Monday, January 5, 2009

From a Friend in Washington State

[Update/clarification - from one of several emails on this on Monday]

From my interview just now with Gregoire spokesperson Laura Lockard:


Q: Is Governor Gregoire going to be Obama's nominee for Commerce
Secretary?

A: “We’re not able to speak to that so we’ll do a release in the
morning.”

Q: Where is she?

A: “She’s out of state.”

Q: Is she in the country?

A: "I’m not allowed to say.”

Q: Is she going to continue as Governor of Washington State?

A: "I’m not allowed to say.”

Like everyone, I await tomorrow's announcement. But I will say—and
again this is just tea leaves—that Lockard didn't sound like a staffer
who was mourning some sort of personal tragedy in her boss's life.

And, not to get too far ahead of things, but: Governor Brad Owen?

Update - Tuesday 10:30 a.m: Gov. Gregoire is in Iraq, visiting Washington National Guard troops. Someone in the comments states that it appeared to that person I was claiming to having written the above information about Gov. Gregoire myself. Please.

7 comments:

Annette said...

OHHHHH Scoop!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTG Phil...

Anonymous said...

Phil, do you go by the name Eli Sanders ever, or has "Eli" borrowed from your blog? I just saw this link on DU that is exactly like yours. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/01/05/gregoire_as_commerce_secretary

Philip Munger said...

No I don't. Don't know who Eli is, either. We probably were on the same email string.

Manthony said...

The Stranger's blog (Slog) is following the story. Eli Sanders is a reporter who works for The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly newspaper.
http://slog.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/

Paul Constant said...

Hey there,

This was written by Eli Sanders, and it was posted to Slog more than half an hour before it showed up here. Someone copied this wholesale and unattributed from Eli's post on Slog. (Note the "again this is just tea leaves," which refers to an earlier mention of tea leaves in Eli's original post, which is listed in the comments above.) I was in the room when Eli was on the phone with Lockard before he wrote this post. There's nothing wrong with posting other people's stuff on a blog, but in the future, please attribute them correctly.

Thanks.

Paul Constant
pconstant@thestranger.com

Steve said...

Phil,

Can you please explain what you were doing with this? When you write, "From my interview just now with Gregoire spokesperson Laura Lockard:" the normal reader assumes that 'my' refers to Phil Munger. It did seem a bit unusual for you to be talking to the Washington State gov's office, but you do have relatives down there.

Why didn't you just say something like, "I got this in an email, not sure where it's from"? Or however you got it?

You can't complain about the ADN using your material if you do stuff like this.

The Stranger is now saying she was in Iraq with other governors. So, not only did you, apparently, plagiarize, but the scoop you were working on was wrong.

I'll chalk this up to -15˚F (or whatever it is in the Valley) plus withdrawal symptoms.

Anonymous said...

Phil, I didn't mean to cast any aspersions by my initial question -- I was just curious.