Mark,
Thanks so much for posting the link last night to the JournoList excerpt published by Mickey Kaus. After a couple of hours of listening to a gaggle of hyperactive kids cooped up in my house by a rainstorm, I needed a good laugh — and was already in the proper frame of mind to enjoy juvenile banter.
While the original Politico story set Washington abuzz, I never found it particularly interesting, nor did anyone else I know. Of course D.C. journalists at titularly liberal media organizations hang out with D.C. journalists at practically liberal media organizations. Before the Internet, it was face-to-face and thus probably more behaved, but still common (I spent a year at TNR two decades ago).
Is it a good idea for journalists purporting to do straight reporting of the news? Probably not, given the nature of the conversation and the potential — now realized — of leaking written exchanges. But reporters do have natural affinities and personal politics. They have a tendency to flock together, and a corresponding temptation towards groupthink. The best journalists push themselves out of their comfort zones and hang out a lot with “the other team,” so to speak, in order to get story ideas, develop sources, and challenge themselves to see issues from different sides.
What was truly funny, and revealing, about the excerpt was the self-importance and puffery. Eric Alterman’s snotty putdown of TNR’s readership was a good example. Honesty compels me to report that water-cooler talk at conservative gatherings sometimes has a similar flavor. Usually, however, it’s among the twenty-somethings, not the fifty-somethings. “Living in the limelight,” wrote my favorite Canadian bard, is “the universal dream for those who wish to seem.”