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.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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