“Regina’s unique experiences and expertise at the crossroads of law, business, political advocacy and media will add an important dimension to the diverse group of influential professionals serving on the Miss America Board of Directors,” said Board Chairman Sam Haskell, III.

Hopper has served as executive vice president of the United States Telecom Association and the American Trucking Associations, and won an Emmy while at CBS News for her work on 48 Hours. Prior to her time in media, she practiced corporate and securities law and litigation communications.

“I am honored to be joining this remarkable American institution,” said Hopper. “The Miss America Scholarship Program has advanced my many educational and work opportunities. I am now privileged to further these opportunities for today’s intelligent, giving and talented young women and to recognize the thousands who are a part of this incredible program.”

Hopper joins fellow Board members John Bermingham, Miss America 1971 Phyllis George, Tammy Haddad, Miss New Jersey 1973 Sue Lowden, Ed Peterson, Corinne Sparenberg, Barrie Jane Tracy, Paul Turcotte, Miss New Jersey 1971 Lynn Hackerman Weidner, Miss America 1964 Donna Axum Whitworth, and Ryan Wuerch.

As the world’s largest scholarship program for women, last year the Miss America Organization and its state and local organizations made available more than $45 million in cash and scholarship assistance. The pageant is returning to network television in January under an exclusive multi-year deal with ABC.

Fox News Channel Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett announced he’s joining National Journal as a Congressional Correspondent on September 3, just in time to avoid the new war over Fox News‘ front-row seat in the White House Briefing room.

Public Campaign, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Media Matters for America sent a letter Monday to the White House Correspondents Association in response to reports of News Corp.’s $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. In the letter they ask for the WHCA to “reconsider its decision to allow Fox News Channel a front-row seat in the White House briefing room” calling News Corp.’s donation “a massive ethical lapse that demonstrates Fox News’ inability to function as an objective media institution.”

Media Matters reports current WHCA President David Jackson of USA Today rejected the seating change request, stating: “The decision has been made.”

Jackson’s predecessor, Ed Chen who left Bloomberg News a few months ago and returned to the Natural Resources Defense Council, calls that decision “a travesty.”

Explaining further to Media Matters:
“The vacancy was created because of an ideological conflict,” he said, referring to [Helen] Thomas’ anti-Israel comments that led to her resignation. “To fill the vacancy with another cloud of ideological conflict was most unfortunate and inappropriate.”

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Fishbowl DC brings word that Jim Glassman’s Ideas in Action will join the Sunday local viewing habits in September.

The half-hour show will “air weekly on two public television stations – Howard University Television (WHUT Channel 32) at 9:30 a.m. and Maryland Public Television (MPT) at 8:30 a.m.” The show will continue to be taped from the Newseum and on location in Dallas.

Glassman, a former host for Capital Gang Sunday and current executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, leads the discussion series that focuses on central topics such as cybersecurity or dissent on the Internet rather than rope-a-dope talking points about traffic jams in Los Angeles.

Ideas currently airs in select markets via PBS and streaming via its website. You can check for local availability here.

If you’re playing at home, that means your average Sunday can now include Ideas In Action among every other show you keep DVR’ed for Monday Morning Talking Points.

That’s how much a private fundraiser held for President Obama garnered according to TheWrap.  Held at the home of producer John Wells, Hollywood came out to hear the president explain his upcoming legislative agenda and other remarks in the relaxed atmosphere of a walled garden.

Outside, however, a few hundred thousand angry Angelenos were fuming about the closings of major streets starting at 3 p.m. that left commuters stranded in their own cars and stretches of road empty for miles according to LAist. Traffic (and angry commuters) remained stationary until 8 p.m. when roads were reopened, says the Los Angeles Times.

But clogged traffic and angry drivers aren’t anything new when the White House drops in on the West Coast. There was the Joe Biden stop on The Tonight Show in July that, as TheWrap reports, froze LAX for a few hours. Ironically, this is nothing new for the daily commute of most Angelenos; it just happens that Obama gets to play scapegoat to a city otherwise choking itself with freeways, cars and boulevards.

If you live within the Beltway, however, you’re more than used to presidential motorcades and random road closures for diplomats and foreign dignitaries. We thought Los Angeles was supposed to be relaxed!

Even worse: we hear The Weinstein Company waited until 4:15 p.m. to send out the press screening for Piranha 3-D at 5 p.m. So if you want to spin it even further, Obama is the reason why some outlets won’t have a review of the 3-D horror film by Friday! Oh, Los Angeles, we feel for you. We really do.

Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing

Even AP's homepage fails at the "lol"

The Associated Press will not haz a cheeseburger after all.

It comes as a surprise to everyone that the wire service was in actual contractual talks for months–yes, “actual months” Fishbowl NY breathlessly assures us–with Pet Holdings Inc. (aka the owners of I Can Haz Cheeseburger.) The reason, according to an interview with Pet Holdings CEO Ben Huh in the Los Angeles Times,

“They felt that allowing the unwashed masses to [alter image captions] would be against their journalistic integrity.”

The main question (“How does an old media monolith like the AP remain hip and relevant in the age of cats with white text?”) is a frivolous statement. The AP has one of the better mobile apps through iTunes, but still suffered earlier this year when Google News revealed it would not host any new content from AP after contract negotiations failed.

Of course, you could always just use Skitch.

The “T” Team – Todd and Tapper – should consider themselves warned (that’s NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s Jake Tapper). Marc Ambinder has lots of sources and long-time relationships in politics; he’s a must-read political blogger for TheAtlantic.com, curates their Politics channel, and is the chief political consultant to CBS News. Ambinder is also half of the new “A” team recruited to help cover the White House for the National Journal Group.

NJ tripled its White House Team with the addition of Ambinder and Aamer Madhani, currently a correspondent with USA Today. They will be joining staff writer George Condon, Jr., who covers the White House for CongressDaily when the National Journal newsroom is unified this fall.

“The New ‘A’-Team—Ambinder and Aamer—is going to be formidable,” said National Journal Editor-in-Chief Ron Fournier. “They are smart, savvy and richly sourced in foreign policy, domestic issues and politics. They have an extraordinary combination of skills that will give National Journal Group readers deep, dependable coverage of the Obama administration.”

When putting those skills to use, Ambinder says his ultimate goal is to “find out what I can find out and pull back the curtains as much as possible.”

Ambinder was also a founding editor of Hotline’s path-breaking news blog, Hotline On Call and one of the founders of ABC’s The Note. He will continue with The Atlantic through the November elections and join National Journal Group immediately thereafter.

Madhani covers foreign affairs for USA TODAY out of Washington, DC after joining the paper in December 2008 as the Baghdad Bureau Chief. He has also worked with the Chicago Tribune. Madhani will begin his work with National Journal next month.

August recess may be shorter this year, as Nancy Pelosi tweeted everyone had to return, but the District is finally slowing back down to wait out the heat.

Politico (in the first of a proposed three-part series it seems) engages the Capitol Hill bar culture about what happens when tired and thirsty staffers seem to disappear for a few weeks.

Last Thursday, eleven White House reporters sat down with President Obama for an off-the-record lunch. The President has talked off-the-record recently with commentators like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, so what makes it so newsworthy this time?

Is it because it took some digging to find out who the Lunching 11 were? The Upshot outed them last week (Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, Politico, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today). Or is it because the New York Times has been so outspoken about refusing the White House invite?

Times reporter Peter Baker tells Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post these off-the-record sessions are “to be avoided if possible. It can too easily turn into a substitute for on-the-record….”

“We’re not trying to be haughty,” he adds, but “White House reporters get relatively few opportunities to talk to the president on the record.”

So without further ado, as Fishbowl DC informs us, Ben Feller is the AP’s new White House Correspondent. Feller covered education for the news organization from 2003 to 2006, switching to the White House since then.

This comes after the AP was awarded Helen Thomas’ seat last week. The official memo is below:

Dear Colleagues,

I’m pleased to announce Ben Feller as AP’s new White House Correspondent.

Ben is taking the helm after an extraordinary year in which he’s won two major awards for presidential coverage, a first for the AP. He won the Merriman Smith Award for presidential reporting on deadline for his coverage of President Barack Obama’s late-night tribute to soldiers returning from war in flag-draped caskets at Dover Air Force Base. He was awarded the Gerald R. Ford journalism prize for overall distinguished reporting on the presidency, including the Dover return, the president’s Nobel prize, and an analysis of George W. Bush’s presidency, among other pieces.

Ben joined the AP in Washington in 2003 as a national education reporter and moved to the White House beat in November, 2006. Prior to joining the AP, he wrote for The Tampa Tribune, the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa.

Feller is a native of State College. He graduated from Penn State University in 1992 with a degree in journalism.

Ben succeeds Jennifer Loven who, after her distinguished coverage of two presidencies, including the last 2 years as correspondent, will be taking a new assignment at her request. With Ben as correspondent, the AP’s tradition of the best possible White House coverage is ensured without missing a step.

Please join me in congratulating Ben.

Steve

Steven Komarow

Acting Chief of Bureau

The Associated Press

Washington

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Meredith Fineman carries her parents journalistic tradition into new media. Her father, Howard, is leading political light for Newsweek and NBC News; her mother, Amy Nathan, now at the FCC, got her start reporting for the Washington Post.

Fifty First (J) Dates is the 23-year old’s way to meet people after returning to her hometown of Washington, D.C. after working abroad in Buenos Aires.

“At first I didn’t tell them about it,” Fineman said. “They found out from other people about ‘how fabulous it was.’” The point, Fineman assures, is to be fun and humorous about dating in D.C. instead of a return to Washingtonienne.

Through the evolution of online dating into the mutual awkwardness of a first-meeting, Meredith Fineman brings out a creative and fun take into the world of dating in D.C., specifically through J-Date.

Meredith Fineman

“I never signed up with the intent of actually writing about it,” Fineman said. Instead the quirks and flirations of “let’s atone for our sins together,” as she also told the Washington Post. But these were clearly too good to pass up and became collected under her new blog, which also gets cross-posted on The Huffington Post.

The blog’s inspiration doesn’t come from looking for potential content, but “the funny little moments on the sites: building my profile and that sort of thing.” Whether it’s slyly asking if we’re all Russian Spies in the age of Foursquare check-ins, preparing for your first J-Date or going over the actual date itself (this date: The Big Shot.)

There’s still a known elephant (sometimes literal) in the various bars and restaurants of Washinton: people come here for political gain and can’t get their head out of the game, even on a date, which Fineman has found. ” I love politics as an interest,” she said. “And I feel like it’s very hard, I agree, without an agenda and concerned about their ego and agenda.”

Still, Fineman doesn’t ignore the possibility of social media and meeting people in D.C. A long-term goal for the site is to further expand into dating culture and showing where to go in the District, sharing tips and as simple as showing where to go based on Foursquare and Twitter.

“I have this funny blog and a pseudo-persona that is me. I think it’s fun to be entertaining people with stories about your life, but you have to know where to draw the line.”

You can submit your own J-Date stories and follow the site on Twitter.