{"id":224,"date":"2006-08-04T11:23:18","date_gmt":"2006-08-04T16:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2006\/08\/04\/briefing-room-not-brief\/"},"modified":"2006-08-06T21:49:57","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T02:49:57","slug":"briefing-room-not-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/08\/briefing-room-not-brief\/","title":{"rendered":"Briefing Room Not Brief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The week’s least important news: The White House briefing room is being renovated, and the press was run out of it Wednesday, to temporary quarters. NPR more or less managed a cute story out of it, though it was a waste of valuable minutes, and my own newspaper gave it good inside play. The New York Times<\/em> had a few hundred words and a photo.<\/p>\n

News media need to devote a proportionate amount of space to the fun or entertainingly trivial. But surely readers don’t care about upholstery for correspondents’ chairs or that the president took time to address reporters about the matter in a lighthearted fashion.<\/p>\n

Look, there’s former press secretaries, former reporters and the first lady! Maybe this president speaking to a group of reporters in their own room is news. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The week’s least important news: The White House briefing room is being renovated, and the press was run out of it Wednesday, to temporary quarters. NPR more or less managed a cute story out of it, though it was a waste of valuable minutes, and my own newspaper gave it good inside play. The New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":137,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/lead-the-press-to-water\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":0},"title":"Lead the press to water","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, July 1, 2005: In this morning's papers, we read again of local officials asking people to informally not waste water, before conservation steps are ordered. Again, they say there is no shortage, just that it's summer and yada, yada, yada. In previous summers, though,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/go-hogs-quickly\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":1},"title":"Go, Hogs, Quickly","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. PollockSaturday, Aug. 13, 2005: News item: The Razorback football team of the University of Arkansas is ending a decades-old tradition of open practice. Starting this summer, the sessions will be closed to the public in general and the press in particular. If a tree falls in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3429,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/12\/havel-and-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":2},"title":"Havel and Me","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock I met Vaclav Havel once, while he was president of Czechoslovakia. We were in a castle. Oh, and I avoided shaking hands with him. Now, he's dead. Not that I'd ever had a chance to renew the, uh, acquaintance. In September 1992, I was in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ben Pollock after a Czech meal 09-1992","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Czech-meal-09-1992-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4990,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2014\/12\/bill-cosby-full-press-court\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":3},"title":"Bill Cosby: Full Press Court","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, comedian Bill Cosby resigned as a trustee of Temple University in Philadelphia, on whose board he sat 32 years. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the decision came after a petition drive and other pressure on the performer's alma mater, which followed a flurry of news this fall on years'-old\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bill Cosby, 2010. Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Bill-Cosby-2010-public-domain-361x496-218x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":55,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/08\/city-editor-ray-hobbs\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":4},"title":"City editor Ray Hobbs","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004. Colleague Ray Hobbs of Little Rock died Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004. He wasn't old, just 53, but had hepatitis C. [Link to obit has expired.] Here are two recollections of Ray. 1. In 1982, maybe 1983, I was working at a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":437,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/06\/big-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":224,"position":5},"title":"Big Money","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"NEW ORLEANS -- The second speaker for the columnists conference was Jarvis DeBerry of the Times-Picayune. He had a heck of a column Sunday showing how this month's flooding in Iowa and The Storm (Katrina-Rita of 2005) have at least this much in common: deliberate damage to wetlands to benefit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Storm, New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"The Storm, New Orleans","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/new-orleans-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}