Washington’s Oscar weekend begins May 9 as Hollywood and New York’s biggest celebrities come to town for an evening with the President, Vice President, official Washington and the media.
400 Visitors Meet FLOTUS as White House Visitors Office Celebrates Successful Year
White House visitors enjoyed a special welcome yesterday – First Lady Michelle Obama and First Dog Bo in the Blue Room. It was the one-year anniversary of the Obama presidency, which began with President Obama promising “To open the White House to more visitors.”
Associated Press reports more than 614,000 guests visited the White House last year.
Chefs Cristeta Comerford and Bobby Flay took a victory back to the White House last night as they battled it out with super chefs Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse. The show started off in the White House garden with the chefs picking their own fresh vegetables and there was even a visit by the First Lady Michelle Obama.
The vegetables from the garden later became the focal point of the dishes cooked up by the masters of the kitchen. Check out more of the action at the Food Network here.
President Obama’s weekly address was a Christmas message, with First Lady Michelle Obama, and included a special tribute to the men and women in the military serving overseas. The White House web site suggested ways to support the troops through DOD’s Military Homefront, OurMilitary.mil, and the USO.
For the 6th month anniversary of the Obama presidency, Michelle Obama will not get another fabulous date night. Instead the president is spending the weekend bringing together all his 22 cabinet members for what some are calling a “bonding” session.
CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller has more — Click Here.
President Obama in his speech to the RTCA got right to the heart of Washington’s journalist dinner rivalry, saying he was on hand to “Tell jokes that weren’t funny enough for me to use when we did this five weeks ago,” at the White House Correspondents’ dinner (known as the Senior Prom to the RTCA’s Junior Prom.) Then again, he said, twisting the knife deeper: “The jokes may not be as good but neither is the guest list.”
And later: “I think your programming is more relevant than ever before — at least that’s the impression that I get when I read the blogs.”
In his appearance before the Radio and TV correspondents at the Washington D.C. Convention Center, the President was unaccompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama on the orange and yellow rose-rimmed dais and he left at 9:20, before dinner was served. His short stay prompted some last-minute frantic juggling of the entertainment lineup, according to insiders. VP Biden wasn’t there, either, despite apparently erroneous earlier reports that he would attend. A spokeswoman said that he had a scheduling conflict.
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, right after the speech, noted the President’s “sharp elbowed humor;” a few tweets from the dinner suggested that his humor was “underappreciated” by the audience. He cracked himself up several times, however.
The biggest laughs of the night came when he joked about embattled California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger competing on “I’m a Celebrity….Get Me Out of Here,” then added: “That’s how I feel about tonight.” The dinner, he said, was causing him to miss “date night” with Michelle, and his plans to go for Thai food-pause-”in Bangkok.”
A joke about being in bed with NBC’s Brian Williams, whom he called a terrible house guest, was followed by a list of new TV programs that the success of “Inside the White House” had inspired, the funniest of which was TLC’s “Jon & Kate plus Peter Orszag.”
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski
There was also a mild jab at NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd for having the style of a TV correspondent and “the facial hair of a radio correspondent.” To MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, he said: “We both have partners named Joe who used to be in Congress and don’t know when to stop talking.” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, he noted, was “the only other man in America with his own situation room,” and it was cooler than the President’s, which he said, was unable “to generate the bandwidth to turn Larry Summers into a hologram.”
Random jokes poked fun at his own Administration, including Richard Holbrooke, whom he alleged sprayed WD-40 that caused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s elbow-breaking fall. He announced a “new” plan to rescue the auto business, telling dinner guests to look under their seat, a la Oprah, because everyone was getting a car company. Fox, he said, would get AIG.
Looking relieved that his speech was over, the President ended his remarks with a serious tribute to the work of the press, noting “I am here tonight because I appreciate the role you do.” He got the traditional standing ovation at the beginning and end.
Obama Walks to Oval Office -- courtesy Antoine Sanfuentes
Mark Lukasiewicz (a.k.a. “Luk”) is one of the biggest names in TV news, yet he operates behind the cameras and lights — and notoriety — as a Vice President of NBC News.
He has been leading NBC News’ digital efforts and on the side (ahem) over the years he has created and produced some of NBC News biggest events, the most recent: NBC’s “Inside the Obama White House, Brian Williams Reports.” With amazing access and resources, he and his team shot 150 hours of tape and created two primetime network hours, which also appeared on NBC’s cable channel MSNBC.
WHCInsider talked to Luk about the two-night special report, both of which captured a “top 10″ TV ranking for that week. about how the NBC the program came together.
Linda Rozett: Did you plan what everybody would be shooting beforehand, or did you just show up with lots of people and start shooting … and sort it out in the edit room?
Mark Lukasiewicz: The White House puts out a public schedule each day, so we certainly knew in advance some of what would be on President Obama’s schedule. But in terms of exactly how it would unfold, there’s no way to know that. You just roll with it. In the end, the broadcast included an entire chapter on how the White House managed the Sonia Sotomayor story — and that episode completely unfolded before our eyes. No one could have predicted it.
Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest and NBC News VP Mark Lukasiewicz on the South Lawn of the White House, consider camera locations for "Inside the Obama White House: Brian Williams Reports" – courtesy Subrata De
In the process we followed, every producer submitted an outline of their best material, what they saw what was noteworthy, what unfolded. Each submitted the outline by midnight on Friday, a few hours after they left the White House.
Before leaving the White House Brian, Subrata De and I were also able to compare notes — and overnight I put together a 12-act outline of the two hours incorporating all the best material from the producers, and laying it out and structuring it into a rough narrative.
By noon Saturday everyone was back in New York and the entire team went to work on that 11-page outline, in a two-hour meeting. We moved some things around, added some things, took some others out. And at the end of that meeting, a producer/editor team was assigned to begin producing each act.
Sunday was another full day in a “war room” on the 5th floor of 30 Rock, where Brian worked with each producer/editor team and scripted each act in sequence. Brian recorded his scripts for those acts Sunday evening. By Monday morning, we were screening a largely completed version of the two-hour special. It was an incredible process.
In addition to the NBC Special, didn’t you have time on MSNBC?
On NBC, we had one hour on Tuesday, June 2, and one hour Wednesday, June 3. We combined those into a single, two-hour program on Friday, which also ran on MSNBC on the weekend. And very soon, it will be a DVD.
And had our own website for the broadcast: www.whitehouse.msnbc.com. Pieces of video that we let run longer and stuff that didn’t make the broadcast, we put that on the website. We also had web-exclusive elements — our web producers were involved from day one; and msnbc.com had its own editorial team with us at the White House. They had access to everything. The website also has the full two-hour video, as well as all the previous “Inside the White House” broadcasts going back several years
With that much material, you must have had some good stuff that got left on the cutting room floor … what were your favorites that just didn’t quite make the cut?
There is. We had 150 hours of material. One thing we couldn’t get into the Monday, Tuesday broadcasts, but got in on Friday was a section about White House photographer Pete Souza. The producer who shot that material made the case for a great segment; a lovely and fascinating little glimpse of how the White House photographer works, how he works with the President. The segment told the story behind a particular photo, hanging in the West Wing, of a young boy in the Oval Office. The picture shows a 4-year old standing in front of the President’s desk and Obama is leaving over so the young boy can touch his hair. Souza told us the little boy had recently had his hair cut and wondered if their heads felt the same. In the photo, Obama is leaning over so the boy can feel his head.
How would you describe Obama’s comfort level with cameras following him that closely for an extended period?
I can’t speak for the President on this, but it appeared that he was very comfortable. We certainly had extraordinary access to him all day long in different settings: casual interactions with immediate staff members, casual interactions with the First Lady, walking from place to place, backstage, meetings in the Oval Office, in the Roosevelt Room, in the limousine, getting off the elevator in the morning and getting on the elevator in the evening. He seemed very comfortable.
Charles Ommanney covering Obama in New Hampshire 1/6/2008
Award-winning Newsweek photojournalist Ommanney talked with Holly Fine about covering the White House.
The winner of this year’s Best Photo award from the White House News Photographers’ Association, Newsweek’s Charles Ommanney, talked with WHCInsider about covering President Obama during his public and private moments from the campaign to the Oval Office. Ommanney told WHCI contributor Holly Fine that while candidate Obama had occasionally denied him access, team Obama understands something the Bush staff did not: the power of images.
Holly Fine Some people say your photographs got Barack Obama elected. How do you react to that? Charles Ommanney Well my God that’s so funny! In a way, I suppose I could say that is an incredible compliment. At the same time, it’s a very gray area in journalism. When you work very close to these people, you find yourself being in a bubble and you forget about the outside world. You can wake up one day and you realize or question whether you are being objective, because it is hard to not like someone like Barack Obama. In fact, it was actually hard once I got on the inside of the Bush campaign in 2000, it was hard not to like him. It’s kind of a gray area that we all go through, you ask anyone who spends time traveling with a presidential candidate.
HF Can you remember the exact moment when you said to yourself, I am photographing the face of the next president? CO I think around Iowa, when the Iowa caucus was going on. The size of the crowd and again it all comes back to this sort of bubble that you live in. We were hearing on the road that John McCain was getting 2,000 people, if he was lucky, in an audience and then you were going to gymnasiums in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and having 20,000 people turn up and you start realizing that this is some kind of phenomenon going on here. You knew you were kind of living some sort of history.
HF How did he change in the campaign through your camera? CO The candidate to a degree is shielded quite a lot by the force of people underneath him, working for him, doing everything. I am not sure Barack Obama really changed during the campaign, if at all. I think it would be extremely unusual if these huge crowds of adoring fans didn’t affect his ego. But really, Barack Obama didn’t change that much. The people that changed were the people around him. Read more…
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner seems to have gotten used to the slings and arrows of Congress, but Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham stopped Secretary Geithner in his tracks when he asked him about being included as one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People under the heading of ”Barack’s Beauties” along with First Lady Michelle Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, and assistant White House Chef Sam Kass.
Here is the transcript:
MR. MEACHAM: People magazine has selected you as one of “Barack’s Beauties.”Would you phrase it that you’re–you were in close consultation? How does that feel?
SECRETARY GEITHNER: It doesn’t–[laughing]–it doesn’t feel particularly good, frankly. [Laughter.] It doesn’t make up for the challenge of being away from my family and doing other things, but you’re so nice to bring it up, Jon.
MR. MEACHAM: Well, you’re welcome. I’d like the record to show that I think Alexander Hamilton blushed as well at various points with various folks.
Jon Meacham, the newly crowned Pulitzer prize winner can get a little history into anything.
Michelle Obama to hand out scholarships to journalism students at WHCD while Jennifer Loven, WHCA Prez, cuts dessert and gives back money to DC food bank.
This year’s WHC dinner on Saturday, May 9, has a new feature. First Lady Michelle Obama will personally hand out the annual awards that are funded by the White House Correspondents Association. By eliminating dessert from the menu, Loven says they will pass on $23,000 in savings to a local charity. The Washington Post’sThe Sleuth, Mary Ann Akers reports.
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