Please Tell Me This Is a Joke

by: Jim Corrigan

Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 12:00:11 PM EDT

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and - at first - even the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer - which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters - was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

http://www.politico.com/news/s...

Wow. But it may be developing.

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events - a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.