TRANSCRIPT: Columbia's SPJ chapter hosted Cox on Monday, Oct. 11, from 6-7 pm. About 60 students attended as their classmate, Richard Morgan <rjm 211 at columbia.edu> moderated the discussion. Photos by Rebecca Castillo <rc 73 at columbia.edu>. Also see a blog's version of the event.

Q: First off, basic stuff. Your day. When you get up, when you stop -

A: The boring stuff

Q: Yeah, what do you read? Who helps you?

A: OK. I have an answer for this. I try to get up by seven. It
doesn't always succeed. Eight's usually a good goal. And I cross the hall into the office. I have Henry the Wonder Intern who, if any of you read Gawker, he's also the Gawker intern. He summarizes Tina Brown, "Topic A with Tina Brown" every Monday. And he puts together a sort of - he puts together election recycling, which is our summary of political news and the gossip roundup. And he does such a good job that all I have to do is read those and follow the links, and that actually gets me set up for whatever else is going to happen that day. I feel like I'm sort of caught up. I'm up to speed a little bit. Because, like, there are, like, 20 different political news summaries you can get if you want. I'm very proud that Wonkette's is the shortest. Like, there's one
sentence per story. Or sometimes, like, less, like, one sentence per several stories. And then, you know, people always ask me this question. It's amazing how I spend eight hours doing this. I sit at my computer and I instant-message and I email and there's always something to write about.

Q: How much do you rely on people giving you tips throughout the
day?

A: I rely a lot on it. I have a network of a thousand tipsters. I
can't believe I was able to do Wonkette without them. Although
people started sending stuff right away.

Q: So in the beginning it wasn't so much?

A: Actually there was a lot in the beginning too. And I think people
- I think anyone, I think all the other editors of the various
Gawker sites would agree that people have a need to gossip and
share what they know. And as soon as you give them an outlet for
that where they feel like - and people love attention. And people
like to be talked about. And so there was this need to fill. People
needed that, a place to tell people. Because the gossip columns -
the sort of mainstream gossip columns in DC - really suck. They're
all written by straight men, that's why. There's Harry Jaffe's
Washington Buzz, which is in the Washingtonian, which comes out
once a month so it has to suck basically. And then Rich Leiby's
Reliable Source. Rich, wonderful guy, very nice; he's probably the
worst gossip columnist on the face of the planet. He took over
Reliable Source about the same time that I started Wonkette and I
think there it was very fortunate for me that people realized very
quickly that he wasn't doing a very good job, that if you had
something really juicy he probably wasn't going to run it. He
reports, that's the problem. He, like, checks facts.

Q: How much do you check?

A: If I get something really crazy, I'm going to poke around a
little bit. May even make a phone call. But at this point, I know
my tipsters pretty well, so -

Q: If someone sent you to something like a Craigslist posting, which -

A: That I just go look at.

Q: But does it matter if the person -

A: Put it in the themselves?

Q: Yeah, they could just put it in themselves.

A: Well, that particular, there's no problem there at all. If it's
funny, it's funny. If it's interesting, it's interesting. And they
put it up there, so - there's kinda no such thing as a fake
Craigslist posting. They're all fake. They're all people showing
off, or exaggerating or lying in some form. I mean, actually the
one - of course - I would be willing to believe that the person who
sent me the fake Jenna Bush Craigslist posting which was like "I saw
you at Smith's point. You looked like a twin. I'm a twin too. I
couldn't come and talk to you because I had these people with me."
It was a very, very thinly veiled missed connection at Smith's
Point. And that might have been written by the person who sent it
to me, but it was hysterical.

Q: You talked about the other gossip columnists who are straight men
and you're -

A: Not a straight man.

Q: Right, not a straight man. But your blog is definitely focused on
your personality and the fact that it's a woman.

A: I take advantage of that.

Q: Would it work if Wonkette, if the blogger behind Wonkette -

A: Didn't have the same personality?

Q: Well, if they weren't female or young or white or all these
things that are so DC-friendly.

A: I think Wonkette could be not white. I think that could probably
work. But I think it's weird. I mean, I think I have taken over the
personality of the blog in a way that the other Gawker people
haven't.

Q: Yeah, they've cycled through a couple of people.

A: And also it's just not as upfront. For one thing, also, I think
there's something to this: Wonkette is the only blog that has a
physical identity on the blog. There's a drawing. There's a
representational figure on the blog that's supposed to be the
Wonkette, that happens to look a little bit like me. It isn't
actually me. It was the artist's representation of an idealized
Wonkette. The cat is mine, however. I asked that if you're going to
put a cat in there at least make it look like my cat. It's my pussy.
Sorry. So I think someone else could do Wonkette, but I think now at
this point it's been established it needs to have a forceful
personality. It needs to have some kind of bite to it, maybe more
so than the other columns. I think it would be tough to do it as a
guy. [Laughs]. Wonketter? The Wonketteer? And that was actually one
of my objections to the name when Nick Denton and I were
brainstorming for names. I actually was the one who came up with
Wonkette and then immediately said "Oh no no no, that sucks. We
have to get a gender-neutral one." And he fell in love with that
name and we use it. I do think that if it didn't have a
gender-specific name, I probably wouldn't have been so over-the-top
in the way that I sort of injected my personality. I should say that
it's not completely my personality. It's a little amped up, a little
bit. And I also found just when I started it was easier to - see, my
real personality, I actually take politics very fairly seriously. I
am more wonk than Wonkette. And I think it was easier to kinda get
into the mode of having to mock everything by having this other
very margarita-filled personality.

Q: On the site, you talk about, you know, I'm still in my pajamas.
I'm still drunk.

A: Am I ever really still drunk? Rarely. I would say I blog a lot
hungover. So if I ever say I'm hungover, that's usually the truth.
But drinking and blogging don't mix. Because for one thing, your -
what I call the 'funnydar' - your ability to tell what's funny is
really off kilter because everything's funny, it's hilarious.

Q: It's been a really good year for blogs but mostly political
blogs.

A: What with the election.

Q: Yeah, it's being fed by the conventions and the primaries and the
wars and the debates.

A: And the fact that reporters like to be talked about themselves
and the blogs talk about the reporters. I'm sorry, you probably had
a real question

Q: Yeah, I was wondering what you think life will be like for
bloggers after the election.

A: Hmm. Nasty, brutish and short. Uh, I don't know and I worry. I
know that for DC-based blogs, DC is self-absorbed enough that I
think -

Q: There's life enough?

A: There's life enough there, yeah. For instance, I have since the
campaigns heated up, I sort of tapered off of my coverage of DC
social life. Like, DC-specific stuff. Like, you know, fucking
baseball team, whatever. And parties and that kind of thing. Once
the election is over, I'll probably have more of that. And people
in DC will love that.

Q: Do you think 2005 will be a tough year after all the fireworks in
2004?

A: It will be another dot-com bust? It might be. I've been thinking
about this a lot. I think that there's definitely - you can't avoid
some fall-off. But I didn't expect as much success as it's had, so
maybe it actually will come to meet my lowered expectations.
That'll be fine. I love doing it and so I'm not really worried
about - like, I'm probably going to be on TV less, you know. But
the blog's not going to stop and there's going to be plenty of
material. The bonuses will be smaller. They're pretty small now.

Q: And this might be the crossroads of what you're talking about
where the real journalist and the Wonkette personality because, and
I hate to be this guy who brings up stuff you wrote, but in April of
this year in In These Times, you wrote: ""Honest political beliefs
are the opposite of trends. They are sincere, thought-out and
deeply held. And if they're wrong or offensive, they should be
argued against, not simply declared out of style." So, that's the
serious.

A: Yeah, that's the wonk.

Q: But the Wonkette is very flippant about -

A: Actually, I don't think I'm very flippant about political beliefs
at all. I mean, I think the strong stuff I've done has come from
stuff I really believe in.

Q: But it is a thumbs-up, thumbs-down of, you know, this is a bad
move or this is a good move. Style winners and losers.

A: Yeah, I mean I'm not getting into nuanced political debates. It's
true. But I think humor can - I'm not always operating with a
sledgehammer, or rather it's a sledgehammer that also has some pins
in it to hit some very specific points. I think the ideal Wonkette
joke is on the surface really crass and broad but somewhere inside
of it is like something more pointed. So, yeah, the sledgehammer.
I'm trying to think. There's no visual image that really is good
for that. But, like, an example I always use is the Sloganator - Is
everyone familiar with the Sloganator? - Yes, OK, the Sloganator,
the Bush-Cheney website machine that let you make your own
Bush-Cheney posters. It was in April I guess that was happening.
And my favorite poster I won't take credit for, but it was the
perfect Wonkette joke: "500 Dead Soldiers For Bush." I mean, that's
broad.

[Laughter]

But I think it makes a very serious point. I wish I'd come up with
that. I'm blanking on the stuff that I did.

Q: Do you wonder when you're making fun of both sides that it
contributes to the perception that Republicans and Democrats are -
that it doesn't matter who's in office?

A: Do I worry about that? It doesn't keep me up at night. And I also
try not to - I have personal rules about avoiding the easy joke or,
again, making the easy joke but making it obvious that it's the
easy joke. I like to mock people who make Bush-is-dumb jokes. I
think it's a really bad mean. It lets him off the hook for a lot of
stuff. So, I guess what I try to do is make the stuff that I say
about both parties not simply a cliché, which I think would
contribute to not even thinking about what's going on. Again I
think that if the humor is directed and makes a point, then it's
engaging with the dialogue, it's not dismissing it.

Q: You talked earlier about the bonuses you get for traffic. And so
many young journalists or journalists trying to get involved in
politics are looking at blogging.

A: I would not recommend it.

Q: The Times magazine piece had -

A: You know my salary.

Q: Yeah, low salary. Low.

A: Well, it's about the same as any first-year journalism student,
but I'm ten years older than that.

Q: Was it worth it? Would you advise that?

A: No. Honestly, I wouldn't advise doing it. I feel very lucky. For
one, I have a husband who provides my healthcare - his job provides
my healthcare and subsidizes my life. And I do freelance and have
other forms of income. Cooking. But it's not something I ever would
have said to myself. "I know what I want to do: I want to make less
than $20,000 a year blogging; that's a great idea." But I love it.
Like people who go into journalism, most people who go into
journalism, I didn't do it to get rich. I did it because I like
what it's about. The trade-off for me right now is pretty good.

Q: Have you already started thinking about the next step?

A: Yeah, sure.

Q: What appeals to you?

A: Well, I would like to work less and earn more. So any, any,
anything that - TV was actually an amazing, like, that - whoa,
that's easy. That was really easy. And kinda fun too. But to me I'm
reluctant to do something that I would have to give up Wonkette
completely, and that limits the choices.

Q: Are there any Wonkettes in training?

A: No. I'm sure they're out there. Maybe in this very room. But
nobody has, you know, pulled a sword out of a stone or anything.

MODERATOR: So, that's it for me. We should open it up to room questions.

Q: How long do you think you'll do this?

A: Excellent question. I really don't know. For a while I was
actively telling people I was going to quit after the election, but
I'm having such a good time. And I've started to realize the
trade-off. What would I do that would give me the satisfaction of
this? I might be earning more money, definitely. There's hardly any
job I could do that would give me less money. But it's nice to be
famous for DC. It's nice to have people suck up to you. It's
hysterical. People in DC are weird; they cede power a lot to other
people because they think they should. That's the story of
politics, really. So, that's a non-answer. Good question.

Q: [Holding The New York Times Magazine issue with the cover story on blogging; with R.W. Apple and Jack Germond, in similar shirts, surrounding Cox at a laptop] Can you tell us about this experience? And why are they wearing the same shirt?

A: Um, not planned.

Q: That's what they said.

A: Not planned. And it was humiliating.

Q: The photo?

A: The photo. The article was -

Q: Where was this taken?

A: That was taken in Chelsea. A studio. No, actually not Chelsea.
Hell's Kitchen. Some artist's studio.

Q: They flew the three of you up?

A: Actually, it was done during the RNC so we were all here. And I
got treated like a model, which is sort of weird. You know, a hair
person and a makeup person and a wardrobe person - or a
lack-of-wardrobe person. That was really the embarrassing part,
was, uh, not wearing -

Q: What about the story itself?

A: Oh, the story itself. The pictures are good. I thought Matt, Matt
Klam, who wrote the piece, is a fiction writer and a very good
fiction writer. And I felt like the piece read like three sketches,
like three short stories more than three pieces of journalism. Also,
I don't think it hung together very well. You want my critique of
the story? All of the thoughts here. Sort of looking at it from an
editor's point of view, I would have cut me. I think I was an
outlier in that story and not very represen - not woven in a way
that made sense. Clearly Matt liked me. He wanted to have me in the
story and he liked hanging out with me. And he bought me lots of
expensive dinners and if he had cut me from the story he'd probably
have to explain that.

[Laughter]

Q: Does it make you feel weird when someone writes about you and
they write about your peachy cream skin and all this kind of
fawning?

[Laughter]

A: Well, as long as it's true. No, it makes me feel very weird. It
made my husband feel even weirder. Actually, there was an item in
the Reliable Source - this is how bad the Reliable Source is -
there was an item in the Reliable Source about the fact that that
article didn't mention how I was married. It called me a "horny
housewife," but that could easily be taken as a metaphor.

Q: Why do you think that is? That they didn't -

A: I don't know if it was intentional. It's hard to say if it was
intentional or not. I could ask Matt. I know, also, that the piece
went through really heavy revisions. And that's one of the reasons
why, although I'm not completely happy with how I came off, I
sympathize with heavy revisions. I realize that Matt, from just
talking with him in his experience in the editing process - and,
you know, we got to be basically friends - I don't think that
article's completely representational of what he thought. I think
it had to be forced into a form of some kind. The arc just needed
someone that is, I think, maybe obviously artificial. I didn't get
hired by MTV to do the RNC, but my television career isn't over.
Like, I'm not - I've done a lot of TV since then.

Q: Just last night.

A: That's right. "Topic A with Tina Brown." Who, she knows all about
Thursdays with Tina by the way, according to her people. So, did I
answer your question?

Q: There are letters to the editor in this week's issue about the
fact that we focus on a left-wing blog. I thought that was odd.

A: I thought that was odd too. Again, the editor in me found this
story to be not satisfying, not a very good picture of the place
that bloggers have in today's political dialogue. Even the title,
"Bloggers on the Bus." None of us have been on the campaign trail.
I guess Josh. Josh went to New Hampshire, right? But I haven't set
foot on a plane or a bus of any kind. Well, on the trail. And to
the extent that bloggers influence politics or political
journalism, there are two different ways that people do that. One,
I think, is the way that I do it, which is taking the edge of
journalists' natural solipsism. They just want to read about
themselves. And, you know, I heard pool reports got better after I
started printing them. And then there's the way, the Rathergate
way, which is more important. Although, well, actually I have to
say that influencing the little world of journalism can be very
important too. Not important, but it can have effects.

Q: You started off more with Republican or conservative fans.

A: Did I?

Q: Yeah.

A: Yes, I did because I was mocking - it was during the Democratic
primaries - and there was lot of material, you know, from the
Democrats. Surprisingly, conservatives have a sense of humor.
Especially about themselves. And I know, like, Tucker Carlson is
still a really big fan. In fact he claims that he didn't realize I
was liberal until I told him. But that means he's dumber than he
looks.

[Laughter]

And that showed TV might make you stupid. I think that "Crossfire"
might have lowered his IQ a lot. And maybe he's used to talking to
liberals like Paul Begala, so if I'm not screaming in his face
about my liberal views he just assumes I'm Republican.

Q: Could you talk a little about your balance, balancing your
journalism with partaking all of these social events in Washington,
and still having that distance to write about things.

A: I don't balance it very well. I don't see my role as - I don't
think of Wonkette as [fingerquotes] "journalism." It is journalism,
but it's not journalism.

Q: Well, maybe you could describe the experiences of going to a
political social event, wearing multiple hats.

A: I don't wear hats. I know what you're talking about. I'm just
having trouble not mocking you. This is actually a problem that
everyone in Washington has. I remember during Rathergate, the big
scandal about Mary Mapes calling Joe Lockhart. Ooh! You know? A
journalist had contact with a political operative? Ahhh! They go
out drinking together, they have lunch, they date. Washington is a
very small town. If you decided you weren't going to have social
contact with the people you were writing about, you would have a
very lonely life. And not be sober. And in the way that it affects
me personally, I do - I have held back on items. Nothing that I
thought was really good. If it was good enough, I probably would
have ran with it anyway, but it was moral, so -

Q: Can you tell us some?

A: Yeah, Joe Lockhart. Actually a bunch of Joe Lockhart stuff. Just
because he's so - he goes to every fucking party in Washington and
gets really drunk. He closes bars like I can't. He's an animal.
He's like 50-something and he acts like he's 25. He just got
divorced. Actually, this is great. This is an example. Actually,
this is really good and I wish I had used it. It was just a
sighting. Someone was at Stetson's and they were in line behind -
Joe Lockhart was two places in front of them in line to go to the
bathroom - and Joe went into the bathroom - his name is J.Lo by the
way. Joe went into the bathroom and the person in front of the
person telling the story turned around and said "Do you know who
that was? That was Joe Lockhart, Clinton's press secretary. I can't
believe I'm going to use the same bathroom as Joe Lockhart!"

[Laughter]

And I really wanted to use that, but that story came at a time when
people were doing a lot of, there was this sort of this - I didn't
think legitimate - complaint on the part of the Kerry people that
there was all these stories written about who was really running
the Kerry campaign. You know, who sat where? Was Stephanie Cutter
really a bitch? Like, there was all this kind of stuff that was
like the internals of the Kerry campaign that I do - from putting
my real wonk hat on - think is not very useful journalism. And not
only would I be contributing to, like, whatever, like Joe feeling
weird. I would also be contributing to amping up that aspect. Now
that that's died down a little bit, I have no shame about gossiping
about the Kerry campaign again.

Q: So you turn off being Wonkette?

A: Sometimes. I have to. Or I really would be drunk in my pajamas.
Well part of it I get away with having a social life and writing is
because I do have a personal rule that I've said before, so you guys
might have heard it: I don't mind ruining someone's day, but I don't
want to ruin their life. So I'm just not going to run items about
affairs, divorces, outing people. Unless, I mean, I will write
about other people outing people. But -

Q: Like linking to Washingtonienne's -

A: That had nothing. That, actually, if I knew that she was as
stupid as she was and it was as easy to find her out who she was, I
probably wouldn't have linked to it. I assumed that anyone who would
have a public blog like that would have been done a better job at
hiding who they were. I thought she really was anonymous, but it
was incredibly easy to find out who she was. And, actually, that
whole experience - I would never do that again.

Q: I'm sorry, can you explain -

A: Oh, sorry sorry sorry. I linked to a blog of this girl who worked
in the mail room of a senator from Ohio and she was basically kept.
She had like four or five boyfriends and one of them paid her
regularly. Well, "paid her." She's very touchy about "paid her." He
was very generous with gifts to her and some of them were monetary.
And I linked to it. And it was also, she, uh, they had, um, some
adventurous sex, let's say. And that's a little obsession on
Wonkette. And I was delighted with it. She's an OK writer. It was
hysterical. It was really funny. So I linked to it. And immediately
people tried to find out who she was, and it turned out to be just
really really easy.  She was using initials, not names, but the
initials were real initials. And she was describing scenes from the
office and stuff. And also Wonkette is read pretty well on the Hill
so, like, people in her office read it and figured out right away.
So, the story is that I linked to it at 11:30 or so and she went to
lunch and she got back from lunch and she was fired. Someone was
holding printouts of Wonkette and Washingtonienne and was just like
"Get outta here. Clear out your desk."

Q: How do you know with things like that that it's not fake or
planted by someone?

A: How do I know? Again, I wouldn't care if that's fake. I think
that that's funny. That's just a funny blog. If it was totally
fake, it'd still be hysterical. And I'm not trying to pass it off
as real either. There's a lot of fake stuff out there on the
Internet. And I try to be pretty skeptical about everything. Like
that bulge in Bush's jacket story.

Q: The Times ran that.

A: I mocked them for running it. And I believe that they shouldn't
have. I can do that because I'm a blog. They're The New York Times.
Like, I'm supposed to be the one doing these stories. Actually,
that's what I said about the Kerry campaign stuff too. I'm the one
who wants to gossip about who sitting next to who in the Kerry
campaign. Elizabeth Bumiller, that shouldn't be her job, you know?
That's part of reporting but it's not a very important - well, it's
just dessert; it's not the main course.

Q: Do you think the mainstream press has suffered because the
reporters want to be bloggers?

A: No, I don't. I think the mainstream press has suffered because -
I object to the idea that reporters want to be bloggers, first.
That strikes me as ludicrous.

Q: You don't think they envy your freedom?

A: They envy the freedom, but they're doing what they're doing. It's
a different job. I think Wonkette is complementary to mainstream
journalism. It's not something that's going to replace it; it
shouldn't replace it. And there shouldn't be that much crossover
really. But I get leaked things by reporters - it's not really
leaking - they have stuff they can't use for whatever reason. And I
think they like having a place that that can go. Although,
obviously, they would never want their names on it.

Q: I just moved here from DC and was working for a policy magazine
down there. When Wonkette first started, everyone in the office
went crazy and loved it, started reading it, because it felt so - I
mean, compared to most DC journalism - it felt very anarchic.

A: And now it's jumped the shark.

Q: Well, now, the cover of The New York Times Magazine, blogging is
- do you worry that it's become so mainstream that it's really lost
its appeal?

A: I have no, like, the whole mainstream thing is, like, I was
really into indie rock in the nineties and I'm so over arguing
about mainstream vs. indie like that. Pavement took care of that.
You guys probably don't even know what I'm talking about. That is
just not a concern for me. Like, I don't worry about becoming
mainstream myself. I worry about my own - I worry about what I'm
writing about every day. And I don't think - I try to be pretty
vigilant about not backing up. Like I said, I've held back on a
couple of things, but I'm very aware and concerned about the time
that I don't do something because I'm worried that people won't
like it. Wonkette's first audience is me. As long as I'm true to
that, it's not too successful. As soon as I start thinking, "What
would Dana Milbank think of this?" That would be bad.

Q: Do bloggers get credit when they deserve it? For Washington, in
example, the story about Fox News running fake Kerry quotes. I
mean, that was broken by Josh Marshall.

A: Well, I think that was also a weird non-scandal in a way. It's
like getting angry for someone for accidentally running feeds.

Q: But my question is that The New York Times carried the story and
there was absolutely no mention that Josh Marshall broke it.

A: Right, they probably should have. But, you know, newspapers don't
like to credit anybody for anything. That's a problem in general in
journalism. Newspapers steal from other newspapers, smaller
newspapers. The New York Times does that all the time. Not just
bloggers, but smaller papers. It's another aspect of journalism:
big people will step all over little people, which is just a fact
of life in general.

Q: Do you see blogging making much money?

A: Yeah, if you read that story, Josh makes -

Q: But he also writes for The Guardian -

A: Right, but they also make a lot off their blogs. They're smart.
I'm not. And I love that they make money. Very good for them.

Q: You talked about a thousand tipsters, how did you go about
building that network?

A: People email me. I get like a thousand emails a day. Not all of
them spam, even. I don't have a thousand people in my Rolodex,
though. No. That's great that you thought I did. It's something
that's an exaggeration. Hyperbole. You might have heard of it. I
use it a lot.

Q: What percentage of the people have you actually met then?

A: What percent of my tipsters have I met? Some of them are
political consultants, some of them are reporters, some of them
just happen to work in Washington and know or see things. People
who have been good tipsters, I try to meet them for drinks and
decide if they're super-scary or anything. The people I've met
though, it's pretty small.

Q: You said you wouldn't report on scandals and affairs, but would
you report if George W. Bush was drinking again?

A: Oh, drinking? Hell yeah.

Q: Do you think the Washington press would too?

A: I think they would too. It's funny. I get email a lot from
Democrats and Republicans about why I mock Jenna so much for
drinking. But it's just like I want to drink with her. I am not
drinking at her, I'm drinking with her. And I also think with Bush,
it's so sad that all the scandals that come out about him just make
me like him more. He drove drunk! He did cocaine! Awesome! Whereas
all the stuff about Kerry makes him sound like a twit.

Q: Can you talk about your work as an editor at magazines? High
points and low points?

A: OK, low point: getting fired. High point? I actually had a really
good time at Mother Jones. In retrospect, a better time than I
realized if that makes any sense. It was going undergoing one of
its myriad redesigns that happens every two or three years there.
And the people who work at Mother Jones - I think this is always
true - are much younger than the people who read Mother Jones and
much more cynical. And that's fun. And I also got to - because it's
Mother Jones and has a name and everything - I got to get to talk to
writers who definitely wouldn't have written for me at Suck. I had a
lot of latitude. And I assigned one of what is still one of my
favorite political stories of all time: meet the least powerful men
in Washington. And it was the metric conversion, the federal metric
conversion office.

[Laughter]

And Jason Zengerle wrote that. He writes for New York Times Magazine
now a lot. At the time, he was a New Republic intern. And, actually,
that's really funny too because Jason was writing that story for me
at the same exact time that the Stephen Glass scandal was breaking,
so I got daily updates from The New Republic office about what was
happening with Stephen Glass. Working at The Chronicle of Higher
Education was weird because they consider themselves to be kind of
The New York Times of education journalism, I guess, and that's
both good and bad. They just take themselves really really
seriously. It was not a good fit.

Q: Is Nick Denton really an evil genius?

A: I don't think he's evil and I don't think he's a genius. I have
very little contact with Denton, truthfully. He is a genius at
certain things. He recognizes talent, definitely. I will take
myself out of the equation and just, you know, look at the other
blogs. What's really weird about the other blogs - now that they've
added the testosterone blogs, I'm not sure this is still true - but
if you look at Fleshbot, Defamer, Gawker and Wonkette they all have
very similar voices. And we don't know each other. We were all doing
very different things before we started blogging. So I think it's
interesting that Denton has some sort of radar that picks up on
this very specific kind of voice that works well in blogging.
Because he's a terrible editor. He gives really bad advice on
stories. I just remember - I actually remember one time during the
campaign, it was right before Iowa, he sent me an email with
something like "You know, Howard Dean has a lot of bloggers working
for him, maybe you should write about that." You know, it had been
on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Denton doesn't actually read
about politics much, so he had just discovered that Dean had a lot
of bloggers and thought that was still a story. You know, it's like
that. And also, we used to go back and forth during the early early
days of Wonkette, where he'd get mad at me for not ID'ing people
and saying what their job was. So for a while when it was still
behind a password, I had to be like "George W. Bush, president of
the United States." And now he has sort of stepped back. He never
really edited. We used to have weekly meetings that were all "I
like this, I don't like this." It wasn't really helpful. But now we
have Choire Sicha, who used to do Gawker, is now the editorial
director. And he's great. Choire's great. And the other thing about
Denton is that he did make blogging look like it could make money.

Q: Do you view this as anything more than an entrepreneur who sets
up these vessels to bring in advertising dollars?

A: I think he is simply an entrepreneur who sets up these blogs as
vessels for advertising dollars. That was his big insight: you
could pay people almost nothing to do something that they were
doing for nothing earlier and there would be this blank space where
ads could go.

Q: Does that bother you that your stories are being used to sell ad
dollars?

A: That's sort of what journalists do. And it's not all I do. I
write stuff that people read. But, Adam Nagourney, also, what's
around what he writes? Lots of ads. And, well, I mean also Denton
enjoys reading Wonkette, likes reading Defamer. He enjoys it. If he
didn't have that sense of finding good writers, you know, it
wouldn't fit.

Q: Do you have pop-ups on your website?

A: No.

Q: So why does Matt Drudge have two when I go there?

A: You'll have to ask Matt. I've give you his IM later.

Q: Do you run into a lot of resentment? Hostility?

A: Yes. From who?

Q: From mainstream journalists. I've heard a lot of professors in
the school knock this.

A: I personally, well, I guess they wouldn't tell it to my face. I
have read some critiques of blogging from mainstream journalists.
But in the Washington social scene, such that it is, for the most
part I find that I have a surprisingly warm reception which may
mean I'm not doing my job well. But, I mean, Tom Edsel is a big
fan.

Q: Do you think you could ever work in the mainstream?

A: The question is would I want to. Would I want to do Reliable
Source?

Q: I mean on staff somewhere. Are you past that?

A: Past it or below it? It's tough. I've been spoiled. There's a
question of "Would anybody hire me?," which I can't answer. People
will hire anybody. People still pay Stephen Glass to write stuff.
Someone maybe somewhere would. And I still have freelance
assignments. And then there's a question of "Would I want to?" And
I have found that I've just been so spoiled by being able to write
whatever I want that I don't think any writer is ever an easy edit,
but I used to think of myself as a pretty easy edit. I would take
criticism well and listen to it, incorporate it.

Q: When you're blogging you have so much control, but when you
freelance is it tough to go back to all the office politics and
hierarchy and heavy editing?

A: Yeah. Sure. It is. I wish that, um, I don't know. I mean, there's
some stuff I miss about collaborative work. But Wonkette isn't a
completely lonely existence. I don't know. I'm not answering your
question. I could do it. I don't think I've, like, turned into, you
know, the wild thing with Tarzan and I can't go back to society. I
still use silverware.

Q: How does the policy wonk in you feel about the culture on Capitol
Hill?

A: I think both the policy wonk and the Wonkette find it boring. Um,
how do I feel about it?

Q: Do you admire any policies?

A: Do I admire any policies, any people who work on committees? I
guess I've just - these questions are not things I've really
thought about. You know, I have friends who work on the Hill, who
work for, like, Senators and Congressmen and stuff, and I have a
lot of respect for what they do. What they do is, you know, how
government happens. And there's silly stuff about that. But it's
democracy. You can't knock it too hard. What are the options? And
they seem to love Wonkette, so they seem to understand that I'm
knocking from a place of love. It's all about the love.

Q: So do you consciously try to stay balanced on each, to mock on
each side?

A: I try not to let my political feelings, my political beliefs,
keep me from making fun of something that should be made fun of.
But I have political beliefs. I'm not shy about talking about them.
But yeah, I'm going to vote for Kerry, you know, but he does some
stupid shit. And I think it's actually part of my job to call him
on that. It's funny: I always get more hate mail from liberals than
from conservatives.

Q: That's what Dan Okrent said.

A: I don't get quite the "I hope your kid dies in a war" stuff.
Mostly because I'm a girl, it's more graphic. Sexual insults.

Q: What are the blogs that you read?

A: You know I get asked that question a lot. I should have a pat
answer for it. Blogs are just like any form of writing; there's
like one percent of it that's good and then the fall-off is just
dramatic. But, you see, I have to read a lot of blogs that are
really bad. So, unfortunately my time to read good blogs is
limited. But lowculture.com. Love it. So good. It's actually one of
the consistently best political blogs that I know about. They're
very funny. It's not a really serious consideration of policy. I
also read. The other hidden part of my personality is that I read a
lot, so I read all the literature blogs like bookslut.com. I enjoyed
TMFTML until he stopped blogging. I'm sorry. I really wish I had a
better list. Oh, dongresin. I also read the other Gawker sites.

Q: What do you think of the Times blogging and Vanity Fair?

A: Yeah, I don't think those are real blogs. They're just sorta
frequently-updated pages. They're not real blogs. Although I have
this whole thing: when you start to argue, like, "What's a real
blog?" that's not a very interesting or helpful conversation to
have. It's like the indie vs. mainstream thing.

Q: Do you have a certain quota?

A: Twelve posts a day, which I usually meet. Or try to meet.

Q: When you look at other blogs, how old does the last blog have to
be before you dismiss the blog?

A: I don't have that kind of reaction. I know a lot of people do.
And, I mean, if a blog is bad - and a lot of blogs are bad - I'm
not anxious for them to update. You know, like,
littlegreenfootballs could go weeks without updating and I would be
fine with that. Andrew Sullivan for that matter too. Although I love
Andrew really. I mock him all the time and he came to my birthday
party.

Q: What books do you read?

A: My junk fiction is mysteries. Right now I'm reading a Travis
McGee novel. But I also am in the middle of "The Known World." It's
very very good. And what's the other thing I just started? Um, the
David Sedaris. The new David Sedaris.

Q: Is there a mainstream publication or a print publication that
serves a similar function in the mainstream that you serve in the
blog world?

A: Well I don't think that you can be mainstream and serve that
purpose, by the definition. There is no funny - no intentionally
funny - political magazine. I find The New Republic hilarious, but
not for the reasons they intended. I also find The National Review
even more funny, but again that's not their goal usually.

Q: What about a Page Six in New York? Is that what you do for DC?

A: I guess. I don't quite know what my role is compared to political
journalists. And also I see as being part of - it's not like my role
in the blog world - it's my role in the blog, TV, magazine,
newspaper world. So it's hard for me to make the analogy you want
me to make.

Q: What do you think of other online sites? Slate? Salon?

A: I don't know what's happened to Salon. I've never been a big fan
of Salon, but I think hiring Sid Blumenthal to do their political
coverage was kind of insane. It's not interesting anymore. It's
screedy and hysterical. They were one of the first to take that
Bush mystery bulge story seriously. Slate is basically a digest of
sorts. Their aim is to not - it's almost like they don't want you
to read anything else. They read the papers for you and the
magazines for you and they watch TV for you. And that could be
useful if you're busy, I guess.

[Laughter]

Q: Would you ever allow comments on your posts?

A: No.

Q: Well, like Slate. They have an article and then they have a
little -

A: The fray.

Q: Yeah.

A: I have no interest in that. I'm very possessive of the site. As
long as I'm doing it, it's going to be my words. I would hate to
cede control to anybody.

Q: Is that talked about?

A: Yeah. It's something, actually, that all the Gawker sites, we
talk about every once in a while. I wouldn't mind having a bulletin
board, a clearly separate thing. Sort of like the fray. And let -
talk amongst yourselves, people. I just don't want to have to
respond. That's a for-sure thing. Like, it's already enough trouble
having to deal with people emailing me. But having to deal with
comments on the blog would be insane. I don't know how Kos does it.

Q: Do you know who did the Nagourney blog?

A: I have heard that it's a Times staffer. I have trouble believing
that. What's weird about that blog - does everyone know what he's
talking about? AdNags.

Q: It's a fake blog.

A: Well, it's a real blog. But it's not really Adam Nagourney doing
it. Although he's taken credit for it.  I know people have emailed
him and complimented him and he's been, you know, "Thanks."

[Laughter]

Which I think is really funny. Apparently the Times talked to him,
you know, about maybe he should take some kind of action. But he
was smart, I think, to realize to sort of let it die. And it will,
eventually. But what's weird about that blog is the comments
section because there's been real gossip and real inside jokes that
very few people would get if you didn't, like, work in the
Washington press corps. And that's what I think made some people
believe that it really was him.

Q: Are you the Wonkette in the comments?

A: No, I'm not. I mean, that's another thing about the comments is
that it's mixed. Some of them probably are signed by people who
wrote them, but I would say 99 percent of them aren't. Joe
Scarborough's not really getting lip surgery, although he needs it.

Q: Is that your natural hair color? And who makes those shoes?

A: Oh, these are Via Spaga. I just got these at Bloomingdale's on
Saturday. And, yes, natural hair color. [Holding up purse] This is
by Coach.

Q: We were just talking about the biggest revelation being that
you're married.

A: I talk about Mr. Wonkette all the time.

Q: But it's not sure that he's a real person.

A: Of course he's a real person, and Dad Wonkette and Mom Wonkette.
Actually, the times I've quoted my mom and dad on the site which
only actually once a piece have been actual quotes from them. Like,
my mom had advice for the Kerry campaign. Who doesn't? And my dad
had the best take on the last debate, which was "Kerry waxed Bush's
ass." He sent me an email during the debate that was like, "Are you
going to make a joke about that 'Need wood?' thing?" I'm like, oh,
he knows me too well. Dad shouldn't make those jokes.

Q: Do you compare yourself or your work to things like "The Daily
Show"?

A: Yes I do. All the time. I would love to be considered in the same
sentence as "The Daily Show." It's funny. I keep on wanting to write
something mean about that show, be like, oh, it's so over; everyone
likes it. But it really is good. And that's almost disappointing,
that it can be that good all the time.

Q: What do you think of Charlie Gasporino's political views?

A: I don't care about his political views. He's just kinda a dork, I
think. Whatever. He was - you're asking because we sat next to each
other and -

Q: You sorta got into it

A: We got into it? It's funny. I actually met him at the Newsweek
party at the RNC, where he refused to tell me his name, which was
just weird. He was worried I was going to quote. He had said
something kinda catty and I said "Oh, that's funny. Who are you?"
He was like "Ah. I'm not going to tell you." Political views?
Whatever. Some of my best friends are libertarian. I just think
he's just a jerk.

Q: Do you get recognized?

A: I am famous for DC. People in my local coffeehouse ask me, "Are
you the Wonkette?"

Q: Did you have trouble in Boston or New York, being there in
person, people maybe not believing you? Like "Yeah, I'm sure you're
the Wonkette?"

A: I've never pulled "Do you know who I am?"

[Laughter]

In fact, I assume people don't know who I am, which I guess is a
good thing to do. My general thumb is that I tell people I'm a
writer. What do you write? I have a website. If they ask what it's
called, I say it's called Wonkette. And if they don't ask anything
else, I don't say anything further.

Q: How do you explain what it is?

A: If they don't know what a blog is, I'm like "It's a website." I
hate explaining it.

Q: Do you call it a news site?

A: No. Hmm. "An online column." That's what my mom tells her
friends.

Q: Would you say why blogging is so male-dominated?

A: I think that for whatever reasons, women in American society,
being a loudmouth is frowned upon more than it is for men. And
blogging requires you to not care what other people think.

Q: So what are some other women bloggers you like?

A: Women bloggers? Bookslut, the girl who does - "the girl," she is
very young - who does Gawker now, Jessica, she's good. Elizabeth
Spiers, who did Gawker before her, she's good. The woman who does
Talkleft. There's a certain kind of female war blogger that I get
annoyed by, although there's some similarities between what they do
and what I do, so I don't really talk about it. It's the sexy war
blogger. The sexy libertarian stuff. The women who engage in the
boobie-thon. I don't know if you know what that is. It's like
showing your breasts for charity. They put up sexy pictures of
themselves for the troops. I rarely post pictures of myself. Never
show my breasts. For a while, before my picture got out, I would
insist that I'm fat and ugly; I still sort of feel that way. I
think what I do is hyperbole, to exaggerate to a point of it not
being true. I think what I do when I'm talking about being slutty
and stuff is mocking that, but I think it might be too subtle for
most people.

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