Blogger Admitted To White House

Harvard alumnus Garrett M. Graff ’03 generated nationwide publicity this week when he became the first journalistic blogger to be granted a daily pass to White House press briefings.

Graff, who is also a former Crimson executive, runs a blog called FishbowlDC. The blog is published by mediabistro.com and reports on media affairs in Washington, D.C.

With the pass, Graff was allowed to attend the morning “gaggle” meeting of the press with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, which takes place off-camera, as well as the filmed press conference with the President in the afternoon.

Graff said he decided to apply for the press pass after the recent scandal in the White House surrounding Jeff D. Guckert—who obtained consistent daily press passes for two years, while operating under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, and reporting for an online Republican mouthpiece, Talon News.

The day pass that the reporter obtained and that was granted to Graff differs from a “hard pass,” which allows permanent access to White House press conferences, and requires an extensive background check.

In order to obtain the day pass, Graff said that he made over 30 phone calls, to no avail. Throughout the whole process, Graff updated his blog about his application status.

After a week, Graff attracted the attention of Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and correspondent for Knight Ridder, who was following Graff’s story on FishbowlDC.

According to Graff, it was Hutcheson who stepped in and met with McClellan about giving Graff a pass.

McClellan was open to the idea, Graff said, and granted him the pass.

While Graff’s admittance to the briefing has created hype throughout national news media, Graff himself said that the briefing was less than dramatic, and that McClellan remained tight-lipped.

“I had very mixed impressions. It was very awe-inspiring at a certain level, and at another level, surprisingly anti-climactic,” Graff said.

He said that the press room was dreary and the atmosphere laid-back.

But Graff added that he enjoyed watching the “interplay between the press and the press secretary,” which he said will help his blog be more informed.

And Graff said that the publicity surrounding this news has generated many more hits for FishbowlDC.

Beyond that, some are saying that this marks a major turning point in the world of blogging as well.

“Over the past year or so, blogging has hit the mainstream and increasingly people have been turning to citizen journalists and bloggers as credible sources of news,” said John G. Palfrey ’94, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS) and Lecturer at HLS, who himself keeps an online blog.

“When bloggers get credentials in this manner, like they did at the [Republican and Democratic national] conventions this summer, their credibility grows,” he added. “The growth of people participating in the public conversation that blogging represents is a great thing for democracy and a great thing for global cultural growth.”