George Kenney of Electric Politics called us for his March 30 podcast: "To get a sense of what's going on from the perspective of grassroots Wisconsin — historically one of the great incubators of American political thought — I turned to John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy, out of Madison. John's a great guy, very thoughtful, possessing an abundance of Midwestern common sense. An excellent, and necessary, reality corrective for the Washington perspective." (Total runtime of an hour and twenty two minutes.)

"While reporting a story on Microsoft's video blogging initiative -- something called Channel 9 -- the dossier that Microsoft and its outside public relations agency Waggener Edstrom keeps on me accidentally ended up in my email inbox," recounts Fred Vogelstein. Although he had "assumed that the people I interview do as much homework on me as I do on them," Vogelstein says that it "was strange to see just how many resources are aligned against me when I write a story about Microsoft. ... For something like six months prior they had been plotting to get Wired to write a story about Channel 9 and had dispatched three executives to meet with editors at the magazine." The 12-page document contains pre-interview tips (including a warning that Voelstein "is digging for tension," and a suggestion to "apologize for being so tough to reach"), post-interview assessments ("Fred's questions went as expected"), a profile of Vogelstein ("Fred can be a little tricky in interviews") -- even anticipated questions and answers, and "what we expect to see in the story." Waggener Edstrom president Frank Shaw writes that the document is not "surprising or nefarious," but part of preparing someone to give "a great interview."

Alternet's Don Hazen interviews the founders of MoveOn. He writes, "For the first time ... members of Congress -- at least the new Democratic majority, along with a handful of Republicans -- finally caught up with the population" and "confronted Bush over the financing of the war and a real timeline for ending it. ... The ability to win this first victory was difficult and complex. It was achieved in part with the energetic and savvy support of millions of progressives and particularly MoveOn.org ... Yet this victory, and MoveOn's role, is not without controversy."