Washington as Baghdad

Inside George Packer’s excellent profile of the Senate

By Joel Meares   Aug 4, 2010 at 07:30 AM

When New Yorker staff writer George Packer started on the Washington beat about nine months ago, a “senior administration official”... More

The Afternoon Beast

By Joel Meares   Aug 3, 2010 at 05:02 PM

A quick Dart and Laurel to Tina Brown’s online mag. Laurel first. The Daily Beast has just run an... More

Q & A: Nir Rosen on Afghanistan and WikiLeaks

“I think undermining that war in any way possible is a good thing.”

By Joel Meares   Aug 2, 2010 at 03:30 PM

If anyone should be unsurprised by material in the WikiLeaks war logs dump, it’s reporter Nir Rosen—the New York-based freelance... More

Shotgun!

A look at the race for the briefing room front seat

By Joel Meares   Aug 2, 2010 at 03:19 PM

In what might be the White House equivalent of a student government election, the James S. Brady Briefing Room was... More

Christiane, I wrote you a song

By Joel Meares   Jul 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM

Among the many Christiane Amanpour tidbits doing the rounds in the lead-up to her debut on This Week Sunday, we... More

Q & A: Nevada Political Journalist Jon Ralston

“People just hate Harry Reid… They would vote for Charles Manson over Harry Reid.”

By Joel Meares   Jul 29, 2010 at 03:52 PM

In a state where the major newspapers are often highly partisan, Jon Ralston has been offering Nevadans some of the... More

Democrats are hotter than Republicans, says The Hill

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 01:25 PM

For those tired of creepy white-haired Australians, heat-seeking missiles, and Pakistan’s sly-S-I, The Hill today provides a deliciously People-esque distraction:... More

Bubble Boys

The WikiLeaks documents put an underreported war back on the nation’s radar. It doesn’t matter that the pundits are yawning.

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 10:27 AM

The hardening conventional wisdom on the Afghanistan “war logs” is that they are not the Pentagon Papers. Nor are they,... More

WaPo, Time, and Others Play Catch-up on WikiLeaks

What to do when you don’t get the exclusive

By Joel Meares   Jul 26, 2010 at 05:49 PM

Whereas The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel had a four week heads-up on the 91,000-document WikiLeaks... More

Same Docs, Different Stories

The three outlets gifted by WikiLeaks take three different approaches

By Joel Meares   Jul 26, 2010 at 12:46 PM

On Sunday, three news outlets published the results of their investigations into 91,731 classified U.S. military documents that they had... More

The Un-federated Tea Party Caucus

WaPo’s roundup of new caucus is funny, but misses a key point

By Joel Meares   Jul 23, 2010 at 04:43 PM

When news broke last week that The National Tea Party Federation had expelled the Tea Party Express for not scolding... More

Calling a Spade a Spade or a Fox a Fox

The Times minces no words on the Sherrod story

By Joel Meares   Jul 22, 2010 at 10:25 AM

We wrote yesterday that we were mostly disappointed with the print coverage of the Shirley Sherrod story from the Times,... More

After the Storm

How the Sherrod story came up in print

By Joel Meares   Jul 21, 2010 at 05:09 PM

If you were anything like us yesterday, your computer screens were tabbed up with reports and opinions on Georgia USDA... More

Et Tu, WaPo?

The Post’s weightless weigh-in on the Black Panthers coverage

By Joel Meares   Jul 20, 2010 at 04:35 PM

Looks like Fox News’s Megyn Kelly got what she wanted: everybody’s talking about the DOJ’s dismissal of charges against the... More

Georgia On Your Mind

Some down south reading in the lead-up to the Peach State primaries

By Joel Meares   Jul 20, 2010 at 07:30 AM

Georgians head to the polls tomorrow for senate, gubernatorial, and house primaries. Most eyes will be on the Republican primary... More