NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Congratulations, Michael!

Con­grat­u­la­tions are in order to our good friend Michael Hood, who has been keep­ing a crit­i­cal eye on talk radio over at blath­er­Watch since 2005.

Yes­ter­day, Michael became the first blog­ger from the Pacif­ic North­west cre­den­tialed to cov­er a White House press brief­ing, which is a pret­ty big deal.

As Michael recounts, it may have been just anoth­er day for the White House press corps, but it was a rather spe­cial expe­ri­ence for him. As he put it: “It was just plain thrilling for a small-town hack whose mea­ger off-line lifestyle is eat­ing crunchy snacks while plugged into cable teevee and haunt­ing the Sun­day shows.”

Inter­spersed with Michael’s humor­ous account of the brief­ing are sev­er­al amus­ing pic­tures of tired or inat­ten­tive reporters, com­plete with fit­ting captions.

Michael only briefly alludes to what White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney and the half-dozen reporters he called upon talked about, but I can tell you from read­ing the tran­script of the brief­ing (which went on for about fifty min­utes) that most of the ques­tions were either about the admin­is­tra­tion’s diplo­mat­ic over­tures in the Mid­dle East or the fall­out from the res­ig­na­tion of Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

As Michael cor­rect­ly observed, not much news is typ­i­cal­ly made at White House press brief­in­gs, and today was no exception.

Still, it’s great that Michael was able to get into the James Brady Room for a day. Most blog­gers nev­er have that experience.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

One Comment

  1. I have been a faith­ful read­er and occa­sion­al con­trib­u­tor to Blath­er Watch for years. What a well deserved honor!

    # by Mike Barer :: May 23rd, 2011 at 1:51 PM
  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: