For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
(From Politico)The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
A year ago, I likened the main stream media insiders to nothing short of courtiers who vie for access to celebrity news-makers, especially if they be public servants.
I'm not ATTACKING the press or the msm, but, rather, observing that the access enjoyed by the Fourth Estate is something lobbyists have to PAY FOR. In the progressive corruption department of the absolute power chase, the gesture floated by WaPo’s “Marketing” people was produced by the cynical Post culture! One must also note that these professionals share an operating system heavy with ego, wealth in peril and, like the New York Times, still so in love with the good ol’ days, unwilling to accept that they are no longer in control of thought. Desperately, they invent channels for cash flow, hoping to ride out the credibility crisis until the news consumer rediscovers the Post's superior status. Fortunes have a way of getting squandered by the privileged legacy hires who have no idea what great folks their predecessors had to be to build the venerable institutions they now parade as status ranches.
“It’s expensive to be us,” they plea … to paraphrase Anna Nicole Smith.
Dolly Parton said it best: “It costs me a lot to look this cheap.”
http://civilizationsaver.blogspot.com/2008/07/not-attack-on-press.html
1 comment:
Upon reflection: That part about the open, non-confrontational access...it would be worth it to be able to finish a sentence, process a thought, focus on the business, mutual goals and concerns...but, Kay, $25,000 is money I probably paid for their half-assed services and products that don't work. How do you determine who comes through the turnstyle once they drop the cash on you?
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