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.
The Beeb is stepping up its game in the former colonies by getting into the After Party sweepstakes in the Washington, D.C., dinner season. All the top radio and TV correspondents will gather on March 17 for the RTCA dinner; President Obama is a no-show, but Vice President Biden will appear and he’s always been a favorite of broadcasters for his commentary.
BBC has hired top party guru Philip Dufour to capture the media stars, their guests, and the accolades for 2010.
Dufour also worked on MSNBC’s 2009 after party. The event, held at the Washington Historical Society, was unforgettable. The evening included a Starbucks “Morning Joe” coffee bar and a celeb mixologist, Rachel Maddow.
Check out WHCInsider’s coverage of the 2009 party.
President Obama’s use of new media and social networking was widely praised during the campaign. That same focus a year into his presidency has some in the White House press corps grumbling, according to Howard Kurtz in today’s Washington Post:
“President Obama hasn’t held a full-scale news conference since July. Instead, he answered a dozen people’s questions last week on YouTube, most of the easily finessed and — extra bonus! — no annoying follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists.”
Watch the president’s YouTube interview below:
“It’s a source of great frustration here … It’s important for us to hold the president’s feet to the fire,” CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid told Kurtz.
Obama supporters received an email from the president’s top campaign leader, David Plouffe, thanking them for their participation in a survey about what they want to the President to do in 2010.
The email linked to a web video of Plouffe explaining the survey results and inviting supporters to watch a live strategy update and Q&A session with President Obama on February 4, at 5:45 PM ET, called “A Conversation with the President.”
As Republicans wonder whether allowing Obama’s exchange with GOP lawmakers to be televised was a wise political move, a campaign has started to demand more opportunities for the right and the left to ask some questions.
“[A] bipartisan group of bloggers, commentators, politicos, and Internet advocates—with a combined readership in the millions—has launched an online campaign urging President Obama, GOP House leader John Boehner and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to make Question Time—televised and webcasted—a regular feature of American democracy. You can join this call at DemandQuestionTime.com,” writes David Corn (@DavidCornDC) in an article in today’s Mother Jones.
Evidently, interest was overwhelming: the campaign website was down this morning.
Watch the video of the President’s appearance at the House GOP Issues Conference in Baltimore.
The White House announced in a blog post this morning that President Obama will “take questions from YouTube users next Wednesday at a live White House event,” according to Talking Points Memo. Christina Bellantoni reports the project, which was not announced through the usual press channels, is “another example of the Obama team circumventing the Washington establishment to communicate more directly with voters.”
There’s already a free White House iPhone app that will live stream the president’s State of the Union address tomorrow night.
Newly-elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown not only got more votes than Martha Coakley on Election Day, he had more Twitter followers (10,76 to 3,657), more Facebook friends (83,535 to 15,573), a bigger YouTube channel (675,208 views to 76,805).
Coakley’s campaign neglected to tweet details of President Obama’s Saturday rally to supporters, according to an article in Advertising Age.
“It was all old-school ways of getting people to spread the word. It felt like they were trying to win Ted Kennedy’s seat using Ted Kennedy’s techniques,” according to David Meerman Scott, a Coakley supporter and author of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR.”
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.
Visitors have commented on the lack of personal touches to the Oval Office and the absence of family photos. The spartan look was on dramatic display during NBC News’ unprecedented two-hour, behind-the-scenes special with President Obama in the White House.
Even President Obama’s Air Force One office has a noticeable lack of “stuff.”
But Obama has finally put his own touch on the Oval Office: fresh fruit has replaced cut flowers, family photos are now on display along with Native American pottery and some small technological devices from the mid-19th century on loan from the National Museum of American History’s patent collection.
He’s even added some tchotchkes, including a penholder that was a gift from Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Check out the photos and article by Erin Loechner of “Design for Mankind” on AOL’s ShelterPop blog by clicking 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.
Now that the dust has settled and the 2009 election results have sunk in, the pondering and pontificating by the pundit elite (and not so elite) continues on cable news and online media sites about what the results mean for the president and the nation’s political future. Much of what is discussed is, and will continue to be, partisan in nature (as is the nature of cable news) and quite frankly, without much merit or solid research beyond party talking points and Wikipedia entries.
Discussions have been playing out on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News on whether Obama’s coattails are still strong; whether 2009 elections are a prediction of the 2010 midterms; whether the GOP can turn 2 key gubernatorial wins into a midterm Congressional movement, and so on. Most of these are unknowns, but there is one major continuous thread of the ‘08 and now ‘09 election cycle that is guaranteed to be part of every successful future campaign whether GOP or Dem or Conservative or Independent: the integrated use of social media and online communications (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, SMA, web 2.0, etc), combined with an authentic, engaging candidate, must be paramount within a campaign’s overall strategy in order to be successful.
Business CEO’s are part of an Obama “corporate kitchen cabinet,” according to Politico’s Eamon Javers. The members lean heavily toward the tech and financial sectors: Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Immelt of GE, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, and Robert Wolf of UBS.
Wolf has even “scored an invitation to golf with Obama” — but there’s no free lunch for the corporate chieftains. “Each executive is asked for a credit card number and subsequently billed for [their] meal.”
America’s favorite speech writer Jon Favreau finally comes forward to tell the world how he crafts President Obama’s speeches. He gives an inside look at wordsmithing at 30,000 feet.
Maybe now that David Plouffe is doing interviews, it’s ok for Favreau to step out of the shadows and video blog as well?
Video by Arun Chaudhary, the official White House videographer
President Barack Obama plays peek-a-boo with Maeve Beliveau, the daughter of Director of Advance Emmett Beliveau, in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 30, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama became the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize this morning.
The Nobel committee cited Obama’s “extradorinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy,” in announcing the award in Oslo, Norway.
The White House heard of the announcement via a wire report to in the Situation Room overnight and Obama is expected to talk to reporters in the Rose Garden about the award this morning.
Click here for Politico’s story, with reactions from world leaders and former Nobel laureates.
WASHINGTON - MAY 09: TV personality Padma Lakshmi walks the red carpet during the White House Correspondents' dinner after party hosted by Capitol File at ... […]
... Access Hollywood Leno Featured Comic At Annual White House Correspondents Dinner. ... Leno Featured Comic At Annual White House Correspondents Dinner ... […]
It was a far cry from Stephen Colbert's now-infamous evisceration of the Bush administration at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner - the annual ... […]
"Miracle Mile" and a still from "2012" Two weeks after 9/11, in perhaps the finest and bravest act any American media institution undertook before Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner roast, the Onion ran a story with the ... Midnight Oil - http://midnight-oil.blogmeister.net/ […]
The Beeb is stepping up its game in the former colonies by getting into the After Party sweepstakes in the Washington, D.C., dinner season. All the top radio and TV correspondents will gather on March 17 for the RTCA dinner; President Obama is a no-show, but Vice President Biden will appear and he’s always been a favorite of broadcasters for his commentary.
