As noted here many times at The Cable Game, Politico is a hot book, probably the buzz-heaviest publication in politics these days. One reason for Politico's success is that it has seemed fair-minded about covering the news, even as it generates buzz. Getting scoops and publishing strong stories is the name of the game, but what matters is being fair. And Politico had that going for it, too. But in the media biz, you are only as good as your latest scoop, you are trusted according to perceptions of fairness, and, over time, you become as bad as your last mistake.
But recently, TCG has noticed that Politico staffers, present and former, are getting sloppy. Maybe cocky leads to sloppy. And maybe the traditional liberal tilt of the MSM eventually infects the new media, too. Consider the case ex-Politico writer Michael Calderone, now at Yahoo. He seems to have both gotten sloppy and moved to the left since coming to the web portal.
So here are three examples:
First, as noted here on Monday seems to have been the only reporter who fell for Zev Chafets' attempt at publicity--his claim that his uninteresting book about Rush Limbaugh was being blacklisted by Fox.
Then, on Wednesday, the same Calderone wrote another piece for Yahoo News in which he gratuitously and unnecessarily included a reference to Shepard Smith--about an arrest that happened almost a decade ago. And then ago and yet he failed to include the most important part--all the charges were dropped! So A) he had it wrong and B) why did he even bother referencing that?
Third, on Wednesday, Patrick Gavin at Politico wrote some BS gossip about Chris Wallace at a Washington Nationals baseball game playing up the fact that Wallace sitting in the wrong seat--one section over. Big deal. Who hasn't done that? But Gavin puffed it into a story, although even he conceded that Wallace was "graceful" throughout the entire non-incident incident, as he moved over to the proper serat. But then The Washington Examiner's Nikki Schwab ended up getting the scoop herself from Wallace on his snafu. So Gavin and Politico missed the story; perhaps they were too busy looking for buzz in all the wrong places to do proper follow-up with Wallace or anyone else.
So this is Politico has become? And what ex-Politicos have become?
TCG is reminded of an old joke about the Model T car, you know, the car mass-produced by Henry Ford a century ago, that became a legend--and made Ford a household name and a very rich man. The joke, playing off that reputation, goes like this: A man buys a Model T, drives it off the lot, and then, 50 miles later, the car stops cold, and so he pulls it off the road, at a farm. When he lifts the hood, he sees that there's no engine. Nothing. "So how did the car get this far," the man asks in wonderment. "That T ran on its reputation," the famer explains. OK, not the funniest joke ever, but revealing nonetheless.
The moral of this story, is that you can go a long way on a good reputation, but you can't go forever. And that's the lesson of Calderone, Gavin, and Politico.
