Politico's Michael Calderone bucks the establishment and blows the lid off "JournoList," the secret society/ messageboard of the DC liberal media elite. He uncovered this far-reaching conspiracy with the twin investigative tactics of, 1) reading about it in Mickey Kaus' blog two years ago, and 2) talking to his three co-workers who are in the club.

We kid! Calderone did a public service simply by exposing, publicly, the fact that the cream of DC wonkdorkery may be in danger of imploding under the weight of their own self-importance. JournoList is sort of a sympathy club for those too liberal to get into Skull and Bones. Jeff Toobin and Eric Alterman and Joe Klein and DC's finest blogerati are on the list, but everything on there is off the record:

"It's sort of a chance to float ideas and kind of toss them around, back and forth, and determine if they have any value," said New Republic associate editor Eve Fairbanks, "and get people's input on them before you put them on a blog."

Ha, around here we do the exact opposite! Now allow us to share with you a quote from supremely self-satisfied liberal Eric Alterman:

"For me, it's enormously useful because I don't like to spend my time reading blogs and reading up-to-the-minute political minutia," he said.

He only likes to spend his time writing blogs and up-to-the-minute political minutia. Finally, professional idiot Joe Klein sums it all up:

But Time's Joe Klein, who acknowledged being on JList and several other listservs, said in an e-mail that "they're valuable in the way that candid conversations with colleagues and experts always are." Defending the off-the-record rule, Klein said that "candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private."

And then Klein - speaking like the JLister he is - said there wasn't "anything more that I can or want to say about the subject."

JournoList is the adult diaper of the liberal media world, soaking up the bullshit before it reaches the outside world. Carry on! [Politico]

That quote is from John Koblin's piece in today's Observer. It's got more gems: Adam Nagourney couldn't find a seat at his own paper's workspace, then bitched about having to cover the convention with so many other, lesser reporters. Fox's Greta Van Susteren, though, was more than happy to be there.

Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News anchor, spent Aug. 25 blogging—“I like the blogging!” she said—and produced 10 blog posts, including an online poll: “What do you think Michelle Obama thinks about Hillary Clinton?”

But there are hardships!

“I don’t like it,” said the Bloomberg News editor Al Hunt, who is covering his 17th convention. “It’s chilly and you can’t hear anything. Have you been to the porta-potties here? Because don’t go.”

Elsewhere in the Observer, Felix Gillette reports that he thought he knocked over Bill O'Reilley's laptop! But no, it was Karl Rove's laptop.

At HuffPo, media critic Rachel Sklar asks Anderson Cooper about the altitude, and Cooper reveals that he wishes he'd had a Bar Mitzvah. If, somehow, Cooper had added that he also wished to be on Saturday Night Live, in a Broadway musical, and Canadian, Sklar probably would've fainted. (After filing 1,500 words.)

And hey, did you know that there are bloggers at the Democratic National Convention? It's true, according to the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau. "The political bloggers are here because this week Denver is the center of the Democratic Party's political universe," we're told. Good to know! Even Katie Couric stopped by the blogger area to figure out what bloggers did all day, exactly.

And lovable David Carr, America's Favorite Recovered Crack-Addict-Turned-Times Reporter, hauls his Carpetbagger vlogging suit out of the closet to bug "members of the media" in Denver! Watching this video, we were struck by how these were exactly the same parties that are thrown in DC every week except in Denver. They still look terrible.

Almost by accident, however, the owners of the Huffington Post had discovered a formula that capitalized on the problems confronting newspapers in the Internet era, and they are convinced that they are ready to reinvent the American newspaper. "Early on, we saw that the key to this enterprise was not aping Drudge," Lerer recalls. "It was taking advantage of our community. And the key was to think of what we were doing through the community's eyes."

Of course, this wildly popular liberal media is also home to essays on Candy Spelling's passive aggressive attacks on her daughter's career and Erica Jong rambling about electing a beaver.. So between Drudge's weather obsession and the Huffington Post's "celebrity" "bloggers" your news agenda is still being driven by crazy people who probably own hundreds of cats.

"I've never been a fan of Howard Kurtz at all, I mean, you know, to me, he's sort of the epitome of insider journalism," Ken Silverstein told us. And though the Harper's Washington editor may be "not terribly fond" of Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, he reserves his real venom for liberal pundit Eric Alterman. "I really can't stand Eric," Silverstein said.

(Of course, Eric in turn is famous for his feuds—he hates, among others, Time's Ana Marie Cox, her husband, the New York Observer columnist Chris Lehmann, and The Nation's Katha Pollitt. Anyway!)

The Silverstein and Kurtz throwdown actually began way back in July: Silverstein wrote a piece about D.C. lobbyists, for which he flirted with entrapment, nailed his story and pissed off a lot of people. Predictably, the pious got their panties in knots, the bored were bored, and the crowd that secretly would kill for a White House Correspondents Association invite lashed out at the Beltway media elite in charge of doling them out.

Kurtz was indignant, and scolded Silverstein: "No matter how good the story, lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects." Oh ho!

Silverstein responded in the LATimes, saying he found Kurtz's criticism "disappointing" but unsurprising, and pointed to two of our own favorite undercover press stings as reasons to continue pursuing the kind of reporting that has largely died out.

Since June, Silverstein has written at least seven items about Kurtz on the Harper's website.

One trashed Kurtz's new book. ("Seems like a pretty dreary read," Silverstein told us.)

One trashed Kurtz's blog. ("Really embarrassing... anyone who writes an item about getting caught in a rainstorm and titles it 'Wet and Wild'&mdash I mean, I'm almost sure it was 'Wet and Wild.'" (Yes. It was.)

Another trashed Kurtz's "hand-wringing, tut-tutting" clucking about the state of American journalism.

We asked why Silverstein hasn't yet disclosed the genesis for his Kurtz aversion on his blog.

"I had thought about putting up some sort of Surgeon General warning about how I'm not terribly fond of the guy&mdash or at least his writing, I don't know him personally," he said. "It just seemed to me there've been so many public references since the lobbying story, the undercover story, that anyone who would probably read an item about Howard Kurtz would probably know about you know, my general dispute with him."

Silverstein points out that it's not as if he's a flip-flopper. "I've always bitched about Kurtz, long before this thing," he said. (True that.)

"The only nice thing I'll say is, I don't question Kurtz's honesty at all in terms of his take on my piece, I mean, he genuinely found it distasteful, so I hope I haven't in any way suggested there was anything dishonest about his critique."

On the other side, Kurtz found a supporter in the temperate Huffington Post media critic Rachel Sklar.

Wouldn't you know it: Damn, did Harper's smack her for it. (They are a tight-knit defensive little group over there, no? Tread lightly!) A Sklar-Kurtz "love fest", cried Harper's contributor Scott Horton.

Sklar's piece on Kurtz's book, in which she wryly told her readers to go buy the critic's book, was a "A drooling, fawning blurb-like emission"!

Then came the requisite conspiracy theory: "First, it seems, Rachel Sklar was invited to Kurtz's show as a guest, showing up in transcripts several times in the course of this past summer. Second, Howie wrote a piece about Sklar in his column at the Washington Post. It's an over-the-top puff piece filled with product placement."

Well, frankly, we too were inclined to think the love-fest might not be all that imaginary. (Although, um, we don't see Kurtz swinging the younger gal thing, but we digress, again. Also? Sorry.)

But! We asked Sklar about Horton's allegations that she'd stopped maligning Kurtz only after he invited her on his show, and she forwarded us her barely-restrained response email, which, Horton has posted today.

In it, she cites her criticisms of Kurtz—from running scintillating B-roll while mourning the loss of television dignity that said B-roll represents and calling previously-published material "exclusive" to pushing his own book on his show.

"So to imply a road-to-Damascus conversion that just happened to coincide with Kurtz giving me facetime is a pretty serious allegation that you might have invested some effort in actually backing up," Sklar.

Then she called him "a little 'sleazy and dishonest'" in return.

"If you are going to make allegations about what motivates a critic in her coverage, you'd best make damn sure that those allegations have some merit. I have no problem 'admitting' that I like Howard Kurtz—heck, I call him Howie—but that hardly means he or anyone else has me in his pocket," she wrote.

The "unusually sunny" Sklar's Kurtz-critical moments are typically balancing acts. Her point about his self-promotion was countered with noting that the publication of his book, "in all fairness, falls squarely within his mandate on 'Reliable Sources' and definitely merited exploration, and this seemed a nice way to handle it," and though she thought his CNN auto-interview was "hokey," she also called it "goofily endearing," which admittedly, sounds pretty familiar.

Unfortunately, her coverage of the controversy surrounding Kurtz's "exclusive" book material carries lines like this one: "We're going to spin this on the sunny side, since that's what we do here."

Is it? We think you'd better inform the other alligators about that!

I was arrested, as I now understand it, entirely on the basis of a misunderstanding. I was asked to leave a room. I left the room. The entire conversation that led to my arrest took place outside the room I was asked to leave.

My impression, in retrospect, is that the police officer wanted me to leave the entire building (even though I was credentialed to be there). But this was never made clear to me. I thought he was just continuing to hassle me for no reason.

When I was handcuffed and arrested, I was having a civil conversation with his commanding officer, trying to ask him to ask the guy to stop hassling me. The arresting officer, who did not actually work for the jurisdiction in question, continually interrupted my attempt at this conversation, until I finally asked him to please let me finish a sentence, at which point I was arrested.

In any event, Alterman is perturbed (that is, incredibly thrilled) to be such big news. We bet he's wishing every old famous person in the world well right now, just so they don't knock the ferkakte Fabian from the front pages (of, you know, a couple weblogs).

Alterman's Arrest [The Nation]

Police say he was asked by an executive at the party if he was invited to the private area and was asked to leave. A police officer was called after a verbal altercation ensued. He was asked by police seven times to leave, and police say he became increasingly loud as he refused. After ignoring a final request, police say he was handcuffed and taken from the building.

Columnist/author arrested in spin room [Political Ticker]

Subject: yes, it smells like crap
There's a clog in the pipes from the 18th floor, they're working on it.

You walk over to the reception area of our office and it's like someone's cleaning a septic tank. I can't even imagine what it smells like in the actual bathrooms. I'm doing my peeing in Starbucks for the rest of the day.

Does Alterman hate Newsweek too? Maybe he dropped a cherry bomb up there.

MARK HALPERIN JOINS TIME

(New York, April 30, 2007)—Mark Halperin joins TIME as an editor-at-large and senior political analyst effective May 3, it was announced today by Richard Stengel, Managing Editor, TIME.

One of the most widely respected political reporters in the country, Halperin will contribute regularly to TIME magazine and have a daily presence on TIME.com. Based in New York, he will also maintain an office in the Washington, DC bureau of TIME and will join the magazine's reporting team covering the 2008 elections. He will continue to serve as a political analyst for ABC News, where he has been on staff since 1988. For abcnews.com, Halperin founded and edited the online publication The Note, which has been characterized as the most influential daily tipsheet in American politics by publications including The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair.

"Mark is universally recognized as one of the finest political journalists working today," Stengel said. "His incisive analysis and voice are instantly recognizable, and his addition to TIME's top-notch political team will take our coverage to even greater heights."

"Throughout my career, for journalists and readers, TIME has been the gold standard for political reporting," Halperin said. "I could not be more excited about writing for this evolving news organization—and starting at such a thrilling time in American politics."

From November 1997 until April 2007, Halperin served as political director of ABC News, responsible for political reporting and planning for the network's television, radio and Internet coverage. He also appeared regularly on ABC News television and radio as a correspondent and analyst, including for election night coverage, presidential inaugurations and State of the Union speeches. He began working at ABC News in 1988 and has covered five presidential elections.

Over his nearly twenty years as a journalist, Halperin has covered every major American political story, including working as a full-time reporter covering the Clinton presidential campaign in 1992 and the Clinton White House. He also covered major non-political stories, such as the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Halperin is the co-author of The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and resides in New York City with Karen Avrich.

TIME is a global multimedia brand that includes TIME.com, TIME Style & Design, TIME for KIDS and Timeforkids.com. TIME's worldwide editions include TIME U.S., TIME Canada, TIME Europe, TIME Asia and TIME South Pacific. TIME magazine is the world's largest weekly newsmagazine with a domestic audience of more than 20 million and a global audience of more than 27 million.

About our Kat-naming poll: It was a close race, but in the end, Kegel narrowly prevailed over KTHXBYE. The first person (of quite a few!) to suggest the name was Gawker commenter Trigger; please get in touch so we can send you your prize. And thanks to everyone who participated.

Previously: Pick Us A Winner

Not put to rest quite yet [Romenesko]

Anatomy of a Washington 'Catfight' [NYO]
Eric Alterman Catfights With Ana Marie Cox
The 'Catfights' Of Gawker's Imagination [HuffPo]

A sputtering Alterman backtracked that he had no issue with Cox, and that it was more of a desire to see more liberal voices in the magazine. When Cox countered that there were plenty of recent stories that could be viewed as taking a skeptical view of the administration, Alterman said something about opinion columns being more important to him than reportage. Cox said that she had been one of the voices calling for greater coverage of the U.S. Attorney firings, and Alterman said, "Well, your role at the magazine—" only to be quickly cut off by Cox's acid, "Oh, yes, Eric, do tell me what my role at the magazine is."

This caused Alterman to launch into a spiral of name-dropping ("my good friend Rick Stengel") that culminated in this classic: "As my good friend [John] Huey said to me at Jim [Kelly]'s party for Walter [Isaacson]...." At this point, any correspondents who were still around crept silently to the bar, cursing their decision not to stay home and watch the NBA playoffs. —balk

Moist Eggs and Cherry Blossoms [NYO]

You are independent, efficient, grown-up, well-organized, and discrete.

To clarify, the use of "discrete" is not our typo. A successful applicant must be comfortable with having his or her limbs scattered about the room.

Update: Alterman has just emailed to let us know that the position has been filled. You can stop amputating your left leg now.

You're Not Good Enough to Fetch Eric Alterman's Dry Cleaning [Gawker]

Seconds ago, I received two weeks' notice from my senior research assistant who works somewhere between half and full time for me, doing mostly historical research for my books, but also a bit of clerical work and helps me a bit with planning my teaching, writing and speaking schedules. I'd really like to have someone in place by the time he's gone. If you are interested, please apply ASAP to [redacted]_at_AOL.com, but do not send me your resume as an attachment. I won't open it. Sorry I can only reply to those emails I want to pursue. If you don't hear from me, it's a "no." Please apply only if:

a) You have at least a master's degree in American history or a closely related field like American studies, or, you have at least two years experience as historical researcher or editor or as a particularly impressive intellectually-oriented journalist on say, a Matt Yglesias or SARAH WILDMAN level (which means I should already be acquainted with your work).

b) You already live, or will be living, in or around New York City two weeks from today.

c) You can make a commitment to work 20-40 hours a week at least until Labor Day

d) You are independent, efficient, grown-up, well-organized, and discrete.

The worst part is that we have no doubt there'll be lots of competition.

UPDATE: As we suspected might be the case, this note got forwarded around for a while, and Alterman just informed us the job is long-filled. On the upside, that means you have plenty of time to finish your dissertation before his next round of hiring.

What Liberal Media
Altercation [MSNBC]