White House Correspondents Weekend Insider

In an announcement this morning, Allbritton Communications’ CEO and Politico Publisher Robert Allbritton announced the company would explore selling their television properties.

“The Company has retained Moelis & Company LLC as its financial advisor and Paul Hastings and Dow Lohnes as its legal counsel,” according to the release. There is currently “no timetable for the strategic review process” and the release goes on to stress it will not effect Politico, which is handled as a separate company.

Obviously, the best place to look for actual quotes is Mike Allen’s Playbook, which runs selections from Robert’s email to the Politico staff:

“This is the Golden Age of new media innovation, and I intend to stay on the leading edge of it…So, I will be looking to invest in or launch media companies that follow the POLITICO model of dominating targeted coverage – and then using multiple revenue streams to profitably fund it. I see a very bright future for media companies like this and plan to show this with substantial investment in coming months and years.”

The potential sale affects eight channels, two of which are local favorites WJLA and NewsChannel 8 (formerly the TBD channel for 45 seconds). The announcement hasn’t yieled any other information except a massive shot across the bow of Washington media, especially as NBC has reupped their contract with Maria Shriver and Chris Matthews–and killed off “The Chris Matthews Show.”

The White House Correspondents Association finally met a scandal that actually rewarded it! The group’s 2013 president Ed Henry received an award from another–albeit fictional–president Tony Goldwyn at the 20th Annual Garden Brunch. Henry was honored again today during a White House press conference by the actual POTUS.

The brunch, honoring The Miss America Foundation and CURE Epilepsy, also provided a notable donation from the co-hosts to the White House Correspondents Association Scholarship Fund.

Goldwyn appreciated his entrance from “an alternate universe” where everyone else in Washington knows him as President Fitzgerald Grant. The crowd quieted down with the announcement from Haddad Media CEO Tammy Haddad that the President had arrived–although it happened to be a fictional one. Ed Henry took his award to a hardy round of applause and spoke briefly about Tom Brokaw’s comments on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Ed Henry accepted the award on behalf of the thousands of reporters over the White House Correspondents Association’s 99 years.

You can see the response below:

It seems like Jeff Zucker is a huge fan of the 2010 film “Morning Glory.” You know, the film where the plucky young producer (Rachel Adams) has to save a struggling morning show and decides to pair up a curmedgon news anchor (Harrison Ford) with an amaglamation of every female anchor ever on TODAY?

Because the new CNN morning show replacing Soledad O’Brien’s Starting Point may as well exist in a movie. “New Day with Chris & Kate” will start June 10th and run from 6 am to 9 am according to TV Newser. This puts it against the big dogs at Fox and Friends and Morning Joe.

The show will be hosted by the eponymous Chris Cuomo, a recent ABC News transplant, Kate Bolduan and recent hire Michaela Pereira. So where does the doe-eyed Rachel Adams metaphor come in? Production heads stemming from Good Morning America and CBS Nightly News.

Will this new morning show be the hit that CNN needs to finally dethrone the morning market? Will Jeff Goldblum cameo? Who knows. In fact, another morning show could be the perfect counterweight as long as it can establish a voice like Morning Joe or Fox and Friends.

Hopefully on the premiere they’ll be making breafkast frittatas.

President Fitzgerald Grant (better known as Tony Goldwyn) met White House Correspondents Association President Ed Henry today at The 20th Annual Garden Brunch. The ‘legendary’ meeting that crossed two universes went out earlier through a livestream that culminated (at the 2:37 mark) with remarks from co-hosts honoring the White House Correspondents’ Association, CURE Epilepsy and The Miss America Foundation. Taking place at the historic Beall-Washington House, where else would you expect the perfect blend of Washington media, Hollywood and tech influences like Uber’s Travis Kalanick, Revolution’s Steve Case or even a gold medalist like Gabby Douglas?

Attendees rounded through R Street into the horseshoe to be greeted with CURE iPhone covers and #STEM branded protractors to give a hint at why Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics are being so vetted by the Miss America Foundation to strengthen education for young women. And it’s true, the Garden Brunch is full of “Things Beltway People Like.”

At the brunch alone you could find Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery posing with “Homeland”‘s Morena Baccarin or Kevin Spacey shaking hands with Navid Negahban and MC Hammer.Then there were the entire cast of Netflix’s “House of Cards” while Gerard Butler of “Olympus Has Fallen” came to lift the spirits of the brunch patrons.

Greta Van Susteren and husband John Coale, whose announcement that she would not attend the WHCA dinner made headlines, was dragged over to the red carpet by Kevin Spacey. For those around it felt like a House of Cards moment when he commanded Greta to “Stand next to me.”

There were even appearences from White House officials like Valerie Jarrett, Gene Sperling, Alan Krueger Tina Tchen (and daughter Emma), FLOTUS chief of staff and her Communications Director Kristina Schake and Reggie Love. House Leader Eric Cantor came to present the CURE Heroes Award to Pat and Patty Horan, an Iraqi war veteran who suffers from seisures. Senator Joe Manchin and Representative Darrell Issa mingled in the crowd with media heavies Joanna Coles, Editor of Cosmopolitian Magazine, David Carr and Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, Chris Hughes of The New Republic, Patty Rockenwagner, from Conde Nast, Alex Korson and Louis Bergholz, of Morning Joe, Toure And during the remarks given by Brunch co-hosts Tammy Haddad and Hilary Rosen, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Internet Investor and Fundamental Physics Prize Founder Yuri Milner happened to be near stage right.

Angel Investor Ron Conway led the giving with a pledge of $5,000 to each of the causes as Mayor Ed Lee and Mayor Villaraigosa talking to Steve Case and other tech leaders including Joe Green who is leading Mark Zuckerberg’s new political efforts in Washington.

Check out some of our photos in the slideshow below:

edit: Yes, in the original we said “Mike Ryan.” It’s because we were reading HuffPost Entertainment.

This seems to be too crazy even for the week leading up to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. Politico reports that the actual White House Correspondents’ Association overnighted a trademark lawsuit to GBK Productions (which Politico provides here). The source of the lawsuit? A gifting suite that GBK is co-partnering with The Creative Coalition that’s called “GBK & The Creative Coalition White House Correspondence [sic] Weekend Gift Lounge.”

This goes against the trademark of the WHCA and gives visiting celebs the false impression that their dinner hosts would be providing free swag from “the St. Regis Bora Bora, Made by Survivors handmade jewelry, Lovelinks by Aagaard jewelry, EyeWalker Elements Aromatic Botanical Alchemy (a.k.a.., perfume) , Jorg Gray watches ‘and more’” according to today’s Playbook.

To further dig a knife into the wound, when Mike Allen tried to inquire further he was met with the age-old response given to online journos since 2004: “Are you media?” And given the always charming response from another GBK representative: “If you’d like to RSVP, follow the instructions on the email. Any other questions, we have no comment.”

It seems silly that a gifting firm wouldn’t look into possible legal issues if they name themselves after the weekend festivities they’re attending. Even sillier is asking whether or not a company like Politico are press. Maybe Tom Brokaw wasn’t wrong when he took the encroaching celebrity aspect of the dinner to task? Or maybe it’s far too late as our annual fete for journalists–now the worst ranked job of 2013–comes calling.