The key is perseverance and a refusal to give in. "At every press conference I stand up every time and ask a question," Bumiller says. "No matter what."

Oh my god.  If you're looking for a fun waste of a few minutes, you must read this profile of Elisabeth Bumiller.  It appears in the Northwestern, which is a publication for "alumni and friends of Northwestern University."   I plan to commit it to memory.  But before you read the profile, read this week's WH Letter, which is completely pointless beyond the helpful hand it offers BushCo as he struggles to defend his decision to leave Washington for five weeks in August and September.  That way, when you read this from the Northwestern piece: (emph mine)

"Reporting is an oasis, and White House reporting is a pretty dry desert," says colleague and competitor Dana Milbank, the White House correspondent for the Washington Post. "Bumiller has a nice anti-authority streak, and she doesn't suffer fools."

You can remember that our intreprid reporter who refuses to sit still for the WH line, has just written this:

Critics have long called it [the infamously ignored August 6 PDB]  a symbol of the administration's complacency in the slow summer days before the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001.  Administration officials have countered that there was no specific information to act on, and that the briefing never warned that planes could be used as missiles.

And when you read this comment from Ms. Bumiller describing her style reporter gig at the pro-war WaPO:

"I wasn't just writing about flowers and dresses," Bumiller says.

"I tried to get some news out of it."

You can remember this from yesterday's WH Letter:

Meanwhile, back at a sleepy White House, major August repairs were under way.

The walnut and oak floor of the Oval Office, installed during the Reagan administration and now thin from constant refinishing, was to be ripped up and replaced. The irrigation system on the White House grounds was to be replaced, too. The masonry and stucco in the West and East Colonnades was under restoration, and the windows along the East Colonnade were being repaired.

If that ain't flowers and dresses, I don't know what is. 

I know.  I'm breaking my own rule comparing the WH Letter to Ms. Bumiller's more serious reporting.  But the Northwestern article helps on that score, saving me the trouble of scouring my archives for examples of her most fatuous news reporting and analysis.  The author, Rebecca Zeifman, uses an analysis piece Ms. Bumiller wrote on the nomination of the fabulous Condi to SecState to give us a glimpse of the reporter's skill at ferreting out a story.  Don't drink anything while you're reading this clip or you'll be shopping for a new keyboard:

This will be a tough assignment.

Yesterday was an easy day, reporting on Colin Powell's resignation, a 1,600-word story about his tenure and accomplishments. "It's easy, it's news," Bumiller says. "Just cut to the chase, cut and dried."

The Times has three White House reporters who split up the stories for the week. Yesterday David Sanger wrote the analysis on Powell. Today it is Bumiller's turn to analyze.

She will use what she calls "the outside-in" reporting method. She will talk to people outside of the White House: people on Capitol Hill, in the Department of State, Republican pollsters and Washington insiders. Only then will she ask questions of the White House.

"I think people think I expect handouts, that they think my job is to listen to what Scott McClellan says at the briefing every day and then put it in the paper. That's not my job," Bumiller says. "You talk to these large concentric circles outside of the White House, and you do it every time, no matter what."

Nicolle Devenish (GJ96), assistant to the president for communications, says that despite their occasional differences, she respects Bumiller. "Elisabeth was a tireless hunter of color and detail that we were often reluctant to share," Devenish says. "But in the end I think we learned to understand each other, and more often than not we were able to come to a middle ground on most stories."

My goodness, the way she hunted down those color elements of the story.  She was unrelenting in her quest for the odd personal tidbit and thank heaven because it was that tireless dedication to the truth that gave us this:

Bumiller writes: "Ms. Rice still packs her lunch many days as a way of avoiding the expense and calories of the White House mess.  She rises at 5 a.m. to run on the treadmill that she keeps in her sparse Watergate apartment, is in the office before 7 a.m. and is in bed by 10 p.m."

Where would we be without reporters who dig and dig until they can get that kind of information? With bombshells like that you can understand Ms. Bumiller's reliance on anonymous sources to get the story out.  CJR had that story:

The Times' Elisabeth Bumiller, for one, seems intent on ignoring assistant managing editor Allan M. Siegel's week-old pleas for fewer anonymice. And, for her impudence, she is rewarded with page one placement. In the course of her story today about "Bush's Tutor and Disciple," Condoleezza Rice, Bumiller invokes the confidence-inspiring and oh-so-specific phrase "friends say" nine times.  Among the very sensitive things that Bumiller could not get Rice's "friends" to "say" on the record: "[Rice] was transformed by [the 9/11 attacks]";  "[Rice] is capable of great charm"; "Rice, a preacher's daughter who grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala., and was pushed by her parents into believing that anything in life is possible, has more than enough toughness and rigor for the job"; and "[Rice] has the discipline." (We should note that Bumiller does get one Rice "friend" on the record, Coit Blacker -- the same guy the Los Angeles Times quotes in their own Rice story today, which is itself full of anonymous sources such as "a close associate" and "a foreign policy specialist who had known Rice for 20 years.")

When Bumiller isn't quoting Rice's faceless "friends," she's quoting or paraphrasing "officials" of one variety or another (another specific Siegel no-no). "Officials" are allowed to go unnamed in order to explain, for example, that "[Rice's] views are not always predictable and that she sometimes challenges the president in certain circumstances." (In other words, to knock down the CW that Rice is the president's ever-welcome yes-woman).

What's the official J-school term for that kind of reporting?  Outside-In the Bag?   Ms. Bumiller could teach a master class in that technique.  Lesson One: Trying to get some news out of it.

Comments

[Thomas Nephew]

Don't know whether to laugh or cry. Oh, what the hell: laugh.

[Thomas Nephew]

BTW: CJR link?

[Scott Lemieux]

What serious reporting?

[eRobin]

Thomas: Thanks. I was sure I fixed that earlier but I didn't.

Scott: more serious reporting. More serious than telling us about the kind of pillows Dear Leader likes on the campaign trail.

[Helga Fremlin]

Elisabeth Bumiller really IS just a 'stenographer' to the WH! And what is happening to Dana Milbank?