Two Days Inside the Beltway

By Jonathan Weber, 4-14-08

It’s always a bit of a shock to the system to travel from Missoula to the big city, and the couple of days I spent in Washington D.C. this week were no exception. The trip reminded me again how unpleasant flying has become (I’ll spare you the specifics of the many annoyances), and I was also shocked to see, in bricks and concrete, one of the central ironies of the Bush Administration: during this regime of the party that’s supposed to stand for smaller government, Washington itself is booming. Shiny new buildings are everywhere – government buildings, private office buildings, fancy apartment houses, you name it. The news story of the day was about how the prosperity – no housing bust here! - hasn’t trickled down to the city’s large underclass. More than ever, Washington has the feel of an imperial capital, where the regents are all in clover.

By contrast, for those attending the conference I came to speak at - the annual meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Newspaper Association of America – these are hardly the best of times. The daily newspaper business is in nothing less than a free-fall, and my conversations with some top editors indicate that it’s getting worse. The trade show floor, where the manfacturing infrastructure of the news business is on display, was practically deserted.

But there were a couple of highlights even for the newspaper execs. One was the appearance of all three presidential candidates; a roomful of newspaper editors is still an occasion that no politician will miss.

The second was the reception at the spanking new Newseum – a $400 million monument to journalism, set on Pennsylvania Avenue just across from icons like the National Gallery of Art. I’d thought of this project as a somewhat absurd endeavor, given the state of the traditional news business, but I found myself genuinely moved as I toured the multimedia displays of seminal moments in journalistic history. The gallery of Pulitizer Prize winning photos alone is worth the admission. Great on-the-scene storytelling when big things are happening – the core of the journalists’ mission - has incredible emotional power. The courage of crusading reporters, the social and historical importance of the First Amendment - well, I may be a sap, but I was literally choked up. I hope it has that kind of impact on non-journalists too.

As to the presidential candidates, well, they were not so inspiring, though each in their own way. John McCain, who appeared on Monday morning, took the occasion to announce his support for a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources (most states already have such a law but it doesn’t apply in federal court). That, of course, is popular with journalists. He then sat for a Q&A with two Associated Press reporters, and came off extremely well. Confident, relaxed, funny – it’s not hard to see his appeal. Under questioning, he did jump into the fray over Obama’s “bitter” remarks, saying he thought the comments were elitist, though he stopped short of applying that term to the man himself.

Obama, in his luncheon speech the same day, addressed the controversy head on, and turned it on McCain, saying “If John McCain wants to turn this into a contest about which party is out of touch, I’m happy to have that debate. We need to have that debate.” Even journalists in D.C. will turn out for Obama: like everywhere else, he drew a far larger crowd than his opponents. But he seemed tired, and a little grumpy, as he went through his talking points.

Clinton, for her part, did not tailor her remarks to the occasion, sticking to attacks on the Bush Adminsitration and all that she sees as having gone wrong since her husband left the White House. She left Obama out of it, for the most part. She was highly articulate and full of policy proposals, but personally I wasn’t all that convinced.