MediaWatch: February 1997
Table of Contents:
Revolving Door: Following Fallows
U.S. News & World Report Editor James Fallows, a former speechwriter for President Carter, continues to shore up the liberal talent at the top of the magazine so that now the top three editors directing news coverage once toiled for Democrats.
The latest addition: In February he brought aboard Steve Waldman, a Clinton Administration operative, as Assistant Managing Editor (AME) for national news. For the past year Waldman's been promoting AmeriCorps as policy adviser for planning and evaluation to Harrison Wofford, the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National Service. Until January of 1996 Waldman was Newsweek's Deputy Washington Bureau Chief.
Just after taking the top editorial position last September, Fallows promoted AME Harrison Rainie to Managing Editor, the number two slot at the magazine. Before jumping to U.S. News in 1988 Rainie served as Chief-of-Staff to Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan.
Aiding Albright
An on-air ABC News veteran has traveled with Madeleine Albright, the United Nations Ambassador and newly confirmed Secretary of State, from New York City to the State Department in Foggy Bottom. Rick Inderfurth covered national security, the Penatgon and Moscow for ABC News between 1981 and 1991. At the U.S. Mission to the UN Inderfurth held one of three Ambassador slots under Albright who has named Inderfurth Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs.
Inderfurth has now worked for virtually every foreign affairs-related government operation. In the 1970s he toiled for Carter's National Security Council staff and later became Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, jumping to ABC when the GOP took control of the chamber.
Inderfurth's not the only journalist implementing Clinton policy. Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State and former Time Washington Bureau Chief, "intends to remain in that job," USA Today reported February 12. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said Talbott will stay "well beyond this summer and well into the future."
Clinton's Contented Clique
At least three other media veterans are sticking with the White House staff. Communications Director Donald Baer, an Assistant Managing Editor at U.S. News before leaping to the White House in early 1994, will stick around through July. He was planning to leave, The Washington Post reported, "but agreed to stay after appeals from" Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and Bill Clinton....
Tara Sonenshine, who went from a producer at ABC's Nightline to Clinton's National Security Council where she handled press relations, then to Newsweek's Washington bureau -- all in two years -- has spun through the revolving door again. She's back at the NSC "working on identifying foreign policy priorities for the second term," reported The Washington Post....
Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign Press Secretary and former ABC News and CNN staffer Joe Lockhart has landed in the White House as Senior Adviser for special projects in the press office. Lockhart put in a stint as an ABC assignment manager in Chicago before moving to CNN as a deputy assignment editor until joining the 1988 Dukakis-Bentsen presidential effort as a traveling press aide.
