Covering the Economy: Julie Rovner

Julie Rovner:

NPR : Julie Rovner: Julie Rovner is a health policy correspondent for National Public Radio, specializing in the politics of health care. She is also a contributing editor for National Journal's CongressDaily. In 2005, she was awarded the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress for her coverage of the passage of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill and its aftermath...

One of her best:

NPR : Bush Skips White House Conference on Aging: Bush Skips White House Conference on Aging: All Things Considered, December 13, 2005· The once-a-decade White House Conference on Aging is meeting in Washington this week, with the future of Medicare high on its agenda. Medicare was on President Bush's agenda Tuesday, too. But he skipped the White House conference -- making him the first president not to speak to delegates in the event's half-century history.

While the conference on aging delegates was meeting in a hotel uptown, the White House motorcade set out in the opposite direction, to Greenspring Village, a high-end gated retirement community in suburban Virginia.

Once there, President Bush met with residents and staff to tout the new Medicare drug benefit he helped shepherd into law. "It's a good deal for our seniors, and so one of the reasons we have come today is to encourage people to see what is available in the new law."...

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Some nuggets about NPR:

• Julie Rovner is on air for perhaps eight minutes a week
• 22 million afternoon listeners
• 14 million morning listeners
• Capitol Hill doesn't understand the reach of radio
• Differences--big differences--between Republican and Democratic attitudes, along the lines of what Bruce Barlett said: "if I had come across Gene Sperling, one of Clinton's closest economic adviser... he would have come straight at me with a laundry list of facts and arguments for why I was wrong to be critical. I would have been invited to the White House mess to carry on the conversation, and I would have left with an armful of studies and statistics explaining the virtues of whatever Clinton program I was attacking. By contrast, the Bush administration never provides its supporters with any ammunition... beyond the endless repetition of the day's talking points..."