How to Make the Front Page: A Do-It-Yourself Guide for Congressmen
Nocera, Joseph
How to Make the Front Page by Joseph Nocera I’ve been feeling a little sorry for Jennings Randolph lately. Here heis, at the age of 76, so long ensconced as the senior senator from West...
...This is selfexplanatory...
...The number was the key...
...Go to the scene of the crime...
...appropriations subcommittee...
...Flood, as you surely know, was recently indicted on a few counts of perjury, but even last winter, when investigative reporters were hot on his trail, Flood also got huge doses of sympathetic press even from reporters as hard-nosed as Jack Anderson...
...The farmers are mad, you say...
...Metzenbaum’s big issue these days is energy...
...His staff has developed good sources inside Conrail who feed them information that they then feed to reporters...
...What reporter is going to turn down a call from the congressman...
...This story is known as the, “curtain-raiser...
...Wire reporters understand your need for press...
...Barely had he moved into his Senate ,office as a freshman two years ago when he began to show us his stuff...
...So, faced with this grim political reality, what does Randolph do...
...Sen...
...Provide newspegs...
...And that’s another trick that’s been widely imitated-think of the dozens of press releases that begin, “If you put all the potholes in America end to end...
...The staff would spend days scouring old committee reports, defense reports, intelligence reports, public reports, any kind of reports, looking for information that would make a good story...
...5. Start a caucus...
...They jog, they make dinner, they do fun, exciting things...
...B e a r d c a l l s the Providence Journal four or five times a day with everything from advice on how to improve theirjob performance, to announcements that he is going to box a few rounds with Muhammad Ali, to anecdotes about Air Force Two (when he was on the plane, flying towards Europe on a recent junket, he couldn’t help calling the Journal to see if the phone in the plane really worked...
...His office called the local Washington correspondent on the eve of the House Assassinations Committee’s hearing with this hush-hush message: “Psst...
...Sometimes Aspin would want to make a point that was not in a report, or that didn’t quite jibe with reality...
...Sometimes, Do Nothing If Pou have tried all these rules and you are still not getting great press, then you probablyjust don’t have what it takes...
...Know the flight schedules so the film gets to the station on time...
...The problem was that Ruby’s gun had never been the subject of much controversy, had never been part of any of the great conspiracy theories, and the reporter, who was something of an assassinations buff himself and therefore knew this, declined to spend the afternoon watching the congressman fondle a well-known gun...
...It was simple...
...Then, a year ago January, Zorinsky came to Washington as the new senator from .Nebraska and, youguessed it, promptly took the door off his office...
...There are other horror stories, but you get the picture...
...As you walk into his office, you see a paint brush on the wall...
...Those who do this well create photo opportunities...
...Buckets of peanuts...
...But don’t expect that to happen to you-you’ll have to spend many a year doing nothing to get that kind of great press...
...With personality journalism sweeping the country’s newspapers and magazines, it is incumbent upon you to do more with your life than legislate all day...
...First, it is helpful if you, the congressman, act as a source for those behind-the-scenes events reporters can’t see...
...He is currently making a career out of accusing the oil and gas industry of “ripping-off” (a bit of sixties lingo adopted by all first-rate headline hunters) consumers...
...7. Take up jogging and get a big kitchen...
...I have uncovered the hidden secrets of headline hunting, and I am going to share them with the pressless among you...
...In fact, at the National Enquirer he is known as a “trained seal,” because he is always so ready with a quote about the latest UFO scandal...
...William Proxmire is another standard-bearer (so to speak) in this regard...
...The solution is that you have to go beyond press releases too...
...This, of course, reporters saw as a symbol of the openness of his administration...
...I t hasn’t been an easy task...
...Such heresy did not endear Zorinsky to his fellow legislators, but no matter, it was the lead story of the night...
...Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat who has to rank high on everyone’s all-time all-star team...
...Keeping up with the times is an important part of headline hunting...
...A chairmanship is one of the best vehicles around for the intelligent headline hunter...
...The secret tocaucuses is that they never actually do anything...
...he has “obtained” from the inner bowels of the Department of Energy that had been hidden by some of those perfidious DOE bureaucrats...
...Start a steel caucus...
...With the AP imprimatur, the local papers feel less guilty about running Baucus’ releases...
...Just as important is to have a press secretary who loves to leak...
...You’ve either got it or you don’t, andall the great ones have it...
...When Heckler wants to blast the peanut support program, she brings along peanuts...
...there was the time, for example, that the Metzenbaum document about the energy bill concerned the wrong draft of the bill and was therefore no longer applicable...
...Anothertime the subject was coal, and sure enough Heckler brought to her press conference a large chunk of coal, the bettertoillustratethe theorythat bothit and her head could fit perfectly within the confines of a 12-inch television screen...
...Margaret “I’ll Walk A Mile For A Camera” Heckler, a ‘Massachusetts Republican, is notorious for her ability to scratch, claw, and elbow her way to the position just behind Carter at a billsigning ceremony...
...You’vegotto supply the right attitude-that’snot my department...
...Let’s be honest, reading about dedicated legislators writing the nation’s laws has a somnambulant effect on most of us...
...So, the big problem in Pennsylvania is its rotting highways and shaky bridges...
...The Metzenbaum method usually begins on Friday afternoons when he sends a “media package” to the Ohio papers, and in particular to the friendly crew who work in the Washington bureau of the Cleveland Plain Dealer...
...He has no legislative or administrative assistants-just some secretaries...
...It is always embargoed until Sunday, giving the reporters time to digest this information, and assuring Metzenbaum a front-page Sunday story with the inevitable lead: “Sen...
...Here he had to use his ingenuity to create a newspeg-and he did...
...You’ve got to blast them, rip them, slander them...
...After the press secretary, on orders from Metzenbaum, tookenough reporters to lunch to tout the-senatorwhotalks-on-the-phone-to-constituents, the networks were there, filming away...
...The most common technique these days is to pick a fight with Carter...
...The new press release is mess release 1 by leak major media markets in Pennsylvaniabut it helps...
...But you can’t spend your entire congressional career just being a nice guy and doing good things for your constituents and the country and expect great press...
...Now in the general election, Randolph faces former governor Arch Moore, a politician 21 years younger, light years more photogenic, and, according to the polls, popular enough to win...
...In its year of existence, for example, the Blue Collar Caucus has taken only one action, a call for an increase in the minimum wage...
...Here we can learn a lesson from Rep...
...Natcher has been in Congress for 24 years and has one of the most abysmal legislative records in history...
...Quite the opposite: if you plan to create news with your subcommittee, see Rule 9. 9. Slander someone...
...He once said he was going to put a mannequin of a housepainter in a corner of his office as a constant reminder...
...13...
...It was an amazing bit of press even if Natcher hadn’t planned it that way...
...Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, will hold a hearing tomorrow to reveal...
...I call them Headline Hunters, perhaps because of my days as a newspaper reporter covering Congress, when I often had the feeling I was their prey...
...That is the spot which ensures the front-page picture...
...The man needed a quick fix and was willing to dojust about anything to get it...
...Toby Moffett leaks like crazy about Conrail...
...Howard Metzenbaum, the Ohio senator-“Headline Howie,” his staff has been known to call him-is a classic of the genre...
...That’s what they’re there for...
...A trip to the White Houseisoneofthefew chances you will have to make the network news, so you have to use it wisely...
...1 call what follows The Joj, of Hunting Headlines: A Do-ItYourself Manual to .Better Pres?, It is dedicated to Ed Zorinsky...
...Finally, let’s not forget about 01’ reliable: the telephone...
...Another prominent headline hunter is Toby Moffett, the second-term Democrat from Connecticut...
...The paper, however, had predicted the grant two days earlier (something Randolph’s staff had failed to notice) and therefore felt quite justified in burying all references to Randolph when they ran theannouncement story...
...He created reports where none existed...
...Good headline hunting is part addiction...
...I just saved my district $10 million...
...Thereis almost no way you can run out of things,over which to start a congressional caucus, and you are guaranteed at least one brief 9 flurry of stories and television interviews when you announce its fordation...
...If you’re one of those unfortunates-if your press releases are forever winding up on the obituary page or, heaven forbid, not getting in the paper at allthen this article can be your salvation...
...Aspin releases were always full of information Aspin was releasing-in other words, news...
...Mario Biaggi-there’s a man with no standards whatsoever, and he’s always being quoted...
...Les Aspin notwithstanding, press releases are now pretty much in disrepute among the Washington press corps...
...And don’t worry about there being a lot of extra work...
...In the primary, his opponent formed The Committee To Dump The Tub Of Lard, a title which seemed to lack that certain degree of respect normally afforded an elder, if somewhat plump, statesman...
...Then, in a sudden stroke of misfortune, one of the guards accidentally dropped his machine gun from his shoulder to his elbow, giving Beard one of the golden headline hunting moments in the history of foreign affairs...
...William Natcher of Kentucky is a good example...
...Not a bit...
...Another way to make the wires pay attention is to have a newspaper that subscribes to AP or UP1 demand wire coverage of some event in which you plan to shine...
...You don’t have to refine the technique quite to the degree that Heinz does-when he looks for a rural bridge, he wants to find the rural bridge geographically located to attract reporters and cameras from five The new great ones, the Toby Moffetts...
...There’s always the chance, though, that you’ll ge\luGky and get press even when you aren’t looking for it...
...Harrington gets a story in every little paper in every state in the coalition because he is smart enough to break down the figures, city by city, state by state...
...vital to have your name in the paper regularly, blasting away at some bloated federal bureaucracy one day, announcing a federal grant the next, and in recent years the telecopier has become one of the primary devices to ensure that kind of coverage...
...The general public and the press weren’t aware of what I was doing until [the present owner of the gun] released the story, I believe,”hesaid...
...He came by the hotel one night looking for reporters,” recalls one who was there at the time...
...Now no one knows for sure if he meant that as a joke, but reporters invariably take it that way and it gets him numerous front-page stories...
...Aspin’s great contribution to the art of hunting headlines was in his innovative ability to create newspegs, those nuggets of information upon which a reporter can hang a story...
...Sam Donaldson (“Bless his soul,” says Blacklow) pointed his finger at the flailing press secretary and shouted to his cameraman, “Over there...
...For radio (always A good leak can be bed to handle a difficult reporter, one who won’t write about anything that comes in mess release fork Ah...
...As it turns out, Rex Granum had decided to begin the daily White House briefing at exactly the moment the visiting congressmen were supposed to leave...
...He spends his days reading all his own mail and answering it...
...That kind of shameless, get-press-atanycost attitude can’t be taught...
...You can’t just want great press, you’ve got to love it, crave it, mainline it...
...Ah, but he is a sucker for a leak...
...Lowell Weiker still hasn’t gotten over those accusations that during Watergate he “over-leaked...
...Nor did it make much difference that Zorinsky never really meant it (he had, in fact, made the whole thing up)-that is something other quality headline hunters could understand and sympathize with...
...Edward Beard, a Rhode Island Democrat, who in only two terms has become oneofthe real marksmen in headline hunting...
...The telecopier is only one of a number of devices around to help you get press...
...All you have to do is have your press secretary tap into the system while you are speaking on the House floor, edit your comments down to the required 30 seconds, and send it out to radio stations across the district...
...I once saw a congressman storm up to the House press gallery after an inconsequential vote, shouting to the gallery superintendent: “Get me a reporter from the wires...
...Senator Richard Schweiker has this routine down pat...
...The only bills he ;sponsors have to do with District of Columbia appropriations, because he is chairman of the D.C...
...It’s not somethingthe peopleat the Bulletinlike to talk about particularly, but they haven’t let Schweiker down yet...
...Jennings Randolph, whatever his othervirtues, is never going to have what it takes to get great press...
...The Trained Seals 1. Forget about standards...
...Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, not generally known as a man of enormous wit, has proposed on occasion his idea to build a teflon-coated, domed city at the foot of Mt...
...The more a reporter relies on you as a source, the less likely the chances his newspaper will investigate your shady fundraiser...
...The first trick is to get a subcommittee, and Metzenbaum worked hard to be Television loves slander, so if you are going to accuse someone of corruption, half way measures wont do...
...They are the techniques that separate the genuine articles from the pretenders, the Metzenbaums fromthe Randolphs...
...In his heyday, Aspin was notorious, not the least bit bashful about jumping on an issue in another Wisconsin congressman’s district-which is usually considered a breach of etiquette...
...2. Abuse the wires...
...Have you ever seen a politician who sat in his office all day profiled in People magazine...
...This does not mean you cannot still get your message out, it just means you have to be a little sharper, a little shrewder than you had to be ten years ago...
...Good headline hunting is also part addiction...
...A very “in” technique these days...
...Getting great press-let’s admit it out loud-is a lot of hard work and long hours...
...you see, most television reporters in Washington don’t know a thing about the areas they are covering for, so if you can supply them with the question you want to answer, they will be grateful, and you will end up looking like a star...
...Over the last few weeks I’ve talked to peoplewho have covered or have been associated with some of the better known hunters trying to pry from them these long-held secrets...
...This technique is often the only way headline hunters can get t h e a t t e n t i o n they so desperately need if they come from sophisticated media towns, like Los Angeles or Philadelphia, where the competition for television or newspaper play is fierce...
...If he is being interviewed, he is likely to pull out another brush he always carries in his coat pocket...
...You can’t just want great press, you’ve got to love it, crave it, mainline it...
...If you aspire to greatness, you’ve got to know these things...
...Television loves slander, so if you are going to accuse someone of corruption, halfway measures won’t do...
...Beard once feuded his way to an international incident...
...If it had a number, you could count on its getting picked up...
...Reporters usually find this task boring, so the Aspin staff had the whole report field to themselves...
...The next thing we knew,” says the reporter, “Beard was screaming at the top of his lungs, demanding that they allow him, an American congressman, to cross over...
...Jokes fall into this category, also...
...When you send out two releases a day proclaiming that you’ve done everything but balance the federal budget, your papers can fall out of the habit of running them regularly, which was the case in Montana...
...great press release writers (press releases are fast falling out of fashion, about which more later), never sends his releases to the Montana dailies any more...
...Where will you find Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania every few months but standing on a shaky Pennsylvania bridge complaining ab out the Carter administration’s bridge repair plan...
...You needn’t fear looking silly by starting a caucus for some wildly obscure cause...
...Aspin could then release a report, giving his charges an authenticity they wouldn’t otherwise have...
...You never saw an Aspin release that simply had Aspin saying something...
...The right mix of all three will produce what Staffmagazine (that’s right, there is really a magazine for the congressional s t a f f aide) calls “a top congressional communicator.’* Sam Rayburn, a bit less euphemistically, used to call ’them “showboats...
...Know what questions to ask...
...I f your constituency is ideologically attuned to Rep...
...It was a para-journalistic operation, complete with national staff looking for material to feed the wires and the national press corps and a “state” staff putting out releases on two cycles (different release times for the morning and afternoon papers) to satisfy his Wisconsin papers...
...He has friends on the Philadelphia Bulletin who will request wire coverage of the Schweiker press conference after Schweiker requests that they request coverage...
...4. Feud your way to the top...
...Of courie not...
...If you have problems in this area, don’t give up-help is on the way...
...None of this quiet, behind-the-scenes stuff that Jennings Randolph prefers...
...So several of the better press secretaries have learned to leave a crumpled, tattered piece of paper on their desks when the reporter walks in...
...1 know it’s not something talked about openly on Capitol Hill, but there are a lot of congressmen who are still struggling with the art of headline hunting, who no matter how hard they try can’t seem to get great press...
...He’ll inspect the bridge, of course, maybe walk across it if it doesn’t look as if it will collapse right there on television, and remind the local officials and reporters that he, John Heinz, has been worried about bridges for years...
...When Monday rolls around, Metzenbaum holds his hearing early enough so that it can make the 6:OO news in Ohio...
...named the chairman of the newly created Citizens and Shareholders Rights and Remedies Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...In fact, that’s the best part about fighting with the President: there’s a good chance that when you have to go to him for a favor he won’t know that you’ve been fighting with him...
...John Moss’ staff is said to have suggested this paragraph to reporters: “Rep...
...Which illustrates another great Metzenbaum press principle: never let the facts get in the way of a good subcommittee hearing...
...Then there was the time the Randolph crew sent, via telecopier, a release to The Charleston Gazette, proudly announcing a $2 million grant...
...Try to avoid overdoing this, however...
...Leaking can take a number of forms...
...Here again we need to look no further than Howard Metzenbaum for guidance...
...The Aspin staff would take the point they wanted to make to the Congressional Research Service, a research arm of the Library of Congress with a reputation for objectivity, and ask it to do the report...
...Metzenbaum has perfected the art of turning his subcommittee into a revolving media show...
...Well, start afarm caucus...
...He will often release a “document...
...On a continuing story the Aspin staff would milk it by coming up with new angles every day, or sometimes two a day, to keep those afternoon papers happy...
...Jennings Randolph obviously has never had any need for the euphoric high that only a picture above the fold can bring...
...His big kitchen is his rootswhen he was elected to Congress he was a professional housepainter making $9,000 a year, and he vowed never to forget it...
...However, you usually don’t have to go quite this far when you are feuding for press...
...Heckler shows her real genius in applying this rule to practice...
...Do you think the House went to all that trouble to install a television system purely for the public’s benefit...
...The one thing every congressman and senator has is a district, a district usually full of pressing problems and crises, and constituents looking for leadership...
...Use that telecopier, quickly...
...It can get tricky, however, especially when another congressman, using his Conrail source, is trying to beat you on the story (usually the first supplier of information gets the free plug in the third paragraph...
...The reason is that Flood is flamboyantnot only anoted quoter of Shakespeare, but a wearer of capes and rings, and a long, thin waxed moustache...
...He has toned down in the past few years, run out of steam, they say, but when he first came to Congress, Aspin set up his office like a newsroom...
...Reporters were only too happy to put their bylines on his staffs legwork...
...For television, the key is to know how to make the reporter’s life easier...
...Rep...
...He devised a new scheme within weeks, one that was guaranteed to get him on the front page...
...That’s the important thing...
...Thoughtful and helpful constituent servicer, honest public servant, Randolph is all of this, too...
...She wants to show the camera the evil peanut, so she picks some up, holds them in her hands, puts her fingers through them...
...You’ve got to be able to get a kick out of seeing a story in the weeklies in your district or hearing the pearshaped tones of your voice on the local radio station or watching yourself on S a l t Lake City t e l e v i s i o n . For inspiration, you should look to Rep...
...Moffett and Blacklow, however, were nat deterred...
...If you have ever wondered why there are so many subcommittees in Congress, the answer is simple: it makes for lots of subcommittee chairmen, and that in turn makes for lots of fun headlines...
...If Mario Biaggi can be the chairman of the Irish caucus, how silly can you look by comparison...
...Moffett made the network news that night...
...You’ll never, ever, see her at a press conference droning on boringly on some issue or other...
...The Washington press corps, which has seen much, much better than that, didn’t bat an eyelash...
...With administration feuds, this can be done quite easily by sending Carter a blistering letter (which the President presumably will never read) or by making a tough attack on administration policies in a speech in your district (which the President will presumably never hear...
...They sat in the press room, patiently waiting for nearly an hour until Granum finished his briefing...
...In this age of tough, investigative journalism, it takes more than mere technology to get the pressto tell your story the way you want it told...
...8. Chair a subcommittee...
...So you’ve got to liven up those issues, make your concern for your constituents seem at once fascinating, interesting, and enjoyable...
...haGe further - . refined headline hunting by leaking...
...His subcommittee provides the forum for leveling a weekly string of venomous adjectives at some helpless oil and gas industry spokesman...
...To get your name in the paper, you don’t have to solve any of these problems, nobody expects you to do that, but you do have to let people know that you know the problems exist...
...These have been weeks of arduous research and expense account lunches, but 1 think they have paid off, for I have compiled a list of the best of the techniques, which 1 present here for the first time...
...6. Go to the White House often...
...That’s when you have to fall back on Rule 12...
...Getting divorced can also be helpful, for it is practically a written invitation for reporters to profile the “new you” getting by in your “bachelor’s quarters” and learning to date again...
...There was the time an aide found out the Army was doing experiments on beagle puppies...
...What was the matter...
...In the next morning’s paper the AP reporter dutifully quoted Maddox denying that he had wanted any coverage of his “ro1e”in getting the gun...
...He told us hewasgoingtothe occupied zone...
...Use the electronics...
...Can’t Be a Nice GUY Chairman of the Public Works Committee is the powerful post Randolph holds in the Senate...
...Not only is he a constant source of quotes and meaningless information for the Enquirer, but he is the only senator I’m aware of who has made news for the National Lampoon, which did a recent two-page spread on his Golden Fleece awards...
...He goes slightly beserk when he spots this piece of paper, obviously not meant for his eyes, and asks for it...
...The reporters, who didn’t have much else to do that day, followed Beard to the border, which was being guarded by a couple of very old, very feeble soldiers...
...The problem, though, was that never having worried much about the press before, Randolph and his staff were novices when it came to actually making intelligent use of their newly bought telecopier...
...A front-page story, with a big front-page headline should send chills up your spine and bring tears of joy to your eyes...
...Another “big kitchen” person is Beard...
...You’ve got to slander someone...
...For those few of you who are unlucky enough not to have a subcommittee (unfortunately, all of you Republicans out there fit into this category), you have to make the best of what you have...
...There was Metzenbaum, answering his own phone calls every morning for an hour-actually talking to real live constituents...
...Finally, if the Washington correspondent of your hometown paper has been giving you a hard time recently, you can avoid him entirely by feeding your stuff to the wires...
...The wires are especially useful as vehicles for laundering press releases into news your local papers will run...
...Which, one must admit, is another nice thing about the wires: they never try to embarrass you by asking questions...
...That won’t do at all...
...Once, after a meeting with Carter, Moffett and his press secretary, Willie Blacklow, found there were no cameras waiting outside and no reporters poised to scribble...
...This way, he is not only the first one out the door, he doesn’t even have to fight with anydne for the total attention of the cameras...
...The new great ones, the Toby Moffetts, have further refined the technique by leaking their newspegs...
...It’s not too hard-you can be gossipy, catty, you can say awful things about your committee chairman and get away with it-since as a source you won’t be quoted by name...
...One leak lover says: “It seems that every time I talk to a reporter, I always say four things: ‘Let’s have coffee.’ ‘This is offtherecord.’ ‘Don’t mention my boss’ name.’ And, ‘You owe me one.’” If your press secretary is leaking something that reflects nicely on you, make sure the reporter knows he has to plug you in the third paragraph...
...Michael Harrington, for one, has based his whole media career (outside of his CIA expose fiasco) on something called the Northeast-Midwest Coalition, a collection of congressmen who contend that the frostbelt is not getting its share of federal money...
...Jars of peanut butter...
...They had an annoying habit, for example, ofsending press releases to newspapers that were five minutes away from deadline and anxiously awaiting the racing results over the telecopier...
...This was a smart, if long overdue, move on Randolph’s part, a firm step into the modern era of congressional press relations...
...This is basic...
...That sounds like it has a rather broad jurisdiction, and it does, perfect as a sounding-board for commenting on the issues of the day...
...These documents may or may not pertain to thematter at hand...
...If you can combine leaking with investigating, then you’ve really got something cooking...
...The new press release is press release by leak...
...Jim Maddox of Texas learned this not too long ago...
...That kind of attention to the local angle is superb newspegging...
...They all wrote that he was the model congressman, the ideal legislator, who worked hard at answering quorum calls...
...It would help tourism, he says...
...Show that you have some culture, that you’re a little different and more diversified than your average, boring, workaholic congressman, and the papers will write puff about you well into eternity...
...Today, this is a widely imitated technique...
...Sam Ervin, Dan Flood, and Bob Eckhardt (who wearsacute bowtieaswel1)arethe acknowledged masters here...
...You’ve got to be out front, hopping on the issues, demanding investigations, railing at recalcitrant witnesses, declaring, observing, challenging, contending, emphasizing...
...Let’s not be naive about this...
...Every time the Aspin newspeg operation hit a dry spell, they just found another puppy being abused by the Army...
...To do it right, to do it with the flair that all the great ones have, takes a combination of natural ability and years of study...
...Know how many stations the reporter is shooting for-many Washington stringers shoot the same story for a number of stations-so you can repeat the same catchy quote three times...
...Here heis, at the age of 76, so long ensconced as the senior senator from West Virginia it’s difficult to remember him ever doing anything else, and he’s got himself all tangled up in an awful reelection fight...
...And don’t worry, congressmen are immune from libel and slander suits when done in the line of headline hunting...
...He gets his kicks presiding over the House floor, an activity he is allowed to do quite often, since no one else wants to...
...your attitude may be wrong or you may be lacking in natural ability...
...The Aspin method of finding newspegs and graciously handing the information over to reporters is being copied by almost everyone else trying to hunt headlines...
...Ed Zorinsky has...
...but he’s a sucker for a leak starved for news) there’s the quote-aphone, into which you can take a stand, on tape, and then have it transmitted to all the stations in your district...
...Here’s how he did it: It WasrightaftertheTurkishinvasion of Cyprus, and Beard was visiting the island, anxious to get some news of his travels to his Greek constituents...
...Beard probably has gotten more mileage out of his paint brush since he came to Congress than he ever did when he was painting houses...
...some are as old as an Imperial typewriter, others are new, designed to take advantage of the needs and wants ofthemodern presscorps...
...By all means, throw caution to the wind...
...Larry McDonald, the Georgia Democrat who once belonged to the John Birch society, then join with McDonald in calling for Andrew Young’s impeachment...
...He was only too right...
...He buys a telecopier, a wonderful little machine that allows one to transmit, say, a press release over the telephone...
...But if you can do that and you follow these simple rules, you’ll see an improvement in the press you get within days...
...It is the perfect way to show your constituents that your brow is permanently furrowed from constantly worrying about their problems...
...Moffett has shown traces of brillianceduring his White House visits...
...Know how to say everything you have to say in 30 seconds...
...But the wires are not nearly as discriminating, so Baucus now telecopies his releases to the AP bureau in Helena, which (sometimes) rewrite the lead andalwayssends the rest of it out verbatim...
...With great reluctance they turn it over-begging him never to reveal where he got the information-and our news hound gets his scoop: today’s press release, in crumpled, tattered form...
...To further exacerbate an already bad situation, a Randolph aide then chewed out a city desk reporter for failing to give proper “credit” to Randolph, a move that clearly did not endear Jennings Randolph to the Gazette staff...
...But in order to get great press from feuding, you have to makesure the press knows you’re in a fight...
...We’ve got Jack Ruby’s gun...
...Of course not...
...Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and one of the last of the Have you ever seen a politician who sat in his office all day nrofiled in Pedde * maaazine...
...But did this stop Zorinsky...
...Yet when he set the all-time record for consecutive roll calls answered a few years ago (and made the Guinness Book of World Records) , reporters - w ho m he despises as a group and has run away from more than once-came knocking on his door to do stories about his record...
...He’s the one who offered the blank amendment to the CIA appropriations bill, which, because it was classified, could not be revealed to the congressmen who were supposed to vote on it...
...He was one of the first to realize that if you want coverage, and a lot of it, you have to do most of the reporting for the reporters...
...If you’re from California or Colorado, fight with him over water policy...
...Silvio Conte (“When 1 told Proxmire I was going to nominate him for a Golden Fleece, 1 thought his last ten hairs would fall out”), has no peers in this department...
...If you care only about coverage in The New York Times, then you’regoing to spend most of your time being disappointed unless your name is Ted Kennedy...
...He’s holding a press conference and no one wants to come...
...How boring...
...Reporters like to laugh,just likeanyone else, and they’ll write nice things about people who make them laugh...
...Surely, this is not what Randolph had in mind when he decided he wanted to keep his job awhile longer...
...It will list the upcoming witnesses, the outrages committed by industry that led Metzenbaum to call the hearing in the first place, and Metzenbaum’s opening statement...
...3. Quote Shakespeare...
...Randolph is roaming the West Virginia countryside with a tenacity he hasn’t shown in decades, politicking, speechmaking, defending his record (and wondering, no doubt, whatever happened to the democratic principle of token opposition), and still, he is only an even money bet to keep his seat...
...Aspin took a giant step forward with his newspegs...
...They jog, they make dinner, they do exciting things...
...How to Make the Front Page by Joseph Nocera I’ve been feeling a little sorry for Jennings Randolph lately...
...One of the great leakers on Rep...
...In a tough race, of course, it is Joseph Nocera is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...It was deceptively simple: after about two months in office, Zorinsky announced to a Washington Star reporter that the Senate wasamess,that hedidn’t thinkit could ever get anything done, and therefore he had seriously considered quitting to find another line of work...
...Nor will he ever let you forget it...
...He hires renowned political consultant David Garth to defend his record, and even that doesn’t improve his odds...
...There are now caucuses for everything from ball bearings to blue-collar workers...
...But St aff never ventured beyond the obvious, and therefore missed the dozens oftricks of the trade that exist in the byzantine world of headline hunting, passed on only by word ofmouthfromgeneration to generation of press secretaries...
...A shrewd Maddox got around this potential dilemma by calling AP, which sent over a reporter and a photographer...
...it is part instinct, part art form, and part science...
...As the mayor of Omaha, Zorinsky found that one good way to get stories written about himself was to take the door off his office...
...If, on the other hand, you know some reporter is hot on your trail, have your press aide leak your side of the story to the reporter, thereby defusing much of the possible trouble...
...At a time when investigative reporting was becoming the prestige beat it is now, Aspin’s staff did their best to respond to that need...
...If you are serious about your press coverage, though, you have got to be able to apply the big kitchen theory to your work...
...They are in no particular order...
...Then, with Granum done, Blacklow stood up, waved his arms and shouted: “Over here, over here...
...To prove it, the coalition is forever doing studies on one aspect or another of the federal budget that they purport proves the point...
...The Associated Press has a 87-man bureau in Washington and United Press International has another 58 reporters, and they are all theretoserve yourevery need and whim...
...The steel industry is in trouble...
...The first lesson is that you can’t be bashful just because the President is in the vicinity...
...The California delegation has to deal with one reporter who simply won’t write about anything that comes in press release form...
...When it comes to providing newspegs, no one in the history of headline hunting has ever come close to Rep...
...Thus, Metzenbaum, knowing the cameras are always poised for the first person to leave a White House meeting, has been known to excuse himself early from group conferences with the President, begging pressing engagements...
...His only claim to fame is that he has answered every vote call, every quorum call, every roll call, since he came to Congress, 10,443 of them in a row-a record of non-accomplishment that boggles the mind...
...Among the younger members, John Burton deserves mention as one who can separate himself from the boring, workaholic pack...
...McKinley...
...That’s right...
...This is a very popular way to get press with some of the veterans on Capitol Hill...
...The story the next day said it all: “Beard accuses Turks of holding him at gunpoint at the border...
...Nor are these hearings the time for compassion, for getting at the truth, for acting responsibly...
...Of course, he had no papers, so the two old guards had no choice but to refuse him passage...
...They’re the bane of the press criticism magazines and the new breed of tough, sharp reporters and editors who have vowed to go beyond the press release...
...If South Dakota is your state, hit him on the administration’s unfair cement policies (cement is very big in South Dakota...
...It doesn’t work that way...
...John Moss stopped long enough from his daily walk across theTidal Basin today to demand an investigation into...
...We also would send out anything with a number in the lead,” says one former aide...
...Get over here soon...
...Think again...
...Because he worried about their social security checks...
...To get great press you have tocreatenews, and that’s a different matter entirely...
...What they’ve also got, though, is technique, exquisite technique, refined and perfected from years of hunting...
...The CRS staff was politically astute enough to know how the results of their “objective” report should turn out...
...Be a leaker...
...That’s no problem for Schweiker...
...It was awe-inspiring...
...He thought Time magazine or CBS or someone would be interested in coming in and doing something on a senator who answers his own phone calls,”recalls a former aide...
...Sometimes a good leak can be used to handle a particularly difficult reporter...
...Some of the more obvious requisitesthe importance of being quotable and a c c e s s i b l e , f o r e x a m p l e - w e r e described by Staff magazine in their eight-part series on “top congressional communicators...
...He is a master grantsman for West Virginia, creating dams where there was only river, and highways where there was dirt...
Vol. 10 • October 1978 • No. 7
