Will Chuck Todd rack up the most airtime of any broadcast TV news correspondent in 2009? How long will conservative media critics remain enamored with Jake Tapper? Will Mark Knoller ever shave his beard?
For those of us with an unhealthy fascination with the minutia of the White House press corps, 2009 promises to be a heady year.
To wit: This week, Tammy Haddad , the longtime doyenne of the District’s media-politics scene, and David Adler, the head of an event planning firm called BizBash Media, launched www.WHCInsider.com , a “micro niche Web site” devoted entirely to chronicling the reporting and jockeying and preening of the White House correspondents.
The site has kicked off with extensive coverage of the coming annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner. A running clock on the right-hand side of the site continuously counts down the days and hours and minutes and seconds until the start of the party. And a number of early posts have been devoted to keeping tabs on which celebrities will be attending the dinner this year. (Hello, Julia Louis-Dreyfus!)
According to yesterday’s press release, the site will include a number of recurring special features, such as “‘Widget Watch,’ a roundup of innovative, politically oriented widgets that are popular new communication tools; ‘Washington Dossier,’ permanent feeds from various Internet sources of all members of the White House communications staff and correspondents; and ‘The Podium Game,’ challenges readers to name which president said what.”
Journalist Bill Triplett, formerly of Variety, will edit the site—which, for the time being, remains a pro-bono venture. For Ms. Haddad, the Web site will hardly be her first contribution to the greater White House correspondents community. Since 1993, she has been hosting an annual garden brunch at her home overlooking the tree-lined cliffs of the Potomac River on the day of the dinner. Over the years, the brunch has grown into a staple of the weekend’s festivities.
So why launch the site now?
“It’s the White House Correspondents Dinner on steroids,” Ms. Haddad told The New York Times yesterday. “This is going to be the president’s debut, and we want to have a little fun for our big weekend.”
