May
4
2004

better things to do

Washington Post White House reporter Dana Milbank has a fun tribute to departing White House pool reporter Bob Kemper, who has moved from covering the White House for the Chicago Tribune to a new job with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (“In White House Pool, Making a Splash” - 05/04/04)

(When there isn’t room for all the reporters who want to attend a given event or follow along on a given trip, a pool reporter is appointed to cover the story and then report back to the rest of the group.)

Rebelling against the frequent tedium of monotonous trips and recycled speeches, Kemper would write his pool reports with humor and wit, poking fun at the ridiculous and the mundane.

Consider his report on President Bush’s St. Patrick’s evening visit to the British Embassy to see a play called “The Spider’s Web,” featuring the president’s sister-in-law, Margaret Bush. “Was the play good? Who knows?” Kemper wrote. “Was Margaret the spider? Who knows? Does the play have any chance of opening at the Italian Embassy any time soon? Who knows? You see, though [Bush] was reportedly at the British Embassy, your pool was at Cactus Cantina, a Mexican restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue.”

What’s more, Kemper recounted, to make sure the journalists did not acquire weapons while at Cactus Cantina, “everyone had to go to the Little Reporter’s Room together with an armed guard.”

Such excessive security measures were a constant theme in Kemper’s, and other poolers’, prose. “Your pool was searched three — count ‘em, three — times on its way into the event,” he reported from Monterrey, Mexico. “Bags went through X-rays so often it is believed they can no longer have little purses of their own.”

It’s a kind of genius. I wish his writings had been more widely (and publicly) distributed … they might have garnered an even larger following. (Although, having made a name for himself as the colorful pool reporter, such increased popularity may have confined him to the monotony of the role even longer. And that’s probably not good for one’s sanity.)

(Thanks to Rob for the link.)

Posted at 7:01 PM in journalism/media, politics & bureaucracy

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Comments

In an interesing story earlier this month in the Wall Street Journal, some reporters lament that because the White House pool report is now so widely distributed, there’s little freedom to be goofy anymore. (“Bloggers Parse Pool Reportage on Bush Doings” - 03/10/05)

Once duplicated on a White House copier and distributed by hand, the dispatches are now e-mailed by White House staff to about a thousand reporters and government officials. The sheer number of recipients and the electronic distribution practically assures that these once closely guarded documents end up online.

Purists in the White House press corps say this public airing is beginning to change the tenor of the pool report, as writers pull punches in acknowledgment of a larger audience. “It’s ‘Wheels up at 6:32, trip uneventful,’ ” says the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, describing the kind of report he says is becoming more commonplace. He thinks the added scrutiny has “stamped all the fun out of it.”

As with much that occurs in the White House, the distribution system is opaque: Officials there won’t say who is on the list, only divulging that the dispatches are sent to reporters and select administration staff. In the fall of 2002, some White House reporters began to suspect the White House was distributing the pool dispatches to Republican lobbyists and political operatives, many of whom were not shy about firing off angry e-mails when they received them. “We were getting criticized almost immediately after posting them,” says Bob Deans, a Cox Newspapers reporter and former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Mr. Deans says the association discussed limiting the circulation of the pool reports by cutting out the White House and setting up an independent distribution network. But in the end, the association offered only cautionary advice. In a memo to correspondents, Mr. Deans advised pool reporters to forswear “tossing in gratuitous asides or inside jokes that some people might interpret as unprofessional.”

(Link found via Romenesko.)

Posted by alykat on March 27, 2005 10:01 PM

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