An archived post from Jay Rosen's PressThink about Philip Gourevitch's talk at NYU is still great reading, but especially interesting in light of the Jeff Gannon hoo-ha:

Cheesy package tour. That was Gourevitch's first impression about traveling with the campaigns. You sign up. You get on the bus. It hits all the major sights. Crowds of people get off at each one. Then they get back on. The campaigns tell you what the schedule is. The campaigns tell you where the pick up will be. The campaigns feed you, get you to the airport, take you from the airport.

"Right there they have you," Gourevitch told our crowd of about 50 journalism students and faculty. "Outside the bubble you cannot go because then you're dirty again and have to be checked by the Secret Service." Under these conditions, he said, "no spontaneous reporting is possible."

That's chilling imagery, isn't it? Too bad all the people inside the bubble aren't wearing their ethical bunny suits. As Gannon himself put it, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

Glad you asked, Jeff! For starters, by acting on what we read by writers like Gourevitch, who, thank heavens, can both report and write well about politics. The catnap-pack journalism of dullards may be clean, but it sure is painful. There's a way to make every story riveting if you can write worth a damn. As Rosen notes, "Gourevitch was effective in reminding us that it was always possible to break away. The bubble is contractual." Listening, snoozies?

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat [PressThink]
Newshounds [New Yorker]
Ancient Hard-Drive, Guy in Bunny Suit [Boing Boing]