Campaign Desk Files, Report Riles

We're shocked that our good friends at Campaign Desk found life inside the reportorial campaign "bubble" to be disorienting, insular and cliquish -- exactly like they thought it would be. No, seriously, what we're really surprised by is that a real journalist found the Campaign Desk's account to be overly intellectual, smug and self-satisfied. No, no, really: what stuns us is that people read Campaign Desk.

Anyway, we don't mind being a clearing house for anonymous snark. We don't mind it at all:

In an amazing development, Campaign Desk actually sent someone to see what its like to be a reporter "in the bubble," known to mere mortals as being part of the Kerry campaign's traveling press corps. Apparently, they must have filled their weekly quota of mind-numbingly pedestrian criticism and figured it might be cool to, you know, get out and actually see what being a reporter is like (one would assume that their asshat professors are going to give them a stern talking to about this).

Unfortunately, the eminent Brian Montopoli never actually does any reporting – I assume he was tired from all that hard thinking they do over at Columbia -- he does come up with some breathtaking observations. It seems that reporters drink a lot of coffee, really like using their crackberries and, get this, they even talk to each other sometimes. Man, he sure is teaching us field reporters a thing or two about being a “journalist.”

He even has time to dismiss out of hand an unnamed reporter’s complaints that deadline pressure sometime results in rushed stories. We can only assume that he doesn’t back up that dismissal because since it doesn’t square with either what he learned in school or the wannabe Noam Chomsky musings of his lil' buddies, it’s prima facie wrong. Hmm, now where have I heard ad homonym attacks on stories using blind quotes and unsubstantiated claims?

Insert standard disclaimer about the folks at Campaign Desk being swell people despite the scolding and whatnot. And we're not sure that they're really into Chomsky. We see them as more the Habermas types.

 A Day in the Bubble [Campaign Desk]