve anything. Let’s say you dragged Wall Street bankers out of their offices, yanked a bunch of MOTU’s off of the trading floor of the NYSE, or chased the fat cats down by helicoptering in to all the remote mansion compounds in the Hamptons, NoVa, all up and down the California coast, up in the mountains of Colorado, or wherever these rich assholes are decamped, and dragged them back to the city center for public executions. Now what? Emotionally satisfying, maybe, but how about running the country? How do you undo the damage they’ve done? Those are much more serious, important, dificult, but way less dramatic, problems.
We’ve got shit to do. Revenge fantasies aren’t going to help, really.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Does Fuckall wanna get in on this commenting orgy? Fuckall?
handsmile
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I thought that was a eulogy I read in comment #75 on dpm’s “Filibuster-By-Morning” post. My condolences. Should flowers be sent or “in lieu of flowers, charitable contributions to….”?
Howlin Wolfe
@LAC: I thought it was “Politc-ho”, ya know, so it scans the same as “Politico”.