ANA MARIE COX... WONKETTE ARTICLE
Shoutout to Debbie... Washington Party Thrower

I learned about the Wonkette blog a few weeks ago, which is a gossip blog for Washington insiders. Then today I was talking with my good friend, Debbie, and she mentioned that she was quoted in the NY Times in an article about the Wonkette so I checked it out. Anyway, this post is just a shoutout to a friend on the wrong side of the political spectrum. :)

First With the Scoop, if Not the Truth

The New York Times
By JULIE BOSMAN
April 18, 2004

WASHINGTON
When the notoriously unreliable Drudge Report blared the stunning headline in February that Senator John Kerry had had an affair with a woman on his staff, the gossip columns in Washington's newspapers did not print a word. Ana Marie Cox saw an opening.

Ms. Cox, writing in her new web log Wonkette, gleefully shared every unsubstantiated detail. That the story faded, unsupported by any evidence, seemed almost inconsequential to Ms. Cox. "It was just one of those things that people in Washington were talking about," Ms. Cox said later, by way of explanation.

With her gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed blog, Ms. Cox, a 31-year-old self-described failed journalist, has grabbed the attention of staid Washington, where gossip columns usually amount to little more than records of Capitol Hill staff changes and James Carville sightings. As she puts it, her mission for her blog (www.wonkette.com) is to write "a blend of gossip and satire and things I make up." It supports no party line, mixing gossip items from newspapers and Web sites with tips e-mailed from readers, which could be anything from guesses about which members of the Bush administration are gay to blind items on Washington luminaries. " `Famous for D.C.' should be the ultimate put-down," Ms. Cox said, drawing from her stockpile of oft-employed one-liners.

Her main competition in town, The Reliable Source, a regular feature in The Washington Post, has held a near monopoly since its debut in 1992. Richard Leiby, who took over from Lloyd Grove last fall, said on Friday that the newspaper's standards limit what he can write. "There really is not a gossip column at The Washington Post," he said. "We're really writing fairly rigorously sourced items of news interest, as opposed to who's sleeping with whom." Mr. Grove, who is now a gossip columnist for The New York Daily News, has said that when he was writing Reliable Source in the late 1990's he sat on the scoop that Newt Gingrich was being unfaithful to his wife. "I guess I'm just a wimp," he told the now defunct monthly Capital Style.
.....
"She pushes the envelope and goes where the other gossip columns don't go," said Debbie Berger, the director of media strategy for the liberal policy group Center for American Progress. Ms. Berger, a daughter of Sandy Berger, the former Clinton administration national security adviser, is noted for giving frequent parties. Ms. Cox "does a really good job at poking fun at the institution of Washington and the stiffness of Washington," Ms. Berger said.

Jake Tapper, the ABC News correspondent, said Ms. Cox's blog succeeds in part because of its lack of credentials. "The difficulty with writing a gossip column from the moss-covered towers of any established media organization is that one's bosses are more often than not likely to be golfing and sipping port with your choice subjects," he said. "So Ana Marie has an advantage there." (full article)