<b>Morning Chatter</b>

Quotes of the Day "Waiting for Romney at 10 Downing street. #2012" -- Bloomberg political reporter Lisa Lehrer. Standing up for American media "Can't believe Romney took questions from British press corps but not from my colleagues traveling overseas w/him. Bad form. Whether you love or hate us in the media, you should want your leaders to at least submit themselves to questions." -- NBC Political Director Chuck Todd. Meow...Journo bores us with cat news "Kitties are totally sleeping, Declan is snoring like crazy, and Tallulah is obviously dreaming about something she wants to murder and eat." -- HuffPost media writer Jason Linkins. If you missed our midnight debut... of "Project Fishbowl" last night -- our debut is on The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful People List -- see it here. In response to The Hill's "50 Most Beautiful People" list, Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner wrote "The 50 Most Beautiful Sentences in The Hill's Annual 50 Most Beautiful People List" in which she scoffs at the pub for "presumably" having "a full calendar year to report, write, and edit—and yet" ... comes up with 50 sentences like these. A note to Juli: As someone who put this list together for five years, your presumptions are shortsighted, bordering on ignorant. The list isn't simple or easy to put together and I'd challenge anyone in Washington to have the patience and organization required to get the monstrosity done each year without shrieking at everyone in a half mile radius. For starters, it's not a full calendar year. When I ran it, as is the case now, there are many other responsibilities to a job apart from this project and you don't have a full year to get it done. I'd say six months, tops. To work on it longer would send a person into a Mariah Carey-like state of exhaustion. Sure, I'd search like a hawk all year long, but six months out we'd call for formal nominations. The nominations would come pouring in, the good, bad and the ugly. Then comes the convincing. This required several weeks to months of persuading bashful beauties to let us photograph them: "I'm so embarrassed. Who nominated me? Did my mother put you up to this? I'm so not beautiful. Did I mention I used to model?" Others had a bolder reaction: "Where do you want me?" The photographer works day in, day out. The whole thing becomes a serious full-time endeavor. Your other deadlines don't cease. At best, briefs on the beauties (if you can convince your coworkers to help, many will and some will refuse) come down to the wire about two weeks before they're due. At times, the ordeal -- and yes, it is one no matter how ridiculous -- resulted in a final 48 hours of marathon editing. So, Juli, let's see you put together a list like this. Who knows, maybe you could do it better. But really? My bet is on no. My favorite part of your project, by the way, is the contributor line at the end: Sarah Ball contributed copy-and-pasting from New York. We totally get it -- having help with an arts 'n crafts project is always appreciated.

Fishbowl

Morning Chatter

Betsy Rothstein

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Betsy Rothstein