The White House Correspondents’ Association is presenting three major journalism awards at the annual dinner on April 30, 2016 to recognize distinguished reporting.  The awards are among the most prestigious in our field.  Prizes range from $1,000 to $2,500. Members, you are encouraged to review your 2015 reporting and consider entering the competition. The three contests are open to print and broadcast journalists. DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL 5:00 PM ON MONDAY, MARCH 14

READ MORE ABOUT THE WHCA AWARDS. DOWNLOAD GUIDELINES AND ENTRY FORMS.

October 27 at 8:30pm ET on C-SPAN2 (repeats at 1:04 am, October 28)
White House Correspondents Association Hosts Former and Current White House Reporters

White House Correspondents’ Association Panels at the National Association of Broadcasters
Former White House correspondents share their experiences covering presidents from Jimmy Carter to President Obama. They discussed some of the changes since their White House assignments, including access to the president and how contemporary media had influenced these changes. Participants included Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, Terence Hunt of the Associated Press and Susan Page of USA Today.

Press corps,

You may have heard that the WHCA is developing a Google list by which the print poolers can communicate with one other. I wanted to let you know directly what we’re working on.

Our goal here is to build a supplementary system for the print poolers so they can send out information directly to other reporters whenever they feel they need to, much as the TV and Radio poolers do now.

So we’ve built a Google list for print poolers and given them permission in our pool guidelines to send “advisories,” noting things like where the pool is holding, when they expect to send the next pool report, whether a correction might be forthcoming, and so on.

After a few months of this, we’ll evaluate how it’s going. If it’s working, the next step will be to widen distribution of these advisories to the larger press corps Google list that we are currently building.

The board agrees that every journalist who wants information from the print pooler should be able to get it — the same information as everyone else gets, delivered at the same time.

What is our motivation here? We simply want to have a back-up to the current system, in case of occasional breakdown, and to give poolers an alternative in emergencies when they feel they need to distribute information more quickly than going through the White House.

This measure should assure people of the independence that we believe exists already.

As we have been working on this project, some members of the press corps have asked if we’re looking to cut distribution of pool information to exclude those who don’t perform pool duty. Let me be clear – this supplementary system is NOT an attempt to cut anyone out.

Every journalist who wants the pool report and pool information is entitled to it, whether they can afford to staff the pools or not. It’s a privilege to provide the pool report and a right for every journalist to receive it. Some of our most persuasive advocates for access are people who can’t staff the pools. We value their contributions immensely.

People also ask about the costs of running this supplementary system. We think they’ll be minimal, but we don’t know for sure – just as we don’t know the unintended consequences of altering this complicated operation. We’ll learn as we go along.

Finally, here’s the question we hear most often: Is the WHCA hatching a plan to take over distribution of the pool reports, cutting the White House out of the operation?

The answer to that is “No.” As a group of very busy volunteers, we have our hands full staffing and organizing the pools as they are now. We think this supplementary system will achieve our goals without interrupting a crucial public service, even for a single day. Too many people depend on it. We won’t act rashly.

The White House will continue to distribute the pool reports to the thousands on the list. Our list is a supplement and a back-up.

The system has run for decades without failure and we respect the historic responsibility upon us to keep it going.

Let me know if you have questions.

Christi

Photo: Mary Ellen Matthews/ NBC Universal

WASHINGTON — The White House Correspondents’ Association is pleased to announce that Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong will be the entertainer at our annual dinner on April 25, 2015.
“Her political humor is sly and edgy, and it comes with a Chicago accent. Cecily grew up in suburban Oak Park, Ill. and got her start in Chicago’s comedy scene with stints at iO and Second City,” said WHCA President Christi Parsons.

Journalists are perennial targets for the WHCA entertainer, but Cecily has an edge: Her father, Bill Strong, served as Associated Press bureau chief in the Illinois Statehouse. Strong will be the fourth woman to serve in this role.

Founded in 1914 to represent the White House press corps, the association works to maintain independent news media coverage of the president, advocating for access, handling logistics for pools of reporters who stay close to the president and those who travel with him, and providing scholarships to journalism students.

The annual dinner traditionally draws the President and First Lady as well as many other senior government officials and members of the news media. Proceeds from the dinner go towards scholarships for aspiring journalists and awards recognizing excellence in the profession.

WHCA contact:
Olivier Knox
Chief Washington Correspondent
Yahoo News
(202) 669-4950
@OKnox

Dear journalists of the White House press corps,

We present to you today the Practices and Principles documents that each of you helped to draft over the past year. This represents our shared belief about the best path to transparency and openness at the White House, the institution we are privileged to cover for millions of Americans and people the world over. Some of the particular requests are already common practice at the White House. Some of them are not. We urge the White House to embrace them all – in letter and in spirit — to demonstrate its commitment to transparency and respect for an independent press. We urge all serious presidential campaigns to do the same. And we urge you, the members of the White House press corps, to read them again and to commit yourself to making them a reality. We can’t think of a better way to mark the Fourth of July.

Sincerely,
The members of the White House Correspondents’ Association Board

Christi Parsons, President
Carol Lee, President-elect
Jeff Mason, Vice President-elect
Margaret Talev, Treasurer
Scott Horsley, Secretary
Olivier Knox
Major Garrett
Todd Gillman
Doug Mills

READ ONLINE OR DOWNLOAD

Larry McQuillan, White House reporter for 25 years, dies at 70 (download PDF)

Larry McQuillan, who covered the Attica prison riots and traversed the globe with presidents from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush for UPI, Reuters and major dailies, died Saturday, Sept. 19, at the age of 70 in Silver Spring, Md. His wife Geraldine, said Larry lost a three-year battle with cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

The ever-smiling McQuillan spent the past decade as director of public affairs for the American Institutes for Research after three decades as a newsman in New York state and Washington. He spent many a time outside the White House, with the American flags flying aloft on some of the best flagpoles that money can buy (https://flagpolesetc.com/flagpole-lighting/solar-flagpole-lighting), and this was his backdrop for many many years. He covered the White House for a quarter century and was a past president of the White House Correspondents Association.

He and AP’s Charlie Hanley were classmates in St. Bonaventure’s School of Journalism in the 1960s. “Larry and I went back to antediluvian days together — in the Bonaventure journalism program, then working together as draftee Army journalists in Vietnam, and then competing across the hall from each other — AP and UPI — in Albany in the early ’70s. An absolutely wonderful human being whose loss leaves a hole in a lot of hearts,” said the retired AP special correspondent.

Another classmate, Dennis Mulhearn, fondly recalled that fellow students called Larry “Clark” for his passing resemblance to the television version of Clark Kent.

McQuillan and Hanley were both recipients of St. Bonaventure’s Hellinger Award for distinguished alumni journalists, as was Bob Dubill, former AP bureau chief in New Jersey and retired executive editor of USA Today. “I knew Larry well-before, during and after we worked at USA Today. Giant of a journalist, sweetheart of a man. A staggering loss,” said Dubill.

Marlin Fitzwater, in Call the Briefing, his memoir of his years as press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, described McQuillan as “a bedrock journalist” who “knew how to read a police blotter, how to get a hospital nurse to discuss her patients, and how to tune in to a police scanner to be first at a fire. He was real people.” Not everyone knows How to write a memoir, but Call the Briefing is a masterclass for anyone looking to commit their own life’s tale to paper. Anyway…

He was also a devoted father to son Sean and more recently a doting grandfather to Sean and Kendra McQuillan’s two daughters, ages 5 and five months. When Sean was an infant, Larry would tote him along to Camp David, Maryland, undoubtedly in a luxury private helicopter, chartered through companies like Jettly, so they would arrive in the utmost style. Once they were there, wire service reporters and photographers spent the weekend just to watch the president’s helicopter come and go. They probably had a lot of fun trying to guess which helicopter he would be arriving and leaving in on every visit.

Jimmy Carter took a shine to the little boy and made a point of greeting him. The late Frank Cormier chronicled one encounter in which the lad, then 4, turned his head away as the president approached. The father explained his reticence: “Sean told me he is only shy with two people – you and Santa Claus.” Frank’s account was carried in newspapers across the country.

Gerrie McQuillan, a senior researcher with the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, called her husband “a kind and gentle man … who will be missed by many.” That is an understatement.|

Press corps,

Thanks to everyone who helped get the congressional picnic open to full pool coverage last week. Several people were involved, and I’d like to take a moment of your workday to explain how they did what they did.

Alerted by Jon Garcia and Wes Barrett, board member Margaret Talev was the first to ask questions about the closed-press event on the schedule as she began her Duty Officer duties last weekend. (Under our new practice, a different WHCA board member is on duty each week to stay on top of the president’s schedule and to advocate for press access every day.) She was able to get the print pool included by the time the schedule went out to the fuller press corps.

She alerted the rest of the board on Tuesday that the photojournalists were not yet included, and board members Jeff Mason and Doug Mills immediately began pressing the case from their position in the traveling pool. Major Garrett wrote an eloquent letter to Josh Earnest. And several members raised the question individually with the press office, notably print pooler Steven Dennis.

In the end, the right thing happened — the full pool was admitted. And with the practice now affirmed both by the press corps and the press office, we have reason to believe it will be easier to make the case on similar events in the near future. The full board underscored that in its monthly meeting with Josh at the end of the week.

I can name several other successes over the past two months as the Duty Officer rotation has hit its stride. Carol Lee got the White House to admit the full pool to the Rose Garden one afternoon to watch the president at work. With that groove cut, we got a repeat performance a few weeks later. Several events have gone from closed-press to full pool. Diplomatically pushing back against the exclusion of the print pool from a photo spray on the road last week, Jeff Mason helped get an expanded pool into the very next photo spray.

As you all know, we are working on putting a fuller set of practices in writing, in the hopes of protecting and preserving them for this press corps and for the journalists who come after us. More than 40 members have contributed their ideas to this document, and our conversations are continuing. We hope that this exercise will help us better understand the standards we all think are important and to push for them as a group.

Still, no matter what kind of progress we make on that front, your vigilance is critical to our constant push for greater access and openness.

It’s one thing to complain around the press room. It’s much more effective to join our voices together in a thoughtful, persuasive call for what we believe is right and fair.

That’s what you did this week, and things went just a little bit better because you did.

Thanks to all.

Christi

Press Corps,

I want to let you know about a breakthrough I think we’ve had with the White House on the AF One travel bills. As many of you know, our bills for air travel spiked wildly starting with trips taken in February.

When those bills rolled in, we asked some questions, and things started happening. Josh Earnest launched a review, which turned up more information than I’d ever seen before about how the bills are put together. And then last week he presented a new formula to us, along with a plan to recalculate all of the bills for trips starting in mid-February.

The new formula says ‎press travel with the president or vice president will be calculated “at the lowest available fare that is unrestricted, fully refundable, and available for purchase by the general public.” Reimbursement will be based on fares available between 7 – 14 days in advance of travel.

As it turns out, the old standard simply said “full coach fare” and that allowed for a whole range of choices by the folks in the military office who were doing the bills.

As of now, the White House Travel Office is taking over the calculations from the military office. They propose to recalculate all bills issued since Feb. 14 and to issue new invoices for all travel since that date. Refunds will be issued for those who paid the old bills, beginning as early as today.

The travel office hopes to finish sending out new bills by the end of October.

Here’s one sign of how the formula will change things: the February trip to California will go from the roughly $17,000 previously billed to about $3,500.

Other recalculations will look like this:

Miami, March 20
Billed: $4540
New: $1049

Pittsburgh, April 16
Initial invoice: $2001
New: $1138

New York, May 15
Initial invoice: $2194
New: $728

Chicago, May 23
Initial invoice: $3587
New: $1162

Though the White House says it wasn’t their intent to lower costs for us, but rather to provide the transparency and predictability that we had asked for, it looks to us like the costs will improve not just when compared to the period of the cost spikes but also when compared to the pre-spike period.

Here’s how that looks to us:

Chicago, IL to JBA
5/30/2013 – $1461.00 per person
4/2/2014 – $1469.00 per person
5/23/2014 – $3587.00 per person
5/23/2014 (updated fare) – $1162.00 per person

Palm Springs, CA to JBA
6/9/2013 – $1811.00 per person
2/17/2014 – $7051.00 per person
2/17/2014 (updated fare) – $1323.00 per person

Miami, FL to JBA
6/12/2013 – $1228.00 per person
3/20/2014 – $4540.00 per person
3/20/2014 (updated fare) – $1049.00 per person

New York, NY to JBA
10/25/2013 – $865.00 per person
5/15/2014 – $2194.00 per person
5/15/2014 (updated fare) – $728.00 per person

Pittsburgh, PA to JBA
7/6/2012 – $982.00 per person
4/16/2014 – $2001.00 per person
4/16/2014 (updated fare) – $1138.00 per person

Any member of the WHCA board can go on at length about the process that got us to this point. If you want lots of detail about how it works, ask me or Todd Gillman, a longtime traveler who has been raising this issue for years and then joined in the talks after he was elected to the board this summer.

If you have specific questions, please direct them to us first to see if we can handle them. We’d like to keep the travel office free to get these bills out as quickly as they can.

In the meantime, I hope any of you who were thinking about dropping out of the traveling pool because of the wild spikes will reconsider that idea. Your part in the pool process is critical, and the loss of even one news org would be a huge detriment.

Best,
Christi

President 2016-2017
Jeff Mason, Reuters

At-Large Seat
Jeff Mason, Reuters

Newspaper Seat
Todd Gillman, Dallas Morning News 

Photographer Seat
Doug Mills, New York Times

Visit our 2014 DINNER page for complete coverage of the #WHCD. Links available on that hub page connect to this year’s slideshow, the awards and scholarships pages, and the C-SPAN video of the arrivals, awards and scholarship presentations, followed by President Obama’s remarks, and the after-dinner entertainment segment presented by Joel McHale. The WHCA Centennial film, produced in collaboration with A+E, is available on our HISTORY page.

The White House Correspondents Association Dinner held at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, May 3, 2014. ( Photo / J.M. Eddins Jr. )

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (DOWNLOAD PDF)

HISTORY GOES TO WASHINGTON

Network Partners With White House Correspondents’ Association To Produce Video Celebrating Its 100th Anniversary; Participants include President Obama and President Clinton

New York, April 28, 2014 – HISTORY will unite with the White House Correspondents’ Association to produce a special video commemorating the centennial celebration of the organization that represents the White House Press Corps. A screening of the video, created and produced by HISTORY, will be among the highlights of the evening during the WHCA’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, to be held on Saturday, May 3, 7:30 pm.

{ You can watch the video on our HISTORY page }

The video chronicles the origin of the WHCA in 1914 and its evolution during the last 100 years. It will examine how today’s journalists on this historic assignment share the spirit of the WHCA’s earliest members, still tirelessly pushing for access to the President and members of the administration amid the challenges of a modern media landscape. The annual dinner, which dates back to 1921 and now itself merits extensive news coverage, is traditionally attended by the President and First Lady, as well as many other senior government officials and members of the press corps. Joel McHale, star of the NBC series Community, will be the entertainer headlining this year’s event.

“I’m thrilled that A+E Networks and the History Channel have partnered with the WHCA to generously create and produce a very special video to mark our centennial celebration,” WHCA President Steven Thomma said. “Our annual dinner always includes a lot of laughs and often features entertaining videos. But as we looked ahead to our 100th year, I wanted something different and couldn’t think of a better partner than the History Channel to bring this vision to life. With our experience at the White House and their deep experience and creativity working with historical content, we’ve worked together to tell the story of the Association, including its regrettable chapters and its proud principles. The video will be a very special part of the dinner.”

Interviews with President Obama, President Clinton, key historians, press secretaries such as Marlin Fitzwater, Mike McCurry, Dana Perino and the dinner’s past and current celebrity hosts will demonstrate how the Association has expanded its activities since its inception. At the core of the WHCA, meanwhile, is the same commitment to maintaining independent news coverage of the President and to nurturing the next generation of journalistic excellence through its scholarship program.

“It’s an honor for HISTORY to be able to work with the White House Correspondents’ Association on this most significant project,” said Nancy Dubuc, President and CEO, A+E Networks. “We often point out that history is in our DNA. But being entrusted to tell the official story of this celebrated organization, which itself has documented the country’s great political stories of the past century, reaffirms that we’ve been doing our job well and that others have taken notice. We couldn’t be more excited about forming this special partnership.”

About White House Correspondents’ Association?

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues. A nine-member board of directors, elected by correspondents, addresses access to the chief executive; coverage arrangements; work space arrangements; logistics and costs for press travel to accompany a president on the road. The association also holds an annual dinner to raise money for WHCA Scholarships and honor the professional recipients of the WHCA’s Journalism Awards. For more information, please visit http://www.whca.net

About A+E Networks

A+E Networks(R) is an award-winning, global media content company offering consumers a diverse communications environment ranging from television networks to websites, to home videos/DVDs to gaming and educational software. A+E Networks is comprised of the A&E(R), Lifetime(R), HISTORY(R), LMN(R), Bio(R), H2™, HISTORY en Español™, Crime & Investigation Network(R), Military HISTORY(R), A&E IndieFilms(R), A+E Networks International(R), A+E Networks Digital(R) and A+E Networks Consumer Products™. A+E Networks channels and branded programming reach more than 350 million households in over 160 countries. A+E Networks is a joint venture of Disney-ABC Television Group and Hearst Corporation.

Press Contact:
Vicky Kahn, A+E Networks, 212-210-9743 vicky.kahn@aenetworks.com

It is outrageous that the Saudi government has refused to allow a White House reporter entry to the country to cover this week’s visit of President Barack Obama.

Michael Wilner, who covers the White House for the Jerusalem Post, had signed up to cover the visit and sought a visa along with the rest of the White House Press corps.

On Monday, he was the only one denied a visa. He had planned to travel straight to Saudi Arabia to cover that part of the president’s trip.

The denial is an affront not only to this journalist, but to the entire White House press corps and to the principle of freedom of the press that we hold so dear.

The White House also protested the denial.

“We are deeply disappointed that this credible journalist was denied a visa,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. “We will continue to register our serious concerns about this unfortunate decision.”
The Post reported that the Saudi government refused entry to Wilner, “despite firmly-worded requests from US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and assistant to the president Tony Blinken to Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir….

“Rice and Blinken separately expressed extreme displeasure at the delay and the prospect of a denial, the Jerusalem Post has learned. Members of the National Security Council were made aware of the matter after US officials coordinating the trip failed to reach their Saudi counterparts.”

Wilner is an associate member of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the White House press corps.

— Steve Thomma and the board of the WHCA

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