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...
...His subcommittee provides the forum for leveling a weekly string of venomous adjectives at some helpless oil and gas industry spokesman...
...His office called the local Washington correspondent on the eve of the House Assassinations Committee’s hearing with this hush-hush message: “Psst...
...The steel industry is in trouble...
...If Mario Biaggi can be the chairman of the Irish caucus, how silly can you look by comparison...
...Those who do this well create photo opportunities...
...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...
...But if you can do that and you follow these simple rules, you’ll see an improvement in the press you get within days...
...Ah, but he is a sucker for a leak...
...Ed Zorinsky has...
...Start a steel caucus...
...2. Abuse the wires...
...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...
...They all wrote that he was the model congressman, the ideal legislator, who worked hard at answering quorum calls...
...They sat in the press room, patiently waiting for nearly an hour until Granum finished his briefing...
...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...
...Then, with Granum done, Blacklow stood up, waved his arms and shouted: “Over here, over here...
...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...
...They jog, they make dinner, they do fun, exciting things...
...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...
...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...
...You never saw an Aspin release that simply had Aspin saying something...
...Nor are these hearings the time for compassion, for getting at the truth, for acting responsibly...
...However, you usually don’t have to go quite this far when you are feuding for press...
...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...
...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...
...If he is being interviewed, he is likely to pull out another brush he always carries in his coat pocket...
...He gets his kicks presiding over the House floor, an activity he is allowed to do quite often, since no one else wants to...
...When it comes to providing newspegs, no one in the history of headline hunting has ever come close to Rep...
...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...
...It was an amazing bit of press even if Natcher hadn’t planned it that way...
...This story is known as the, “curtain-raiser...
...It was simple...
...Senator Richard Schweiker has this routine down pat...
...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...
...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...
...It would help tourism, he says...
...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...
...Let’s be honest, reading about dedicated legislators writing the nation’s laws has a somnambulant effect on most of us...
...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...
...Let’s not be naive about this...
...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...
...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...
...Aspin took a giant step forward with his newspegs...
...Barely had he moved into his Senate ,office as a freshman two years ago when he began to show us his stuff...
...Moffett made the network news that night...
...If you have problems in this area, don’t give up-help is on the way...
...Which illustrates another great Metzenbaum press principle: never let the facts get in the way of a good subcommittee hearing...
...His staff has developed good sources inside Conrail who feed them information that they then feed to reporters...
...Here again we need to look no further than Howard Metzenbaum for guidance...
...Reporters usually find this task boring, so the Aspin staff had the whole report field to themselves...
...And don’t worry, congressmen are immune from libel and slander suits when done in the line of headline hunting...
...He came by the hotel one night looking for reporters,” recalls one who was there at the time...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...How to Make the Front Page by Joseph Nocera I’ve been feeling a little sorry for Jennings Randolph lately...
...Sam Ervin, Dan Flood, and Bob Eckhardt (who wearsacute bowtieaswel1)arethe acknowledged masters here...
...There was Metzenbaum, answering his own phone calls every morning for an hour-actually talking to real live constituents...
...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...
...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...
...some are as old as an Imperial typewriter, others are new, designed to take advantage of the needs and wants ofthemodern presscorps...
...1 call what follows The Joj, of Hunting Headlines: A Do-ItYourself Manual to .Better Pres?, It is dedicated to Ed Zorinsky...
...He has no legislative or administrative assistants-just some secretaries...
...You’ve got to blast them, rip them, slander them...
...He devised a new scheme within weeks, one that was guaranteed to get him on the front page...
...The telecopier is only one of a number of devices around to help you get press...
...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...
...Such heresy did not endear Zorinsky to his fellow legislators, but no matter, it was the lead story of the night...
...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...
...4. Feud your way to the top...
...Provide newspegs...
...That’s what they’re there for...
...Get over here soon...
...The only bills he ;sponsors have to do with District of Columbia appropriations, because he is chairman of the D.C...
...Rep...
...The solution is that you have to go beyond press releases too...
...That’s no problem for Schweiker...
...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...
...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...
...The new great ones, the Toby Moffetts, have further refined the technique by leaking their newspegs...
...For television, the key is to know how to make the reporter’s life easier...
...Howard Metzenbaum, the Ohio senator-“Headline Howie,” his staff has been known to call him-is a classic of the genre...
...You can’t just want great press, you’ve got to love it, crave it, mainline it...
...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 the electronics...
...named the chairman of the newly created Citizens and Shareholders Rights and Remedies Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...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...
...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...
...If it had a number, you could count on its getting picked up...
...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...
...13...
...3. Quote Shakespeare...
...Have you ever seen a politician who sat in his office all day profiled in People magazine...
...That’s right...
...There are other horror stories, but you get the picture...
...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...
...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...
...John Moss stopped long enough from his daily walk across theTidal Basin today to demand an investigation into...
...So, the big problem in Pennsylvania is its rotting highways and shaky bridges...
...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...
...First, it is helpful if you, the congressman, act as a source for those behind-the-scenes events reporters can’t see...
...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...
...Sometimes a good leak can be used to handle a particularly difficult reporter...
...He will often release a “document...
...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...
...Of course, he had no papers, so the two old guards had no choice but to refuse him passage...
...The man needed a quick fix and was willing to dojust about anything to get it...
...That kind of shameless, get-press-atanycost attitude can’t be taught...
...A very “in” technique these days...
...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...
...That kind of attention to the local angle is superb newspegging...
...So you’ve got to liven up those issues, make your concern for your constituents seem at once fascinating, interesting, and enjoyable...
...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...
...Not a bit...
...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...
...Jennings Randolph obviously has never had any need for the euphoric high that only a picture above the fold can bring...
...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...
...Buckets of peanuts...
...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...
...Mario Biaggi-there’s a man with no standards whatsoever, and he’s always being quoted...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...This, of course, reporters saw as a symbol of the openness of his administration...
...John Moss’ staff is said to have suggested this paragraph to reporters: “Rep...
...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...
...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...
...The farmers are mad, you say...
...Reporters were only too happy to put their bylines on his staffs legwork...
...We also would send out anything with a number in the lead,” says one former aide...
...If you’re from California or Colorado, fight with him over water policy...
...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...
...Know the flight schedules so the film gets to the station on time...
...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...
...The Trained Seals 1. Forget about standards...
...Be a leaker...
...Do you think the House went to all that trouble to install a television system purely for the public’s benefit...
...This is a very popular way to get press with some of the veterans on Capitol Hill...
...These documents may or may not pertain to thematter at hand...
...8. Chair a subcommittee...
...Heckler shows her real genius in applying this rule to practice...
...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...
...We’ve got Jack Ruby’s gun...
...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...
...He hires renowned political consultant David Garth to defend his record, and even that doesn’t improve his odds...
...he has “obtained” from the inner bowels of the Department of Energy that had been hidden by some of those perfidious DOE bureaucrats...
...it is part instinct, part art form, and part science...
...Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, will hold a hearing tomorrow to reveal...
...Jokes fall into this category, also...
...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...
...With the AP imprimatur, the local papers feel less guilty about running Baucus’ releases...
...That is the spot which ensures the front-page picture...
...That’s the important thing...
...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...
...The secret tocaucuses is that they never actually do anything...
...Jim Maddox of Texas learned this not too long ago...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...You can’t just want great press, you’ve got to love it, crave it, mainline it...
...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...
...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...
...Jennings Randolph, whatever his othervirtues, is never going to have what it takes to get great press...
...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...
...Metzenbaum has perfected the art of turning his subcommittee into a revolving media show...
...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...
...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...
...Can’t Be a Nice GUY Chairman of the Public Works Committee is the powerful post Randolph holds in the Senate...
...The new press release is press release by leak...
...Think again...
...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...
...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...
...William Natcher of Kentucky is a good example...
...Getting great press-let’s admit it out loud-is a lot of hard work and long hours...
...Les Aspin notwithstanding, press releases are now pretty much in disrepute among the Washington press corps...
...The Washington press corps, which has seen much, much better than that, didn’t bat an eyelash...
...William Proxmire is another standard-bearer (so to speak) in this regard...
...The more a reporter relies on you as a source, the less likely the chances his newspaper will investigate your shady fundraiser...
...Try to avoid overdoing this, however...
...He once said he was going to put a mannequin of a housepainter in a corner of his office as a constant reminder...
...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...
...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...
...A front-page story, with a big front-page headline should send chills up your spine and bring tears of joy to your eyes...
...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...
...In a tough race, of course, it is Joseph Nocera is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...By all means, throw caution to the wind...
...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...
...Quite the opposite: if you plan to create news with your subcommittee, see Rule 9. 9. Slander someone...
...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...
...Because he worried about their social security checks...
...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...
...McKinley...
...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...
...Moffett and Blacklow, however, were nat deterred...
...She wants to show the camera the evil peanut, so she picks some up, holds them in her hands, puts her fingers through them...
...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...
...When Heckler wants to blast the peanut support program, she brings along peanuts...
...Edward Beard, a Rhode Island Democrat, who in only two terms has become oneofthe real marksmen in headline hunting...
...Thoughtful and helpful constituent servicer, honest public servant, Randolph is all of this, too...
...Every time the Aspin newspeg operation hit a dry spell, they just found another puppy being abused by the Army...
...Television loves slander, so if you are going to accuse someone of corruption, halfway measures won’t do...
...Know how to say everything you have to say in 30 seconds...
...It is the perfect way to show your constituents that your brow is permanently furrowed from constantly worrying about their problems...
...If you are serious about your press coverage, though, you have got to be able to apply the big kitchen theory to your work...
...Good headline hunting is also part addiction...
...The most common technique these days is to pick a fight with Carter...
...He created reports where none existed...
...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...
...Then there was the time the Randolph crew sent, via telecopier, a release to The Charleston Gazette, proudly announcing a $2 million grant...
...Sam Donaldson (“Bless his soul,” says Blacklow) pointed his finger at the flailing press secretary and shouted to his cameraman, “Over there...
...They jog, they make dinner, they do exciting things...
...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...
...Metzenbaum’s big issue these days is energy...
...You’ll never, ever, see her at a press conference droning on boringly on some issue or other...
...When Monday rolls around, Metzenbaum holds his hearing early enough so that it can make the 6:OO news in Ohio...
...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...
...That won’t do at all...
...If you can combine leaking with investigating, then you’ve really got something cooking...
...appropriations subcommittee...
...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...
...Aspin releases were always full of information Aspin was releasing-in other words, news...
...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...
...That’s when you have to fall back on Rule 12...
...haGe further - . refined headline hunting by leaking...
...Use that telecopier, quickly...
...Larry McDonald, the Georgia Democrat who once belonged to the John Birch society, then join with McDonald in calling for Andrew Young’s impeachment...
...And don’t worry about there being a lot of extra work...
...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...
...He told us hewasgoingtothe occupied zone...
...This was a smart, if long overdue, move on Randolph’s part, a firm step into the modern era of congressional press relations...
...Of course not...
...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...
...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...
...Sometimes Aspin would want to make a point that was not in a report, or that didn’t quite jibe with reality...
...It doesn’t work that way...
...Jars of peanut butter...
...Today, this is a widely imitated technique...
...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...
...Sen...
...I t hasn’t been an easy task...
...What they’ve also got, though, is technique, exquisite technique, refined and perfected from years of hunting...
...He spends his days reading all his own mail and answering it...
...To get great press you have tocreatenews, and that’s a different matter entirely...
...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...
...He buys a telecopier, a wonderful little machine that allows one to transmit, say, a press release over the telephone...
...They are in no particular order...
...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...
...But did this stop Zorinsky...
...But in order to get great press from feuding, you have to makesure the press knows you’re in a fight...
...There’s always the chance, though, that you’ll ge\luGky and get press even when you aren’t looking for it...
...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...
...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...
...How boring...
...So, faced with this grim political reality, what does Randolph do...
...Aspin could then release a report, giving his charges an authenticity they wouldn’t otherwise have...
...It’s not somethingthe peopleat the Bulletinlike to talk about particularly, but they haven’t let Schweiker down yet...
...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 CRS staff was politically astute enough to know how the results of their “objective” report should turn out...
...You needn’t fear looking silly by starting a caucus for some wildly obscure cause...
...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...
...Leaking can take a number of forms...
...What was the matter...
...If South Dakota is your state, hit him on the administration’s unfair cement policies (cement is very big in South Dakota...
...Finally, let’s not forget about 01’ reliable: the telephone...
...He was only too right...
...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...
...The story the next day said it all: “Beard accuses Turks of holding him at gunpoint at the border...
...The number was the key...
...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...
...If you aspire to greatness, you’ve got to know these things...
...He goes slightly beserk when he spots this piece of paper, obviously not meant for his eyes, and asks for it...
...Here he had to use his ingenuity to create a newspeg-and he did...
...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...
...One of the great leakers on Rep...
...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 first lesson is that you can’t be bashful just because the President is in the vicinity...
...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...
...Lowell Weiker still hasn’t gotten over those accusations that during Watergate he “over-leaked...
...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...
...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...
...I just saved my district $10 million...
...Reporters like to laugh,just likeanyone else, and they’ll write nice things about people who make them laugh...
...Toby Moffett leaks like crazy about Conrail...
...You’ve either got it or you don’t, andall the great ones have it...
...He has friends on the Philadelphia Bulletin who will request wire coverage of the Schweiker press conference after Schweiker requests that they request coverage...
...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...
...Another prominent headline hunter is Toby Moffett, the second-term Democrat from Connecticut...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...There are now caucuses for everything from ball bearings to blue-collar workers...
...Good headline hunting is part addiction...
...Keeping up with the times is an important part of headline hunting...
...7. Take up jogging and get a big kitchen...
...This is basic...
...A chairmanship is one of the best vehicles around for the intelligent headline hunter...
...Go to the scene of the crime...
...I f your constituency is ideologically attuned to Rep...
...What reporter is going to turn down a call from the congressman...
...A trip to the White Houseisoneofthefew chances you will have to make the network news, so you have to use it wisely...
...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...
...The California delegation has to deal with one reporter who simply won’t write about anything that comes in press release form...
...None of this quiet, behind-the-scenes stuff that Jennings Randolph prefers...
...Wire reporters understand your need for press...
...Moffett has shown traces of brillianceduring his White House visits...
...They are the techniques that separate the genuine articles from the pretenders, the Metzenbaums fromthe Randolphs...
...Another “big kitchen” person is Beard...
...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...
...A shrewd Maddox got around this potential dilemma by calling AP, which sent over a reporter and a photographer...
...Know what questions to ask...
...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...
...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...
...You’ve got to slander someone...
...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...
...your attitude may be wrong or you may be lacking in natural ability...
...You’ve got to be out front, hopping on the issues, demanding investigations, railing at recalcitrant witnesses, declaring, observing, challenging, contending, emphasizing...
...It was awe-inspiring...
...6. Go to the White House often...
...Surely, this is not what Randolph had in mind when he decided he wanted to keep his job awhile longer...
...Of courie not...
...Among the younger members, John Burton deserves mention as one who can separate himself from the boring, workaholic pack...
...5. Start a caucus...
...Well, start afarm caucus...
...He’s holding a press conference and no one wants to come...
...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...
...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...
...Beard once feuded his way to an international incident...
...I have uncovered the hidden secrets of headline hunting, and I am going to share them with the pressless among you...
...Here we can learn a lesson from Rep...
...Just as important is to have a press secretary who loves to leak...
...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...
...Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat who has to rank high on everyone’s all-time all-star team...
...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...
...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 new press release is mess release 1 by leak major media markets in Pennsylvaniabut it helps...
...Natcher has been in Congress for 24 years and has one of the most abysmal legislative records in history...
...He is a master grantsman for West Virginia, creating dams where there was only river, and highways where there was dirt...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Nor will he ever let you forget it...
...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...
...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...
...You’vegotto supply the right attitude-that’snot my department...
...There was the time an aide found out the Army was doing experiments on beagle puppies...
...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 you walk into his office, you see a paint brush on the wall...
...This is selfexplanatory...
Vol. 10 • October 1978 • No. 7
