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At a forum at Columbia University (which as the former King's College knows from royalty) on political reporting, I asked the NY Times' Elizabeth Bumiller what effect it had on her or anyone's reporting when reporters and government officials live in the same neighborhoods, send kids to the same schools. She paused in disbelief. "There are only a few neighborhoods you can live in, in D.C.," she explained patiently. Bumiller was then deep in writing a bio of Condoleeza Rice -- who might, I have to think, have taken offense at Bumiller's implication.
But the impossibility of not having playgroup with the folks you're supposed to be covering was obvious to her - and to many others in the room, who found the question kind of fringe-y. But marrying the people you cover likely doesn't feel so odd if you've convinced yourself that the world really sits in half a square mile near Dupont Circle.
