WH Pool Report Report: Milbank Goes Meta
Talk about your slow news days: In today's WP, Dana Milbank explicates the purpose and pedigree of pool reports, an exercise that could be described as "inside baseball," but baseball is more interesting: "It is . . . the pooler's constant challenge to portray boredom in exciting ways."
Actually, pool reports can be hilarious and cutting -- Milbank's own filings never fail to be both -- but we worry about them staying that way, and not just because we're losing another in-house sniper, the Trib's Bob Kemper ("who did for the White House pool report what Ernie Pyle did for war journalism"). We'd sort of been wondering why we kept getting copies of the reports, for instance -- now we know that it's because thousands of people do. When the pool report stops being an intramural snark hunt and starts being just another way to suck up, well, might as well let Bumiller write it every time.
In White House Pool, Making a Splash [WP]
WH Pool Report: Live with the Boats Edition [Wonkette]