Thank you, Emily and Rob! This has been very enlightening.

I appreciate Gregory helping us see this topic in its full shadings and ambiguities. As much as we’d like black-and-white answers, ultimately journalists need to be transparent and guided by an inner ethical compass.

Agreed that senators and reps value the hometown audience. I’m talking about the two-edged sword of having a reporter actually based in D.C., versus using reporters in the hometown working by phone with reps and sources in D.C. It seems the cost-benefit of the embedded reporter may not make sense, but I’m just throwing out [...]

By “regional papers” I’m talking about papers below the size of metros like Chicago, Boston etc. When I was in newsrooms, we saw the elected officials basically feeding press releases to ourD.C. bureau, and if there was something big or controversial, they’d find a way to manage it with all the local media. So the [...]

This isn’t about quote-clearing per se but about access overall: It seems that reporters based in D.C. working for regional newspapers are in a very tough situation. They have little to write about if their state’s senators and reps don’t cooperate. Thus their ability to cover issues of any controversy is severely limited. How did [...]