Colbert Report's Emily Lazar, journalist Howard Fineman, Atlantic editor James Bennet, Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart, Newshour's Terence Smith, Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, and Slate's Jacob Weisberg talk about the media's role in the 2008 campaign.
Bennet talks about how the Internet and blogging has enabled Atlantic to break out of a monthly magazine cycle.
Weisberg argues that the political conversation in America has moved online.
Bio
James Bennet
James Bennet has been editor in chief of The Atlantic since 2006. Before joining the Atlantic staff, Bennet was the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. During his three years in Israel, his coverage of the Middle East conflict was widely acclaimed for its balance and sensitivity. His much-lauded long-form writing for The New York Times Magazine was responsible for catching the eye of Atlantic owner David Bradley during his year-long search for a new editor. Upon accepting the position, Bennet told a Times reporter that he saw the Atlantic job as “a chance to help, encourage and preserve the practice of serious, long-form journalism.” Prior to his work in Jerusalem, he served as the Times’ White House correspondent and was preparing to join its Beijing bureau when he was offered the Atlantic editorship. Bennet began his journalism career at the Washington Monthly.
Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan Capehart is an editorial writer for The Post, specializing in national politics and environmental issues.
Capehart joined the editorial board in 2007. Prior to joining The Post, he was a member of the New York Daily News editorial board from 1993 to 2000. He then became National Affairs Columnist for Bloomberg News from 2000 to 2001, and left to work as a policy adviser to Michael Bloomberg in his successful campaign for Mayor of New York City. He returned to the Daily News as deputy editor of the editorial page from 2002 to 2005.
Capehart and the Daily News editorial board won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for their editorial series on the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Howard Fineman
Howard Fineman is Newsweek's senior Washington Correspondent and columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington Bureau Chief. He is also the author of Living Politics, a column that began and continues on MSNBC.com and Newsweek.com and is now featured in the print magazine.
An award-winning writer, Fineman also is an NBC News Analyst, contributing reports to the network and its cable affiliates. The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic.
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist, author of eleven books and co-founder and editor of the HuffingtonPost.com. She is also co-host of "Left, Right & Center," public radio's popular political roundtable program.
Her weekly commentary is syndicated in newspapers across the country by Tribune Media Services. Huffington's many books include On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America, and Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America.
Emily Lazar
Emily Lazar is a Talent Producer for The Colbert Report.
Terence Smith
Terence Smith is an award-winning journalist who has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, and television analyst.
For almost a decade he led the media unit at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS as its senior producer and media correspondent, and he now serves as a special correspondent.
Before that he worked for CBS News in Washington and spent 20 years with The New York Times, including eight years abroad in the Middle East and Far East.
He also served as the paper's assistant foreign editor and deputy metropolitan editor and as its diplomatic correspondent and chief White House correspondent.
Jacob Weisberg
Jacob Weisberg is the Editor-in-Chief of The Slate Group, a division of The Washington Post Company. A native of Chicago, he attended Yale University and New College, Oxford. From 1989 until 1994, he worked as a writer and editor at The New Republic. Between 1994 and 1996, he wrote the National Interest column for New York Magazine. In the fall of 1996, he joined Slate as Chief Political Correspondent. He succeeded Michael Kinsley as editor of Slate in 2002. He has also been a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a reporter for Newsweek in London and Washington, and a weekly columnist for the Financial Times. In 2007, Min Magazine named him Web Editor of the Year.
