MediaWatch: May 1990
Table of Contents:
Revolving Door: New Times Projects
New Times Projects. The New York Times has two new projects editors. Eric Eckholm, a State Department policy planning staff member during Jimmy Carter's last two years, is now projects editor for enterprise reporting. For the past year Eckholm has edited the Sunday "Week in Review" section. Martin Gottlieb was a New York Times reporter until becoming Editor of the trendy left-wing weekly Village Voice in 1986. Now he's back at the Times. Before he joined the paper of record in 1984, Gottlieb spent eight years reporting for the New York Daily News.
Democratic Consulting. Podesta Associates, a Democratic political consulting firm has brought aboard a new Associate: Michelle Baker, a reporter and researcher in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau from 1987 until late last year. Brothers John and Tony Podesta, both veterans of numerous liberal causes, teamed up in 1988 to form the firm. Most recently, John directed the Opposition Research and Quick Response Office for the Dukakis campaign. Tony was President of the liberal People for the American Way until the Dukakis campaign asked him to run its California operation. Legal Times reported that in 1987 Tony advised Sen. Ted Kennedy on how to derail Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination. John did the same for Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Good Morning OMB. As a Good Morning America Associate Producer in Washington from 1986 to 1988, Kimberly Timmons Gibson booked guests for ABC's morning show, a job she left to join the Bush campaign where she spent the last months of 1988 as a researcher in the surrogate campaign department. Since Bush took office she's been Deputy Director for External Affairs for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In March, OMB Director Richard Darman added the role of Spokeswoman to her duties.
Post Time. Myra Dandridge, a Legislative Correspondent since late 1987 for liberal U.S. Rep. Sam Gejdenso (D-CT), has decided to apply her research and writing talents to journalism. In May Dandridge reported to The Washington Post where she is now a news aide for the "Metro" section.
NBC Executive Moved Moynihan Left. In the 1970s, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan worked for President Nixon and was considered a leading neoconservative thinker. But by the early 1980s, the Democrat had moved left and become a staunch advocate of liberal policies. Who influenced this shift? "Moynihan's leftward turn," former Washington Post reporter Martin Schram wrote in the April Washingtonian, "coincided with the rise on his staff of a young fellow Irishman named Tim Russert." That Irishman, who later worked for Mario Cuomo, is now NBC's Washington Bureau Chief.
"Russert saw that the only thing standing between Moynihan and a career of landslides was the prospect of primary challenges by liberals," Schram explained in his profile of Moynihan, noting: "The turning of the USS Moynihan from starboard to port was slow but steady. Russert handled the politics, Moynihan the policy."
