Backgrounder: Washington Media Insights Panel
Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter has written the highly praised "Between the Lines" column since 1991, covering politics and the media. Alter received his bachelor's degree in history from Harvard in 1979, and afterwards spent two years working as an editor for the Washington Monthly. He joined Newsweek as an associate editor in March 1983, became a media critic the following year, a senior writer in 1987 and then a senior editor in 1991. Since 1996, Alter has worked as a contributing correspondent for NBC News, and he continues to appear regularly on NBC broadcasts.
In an e-mail, Alter stated what he thought about the state of political journalism in Washington, which he hopes to address in Thursday's panel discussion:
"The big change is the development of a conservative media establishment to compete with the 'old media' or 'mainstream media,'" he said. "The conservative media put politics first, and see media as a way to axe-grind for a conservative agenda. The mainstream media is made up of reporters who are largely liberal and whose stories ... sometimes reflect liberal assumptions. But their primary allegiance is to independent journalism and the enlightenment of their readers, not to advancing a liberal political agenda."
Ana Marie Cox has been the editor of Wonkette.com since its inception in January 2004. Called Washington, D.C.'s answer to Gawker.com, Wonkette.com is an irreverent gossip-and-politics blog that follows no party line, and happily reports, or surmises, on all the goings-on in politics. A self-described "failed journalist," Cox worked for American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mother Jones and National Geographic before working for Wonkette. Originally from Lincoln, Neb., Cox, 32, moved to Washington, D.C., from New York with her husband, Chris Lehmann, an editor at The Washington Post Book World. Cox also edits a personal blog, TheAnticMuse.com, from her home, in Arlington, Va.
Cox is very clear on the difference between what she does with Wonkette and what news journalists do. During a visit to the Columbia Journalism School on Oct. 11, 2004, she said, "I don't think of Wonkette as 'journalism.' It is journalism, but it is not journalism. It's a different job. I think Wonkette is complementary to mainstream journalism. It is not going to replace it; it shouldn't replace it."
A political strategist and media consultant, Long Island native Russ Schriefer was a member of the Maverick media team that produced political advertising for President George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. A founding partner in The Stevens and Schriefer Group, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., Schriefer was the Program Director for the 2004 Republican National Convention. To attract a more youthful and captivated audience, Schriefer told The New York Times: "We tried to look at what TV shows do to keep an audience. We're taking lessons from TV shows."
For the past two decades, Schriefer has been managing and consulting on Republican campaigns at all levels of government. He is an executive vice president of the Bond-Donatelli government affairs firm, which allows him to advise corporate clients on strategy, message, tactics and communications.
For more than 30 years, Ellen Hume has worked as a reporter and analyst for American newspapers, magazines and television. Hume is the director of the Center on Media and Society at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches courses that examine the relationship between journalism, politics and public policy. Hume worked as a Washington-based reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 1977 to 1983 before becoming a White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal until 1988. From there Hume was the executive director and senior fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Throughout her career, Hume has worked extensively in television. She was the founding executive director of PBS's Democracy Project, serving there from 1996 to 1998, and appeared as a media analyst on CNN's Reliable Sources from 1993 to 1997.
As the moderator for the Washington Media Insights panel, Hume has a variety of questions she hopes the panel will answer:
"I think the key issues our panel should consider are: Who is a real 'journalist' today, and why does it matter? What role does the professional journalist play in the White House/Washington policymaking process and what role do the ersatz bloggers, comedians and other message-bearers play? What happens if the White House is lying? Can journalists print that? How should the public navigate this complex landscape of political messages? What should they look for to determine what is true?"