White House Correspondent or Not

Washingtonians are still talking about James Guckert AKA Gannon and how he was able to stay in as a White House reporter for such a long time. What a joke.How could you miss the set up questions he asked? Who could keep a straight face? And Helen Thomas lost her seat?

I keep waiting for some good journalists to really ask some hard-hitting questions. I know they have been better lately, but really. Do we need Sam Donaldson and Carl Bernstein to do everything?

What do you think?

WEST WING AND HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

Last night's West Wing on NBC was an exceptionally good program.
It was all about campaigning. The Jimmy Smits character was
loosing and wasn't allowed to participate in the debates.

He was advised to do punky ads and he refused. In the end he gave a one minute
live speech on TV and looked into the camera and said what he thought was right.

Could we actually get away with that today? Would that work?

I think we definitely need to come back to our senses and try this sort of thing in
our country's campaigns. Not only political campaigns either. We always advise our clients to take the honest approach. There is no such thing as a good cover up.

My Trip to New York

Had some business in New York on Monday, so Phil and I went there
over the weekend and had a great time with friends. We went to hear Mark
Murphy the great jazz vocalist at Iridium. It was amazing.

The next day we went to have drinks at the Oak Room Bar possibly for the last time
since they are closing next week. It was so historic and fun. Where else can you get a tuna
salad sandwich for $19?

We had a big group of people later that night for a Chinese dinner party on the west side.
They included a woman who ran for the Senate seat in St; Louis to New York Times
writers. My friend Daphne really put together quite a group of artists , writers and politicians.

The next day Emily and I went to some meetings and had lunch with one of our publishing clients at Giorgiones in the meast packing district. We really had a good talk.
I asked her about the future of publishing and she said budgets are being cut, but it will thrive.

Then on to meet our agent coordination client and take her to meet with an agent. This agent really liked that we were representing her and said that it gives writers a platform that agents like.

A Typical Day in Washington,DC

Welcome to the MediaMix. I do publicity mostly for publishers and authors. The mix comes from the many different types of stuff we do with the media from health care to political agendas. We’re in Washington, DC after all and about two blocks from the White House.

We see the motorcades everyday and this morning there was an odd one that stopped traffic for miles. It involved busses of people coming back from a Presidential prayer breakfast I think. Horns were blowing and lights were flashing. It really was confusing because although we are used to this, no one knew where to go, basically everyone stopped in their tracks. I just waited on the sidewalk until it went through.

I love book publicity and have been doing it for over 20 years. I’ve been here at Planned Television Arts DC office for eight years on Feb 18th. The home office is in New York.
So I get to take trips up there and mix business with fun.

Sometimes publishing rebels think they will change the mindset, but it takes a while. Publishing is a world all to its own. I think book people just want to cling to typewriters and think that computers are too anti-intellectual. But slowly and surely the literary types come around.

I like doing work for the Think Tanks here. What a great job it would be to just think all day. Then write papers that give thoughts and ideas. And sometimes even solutions, but not very often. DC is intriguing that way.