DAY 4.....local DC reporter STILL not allowed into White House gaggle

but they are STILL trying...hoping for 'possible' success NEXT WEEK...'gannon' got in with NO TROUBLE AT ALL...these are AMERICAN HEROES for trying out the White House proceedures....


http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/west_wing_reportage/wh_gaggle_watch_day_four_success_19155.asp

WH Gaggle Watch: Day Four -- Success???

-snips-

Hope Factor: High

Full report after the jump. (Day One is here; Day Two is here; Day Three is here; and our Open Letter is here.)


By lunch yesterday, call after call had gone not only unreturned but now unanswered. Thinking the Media Affairs office might just not be answering OUR calls, we tried calling from a different number. No luck. We enlisted the help of MediaBistro's editor Elizabeth Spiers, who tried calling from her office in New York. Nada.

As we wrote yesterday, our next step was to ask Elizabeth to fax a formal written request for access. She tried calling to get a fax number. No answer. We each tried the main White House Press Office. Before the Press Office would give us a fax number, they asked each of us who we were. When we answered "MediaBistro" and "Fishbowl D.C.," after a long pause on hold, we each got transferred back to Media Affairs. No answer.

We finally reached Caroline mid-afternoon and she promised someone would call us back. We got a friendly little laugh out of her by begging for someone to return our call and offering to bake cookies, cupcakes, or send flowers. She said she'd try.

Elizabeth similarly reached someone in Media Affairs but the woman answering (Caroline? Jenny?) wouldn't give out a fax number. We had to talk to a spokesperson for that. We each did a post asking for the fax number, and eventually tracked one down. Late yesterday afternoon, Elizabeth finally faxed over a formal request, and we sat down to write the open letter.

After that low point, though, things started to break our way. We got an emailfrom Knight Ridder's Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents Association, who said that, without prompting, he'd raised the issue with the White House Press Office. USA Today's media reporter Mark Memmott was interested in writing a story about the saga and he started making calls. Late yesterday, he spoke to a spokesperson who said that that the Press Office had gone ahead and cleared us in.


---much more...continued.....


http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/west_wing_reportage/wh_gaggle_watch_day_four_success_19155.asp

something like The Claw or Fang News or Bird of Prey Toe News... that just screams journalistic integrity

i've been dying to know if anyone else has been trying to get a day pass for a WH press briefing. Great job fellas.